Quote:
Originally Posted by sheeny
Being a country dweller, I am all for wood heaters. However, I understand your irritation, especially when you see the down side and not the benefits, but they have their place. In the city or built up areas where you need to buy your firewood, and gas is readily available I think they are a luxury and not terribly appropriate.
SNIP .............
We do not have any problem with smoke smell in our clothing from the washing line, though it is rare we run the wood heater during the day.
Al.
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+1
Good post Al. We're in much the same position - a country location and our own trees that die at a natural rate. We would have to wait for many years before a freshly cut down tree was seasoned enough to use for firewood. Even the firewood sold locally has been harvested as dry dead logs from the local forests.
Like you, I believe that a properly adjusted wood fire is not necessarily more harmful, in terms of producing pollutants, than any other form of home heating - if you look closely at the whole supply and production chain.
The major problem,as i see it, is population density. When you cram enough people together in a city you get more waste, of every kind, than can be disposed of simply. Many solutions just push the problem somewhere else on the "out of sight out of mind" principle.
To put it into perspective, when I was born in 1946 the population of the entire world was less than two and a half billion. Now it's already blown out to seven and a half billion. So, in the space of a single lifetime (which isn't quite over yet!) the population has trebled. The pressure on resources and environment is increasing at an unsustainable rate. Getting a little "greener" is clearly desirable, but if we keep breeding at that rate, recycling our beer bottles etc will only delay things by a few eye-blinks.
We all contribute to this. For instance, I'm personally addicted to breathing in oxygen and other gases and exhaling some of it as carbon dioxide. And it's not just me - my wife and son are addicted too. And we're addicted to food as well - we eat some almost every day. And it takes a lot of good land to keep us chomping away.... Water too (and we all know what humans turn that into...)
I don't have a firm opinion on nuclear power, but maybe if we could just nuke a few cities we could thin the population out a bit? Well, maybe not.... there's bound to be a fuss of some kind...
But IMO the greenest tool isn't an electric heater, it's a vasectomy knife...
Cross your legs fellers, I'm coming after you...
Cheers,
Chris