Coal being phased out

[vintage engineerParticipant @vintageengineer]

Funny how commercial tomato growers have to increase co2 levels to 1000ppm to achieve viable crops?

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 29/02/2020 18:41:53:

Posted by vintage engineer on 29/02/2020 18:13:41:

Well if the green idiots get there way we will all die out anyway, but we will leave a barren lifeless planet behind. If we reduce the earth's co2 level below 300ppm most of the plants will die out!

If we had the technology to reduce CO2 levels by 50ppm, there would be no need to worry about climate change! As it is, CO2 is out of control.

Ice core records show CO2 levels wobbling just below 300ppm for the last 800,000 years. Then they show the level rising sharply since industrialisation, up to about 420ppm last year and accelerating. It's an awful big difference to make to the atmosphere in only 250 years. Carbon Dioxide being odourless and invisible doesn't help – the problem would be much easier to accept if the air turned black and car tyres dissolved in rain water!

Curious thing noted at today's family 'do': although the elders don't care about global warming, they're terrified by Coronavirus…

Dave

[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

To get back to the practical effects of the legislation, I'm wondering how it will affect me. I buy unprocessed logs from a local farmer – he charges me £30 for as much as I can cram into my estate, which I reckon is 400 to 500 kg. So less than a cubic meter based on a density of 600-800 kg/m^3 for hardwood. This come from a massive pile in his yard. He reckons it take about two years for green wood to get bulldozed from the input to the output end. It is a big pile!

When I get it home the superficial moisture content (measured by one of those resistance meter things) can be as high as 35%, but after processing and storing indoors for a few weeks it's down to 20-22% and burns nicely.

How is this going to be policed? If I have to buy kiln-dried and processed with certified water content it'll be too expensive – and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Round here some folk have the space to store enough to season under cover for a year or more.

Robin

Edited By Robin Graham on 01/03/2020 01:30:14

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Around here you can go severa years between sightings of a policeman and fl-tipping and burglary are ignored so what;s the chance of getting firewood checked? Don't worry about it. If anything is ever done to police it then it'll be a few spot checks on licenced dealers and a large fine if they catch one 'pour encourager les autres'

I've got 10 or 15 tons of the stuff in a dutch barn but hardly ever burn it 'cos of the mess and dust involved and that it takes a heaped wheelbarrow a day to warm this place up. Much easier to use oil CH. It does get used in the hobby shed on cold evenings.

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Nasty stuff that CO2. It killed these three people and put others in hospital. CO2 DEATHS

Albeit at about one million PPM.

[vintage engineerParticipant @vintageengineer]

All inert gases are asphyxiant gases in the right concentrations. I remember when Halon was replaced with Inergen gas which was much safer to humans as it still contained oxygen.

Helium has been used in the USA to kill people as it leaves no trace and undetectable!

Posted by Hopper on 01/03/2020 05:55:29:

Nasty stuff that CO2. It killed these three people and put others in hospital. CO2 DEATHS

Albeit at about one million PPM.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Robin Graham on 01/03/2020 01:08:10:

To get back to the practical effects of the legislation, I'm wondering how it will affect me. …

How is this going to be policed? …

…

Smoke signals! On a still day it can be seen for miles, and it points straight to the guilty party.

But the point of legislation is to discourage anti-social behaviour, not to guarantee it never happens. If the ban reduces the number of cheapskates burning wet-wood by half, that's an improvement. The Law doesn't prevent murder, theft, irresponsible dog owners, or parking on a double yellow-line whilst under the influence, but it certainly discourages all of them.

Dave

[RobinParticipant @robin]

There was a lovely theory…

The plants each wanted to grow higher and reach above the canopy to soak up the sun. Tricky because they were all a bit floppy until one of them invented lignin and suddenly the sky was the limit.

Unfortunately the bacteria and fungi that ate dead trees did not know how to digest lignin so the dead trees piled up and then got buried eventually becoming great seams of coal, taking most of the atmospheric carbon with them.

Now the bacteria and fungi have gotten their acts together we neeed to release that carbon back in to the atmosphere, restoring the natural levels in which the plants evolved and adapted to.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

I'd love to see the energy balance for kiln dried firewood. How much of the dried stuff that comes out do you then have to feed back in to dry the next load. Surely just keeping it under cover for a couple of years would make more sense? Of course you'd then have to work out how many acres of under cover storage we needed, and what the carbon footprint of building it was. I've seen some really impressive large span wooden structures, they should have a fairly low footprint, just no concrete floors.

All this will be killed off by accountants, if there isn't a return in 3 months forget it.

On a second tack, in the village I grew up in there was a sawmill which had a suction gas engine that ran on sawdust. Must have been similar to this https://www.paxmanhistory.org.uk/suctngas.htm but it's a long time ago. You could hear it for at least half a mile!

Edited By duncan webster on 01/03/2020 11:48:05

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

I perceive that regulation of kiln dried logs will be overseen by Trading Standards, they seem the logical persons to police sales, with the current level of under provision of manpower in local authority departments I bet that it will be a very low priority and very few transgressors will be held to account.
Dave W

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