Re[6]: [at-l] another stove question

[spiriteagle99@xxxxxxxxxxx (Jim and/or Ginny Owen)]

Weary wrote:
> >"... For global warming purposes,  alcohol, white gas and butane are
> >better due to the nature of the combustion byproducts," argues Jim.
>
>Which is simply not true, at least for white gas and butane.

Of course it's true. By comparison, wood combustion  is energy-inefficient
and polluting - even under forced draft in a Zip.  It's major advantage for
a hiker is convenience.

Remember, we're talking on a micro basis here - not macro.  That means YOU
and YOUR stove as opposed to ONE other person and their stove.  The energy
content of wood is considerably less than that of alcohol or white gas.
That means you have to burn more wood 'weight' in order to generate the same
thermal energy.  That means you're generating more CO2, NOx, wood ash,
particulate carbon and other byproducts (depending on what type of wood you
use and its chemical content) - in order to generate the amount of heat
needed to boil, for example, 2 cups of water.  If you're cooking
long-cooking food, that means you're increasing the amount of CO2,
particualte carbon, etc. that you're generating.

With a higher energy content fuel, you use less weight to generate the same
amount of heat. Which in turn, produces less CO2, etc.  And a whole lot less
particulate carbon (but NOT zero).

And yeah - that's a simplified description. But it's also reasonably
accurate.

If you doubt that wood burning produces byproducts other than CO2, go smell
your clothes after you use the stove (or after your campfire). That ain't
CO2 you're smelling, babe.  CO2 is odorless.  And check out the amount of
soot that's on your clothes.  Do you really think ALL the soot ended up on
your clothes?  So -- where do you think it went?  Into the atmosphere maybe?

Try starting with some facts and then thinking through the process.  It's
not that hard.

>I don't know the source of the energy used to dehydrate beer (fermented
>grains, as opposed to wine, fermented fruits) into alcohol.

What does that have to do with the stove discussion?  As I recall,
comercially they use natural gas, which is a whole lot cleaner than my
great-grandfathers woodburning still was.


>Jim, I'm afraid fails to understand the basic facts of global warming.

Aw gee - now you've done it. And I was havin' fun. You were the one who
said:
>But I don't engage in personal attacks, either on this list, or >anywhere
>else.

So how come you don't recognize your own words as a personal attack?

Fact is, I think Jim "may" understand global warming better than you do.
He's spent 39 years working with the instrumentation, the scientists, the
data, the software and the theories.  The fact that he doesn't agree with
you doesn't make him either ignorant or stupid.  Nor does it mean he
"doesn't understand".


>It's the sudden burning over a couple of centuries of fuels stored multiple
>millions of years ago, that is changing the concentration of CO2 in the
>atmosphere.

Yeah - but that's less than half the story.  How come you don't know the
rest of the story?  How come you don't know just how fragile your theory is?
And how little hard data actually supports it?  And how much the computer
models have to be screwed around, finagled and fudged to make them support
it at all?  How come you don't know about the tremendous amount of research
that's being pursued that may or may not support what you seem to believe?
How come you don't know about the results of major studies that negate a
good part of what you're claiming?  Why do you think we're launching/have
launched a dozen or more spacecraft to study those things that you claim as
facts?

Uh - tell me again - which one of us understands what?


>If society turned to wood as an energy source, the global warming threat
>would disappear as soon as the current buildup of carbon dioxide in the
>atmosphere slowly gets absorbed by vegetation.

By what vegetation?  The vegetation that you're burning faster than it can
grow?  The world is a whole lot more complicated than that.

Don't get asinine on me here - you're better than that.  If we did what you
suggest, the forests would disappear within your lifetime.  How come you
don't understand the effects of scale in your calculations?  For "you" to
use wood is one thing. For 300 million people to use wood is an entirely
different bucket of worms.  Go to Haiti and you'll see the results of your
kind of solution - total denudatin of the land.  Followed by abject poverty.
  Or maybe you'd like to try Southeast Asia?  Or maybe you'd like to go back
to Merry Olde England?  Do you have ANY idea what the air quality was like
there?  I don't think you do - I don't think you'd have liked it there.  And
I have no desire to retreat to that kind of existence.

Somehow I think there'd be a lot of opposition to your idea from the Sierra
Club and other environmental organizations.  <G>


>Burning vegetation that is currently growing is the natural carbon >cycle
>that neither adds, nor subtracts from atmospheric greenhouse gases.

That's an unproved and incomplete theory - and in fact, may well have been
proved to be largely false in recent years.  Seems to me I ran into
something about that recently - I'll have to go look for it.  But it didn't
support your statement.  Fact is that Bryan's right - the carbon cycle is
NOT even close to being completely understood.  And won't be for at least a
few more years.


>Vegetation decays and releases carbon dioxide,

Does it really?  OK - How much CO2?  On what time scale?  And why do you
think that's the same process as combustion?  It's not, you know.


>or is burned and releases carbon dioxide. In either
>case that carbon dioxide is reabsorbed in the growing of new vegetation,
>continuing the cycle ad infinitum -- or at least until development >finally
>paves over the earth.

You fail to account for a considerable percentage of the carbon as well as
other compounds in your simplistic theoretical cycle.  In fact, you're
talking about two entirely different processes which have two greatly
different cycle times as well as somewhat different product sets.  They're
not directly equatable.

Now - the answer is - yes.  I DID finally get down to the "Debunking BunBun"
posts on TA. I was gonna let them go, but I may just change my mind about
that.  From what little I read of them (not much yet - I'll get to that
later), if that's the best you guys can do, you need to learn a hell of a
lot more about real science and stop spouting what I call "political
science" (aka "politicized science").  Real science doesn't "start" with a
conclusion - and very often doesn't end with one either.  More often than
not, it "ends" with more questions than it started with.  And global warming
theory hasn't even managed to ask all the preliminary questions yet, let
alone answer them.

This particular discussion just got relegated to TA for anyone who's
interested.  It no longer has anything to do with hiking - or the Trail - or
even stoves.

Walk softly,
Jim



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