Posted on 09/10/2022 5:53:23 PM PDT by Drew68
Governments bet billions on burning timber for green power. The Times went deep into one of the continent’s oldest woodlands to track the hidden cost.
Burning wood was never supposed to be the cornerstone of the European Union’s green energy strategy.
When the bloc began subsidizing wood burning over a decade ago, it was seen as a quick boost for renewable fuel and an incentive to move homes and power plants away from coal and gas. Chips and pellets were marketed as a way to turn sawdust waste into green power.
Those subsidies gave rise to a booming market, to the point that wood is now Europe’s largest renewable energy source, far ahead of wind and solar.
But today, as demand surges amid a Russian energy crunch, whole trees are being harvested for power. And evidence is mounting that Europe’s bet on wood to address climate change has not paid off.
Forests in Finland and Estonia, for example, once seen as key assets for reducing carbon from the air, are now the source of so much logging that government scientists consider them carbon emitters. In Hungary, the government waived conservation rules last month to allow increased logging in old-growth forests.
And while European nations can count wood power toward their clean-energy targets, the E.U. scientific research agency said last year that burning wood released more carbon dioxide than would have been emitted had that energy come from fossil fuels.
“People buy wood pellets thinking they’re the sustainable choice, but in reality, they’re driving the destruction of Europe’s last wild forests,” said David Gehl of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a Washington-based advocacy group that has studied wood use in Central Europe.
The industry has become so big that researchers cannot keep track of it...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Europe might look like the Sahara Desert.
Can you buy coal by the 50lb bag anywhere? I haven’t seen it for sale in years. Since I was a kid, I’ve loved the smell of a coal fire.
Forests in Finland and Estonia, for example, once seen as key assets for reducing carbon from the air, are now the source of so much logging that government scientists consider them carbon emitters.
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Interesting circular logic. The trees are being logged, therefore are “carbon emitters, because they’re being logged, therefore are responsible for carbon emission, so they can be logged to remove them from editing carbon.
Same with the magnificent vistas in the western USA. All will soon be gone, buried under a forest of millions of windmills with a billion tons of buried concrete. Each windmill has a lifespan of 20 years, MAYBE 25 to 30 tops.
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I’ve seen it happen with the once beautiful Berkshire Hills. Those wind turbines look like trash.
Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gathering winter fuel
Burning Biomass is not the way to go.
And I say that as someone who has a wood stove.
So unbelievably unnecessary!
ESG elites look what you have wrought.
Coal=Dead trees. Wood Pellets=Living trees. Greenism is the new nazism. Particularly in Germany. Greenism has it’s roots there in the Wandervogel movement. As did Nazism. The poor trees. Tolkien had a soft spot for trees. We all should
Greenism and hipsterism are causing environmental destruction on a massive scale. Smug westerners thinking they are helping the planet with their wind turbines and almond milks. Somewhere, someplace, the poor pay for the good vibes of these hypocritical, odious @uks
Look at the island of Hispaniola on google maps. On one side, Dominican Republic, lush and green. On the other side is Haiti. Barren of vegetation and not a tree left standing because they cut down everything to burn.
Will do. Thanks.
The beautiful Columbia River Gorge between Oregon and Washington is thoroughly ruined with them. Thousands and thousands of them. My son and I drove through in March this year and not one was turning. What a colossal waste of money.
Does this mean the remaining WW1 and WW2 mines will now be cleared?
Will the bodies left there now be recovered?
Or will some tree harvesters get rude surprises as they step into “History”?
This is how bad it has gotten in the UK and Europe....
‘Europe Game Shows Will Pay Energy Bill If You Win’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_8mmVbAPwE
“...whole trees are being harvested for power...”
I have never known when less than a whole tree was harvested for anything.
What do environment wackos think about this?
If people want to see how much pollution burning wood creates they need only come to Fairbanks, Alaska in wintertime during an inversion. The EPA is trying to do away with wood burning stoves in the US and there are areas in Cali where they’re now illegal.
When, around 1800, England burned all it’s available forests, it turned to coal as the main energy source.
Are we supposed to go back 300 years and expect different results?
I reached the conclusion, that whatever disasters “global warming” can bring on us are thwarted by the self inflicted disasters brought on as in futile attempts to stop it!
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