To: ABN 505
Teddy Roosevelt started the national parks system because the national appetite for wood threatened to deforest the entire country, with 1900 levels of population and energy consumption. If we tried to sustain our current energy consumption levels using wood, or other forms of biomass, we’d be deforested in a generation. (May well happen anyway.)
Pollution is a legitimate “neighborhood” effect. Historically, wood burning hasn’t been regulated because “everyone” did it and we all recognized that tolerating others soot and ash was the price we paid for staying warm in the winter.
I wonder why coal hasn’t made a comeback? My family used coal in Queens as recently as 1960. (We still had an icebox in Manhattan as recently as 1954. No refrigerator. The iceman lugged a huge block of ice up several flights of steps a couple times a week.) Coal has a lot of the drawbacks of wood. In the 1950’s the coal truck was a common sight rumbling down the street and dumping a barrel or two of anthracite down the coal chute into the basement.
32 posted on
11/23/2007 7:21:40 AM PST by
Lonesome in Massachussets
(NYT Headline: Protocols of the Learned Elders of CBS: Fake but Accurate, Experts Say)
To: Lonesome in Massachussets
Coal really belongs in industrial boilers like utilities and big manufacturing settings. From first-hand experience I can tell you, the storage, handling, burning and disposal of ash is a filthy job. Its had to believe, but even residual oil is a cleaner fuel (except when its spilled in a marine environment.)
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