Coal being phased out

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.

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

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