Another Ban on the way?

[Jacob]

The Chinese? They are one of the largest contributers to CO2 output, probably in part because they are manufacturing such solar solutions and batteries. Closely followed by India. What we do in our little country has little or no impact on global warming.

Chine well down the list "per capita" but top on total output. Click the top of a column to order it: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/
Chinese is also tops in terms of renewable energy production, and serving the rest of the world with the technology.
One dubious advantage of a totalitarian state is that govts can follow the science and impose radical solutions. They are not at the mercy of fossil fuel industry or climate change sceptics.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Chinese is also tops in terms of renewable energy production.

Yes. My friend's s.i.l. is very high up in an international mining corp. - he told us he'd just returned from China where he'd just commissioned a huge new coal mine. The sole purpose of this mine was to fuel electricity generation for a massive industrial estate ......................... whose sole purpose was to manufacture low and renewable energy products for the West. It's not all as clean as it appears.

 

[paulrbarnard]

The Chinese? They are one of the largest contributers to CO2 output, probably in part because they are manufacturing such solar solutions and batteries. Closely followed by India. What we do in our little country has little or no impact on global warming.

The classic attitude that has the biggest impact on addressing difficult problems. Add up all those little ‘no impacts’ and it becomes a very significant issue.

 

[Krome10]

The Chinese? They are one of the largest contributers to CO2 output, probably in part because they are manufacturing such solar solutions and batteries. Closely followed by India. What we do in our little country has little or no impact on global warming.

What we do in our little country is buy the goods that are made in places like China.

 

[Windows]

CO2 neutral via carbon cycle. Smoke pollution less severe in low housing density areas. I wonder if there are design or operational improvements which can be made for wood and waste burning? Low tech solutions tend to get overlooked.

Burning puts CO2 (and other gases and particulates) into the atmosphere instantly. It isn’t CO2 neutral vs much slower animal, plant, fungi, & bacterial processes where most of the carbon remains in the wood until it gets sequestered in other living & dead things.

 

[Jacob]

Burning puts CO2 (and other gases and particulates) into the atmosphere instantly.

But if there are sustainable sources growing then they are absorbing CO2 simultaneously, or even in advance.

It isn’t CO2 neutral vs much slower animal, plant, fungi, & bacterial processes where most of the carbon remains in the wood until it gets sequestered in other living & dead things.

It's a continuous cycle, not emission followed by adsorption

 

[Jacob]

The classic attitude that has the biggest impact on addressing difficult problems. Add up all those little ‘no impacts’ and it becomes a very significant issue.

Not only that but we could be setting an example and leading on the technology rather than buying chinese.

 

[Windows]

But if there are sustainable sources growing then they are absorbing CO2 simultaneously, or even in advance.

It's a continuous cycle, not emission followed by adsorption

My point is that “the carbon cycle” doesn’t make one’s decision to burn wood C-neutral even if you’re talking about waste from sustainable timber. The decision about sustainable forestry has already been taken. If you are faced with a choice between burning or not burning, you should know that burning adds more CO2 to the atmosphere than not burning (assuming that not burning the wood doesn’t result in burning massive amounts of fuel for another form of disposal).

Sustainable timber means that (on decades long timescales), wood will be available. It doesn’t mean that burning it is carbon neutral.

 

[Jacob]

My point is that “the carbon cycle” doesn’t make one’s decision to burn wood C-neutral even if you’re talking about waste from sustainable timber. The decision about sustainable forestry has already been taken. If you are faced with a choice between burning or not burning, you should know that burning adds more CO2 to the atmosphere than not burning (assuming that not burning the wood doesn’t result in burning massive amounts of fuel for another form of disposal).

Sustainable timber means that (on decades long timescales), wood will be available. It doesn’t mean that burning it is carbon neutral.

But sustained forestry has already been practiced for 100s of years, so as long as it is growing at the same rate as it is being burned it will be CO2 neutral.
Interestingly - according to Oliver Rackham and others, those parts of Britain where wood was most in demand; for the early iron industry, for ship building etc, were also the places where forestry was maintained and replaced - hence carbon neutral.
The main destroyers of forests and CO2 production has always been farming, especially meat/dairy production which involves far greater areas than equivalent plant food sources. https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/what-is-the-climate-impact-of-eating-meat-and-dairy/index.html

 

[RobinBHM]

What we do in our little country is buy the goods that are made in places like China.

Off shoring is a problem

 

[Windows]

“But sustained forestry has already been practiced for 100s of years, so as long as it is growing at the same rate as it is being burned it will be CO2 neutral.”

That’s not correct. To understand why consider this: if you burned every last scrap of sustainably produced timber this year, you would put more CO2 into the atmosphere than if you had burned none of it. If you make the same decision to burn the entire crop of sustainable timber again next year, you would put more CO2 in to the atmosphere than if you stopped burning it after one year. Clearly the sustainability of the timber is not directly tied to the amount of CO2, it’s the use to which it is put that is key.