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Category Archives: Wood
Wood, the fuel of preindustrial societies, is half of EU renewable energy
Preface: By far the largest so-called renewable fuel used in Europe is wood. In its various forms, from sticks to pellets to sawdust, wood (or to use its fashionable name, biomass) accounts for about half of Europe’s renewable-energy consumption. Although … Continue reading
European Power plants are burning American forests
Preface. Incredibly, this article doesn’t address the fact that after you cut down a forest and convert the wood into pellets destined to be burned in European furnaces for “clean energy”, the next forest won’t grow back with nearly as … Continue reading
Book review of Underbug: an obsessive tale of termites and technology
Preface. I read this book mainly to find out where “grassoline” stood. Scientists thought 10 years ago that we could recreate the termite biota system of digesting biomass to create biofuels. But this appears to be far in the future … Continue reading
Posted in Agriculture, Wood
Tagged ethanol, grassoline, superorganism, termite
Comments Off on Book review of Underbug: an obsessive tale of termites and technology
Book: John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”
Preface. This contains excerpts from John Perlin’s “A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization”. It’s one of my favorite books about natural resources, exploring the role wood has played in the rise and fall of civilizations since they … Continue reading
Posted in Collapse of Civilizations, Collapsed, Deforestation, Life Before Oil, Limits To Growth, Peak Resources, Soil, Wood
Tagged civilization, collapse, deforestation, peak wood, wood
1 Comment
Vaclav Smil on wood
[ I’ve extracted bits about wood from Smil’s book about materials below, read the book for the larger context. Enormous amounts of wood were used in former civilizations with much smaller populations than today, so it’s clear we can’t go … Continue reading
How burning biomass made us human
[ This is a book review of Wrangham’s “Catching Fire: How cooking made us human”. Fire enabled us to have larger brains from the increased calories in cooked food, held carnivores at bay, killed bacteria, and gave us many other … Continue reading
From Wood (10,000 BC to 1750) to coal (1750-1920) to Oil, Natural Gas, & Electricity to What?
Cutler J. Cleveland . Energy Quality, Net Energy, and the Coming Energy Transition. Department of Geography and Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Boston University The level of health, food security and especially material standard of living that exists today … Continue reading
Posted in Wood
2 Comments
Coal Power Plants stumped by Burning Wood
Power Plants Try Burning Wood With Coal to Cut Carbon Emissions. Matt Wald. New York Times. November 3, 2013. There are many difficulties to burning wood in coal plants: Pound for pound, wood only produces 66% as much energy as … Continue reading
Germany National Academy of Sciences report: Don’t use biofuels
July 26, 2012. Bioenergy — Chances and Limits. German National Academy of Science (Leopoldina Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften). Page 30-56 English Version. A major motivations for using bio-energy is to reduce climate change from carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by substituting … Continue reading
Posted in Algae, Biofuels, Biomass, Biomass EROI, Wood
Tagged algae, biodiesel, biofuel, environment, ethanol
2 Comments