On Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:48:10 -0600, the infamous Chris Friesen
scrawled the following:

On 12/07/2009 12:18 PM, Leon wrote:
"Chris Friesen" wrote in message

As long as the rate of burning doesn't exceed the rate of growth,
burning wood for energy is carbon neutral.

That sounds lile a fuzzy feels good formula.

Huh? You grow a tree then burn it...no net carbon release. How is that
fuzzy or "feels good"?

200 years ago the population of the planet was under a billion people.
Now it's 6x that.

But every one was burning then not so now, actually few by contrast.

Before we were burning trees, now we burn oil, coal, and gas.

From 1850 to 2000, the total energy consumption of the USA increased by
a factor of 50. Of course a large amount of that is due to population
increase, but the per-capita energy consumption has increased roughly 4x
over that period.

So.. much cleaner energy consumption compared to way back when.

Cleaner in what sense? As the US switched from agrarian to modern it
uses 4x as much energy per person. How is that cleaner overall?

A gas furnace is 25-40x cleaner than a fireplace or wood stove.
Incandescent/fluor lamps put out no CO2 while an oil lamp does.
Cars put out more CO2 than horse farts, but we're still ahead.

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