From the NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY and the “wood stove police will soon come knocking” department comes this claim:
Your wood stove affects the climate more than you might think
Black carbon is the biggest problem, but other factors may have a mitigating effect
Norwegians love to heat with wood. That’s easy to see when driving around the Norwegian countryside in the winter. Stacks of wood line the walls of houses and smoke rises from the chimneys, especially on cold days.
There was even a national “wood night program” on NRK, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, which ran for 12 hours and attracted international attention because of its unusual theme.
According to figures from Statistics Norway (SSB), 1.2 million Norwegian households heat with wood. They burned 1.1 million tonnes of firewood in 2016, which provided 5.34 TWh of direct heat — and that might have affected the climate more than you might think.
“Our findings show a complex picture. This form of heating has a significant warming effect on the climate, which is cause for concern. But at the same time, burning wood also causes significant cooling, which is encouraging,” says Anders Arvesen, a researcher in the Industrial Ecology Programme at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
Arvesen and his colleague Francesco Cherubini were among the co-authors of a major study on climate impacts in Norway just published in Scientific Reports.
The study analyzed so-called stationary bioenergy systems based on heat from wood-burning stoves and from wood biomass-based district heating.
“A lot of research has been done on this topic, but until now we’ve never had such a comprehensive study of various effects on a national level. This is the first time we’ve considered all the different factors in a single study,” says Cherubini, who is a professor at NTNU’s Industrial Ecology Programme.
A research project called CenBio, which focused on innovations in bioenergy, carried out the study, which was supported by NTNU in cooperation with SINTEF Energy, the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO) and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU).
The 35 members of the OECD decided in 1991 that CO2 emissions from biomass combustion would not count in CO2 emission accounting. The theory was that nature would reabsorb the carbon dioxide released by burning, yielding a net balance of zero. Unfortunately it’s not quite that simple.
“Bioenergy from forests is carbon neutral in the sense that forests are a renewable resource. The trees will absorb CO2 as they grow, but temporarily there will be a greater amount of CO2 in the atmosphere,” explains Arvesen.
Logging can adversely affect the climate, including from emissions from heavy logging machinery. But the logged areas themselves can actually have a cooling effect, because open areas reflect more of the incoming sunlight back into the atmosphere than wooded areas.
“The cooling effect varies depending on where in the country the logging takes place, since different parts of the country have varying snow conditions and forest density,” says Arvesen.
The CenBio study took these factors into consideration. It also analysed how other emissions from burning wood affect the climate. Methane gas and assorted particles also flow out of Norwegian chimneys.
These particles can both absorb and reflect solar radiation. Whereas organic carbon particles have a cooling effect, black carbon – also known as soot – has a warming effect on the climate.
Black carbon also destroys some of the snow’s ability to reflect sunlight because it changes the colour of the snow landscape and contributes to increased snowmelt.
Black carbon from biomass combustion accounts for 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 in Norway, according to the study.
“Our analysis indicates that black carbon is the main reason for climate warming. I was surprised how important the effect of soot was, although it wasn’t completely unexpected. Burning wood creates a lot of dust emissions,” says Arvesen.
Cherubini thinks more research is needed in this area. He points out that reducing black carbon emissions will also have a positive health effect due to improved air quality.
Nevertheless, “it’s still better to heat with wood than to burn fossil fuels,” says Cherubini. He emphasizes that more technological possibilities are being developed that will result in new and better wood stoves and furnaces. Until they come on the market, people can reduce particle emissions by replacing their old stoves.
Many Norwegians have already replaced their old woodstoves with newer and cleaner-burning stoves, which has more than halved soot emissions since the early 2000s.
By 2016, 730 000 wood-burning households were using new technology. Overall, heating with wood in Norway has decreased slightly. The amount of wood burned in furnaces with old technology has decreased by more than 75 per cent in the past 20 years, according to Statistics Norway.
Old woodstoves emit more black carbon than new ones. And if the positive development continues, woodstove emissions should drop to the same level as pellet stoves in the near future. The challenge lies in the smallest particles, according to SINTEF scientist Morten Seljeskog.
“Soot is made up of particles as small as nanosize. These emissions are the most difficult ones to get rid of. Researchers are working to figure out what physical measures need to be taken in the combustion chamber to minimize soot emissions in all furnaces,” he says.
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The paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21559-8
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Really? what about the freakin’ big orange ball in the sky at noon.
What about the black carbon released through tires wearing? Guessing this may be a significant source? Perhaps the greens should ban wheels?
Now that really would appeal to their wish to drag us back to the Dark Ages !
Square wheels can’t functionally rotate as fast as round ones thereby reducing wear. Besides saving the planet they can now allow you to drive up stairs.
Soot comes from incomplete combustion.
My proposal is to put both solar panels and a windmill at each house to power electrolysis. Both the O2 and H2 can be stored in tanks behind the house with some going to a Tesla Powerwall that will drive any pumps needed and help in electrolysis when the Sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow. During the wood stove operation, both the O2 and H2 can be fed into the combustion chamber providing a setup that will more completely burn the wood.
On cold nights, the flue gases can be sent through a chiller taking out water that can be fed back into the system.
I’m pretty sure that will work.
Plus you could remove hair on your upper lip for free!
I say give the man a grant to study this in detail and a huge subsidy to develop it 🙂
I call Poe’s law. I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic and are quite good at it, or if you are an enthusiastic high schooler with no idea that you just described a ludicrously expensive and horrifically inefficient mess.
So either “bravo” or “you have a lot to learn”.
Go with ‘bravo!’
Yeah, bravo! An award for an outstanding Rube Goldberg solution as well!
In the Northeast our wood stoves burning seasoned hardwood ( oak, poplar ) provides a clear stack with no visible soot.
…and who gets the privilege of paying for that super complex and expensive lash-up??
I remember going to Telluride, Colorado on a ski trip back in the 80’s. The town sits in sort of a bowl (box canyon) at about 8,700 feet. or so. All the chimneys were emitting wood smoke. At that altitude the smoke in the air made it very uncomfortable to breathe and the pungent odor filled the town. I have always wondered if they ever restricted wood burning there.
That minor descriptor of “ALL” chimneys needs to be clarified, especially since the primary fuels in Telluride are electricity & gas. Simply having a chimney does not mean that that the fuel is wood. Sure, many of the ski lodges burn wood for the ambience of the tourists, but it is not the primary heat source.
I stand corrected. But the smoke smell back in the 80’s was overpowering in the town, I thought.
I remember an article I read a couple of decades ago about Denver requiring catalytic converters on fire places for just that reason.
I experience the same in Boise, ID in the 1970s, as it sits in a valley prone to occasional temperature inversions. On still days, the smog from combustion would be trapped in the valley for days. Driving to an elevation above the valley revealed a vast, brown layer of air below.
We see that here in Reno (alt 4500 ft). Our home is about 700 feet above Reno, and on cold, still mornings Reno is blanketed in haze.
Then the afternoon winds come up, and everything not tied down blows away.
Actually, we’re too far away to smell it. Just wonder where the town went. They do restrict wood burning, but I don’t know how they enforce it.
Officials tried that in Aspen years ago: got laughed out of town.
More science lite, but interesting that the laid back temperament of Norwegians comes through in their writing style. No end-of-world-fire-and-brimstone hysterics of their southern more excitable neighbors. A somewhat similar difference used to exist between Canadians and Americans but, like the temperatures we have been more homogenized of late.
Norwegians! Firewood is unsustainable. Thou shalt freeze to death for the sake of the climate. Think of the children unborn!
That idiocy of that comment from the article along with several others had my eye’s rolling.
I suppose it takes a Norwegian genius to realize that heating could have a warming effect.
The other corker:
“The 35 members of the OECD decided in 1991 that CO2 emissions from biomass combustion would not count in CO2 emission accounting. The theory was that nature would reabsorb the carbon dioxide released by burning, yielding a net balance of zero. Unfortunately it’s not quite that simple.”
I am just flabbergasted that they could actually rationalize this concept.
Sounds like some dodgy accounting…
I guess the biomass combustion “carbon” wasn’t displaying the proper ID so it wasn’t getting exclusive absorption preference.
How about this one:
“Black carbon from biomass combustion accounts for 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 in Norway, according to the study.”
Black carbon = CO2? Huh?
There are some reasonable Norwegians, one of them is Ivar Giaever.
Yes, one might warmeth the planet and not need to heat with wood or any other source and sleep apart with the windows open because sleeping close is too warm and consequently no baring of child.
“But the logged areas themselves can actually have a cooling effect, because open areas reflect more of the incoming sunlight back into the atmosphere than wooded areas.”
From personal experience, I disagree with the author and take the 180 position. Drive on an open road in 93 degree F vs driving on a road surrounded by woods on both sides. Trees make the planet cooler.
I fly sailplanes and you are constantly looking for rising air and avoiding sinking air, which essentially means find an open field (preferably one with bare ground showing or low plant life) or a large paved area like a shopping center to find the lift. Avoid woodlots and bodies of water as the air can sink pretty rapidly.
It is different in winter. Norway has a lot of winter
My take was that they are talking about areas with snow on the ground.
In winter the tress are covered in snow/frost.
https://depositphotos.com/151278008/stock-photo-iced-forest-in-carpathians.html
Richard’s picture shows that the trees are darker and so absorb more solar energy than snow covered ground. So trees make the winters slightly less cold and the summer slightly less hot. I am at a loss to explain why anyone would be unhappy about this.
Because it is the green party line: alsways believe, never doubt. Else…
Transpiration and photosynthesis.
Agree — forested regions are cooler.
“Our findings show a complex picture. This form of heating has a significant warming effect on the climate, which is cause for concern. But at the same time, burning wood also causes significant cooling, which is encouraging,”
Everybody likes cold, right?
Loved the contribution from the Little Angel (Mr Cherubini). Send us more money so we can do further “research”
Just back from a sad trip to Galway for my brothers funeral. Visited about 10 rural relatives ALL of whom have turf/wood/household rubbish burning stoves.
My stupid Irish government have bought into the global warming scam in a big way. All financed by that wonderful philanthropist Mr Soros who also sponsors the upcoming abortion referendum, having successfully got queer marriage through the last referendum.
It used to be called the Isle of saints and scholars. Now more like the Isle of Queers and Squalar.
Do these people ever read their work before submitting it?
More from the crackpot left.
Who says they can read let alone comprehend.
They’ve already come in my part of the world and require very expensive modifications if you want to burn wood.
Widespread use of wood or coal for heating is more of a health issue than a climate issue. I remember back in the 1950s in the winter how the snow would be speckled with black soot. Everyone heated their houses with coal. Today, in our exurban area, there are many wood fires around the lake on cooler summer nights and the air becomes thick with smoke… so thick that at times you have to stay inside with the windows closed. But, of course, the lake sits in a natural bowl so the smoke tends to stick around.
If you see soot coming from a home that is burning coal it was most likely they are burning bituminous or soft coal.
I have been burning anthracite coal, aka hard or smokeless coal for 30 years. For many years my neighbors did not know I burned coal until they saw a coal delivery truck pull up to my house.
I wonder what they say about the past when NO ONE put out fires. We currently unnaturally suppress little, big, and catastrophic fires. Given that scenorio it is reasonable to suggest that in the past there was likely much more black carbon in the atmosphere than we now have wafting around.
Plus I might add, this piece of fluff was more than likely driven by an AGW grant waiting to be had, not by any concern over explaining a human cause for weather.
But does smoke cause warming or cooling? Soot on the ground reduces the albedo of the cryosphere but smoke in the air blocks sunlight.
The solar radiation that is “blocked” by the smoke is absorbed or reflected by the smoke particles, who in turn reradiate their new heat into its surroundings (air). That same radiation would have otherwise hit and effected something else (on the ground?). All that changes is were the heat gets radiated, in the air or on the ground.
Rocketscientist
It is ground temperatures that we are generally concerned with, during the “year without summer” (1916) the theoretically hotter upper atmosphere did nothing to alleviate the suffering.
In general, the higher in the atmosphere, the more H2O and CO2 you are above, making it easier for energy to radiate out to space.
True. Fires are put out according to “who” is getting fried.
We could use some soot here. 12 degrees F., 20 mph winds, almost a blizzard, 30 degrees F. below normal.
Pet peeve, I prefer to call it average, not normal. You can calculate an average, but nobody really knows what normal is.
Average is a specific number. Normal is usually a range of numbers. Typical is one number within that normal range.
Mine too. NO such thing as normal. Average is statistical. Joe Bastardi drives me batty with his “normal”… lol Normal, and typical, conjure nor says anything. Tell a visitor that something odd is normal and something typical is normal, but on average neither happens.
Minus 4 F where I am but the sun is rising in a clear sky with little wind. I have no idea what normal should be except that if it can be this cold on this day it is probably normal.
“This form of heating has a significant warming effect on the climate, which is cause for concern.”
Good news! That is total nonsense. The “concern” is about nothing, so is idiotic.
“But at the same time, burning wood also causes significant cooling, which is encouraging.”
Bad news! That, again is total nonsense. It likely causes little, if any cooling. None that is measureable anyway. And being “encouraged” by cooling is idiotic in any case.
Warmunists do like to prattle on about total nonsense. Wood smoke can be a local problem, causing decreased air quality, especially if the area is prone to trapping air pollutants, and when you get temperature inversions.
I guess you didn’t get the memo. Warming BAD, CO2 BAD, people BAD. Must spank yourself. Attractive helpers not allowed.
“This is the first time we’ve considered all the different factors ”
Make that “all the factors you could think of”. It’s the height of hubris to assume that you actually have considered all of the possible factors.
Now that they have “determined” that burning wood can increase global warming, how long until they seek to ban that as well?
When they go after your coat and blankets you won’t be toast. You will be better preserved as an icicle.
Relentless non-stop catastrophic propaganda. Will it get worse or better? With too many dumb reporters, too much time to fill in between ads, too much taxpayer funding and political power agendas I fear it’s the former.
I love an open fire, but it is smoky. I love a closed, log burner too. Nothing like the dry heat from a log burner. But you need to burn dry wood at pretty much full “throttle” to burn “clean”. Suffice to say, log burners do create “smog” locally on a calm night.
I have a 1976 Vermont Castings Vigilant wood stove. It weighs about 300 pounds, quite a hunk of cast iron. Built before the introduction of catalytic convertors, it took a few seasons (and one chimney fire) to learn how to run it correctly. Full throttle causes almost complete combustion and hardly any soot in the stove pipe or chimney (which has a stainless steel liner). I burn about 3-4 cords a winter and only need to run a brush up there every 5 years or so. Have tried the Prest logs , 89K BTU each!, which are excellent all nighters, but expensive. More than a few places, which sell pellet stoves, have told me don’t buy a pellet stove. They are too complicated and require a trained tech to maintain.
We live at a high elevation and are not bothered with wood smoke or inversions like those in the valleys.
Would not even dream of heating our little place with anything other than wood.
“So I lit a fire, isn’t it good Norwegian wood”–John Lennon / Paul McCartney
I’m surprised someone hasn’t referenced it already. 😀
Well, its hard to believe, but that song is over 50 years old…
It warms but it cools and depending on how I adjust my parameters I can make it do both at the same time. Can I have my grant money now.
EU must not burn the world’s forests for ‘renewable’ energy
Unfortunately, this isn’t a joke. The EcoFriendly EU seeks to allow the Stone Age Fuel of Wood to be classified as a “renewable fuel.” The European Union is moving to enact a directive to double Europe’s current renewable energy by 2030. This is admirable, but a critical flaw in the present version would accelerate climate change, … Continue reading
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/12/25/eu-must-not-burn-the-worlds-forests-for-renewable-energy/
@Gary Young Pearse, living in Norway I can assure you that if there is a country where the powers that be are completely hysterical about everything having to do with climate it is Norway. It is even so bad that critics are almost completely excluded from being able to ventilate their viewpoints in the MSM. The country will save the whole of Europe by sending wind power from windparks to be built (at great expense and ruining of untouched nature), at least that is what everybody wants you to believe. Looking at the terawatts that can be sent it is nothing more than a mous’s piss in the ocean, all pain, no gain. The people in the rural areas have a bit of another opinion on the matter, but when it comes down to political parties, bureaucrats and all kind of pressure groups there is not a single one left that dares to take a sceptic viewpoint.
“Logging can adversely affect the climate”…
Um, no. It’s effects, whatever they are would be local, possibly regional. Logging, if done irresponsibly can certainly have adverse effects on the environment. But that is not “the climate”. Deforestation around Mt. Kilamanjaro, for example caused among other things, the snow to disappear from Kilamanjaro. Chopping trees down to feed bioenergy plants built to “save the planet” from carbon pollution” is a good example of stupidity on steroids, and something that is truly unsustainable.
Are they worried about carbon (soot) or carbon dioxide (a gas) ?? Most people are so stupid that they do not realise there is a difference because politicians talk of reducing carbon dioxide (only 0.04% of the atmostphere) and then in the same breath talk of “dirty carbon” not having a clue what they are saying.
Why doesn’t someone educate them ??
You guys missed it entirely: