Fireplace . Robbie Sproule from Montreal, Canada, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

British Greens Pushing for a Home Wood Heater Ban

Essay by Eric Worrall

As British energy prices and home heating spiral out of the reach of ordinary people, affluent greens are campaigning for their poorer neighbours to be forbidden from staying warm by burning wood.

Log burner ban warning as ‘harmful’ impacts pinpointed: ‘Like 750 HGV exhausts!’

ENVIRONMENTAL campaigners are calling on Britons to “protect your neighbours” and stop using log burners as using them is like having 750 diesel trucks pumping their exhaust into your living room – including those marketed as “eco-friendly”.

By ROSIE JEMPSON

11:00, Sun, Jun 26, 2022 | UPDATED: 12:38, Sun, Jun 26, 2022

Only stoves that meet the ecodesign standard can be legally sold as of this year in the UK and EU, but experts said that the PM2.5 pollution – which comes from wood-burning – hasn’t been reduced.

According to the Forum of International Respiratory Societies’ Environmental Committee, PM2.5 is especially harmful to health as it can pass through the lungs into the bloodstream and then be carried around the body and lodge in organs.

Statistics also show that there are at least 40,000 early deaths a year attributed to wood burning in Europe.

The source of the original HGV figure is a report by the European Environmental Bureau, which looked at the amount of PM2.5 emissions given off by the wood stove compared to the amount generated by HGVs.

A Defra spokesperson said: “Air pollution has reduced significantly since 2010, with nitrogen oxide levels down by 44 percent and PM2.5 down 18 percent since 2010.”

In response to the statement, Ms Hartshorn said that the Governmental department “always say that” but the findings from the “National Audit Office (NAO) report said nitrogen oxide, which is from cars, has dropped but pollution from PM2.5, including from wood-burning stoves hasn’t”.

Read more: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1629751/log-burner-ban-wood-smoke-air-pollution-mums-for-lungs-defra

The UK already has a powerful clean air act which could be used to stop wood burning, but enforcement is less than universal.

I used to burn lots of wood when I lived in Britain, we didn’t have gas and the electricity was ridiculously expensive. The wood was delivered by a guy who was referred by one of my neighbours. I somehow always forgot to ask for a receipt, I was grateful for affordable home heating.

The British Government admits fuel poverty rates are unacceptably high, a situation which will only get worse in the light of recent price hikes. The UK also suffers a substantial excess winter deaths, 17,280 excess winter deaths in 2018-19. 2019-2020 was a horror year, 28,300, and 2020-21 even worse, at 63,000.

Obviously Covid was the big issue after 2019, and its difficult to separate poor indoor air quality from other factors in previous years. But everyone who has experienced cold weather knows severe cold would be more of a problem for people’s health, than a little smoke. There is a reason our ancestors have been using fire to stay warm, for at least the last few million years.

If greens get their way, and the last affordable form of home heating is further restricted, I suspect a lot more people are going to die from cold than the number who currently die from wood smoke pollution.

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Paul Buckingham
July 3, 2022 2:02 am

All climatards need to have the courage of their conviction and go live in a swamp, where they will have no access to communications, and then we don’t have to listen to the idiots.

Reply to  Paul Buckingham
July 3, 2022 2:50 am

I reckon there is a glaring spelling mistake, second word……

dmacleo
Reply to  186no
July 3, 2022 8:55 am

nope. its a play on the word retard. east enough to grasp unless easily offended.

Reply to  dmacleo
July 3, 2022 10:40 am

But change an A for a U .. .. ..

Auto

Reply to  auto
July 4, 2022 6:26 pm

climutards?

sadbutmadlad
Reply to  186no
July 6, 2022 12:19 am

Change the 2nd A to a U

Editor
July 3, 2022 2:09 am

I won’t take it personally!!!

fretslider
July 3, 2022 2:24 am

Log burners have a flue
Gas boilers have a flue

I have a fireplace and it has a chimney!

Silly alarmists can jog on – and freeze if they choose

Glen MICHELL
Reply to  fretslider
July 3, 2022 4:09 am

Compost the greens , let them dry out. Then… presto!

Reply to  fretslider
July 4, 2022 3:00 pm

And because of no heating many will die with a flu.

Reply to  fretslider
July 4, 2022 6:34 pm

I have a fireplace and it has a chimney!”

Fireplace chimneys usually have flues also.
When using the fireplace, the flue is opened, just enough.
When not using the fireplace, the flue is closed.

Chimneys are designed to help evacuate the air inside a dwelling.
In winter, warm air is evacuated and cold air is drawn inside.

Which is why the flue is opened just enough to draw the smoke out and not all of the warmth.

Charles Pickles
Reply to  ATheoK
July 4, 2022 11:18 pm

All wood burners when installed require a separate direct stream of air from outside through its own vent system drawn by the draught of the fire. Being at low level the cold of that airstream will not have any impact on room temperatures when the wood burner is aflame. When not aflame, that airstream could cool the room should there be a wind pressure forcing a draught. But a damper on that vent would minimise that when shut. My cottage is dependant on that form of heating in the depths of winter.

lee
July 3, 2022 2:29 am

Deaths likely will be blamed on COVID.

Carbpn Bigfoot
Reply to  lee
July 3, 2022 3:15 am

As Steve Milloy would say “show me the bodies”. I say do your research–the jab is responsible for the bodies now described as “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome”–go get another booster!!

Charles Higley
Reply to  Carbpn Bigfoot
July 3, 2022 7:39 am

It was revealed years ago that what they do at the EPA is to sit around and speculate how many deaths might occur due to the topic of the day, like PM2.5. Someone comes up with a rate of, say, 1/100,000 in the US and them they do the napkin math and come up with how many people would die. Shortly, this becomes a published number. There never were any bodies. It’s all speculation and armchair stupidity.

Later, the EPA tried and failed to show that PM2.5 kills people, doing an experiment with very high PM2.5 exposure on volunteers that they expected to die—surely the volunteers were not told this. When the experiment failed completely with no effects or deaths, they buried the study and did not tell Congress, as they had already claimed to Congress that PM2.5 was lethal at low concentrations.

Paul C
Reply to  Charles Higley
July 3, 2022 8:59 am

If I recall correctly, their totally unethical experiments deliberately exposed people with respiratory conditions to what the EPA claimed would produce many fatalities amongst the group. However, since the particulate levels the EPA claims are lethal would have wiped out the entire population of London each year when it experienced regular smogs, and many a Chinese city in the modern era, the lethality of particulates claimed by the EPA fails the smell test.

TheLastDemocrat
Reply to  Paul C
July 3, 2022 11:43 am

It ouwld be great if the actual citations to these claims could be posted. Or, at least, a couple more clues, so these can be tracked down.

Carbon Bigfoot
Reply to  Charles Higley
July 4, 2022 4:39 am

Yes Charles but they admitted in Federal Court their sin. Go to Junk Science Steve Milloy’s for the documentation.
Follow up on SAD:https://greenmedinfo.com/blog/latest-tragedy-sudden-adult-death-syndrome?utm_campaign=Daily%20Newsletter%3A%20Weekly%20Newsletter%20%28Wjx8uC%29&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Daily%20Newsletter%20Sends-%20Updated&_kx=rojyBcC_PI3z83RFfdEl-OEA7n2owLVMC0Y72R2ZEHk%3D.K2vXAy

  • In recent weeks, media outlets around the world have started highlighting a medical phenomenon called “sudden adult death syndrome,” or SADS, in what appears to be a clear effort to obscure the reality of COVID jab deaths. Sad on steroids indeed
  • Underlying factors for SADS include undiagnosed myocarditis, inflammatory conditions and other conditions that cause irregularities in the electrical system of the heart, thereby triggering cardiac arrest
  • While SADS has been known to occur previously, what’s new is the prevalence of this previously rare event. In Australia, the Melbourne Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute is setting up a new SADS registry “to gain more information” about the phenomenon
  • Data compiled by the International Olympic Committee show 1,101 sudden deaths in athletes under age 35 between 1966 and 2004, giving us an average annual rate of 29, across all sports. Meanwhile, between March 2021 and March 2022 alone — a single year — at least 769 athletes have suffered cardiac arrest, collapse, and/or have died on the field, worldwide
  • Among EU FIFA (football/soccer ball) athletes, sudden death increased by 420% in 2021. Historically, about five soccer players have died while playing the game each year. Between January and mid-November 2021, 21 FIFA players died from sudden death
July 3, 2022 2:33 am

The WHO tells us 4m people every year in developing nations die from respiratory conditions caused by smoke from burning wood and/or dung for heating and cooking. All for the want of cheap, fossil fuel derived electricity.

This is where the concept of ‘illegal loggers’ comes from in and around rain forest’s. These people are designated such not because they are cutting down trees to provide nice furniture for the wealthy west, but from responding to the demands of local people for timber to burn.

Nor are these confined to villagers, these are towns and cities that have no access to cheap electricity or gas. But loggers are presented as destroying valuable rain forests for profit rather than the real source, non existent government energy policies.

Richard Page
Reply to  HotScot
July 3, 2022 5:37 am

I think this article is one more piece of evidence that these moronic ‘greens’ are inner city middle class with too much time on their hands, no interest or understanding of how the majority live and a false righteous indignation that the world doesn’t work the way they know it should. These people are the real deplorables.

Old Man Winter
Reply to  HotScot
July 3, 2022 7:27 am

Willis posted this photo of a northern section of the Haiti/Dominican Republic border (L/R- very poor
vs those not nearly as poor), which does show up on Google Maps. The contrast is stunning!

HaitiDR.jpg
Rocketscientist
Reply to  Old Man Winter
July 3, 2022 8:40 am

I’ve overflown the island many times and have always remarked to those looking out their window that the border between the two countries is obvious. And, the reason is rather obvious as well.

Steve Taylor
Reply to  Old Man Winter
July 3, 2022 10:40 am

It would be interesting to see how Haiti would be if the French hadn’t continued to rape the country after its “liberation”

Tim
Reply to  Steve Taylor
July 4, 2022 4:44 am

It would be even more interesting if this has not happened:
1804 Haiti massacre – Wikipedia

Reply to  HotScot
July 3, 2022 10:00 am

I don’t think people in the developing world are cooking using an AGA, Rayburn or Esse stove. It’s an open fire without a decent chimney

Reply to  Ben Vorlich
July 4, 2022 8:24 am

I didn’t suggest they were. A chimney in many instances is an open door.

Reply to  HotScot
July 4, 2022 3:07 pm

In these developing nations many would die irrespective of their respiratory conditions. It is probably like not distinguishing between death because of covid or death with covid. There are simple and inexpensive ways to obtain the same heat from less wood i.e. less smoke. This is what should be encouraged and the people given practical guidance without banning these readily available fuels. This is called Adapting.

Mark Pawelek
July 3, 2022 3:07 am

British Greens Pushing for a Home Wood Heater Ban

eh?
The general case: “Greens Pushing for a Heater Ban”, or is it: “Greens Pushing for Ban”?

Rod Evans
July 3, 2022 3:09 am

Well this is something that was always on the Green agenda. It has zero to do with health and everything to do with removing a basic freedom from ordinary people trying to live an ordinary life by keeping warm.
This may well prove to be the issue that finally breaks the back of the climate alarm industry and the Green battalions engaged in keeping climate alarm going.
In rural Britain wood burning is ubiquitous, stopping people staying warm by denying them the one least cost fuel they actually have access to i.e. wood will end up in riots.
NB Today is the British F1 GP at Silverstone. I have been there when it was so hot you would be forgiven for thinking you were somewhere hot! I have been there when it has been raining and cold. Today I will be watching from the comfort of my home with the wood burner on because the temperature here in the Midlands is 15 deg C but an expected high of 19 deg C in the next couple of days, then back to 11 deg C by Thursday.
So much for global warming here in Central England.

Jack Frost
Reply to  Rod Evans
July 3, 2022 3:55 am

Up in North Wales, we’ve only had 4 days this year with temperatures above 18 degrees. Friday evening it was wet, windy and 8 degrees, and I had two wood burners going. They’ll have to shoot me before I give them up.

Reply to  Jack Frost
July 3, 2022 11:18 am

Jack F.
I had two wood burners going. They’ll have to shoot me before I give them up.”

That, too, is foreseen in their plan.
Sadly.

Auto

Reply to  Rod Evans
July 3, 2022 6:40 am

Stay warm and enjoy F1!

Reply to  Rod Evans
July 3, 2022 2:21 pm

Yup – summer here in NE Scotland has been pleasant – but the wood -burner has been called on a couple of times every week on average…..

Ron Long
July 3, 2022 3:10 am

This sounds like the latest iteration of the “let them eat cake” mentality. Honest attempts to control pollution and guard health are one thing, weaponizing situations to advance your looney agenda is very different.

H B
July 3, 2022 3:18 am

Greenie bashing is soon be be a sport in the UK

ozspeaksup
Reply to  H B
July 3, 2022 3:23 am

with a nice handy chunk of natural WOOD;-)
and burn the evidence

Ron Long
Reply to  ozspeaksup
July 3, 2022 8:58 am

“handy chunk of natural WOOD…”. We call those baseball bats in the USA, but if you want an additional cheap thrill when you bash a deserving recepient use one of the metal bats, the sound is quite satisfying.

Steve Taylor
Reply to  Ron Long
July 3, 2022 10:41 am

For traditions sake, a cricket bat is just as effective,

H B
Reply to  Steve Taylor
July 3, 2022 9:44 pm

The sound of leather on willow

Reply to  Steve Taylor
July 4, 2022 6:58 pm

Cricket bats are pricey tools with a significant owner fondness.

Cheap baseball bats are easily found at a number of yard sales. Plus you can burn them afterwards without shedding any tears.

Here in the states, that is most yard sales, flea markets and school lost & found departments.
If they’re “Made in the USA” baseball bats, they are typically made from Ash, an excellent firewood.

Richard Page
Reply to  Ron Long
July 3, 2022 11:49 am

Pickaxe handle, obviously without the metal head. A classic.

Reply to  Richard Page
July 4, 2022 6:59 pm

Another excellent American hardwood that is terrific for firewood.

July 3, 2022 3:36 am

HGV = Heavy Goods Vehicle.

July 3, 2022 3:37 am

We really are now living on Planet Dumb….

Quote:”like having 750 diesel trucks pumping their exhaust into your living room

OK:
The method by which wood-burning (anything burning) stoves are controlled is by regulating the amount of Oxygen that gets into them. Otherwise there is something akin to a ‘Flash In The Pan’
When the stove is controlled via Oxygen intake, you get a gentle red glow from the fuel and a little flickering blue flame.

The blue flame is in fact Carbon Monoxide burning. (It’s a very good fuel, burns really hot given the chance)

Engage Brain Mode>
If these PM particles are managing to escape the stove, then surely Shirley, Carbon Monoxide gas and myriad others will be escaping the stove – into the living room.
When Carbon Monoxide gets into your living room, it ceases to be a ‘Living Room‘ and does actually become a ‘Dying Room‘ – sometimes known as “Gas Chamber

Carbon Monoxide is an especial villain but Carbon Dioxide will suffice simply by displacing the Oxygen and sending you, completely unawares, into a deep slumber from which you never wake.

Keep The Brain Engaged>
Clever well intentioned scientist types have patently gone into people’s living rooms, rooms with wood stoves in them, and recorded levels of PM2.5
And leapt to the conclusion that the 2.5 was coming from the stove.
But, if it was, so would carbon monoxide and dioxide and there would be no living people there.
Thus, the PM2.5s must have been there before the wood stove was fired up, and presumably, been there since Time Immemorial.
And patently done no harm to the people living in the living room – by definition because of the simple fact that they were actually = Living+
In fact, living on Planet Earth as we’ve done for some little while, is it beyond the bounds that we have adapted to these Particles Mysterious and that they pose completely no threat what so ever. If they can get into these ‘organs’, why is it not possible they can get out the exact same way?

Thus PM2.5 science is total utter garbage.
That the folks pursuing it can simultaneously be so dumb, ignorant, green-eyed and ugly is The Problem Of Our Time.
Not trapped heat or ‘re-radiated in all directions’

Reply to  Peta of Newark
July 3, 2022 3:56 am

missed the edit to PS
It gets even worse..
In my time as a kid, I lived in a house with an open fireplace in each of the downstairs rooms (and a solid fuel range type cooker in the kitchen.

It was at the time generally reckoned that house with open fireplace (and obviously chinmeys( were in face very healthy places to be brought up in and to live in.
Reason being the chimneys are always ‘working’
If there’s so much as a gentle breeze blowing, the chimney (without a fire in its fireplace) would be working to draw air from inside the house and thus work to suck clean fresh air into the house.
Thus: houses with chimneys were ‘healthy places’

Yet now we’re told The Exact Opposite

(We do now see the problem with Third World Countries using open fires, indoors, to do the cooking and thus poisoning them selves.
All they need is the knowledge and where-with-all to have A Chimney.
They don’t need no electric, fossil fuel or power stations, just a 4 metre length of steel tube, maybe 4 or 5 inch diameter and some indication of how to fix it up.
How many lives would that save?)

Reply to  Peta of Newark
July 3, 2022 9:01 am

Quote:”like having 750 diesel trucks pumping their exhaust into your living room

Diesel trucks are pretty clean these days, which is why you need 750 of them to produce a flicker on the PM2.5 meter.

Reply to  Peta of Newark
July 3, 2022 9:44 am

Back when they were pushing the approval of the PM2.5 EPA Regulation For Coal/NF fired power plants. there was a map in an article showing the present PM 2.5 levels, Essentially every state exceeded the desired PM2.5 level by an order of magnitude, Only states perpetually downwind of a large body e.g. Lower peninsula of Michigan or CA (except around “Smog Cities”) of water even approached the desired PM2.5 level. Thus the regulation was forcing the power plants to become a giant HEPA filter for PM2.5. All they were doing was reducing the PM2.5 in the immediate area around the stack. Pumping in air with a PM2.5 level of ten to 30 microgram per cubic meter and the stack emission had to be less than five microgram per cubic meter

July 3, 2022 3:46 am

I love my log burner. It ensures I have a good flow of clean air into the house, with the fumes form burning dried logs at high temperature all going up the chimney. I dry logs for a minimum of 3 years, often much longer..

Reply to  Phillip Bratby
July 3, 2022 9:59 am

Grew up in a house with a fireplace like you see in the pioneer movies, Six ft wide, 5 foot tall and 4 ft deep. Always had an 18 -24 inch diameter log in the back. Santa Claus could easily drop down the chimney! Had a fire in the fireplace 24/7 from Thanksgiving through Easter. Living room had a Ben Franklin stove, but was only used for parties. The Wood Kitchen Stove was moved to the enclosed back porch before I started school. The only illnesses I have had were Measles, Mumps and Chicken Pox, and now, I think, COVID 19 even though I had the shot and a Booster. Only visit to the hospital was for joint replacements. And I am now 80 years old.

John V. Wright
Reply to  Phillip Bratby
July 3, 2022 1:31 pm

Nice one Phillip. We also have been burning dried logs safely in our wood burner for years. I obtain logs from various sources, have good storage facilities and, yes, move them around to ensure long-term seasoning occurs so they are in oeak condition when they go into the burner. Of course, this is nothing to do with health but just another Leftard attempt to remove independent thought and action from ordinary people. But ordinary people fight back against oppressors. We are ready.

Jack Frost
July 3, 2022 3:49 am

I live in an exposed area of rural North Wales, I have two wood burning stoves as my primary source of heat. We have no mains gas, so the alternatives to burning wood for heating is coal, oil, with has increased almost threefold this year, or propane. I suggest that those that want to ban these stoves spend a week up here in the winter and see how long it takes for them to crank them up to keep warm.

We’ve been using stoves for over 30 years and have suffered no ill effects from them. I suspect if I had “750 diesel trucks pumping their exhaust into your living room” the health effects would be profound.
This is just more rich toffs wanting to impose their will on those that do not share their beliefs.

On a practical level, the wood I burn has been dried for at least 4 years, and opening the door slowly helps prevent smoke and gases being pulled into the room.

I love my wood burners and will not give them up.

fretslider
July 3, 2022 3:56 am

If there’s one thing alarmists excel at, it’s hyperbole.

“Global warming has heated the oceans by the equivalent of one atomic bomb explosion per second for the past 150 years” 

“…it’s hardly surprising there is huge concern over the so-called “insectageddon”. 

“The sixth mass extinction of wildlife on Earth is accelerating, according to an analysis by scientists who warn it may be a tipping point for the collapse…”

“Antarctic ice melting faster than ever, studies show”

“A polar bear attack in Canada that left two people injured has brought new warnings from scientists of a dangerous rise in human-bear encounters in a warming Arctic.”

All from the Guardian – and I could most certainly go on and on and on and on…

A Western household has a flue connected to their gas boiler or their log burner and we do not burn animal dung with wood in an unventilated mud hut.

750 HGVs?  I mean who is stupid enough to come up with a bonkers number like that? Your average devout green, that’s who.

Reply to  fretslider
July 3, 2022 6:46 am

Maybe the greens will be the first in line during the sixth mass extinction.

AGW is Not Science
Reply to  Steve Clough
July 4, 2022 4:37 am

We can only hope! Then the rest of us can get on with enjoying life without listening to their anti-energy, anti-freedom, anti-human twaddle.

Rick C
Reply to  fretslider
July 3, 2022 9:22 am

The very cleanest heavy diesel trucks emit about 0.1 gram of PM2.5/mile. So that’s 7 grams per hour at normal highway speed of 70 mph. A new US EPA emission certified wood stove is limited to 2.0 g/h total particulate which includes PM2.5. So 750 diesel HGV’s would produce more than 2,625 times the PM 2.5 emissions of a modern clean wood stove, which, by the way, does not vent any of its exhaust into your living room.

When alarmist propagandists start their crap articles with such obvious and stupid lies, it is clear that what follows is complete nonsense. Only idiots and fools would find this stuff persuasive, but idiots and fools are their target audience – after all they do vote.

John Garrett
July 3, 2022 4:10 am

There just might be some serious deforestation in Germany this winter.

Rich Davis
Reply to  John Garrett
July 3, 2022 10:00 am

Just burn all the trees they are clear-cutting in the Schwarzwald to put up bird choppers

Reply to  John Garrett
July 3, 2022 11:12 am

Gotta put those wind turbines some place.

July 3, 2022 4:45 am

This will be interesting. There is a popular TV show called “Escape to the Country” which features couples looking for homes in England, Scotland and Wales. Each couple is shown three homes meeting their stated criteria. It has astounded me how many couples express delight in finding a nice “snug” with a “wood burner”. I don’t know whether the attachment is just sentimental (really sentimental people would swoon over a “coal burner”), or whether distributed wood furnaces are just more practical on older houses.

In any case, my sense is this will hit UK homeowners much harder than the same ban would affect the US. We haven’t used our fireplace in 20 years.

fretslider
Reply to  Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7
July 3, 2022 4:54 am

I used my fireplace last in January – there is something about an open fire…

Julian Flood
July 3, 2022 5:00 am

To reduce NOX and particulates in the UK, convert HGVs, diesel trains etc to compressed natural gas. Then they would produce negligible amounts of both. Also extend the gas Grid to replace domestic heating, industrial heating etc – natural gas is halfway to the hydrogen economy it is so low carbon.

Why can’t we do that? Because the Greens, aided by Ed Miliband and other crusties has imposed exploration-stopping limits on onshore fracking in the UK. They’d rather accept other people’s deaths from respitory illness and hypothermia than accept that cleanest and low carbon fuel.

JF

Reply to  Julian Flood
July 3, 2022 9:09 am

NOx sources:

Nox.png
Reply to  Julian Flood
July 3, 2022 9:10 am

PM2.5 sources

PM25.png
July 3, 2022 5:18 am

Our Anglo Saxon societies have this extraordinary phobia and aggression towards poor people. We never tire of finding new reasons why they’re bad and don’t deserve even the little they have.

Corey
July 3, 2022 5:21 am

Exactly. We been doing things for a long time. It’s all about the money.

Alasdair
July 3, 2022 5:26 am

Do these Greenies intend to apply this to Drax Power Station? It is difficult to predict what their thinking will tell us what to do next; or more to the point what we will NOT be allowed to do.
They seem to have a fetish for banning things.

mwhite
July 3, 2022 5:29 am

Let’s hope they’re the first to have their smart meters cut the off when needed.

Paul Hurley (aka PaulH)
July 3, 2022 5:40 am

You will own nothing, you will freeze in the dark, and you will be happy.

Reply to  Paul Hurley (aka PaulH)
July 3, 2022 6:23 am

You will own nothing, you will freeze in the dark, and we will be happy because you will be no more.

David Elstrom
July 3, 2022 5:46 am

No fun or enjoyment allowed in the Climatista ranks. Perpetually screeching leftists want to drag everyone down to their level of misery and malcontent. If it’s not the climate scam it is some other “outrage,” but the “solution” is always the same: less liberty for and more plunder of normal people. That is, people who work to provide valuable goods and services for their fellow citizens and who aren’t leftists.

George Daddis
July 3, 2022 5:50 am

 “….there are at least 40,000 early deaths a year ..”
Another gross exaggeration justified by the debunked “Linear, No lower Threshold..” standard.
Of course there is a lower threshold – and virtually nothing “natural” in this world is “linear”.

An “early death” is also impossible to define. Just how early was it, and who died “before their time” because they breathed in 2.5 particulate matter?

OweninGA
Reply to  George Daddis
July 3, 2022 7:56 am

40,000 early deaths? yet the average age of mortality is rising. I don’t see it, someone has yanked that number unwillingly from their nether regions.

Reply to  George Daddis
July 3, 2022 2:12 pm

Matt Briggs has written about the sloppy science behind California’s PM2.5 regulations. Bottom line: nobody measured anybody’s actual PM2.5 exposure; it was just extrapolated from proxy data (residence address). They then used a total of 9 complex statistical models on the dubious data, finding just one yielding a statistically significant result, which of course they used for the “findings” after discarding the other 8.

roaddog
July 3, 2022 6:01 am

Climate Nutter’s desire to punish others in every way possible is laughable. Their objectives may once have been motivated by a concern for the climate, but the creation of maximum misery has now become pre-eminent.

Richard Page
Reply to  roaddog
July 3, 2022 11:57 am

It’s small minded idiots who think they have been hard done by and want more – they think that by banning everyone else’s stuff and by trying to break the system that they will come away with just a little bit more than others. Tyre Extinguishers, XR, Insulate Britain, all the others are just the same – inadequate dimwits that are desperate to improve their lot at everyone else’s expense.

July 3, 2022 6:08 am

Burn wood for making electricity, good.
Burn wood for heating the house, bad.

Ignorant idiots: They think that
wood -> heath + loss1 -> mecanical work + loss2 -> electricity -> heath
is better than
wood -> heath…

peter schell
July 3, 2022 6:36 am

Modern Wood stoves are efficient, and burn many of the toxins that used to be exhausted straight into the air. Makes me wonder if someone could build a clean, for a measure of clean, coal burning furnace.

If everyone burned wood the forests would dispear in one winter, but there is ample coal, if only some way can be devised to burn it more or less cleanly.

And even as I type this I fully understand that even if you actually figured out a way to strip out everything but co2, it would not be allowed.

RevJay4
July 3, 2022 7:17 am

Let’s keep it simple, folks. “Greens = communists”. Total control of everything, everyone is all they ask for. I say let them set the example by living without the modern conveniences supplied by the evil fossil fuels.
Like that will ever happen. Pfffft.

Charles Higley
July 3, 2022 7:33 am

The EPA tried to show PM2.5 to be deadly. When their tests on human volunteers, not telling them that they expected them to die, failed, with only on woman withdrawing due to asthma, they buried the finding. There were no other symptoms although they exposed the subject to many times the environmental PM2.5 that they claimed to Congress was lethal.

This is all about created a new boogeyman to worry about in order to impose more oppressive and wrong regulations. Bringing down the poorer people is the goal.

OweninGA
Reply to  Charles Higley
July 3, 2022 7:59 am

Not only the high exposure, but selected for the study those that already were cardio-vascular compromised. THEY INTENDED TO KILL THOSE PEOPLE!!

Malcolm Chapman
Reply to  Charles Higley
July 3, 2022 12:29 pm

An interesting thread. I live in the north of England, and have been thinking of getting a wood burner; perhaps I should do so before the inevitable ban. Charles, do you have a reference or link for the EPA story on PM2.5?

griff
July 3, 2022 8:18 am

The Daily Express is not a reliable news source… they were among UK tabloids who recently reported a non existent fat Russian general

Reply to  griff
July 3, 2022 9:33 am

They get more right than the Graun.
We’re still looking for those 50 million climate refugees that the Graun told us would be roaming the globe by 2010.

Stuart Hamish
Reply to  griff
July 4, 2022 12:14 am

Thats a really intelligent argument : attack the publisher and not the veracity of the content….. If fright-bat toff Jemima Hartshorn and the green cult ‘ Mum’s for Lung’s have been misquoted or misrepresented by the Daily Express then why are there no complaints Todd Huffman ….Sorry – ‘Griff ” …I must have you confused with someone else …Shouldn’t they be spending their time campaigning to ban the millions of tons of polluting woodchip biomass shipped from the United States each year to be incinerated in United Kingdom power stations only to be classified as a ‘carbon offsets ‘ ? Or like all fascist bullies do they just prefer to control private citizens personal choices hiding behind a cause ?

Brian Pratt
July 3, 2022 8:56 am

Nice photograph of a traditional suburban open fireplace, from Montreal. These are now banned there, ostensibly to reduce smog. It is claimed that wood burning contributes 39% of particulates whereas transportation is responsible for 45%.
https://montreal.ca/en/topics/solid-fuel-burning-stoves-and-fireplaces
You have to have a low particulate emissions insert, and it has be to be registered etc., so there is a whole bureaucracy set up for this. You can’t burn it at all if a smog warning is declared. Remember Montreal has inspectors who measure lettering on signs to make sure English lettering is half the size of French.
My fireplace insert out here on the bald prairie works great even at –40.

July 3, 2022 9:23 am

I hope the funeral homes are stocking up on coffins.

Rich Davis
Reply to  Richard Lentz
July 3, 2022 10:23 am

Look! Even more good paying union jobs—making coffins!

Richard Page
Reply to  Richard Lentz
July 3, 2022 11:58 am

Only for burials comrade – cremations is banned!

July 3, 2022 9:56 am

I think that the mayor of Paris tried to ban wood burning home heaters in around 2014. But decided discretion was the better part of valour and did not implement it. Diesel cars were an easier target when it came to Parisian pollution.
Us Brits let fonctionnaires walk all over us.

richard bell
July 3, 2022 10:00 am

YES BUT …… They cut down trees in the USA …… make pellets from the wood ….. move the pellets to a SHIP …… move that ship to the UK ……. move those pellets to a BRITISH power station …… THEN BURN THOSE WOOD PELLETS …… to make electricity for British homes ……. Yes and they say this is GREEN and Environmentally sound ….. MADNESS !!!

AZeeman
July 3, 2022 10:17 am

The main question is what causes more excess deaths, the smoke from a wood fire or the lack of heat caused by not having a wood fire? This is a simple optimization problem.

John Hultquist
July 3, 2022 10:30 am

 The top photo of a fireplace may be the description of a “log burner”. But it is not a good way to heat a room.
A modern wood burning heater is closed (there may be a window, if you want to see flames) and in a tightly closed house may need an intake from the outside for the oxygen supply.
It will also have a catalytic burner (sometimes called a converter or combustor) that will consume most of the objectionable particles from wood burning. Such a unit is a useful modern appliance, where possible. With the UK’s Drax Power Station burning wood, such units should be acceptable.
There is a place called “Yorkshire Stoves’ and others that offer these in the UK. In Washington State, I have a Blaze King, made in the state.

RexAlan
Reply to  John Hultquist
July 3, 2022 5:30 pm

You mean like this one.

DunleyHeatStove.jpg
n.n
July 3, 2022 11:08 am

For the sake of a Green. inequitable, and exclusive world (GIE comparable to DIE), it is imperative to mitigate greening, as well as renewable/reliable/efficient/hydrocarbon and nuclear-derived energy. Say no to trees, no to CO2, and all your carbon-based entities, too.

Paul C
July 3, 2022 11:32 am

So, comparing the particulates output from the particulate filter on a HGV exhaust to that of a woodburning stove is comparing virtually nothing to virtually nothing, but the bigger virtually nothing is many times bigger than the smaller virtually nothing? According to the Ecoloons, the emissions from each wildfire we survive should have been lethal to vast numbers. The only practical solution to eliminate wildfires is to burn as much wood as possible in efficient, and extremely low emission stoves. Cut down the forests to prevent smoke from wild forest fires from finishing us all off! Better eliminate the grass too – grass fires are awfully smoky. The Northern Ireland RHI which paid farmers to burn off woodchips (to heat empty barns) might just be a practice run for the lunatics running the asylum. Bunkum, the lot of it!

Gary Pearse
July 3, 2022 11:37 am

PM2.5 has not been studied in any meaningful way.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/04/the-epas-unethical-pm2-5-air-pollution-experiments/

I suspect it is linear thinking from the fact that cigarette smoke is about that size – 2 microns. Humans, and I suppose all creatures evolved during a few million years of repeating continental glacial cycles. The grinding action of moving ice over rock created an abundance of fine detritus that was windblown after ice retreat, creating loess (silt) deposits 10s of metres thick over 100s of thousands of sq km on every continent. Up to 20% of these deposits is in the 2.5micron size

The lungs and bronchia have fine motile ‘hairs’ called cilia that move such fine particles in a mucous layer upwards to the throat where it can be coughed up. This is the reason that it takes 30yrs or more before smoking overcomes you. In fact, constant taxing of the lungs in smoking eventually stills the cilia and the mucous simply collects in
the lungs – this is emphysema.

We also evolved with smoke from grass and forest fires. We handle this with no problem in intermittent haze. Soluble particles like fine silica are dangerous, though. The gov research is about the same on this as climate non-science (probably the source of the word nonsense).

ResourceGuy
July 3, 2022 11:49 am

Is this before or after banning Drax and the clear cutting of North America? Griff, we need some clarification here.

ResourceGuy
July 3, 2022 11:50 am

Import the heat via large steam pipes from Norway. /s

July 3, 2022 11:59 am

It’s only a matter of time before the lunatics start a campaign for us all to wear noxious gas meters in our underwear. We could get ahead of the curve and insist all ecofabulists wear bullshit detectors on their faces.

Fran
July 3, 2022 12:02 pm

The way wood heating has been attacked in Canada is by making any place with a woodstove uninsurable unless all sorts of conditions were met. This means that most of those who heat with wood are the poor who do not carry insurance. Unfortunately they are also the ones most likely to have seriously unsafe arrangements. There have been 3 house fires in our small community of 1200 this year.

Old Man Winter
Reply to  Fran
July 3, 2022 1:28 pm

After 9/11, insurance companies really, really clamped down on stoves & chimneys. Putting the
stove in a separate small shed & piping the heat into the house was one way around that, if you
had the space.

3x2
July 3, 2022 12:25 pm

<i>If greens get their way, and the last affordable form of home heating is further restricted, I suspect a lot more people are going to die from cold</i>

A quick look at the comments over at places such as the Gruniad will demonstrate that, for many, this is a feature not a bug.

Brandon Galt
July 3, 2022 1:39 pm

‘Statistics also show that there are at least 40,000 early deaths a year attributed to wood burning in Europe.’

But statistics also show that 87.5% of statiticians are liars and just twist the data to show what they want it to show.

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott
July 3, 2022 2:26 pm

It is useful to know that wood fires make smoke particles with a median aerodynamic diameter of 0.6 microns. Wood makes nearly no particles larger than 1.0 microns. The comment about wood smoke “getting into the blood stream” is true to an extent, but not nearly as true for wood as for diesel which makes vast clouds of nanoparticles in the 10-20 nanometre range. Believe it or not, very little is known about the health effects of such nanoparticles. There are lots of claims, assertions and talk, but little actual data.

One of the green energy claims is that burning “solid fuels” is harmful, as if the fuel contains particles waiting to be released; that the stove has nothing to do with it.

Why then are there EPA 2022 rated stoves? The fuel is the same, the emissions are different. They can’t have it both ways. Smoke is unburned fuel. Good stoves/fireplaces burn the smoke. The problem is reduced.

Energy poverty is very real in the UK. The excess deaths numbers due to cold and chronic underheating cited as well below those one usually sees. Let’s watch that space.

For those interested there is a new version of CSA B415.1 – the test method and calculations for wood burning appliances. It is used in the USA and Canada.

Some in the UK want to ban wood burning. Does that include pellets? Briquettes? Seasoned hardwood? Why not ban polluting appliances instead? You don’t ban dogs because one dog barks.

Dr Ken Pollock
July 3, 2022 3:36 pm

PM2.5 refers to pretty tiny particles, generated in a variety of ways. They are so small they get everywhere. To trace movements, scientists have used gold particles, as you can identify them, even when so tiny.
Naturally, any good scientist who finds these “alien” particles in practically every part of the body has to believe they are doing harm. Hence the WHO proclaims huge numbers of deaths each year – or at least reduced QALYs.
There is one flaw in the argument: no-one has ever shown that the presence of these tiny particles does any harm at all to anyone. Presence does not mean damage. It appears to me to be an almighty scam. Now why is that familiar?

marlene
July 3, 2022 4:11 pm

This is exactly what the WEF want in the UN’s Agenda 2030 plan. And Farmer Gates & his cohorts won’t be planting trees on their massive land acquisitions for the masses either. Then what??

dk_
July 3, 2022 5:01 pm

Burn good Welsh coal in your fireplace or stove, but open a window.

Zane
July 3, 2022 9:33 pm

The term ” Got wood? ” may make a return to common parlance.

Chaswarnertoo
Reply to  Zane
July 4, 2022 12:43 am

Welsh gold.

Rod Evans
July 3, 2022 10:39 pm

Quick update on the events at the British F1GP yesterday.
The race was a classic example of motor racing at its finest. From a massive first bend incident that provided the best evidence available of how safe a fully fueled up racing car is, even when travelling 100 yards on its drivers head safety hoop, before flipping into the high catch fencing, having vaulted the tyre wall completely. The driver ( Brand New Joe) was unharmed, despite being trapped between the catch fence and the tyre barrier for about twenty minutes.
Then having red flagged the race to recover the crashed car and driver a bunch of eco loons invaded the track wanting to ban oil apparently. Their actions were the ultimate in stupidity. only the crash on the first bend saved them from serious risk of injury or death.
A great maiden F1 win for Carlos Sainz in a Ferrari, Perez made second from running plum last on lap two and Hammy managed to get on the podium in third.
The log burner added to the warmth of the spectacle.
The eco loons were arrested and hopefully made to walk to the prison, as they don’t like oil…

Ubique
July 4, 2022 12:30 am

Banning wood heaters? In Britain whose single largest power station Drax burned 7.3 million tonnes of wood pellets in 2020? Have people lost their senses altogether?

Chaswarnertoo
Reply to  Ubique
July 4, 2022 12:44 am

Green: gullible, lacking knowledge, easily fooled, naive, etc.

2BAFlyer
July 4, 2022 5:01 am

Whether the wood goes up your chimney or as flatulence of bugs which eat dead wood in the forest, it ends up in the same atmosphere. You might as well put that dead wood to productive use.

July 4, 2022 2:57 pm

When grannies and aunts and other family members die in the first massive snow falls across the UK are they going to blame climate change or their own selfish foolishness?

Jack
July 5, 2022 7:11 am

The UNO german delegation ironically laughed at a 2018 speech of president D.Trump warning Germany about its overreliance on russian gas ans oil:
They’re Not Laughing Now: Wood-burning Stoves and Firewood in Short Supply in Germany as Citizens Fear Freezing to Death Due to Gas Shortages (thegatewaypundit.com)
Obviously the german people don’t care if the woodburning stoves have harmful impacts on the environment. Freezing during winter due to the lack of gas heating would have more harmful impacts on their personal health !

Brian J. BAKER
July 5, 2022 9:26 am

I suspect a lot of greens will be thrown onto a briar as a substitute for wood.

Jim
July 5, 2022 10:51 am

What human behavior can be expected when dealing with survival conditions? Sadly it is an option beginning to end. All in the noble belief of saving the earth. Has it always been this bad?

Ray in Northern WI
July 5, 2022 9:22 pm

For 20+ years I heated my home with wood only. I loved the exercise, making wood in the fall woods, and a nice warm home. A few years ago LP was so cheap that it made sense to use that. I could heat the house for less than $600/year. I knew that wouldn’t last so I continued to stockpile wood. Now that LP has gone from $0.69/gallon to $2.00+ a gallon I am pretty happy to have about 4 years of wood stockpiled. Banning wood burners? That would never happen in northern WI.