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”.
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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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.
I reckon there is a glaring spelling mistake, second word……
nope. its a play on the word retard. east enough to grasp unless easily offended.
But change an A for a U .. .. ..
Auto
climutards?
Change the 2nd A to a U
I won’t take it personally!!!
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
Compost the greens , let them dry out. Then… presto!
And because of no heating many will die with a flu.
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.
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.
Deaths likely will be blamed on COVID.
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!!
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.
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.
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.
Here’s a place to start.
https://junkscience.com/2016/09/fact-sheet-particulate-matter-in-outdoor-air-does-not-cause-death/
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
It would be interesting to see how Haiti would be if the French hadn’t continued to rape the country after its “liberation”
It would be even more interesting if this has not happened:
1804 Haiti massacre – Wikipedia
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
I didn’t suggest they were. A chimney in many instances is an open door.
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.
eh?
The general case: “Greens Pushing for a Heater Ban”, or is it: “Greens Pushing for Ban”?
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.
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.
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
Stay warm and enjoy F1!
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…..
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.
Greenie bashing is soon be be a sport in the UK
with a nice handy chunk of natural WOOD;-)
and burn the evidence
“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.
For traditions sake, a cricket bat is just as effective,
The sound of leather on willow
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.
Pickaxe handle, obviously without the metal head. A classic.
Another excellent American hardwood that is terrific for firewood.
HGV = Heavy Goods Vehicle.
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’
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?)
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.
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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe the greens will be the first in line during the sixth mass extinction.
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.
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.
There just might be some serious deforestation in Germany this winter.
Just burn all the trees they are clear-cutting in the Schwarzwald to put up bird choppers
Gotta put those wind turbines some place.
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.
I used my fireplace last in January – there is something about an open fire…
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
There’s also an issue with compressed gas on ferries and the channel tunnel, or was, not sure what the latest rules are.
NOx sources:
PM2.5 sources
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.
Exactly. We been doing things for a long time. It’s all about the money.
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.
Let’s hope they’re the first to have their smart meters cut the off when needed.
You will own nothing, you will freeze in the dark, and you will be happy.
You will own nothing, you will freeze in the dark, and we will be happy because you will be no more.
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.
“….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?
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.
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.
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.
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.