People that call wood burners dirty / polluting / not green are ignorant

[Sazzas]

With a modern stove that is DEFRA approved it reburns the smoke so hardly any smoke comes out of the chimney. Also as apose to gas or oil powered heating its far greener, less environment impact and local. My wood all comes from down the road from a responsibility managed forest and by buying it I'm promoting more of the land to be converted into forestry.

Its by far the cleanest, greenest and most sustainable way to heat my home

Ego, every part of our human activity involves releasing CO2. It's a natural part of living. The manufacture of solar panels and every other item we use releases CO2.

There is no solution to this unless it's to reduce the human population (we are the most consumerist species) by a lot and to go back to living in unheated caves.

Even fish and moose and ants release CO2.

But, if you burn a tree and plant a tree, it traps CO2 as it grows. Potentially the same CO2 that it released on burning. If you burn hydrocarbons in any shape or form, you are releasing the CO2 present in vegetation and animals from millennia ago that were far lusher and bigger than practically anything alive now. And the current climate and growing conditions are in no way conducive on most of our planet to replicate the growth of those plants and animals in their lifetime.

ego- if a tree grows and dies, it decomposes, releasing the same CO2 back into the atmosphere as if you burned it. As a process, the natural decomposition (which is a form of combustion) is slower, granted, but not that much slower if you measure it against burning oil or gas.

mollie The fact that I have a large house isn't really relevant to the thread. I mentioned it only to demonstrate that you can heat larger properties effectively using wood and not just smaller homes. Woodturners don't have to be just a decorative feature in a living rom or a back up heating source.

I'm not sure why I'm being criticised for having a larger house. I'm certainly not "privileged" if by that you're meaning to imply it was handed to me along with my silver spoon or something.

Seconded, atticus. Sour grapes, methinks.

If the burner burns all of the smoke, how come my neighbours' woodburners (3 in a 20 house cul de sac) make my house stink?

Do you heat and power your home exclusively using solar ego? Because what we are saying is that biomass is better than oil/gas/coal because its completely renewable.

We need more habitats than just forest though! And forests arent just blocks of trees, but require openings and glades.

"if you burn a tree and plant a tree, it traps CO2 as it grows. Potentially the same CO2 that it released on burning... If you burn hydrocarbons in any shape or form, you are releasing the CO2 present in vegetation and animals from millennia ago"

Sorry duchess, but that is not what happens. Plants don't "trap" CO2 any more than humans "trap" O2. They use CO2 during photosynthesis, which means the CO2 they take from the air is destroyed at that point. And the CO2 that results when they are burned has no relation to how much CO2 they used through their lifetime or when they used it. CO2 emission only depends on how much wood you burn (mass).

But you're discounting the replanting and the shift away from fossil fuels which are a lot more harmful.

Of course the greenest way is to have no heating and instead wear three jumpers made from the wool of your own sheep whilst living on raw wild blackberries - but discussions like this are only helpful if they are also realistic.

sorry, that was to the suggestion that we just keep planting trees. Conservation is a lot more complicated than that. Presumably those saying we should plant more trees know that because of course if you were that passinate you would be involved in conservation projects?

Cote- taken from the atmosphere, turned into carbon, which turns back into CO2 during combustion.

But oil and gas is buried deep in the ground- it's not going to be decomposing anything like the rate it does when you dig it out and bring tit into the oxygen and...burn it.

OP - re "a modern stove that is DEFRA approved it reburns the smoke so hardly any smoke comes out of the chimney"

You can't burn CO2. It is just not a combustible gas. In fact, fire extinguishers contain pressurised CO2. Because it doesn't burn.