[Closed] Seems that burning wood for power “is misguided”

But I see that once again you've turned this discussion into one all about you.

Electricity positive house (even with an electric car)
No gas, wood for heating but about 2.5 m3/year as house is
Well-insulated house
Solar water heater
triple glazing
Madame walks to work
7500km a year by electric car
We use bikes for shopping and many local journeys
We use the bus and train for holidays
I've flown less than once per ten years (mainly because I dislike flying)
Local produce bought in preference and where possible

My case reclines upon the divan.

No, I was pointing out your mistake.

No mistake my wood management has currently reduced the level of atmosheric carbon whichever way you look at it including the manufature of the tools (the wood slitter was bought between three of us)

Go on admit that you were wrong and apologise, Ransos.

It's induviduals who contribute most to CO2 emissions and who can do the most to limit climatic change. To those who say nothing can be done, I say it can, I have and you can do the same.

That annoys people because this isn't the governments fault, it's your fault, it's my fault, but I'm doing what I can to make it less my fault and so should you. Jealous? Visibly so and so you should be, feeling guilty too when you buy that flash gadjet rather than some insulating materials. It's individual choices and you're making bad ones for your children, grandchildren and anyone who follows you.

No mistake my wood management has currently reduced the level of atmosheric carbon whichever way you look at it including the manufature of the tools (the wood slitter was bought between three of us)

Go on admit that you were wrong and apologise, Ransos.

You don't seem to understand how the carbon cycle works. As I said, your approach is low carbon but it's not neutral. It's also not particularly interesting as a solution because it's not remotely scalable and requires the use of a [s]cancer[/s] wood burning stove.

You don't seem to understand how the carbon cycle works.

Read my first contribution to this thread. And my carbon sink. I really do understand.

requires the use of a cancer wood burning stove.

I've been waiting for that. People get more wound up about wood-buring stoves in low popultaion areas than they do about diesels in cities. They're generally the ones like you who find fault with any alternative energy inititave whilst doing everything they can to poison people on an individual levels themselves.

The cancer case is weak against wood burning in high temperature stoves beyond start up. Crude oil contains benzine ring chemicals which are proven carcinogens, diesel soot is a high risk carcinogen if you consult medical papers and yet the car-lobby minimises the risk, while at the same time pointing their fingers at wood burning form which there is little evidence that the risk is especially high. It's smoke, smoke isn't good for asthma sufferers, it's not healthy. But to demonise it is not helpful either. If you have a wood-burner use it as little as possible (insulate the house), don't light it when it's likely to annoy neighbour, and don't install one at all if you live in an area with air pollution issues.

If you really want to improve air quality then get rid of your ICE car and stop chucking stuff in the bin, because it gets incinerated and it's highly inlikely that you local incinertor runs hot enough to illiminate the carcinogens all the time.

Read my first contribution to this thread. And my carbon sink. I really do understand.

I did. Zokes has it.

I've been waiting for that. People get more wound up about wood-buring stoves in low popultaion areas than they do about diesels in cities.

It seems that you're the one getting wound up, when anyone points out that your lifestyle (which you never fail to mention) is not perfect. And as I said before, not very interesting, as it doesn't provide solutions at scale.

Stop trolling, edukator. I know you're bright enough to understand what I've written, so please do so rather than picking pointless arguments.

You are describing a low carbon fuel, a very admirable one given some of the lengths you're describing in your virtue signalling, but it's more incorrect than just semantics to pretend that it's carbon neutral.

It seems that you're the one getting wound up,

Do you want Skype as I type? Or are you going to type three posts implying I'm lying if I point out you're the one being provoked into provoding the predictable climatic skeptic, anti-wood as fuel, alternative-energies-pollute-just-as-much-as-oil Trump propaganda?

Stop trolling, edukator.

OK
Stop burning fossil fuels if you want to stop climatic change, thinking beyond that is a waste of thought waves.

Biochar seems interesting, I was looking at stuff about that recently. Potential to improve soil greatly and sequester carbon for the long term, but could it be viable on a large scale? Seems almost hobbiest scale currently.

It needs integrating. Using "waste" organics in pyrolysis or gasification systems produces it, but the soil side of the research really disappeared up its own backside for the last decade and sadly a lot of missed opportunities have occurred where more research could have linked its production, energy production, and use in soils.

There's a surprising amount of biomass out there that could be useful, and stuff that's been through anaerobic digestion first could then be pyrolised to produce bio-oil and char. More broadly than the UK, a lot of alternative plants could be grown in places where they don't displace food crops, so there's big potential.

Gents, you are turning an interesting discussion into name calling posturing. Would it be possible to draw a line under that and get back to discussion in a polite and interesting way?

Anyone got links to stuff on how rotting wood etc gets into the soil and what happens over time? Does soil carbon content just get higher and higher or does a forest reach an equilibrium?

Stop burning fossil fuels if you want to stop climatic change, thinking beyond that is a waste of thought waves.

Now you're just being childish. As it happens, whilst in direct terms I definitely live a less virtuous lifestyle than you, my work directly contributes to getting this right at the global scale. As a consequence, your high horse seems a little incapacitated.

@neil: Given this is my day job (the terrestrial carbon cycle, not arguing with internet trolls), and it's late at night here, I'll dig out some stuff in the morning if you'd like. I'm aware of some well written articles for the general audience that I can probably link to, but can also email some pdfs of scientific papers if you've got the will.

Or are you going to type three posts implying I'm lying if I point out you're the one being provoked into provoding the predictable climatic skeptic, anti-wood as fuel, alternative-energies-pollute-just-as-much-as-oil Trump propaganda?

Sigh. I understand the issues very well, academically and professionally. Now, if we agree to give you three house points, will you promise to be a good boy and stop the praise-seeking?

Thanks zokes, well written papers for the general audience first please, ta.

The problem is, Neil, that whilst you worry yourself about how much carbon can be tied up in soil you're fogetting that however much that is it's insignficant because you don't have enough soil.

I did a few sums on how much land would have to be forested in SW France to stock the fossil fuel emissions from my local town even on an optimistic for a forest as a carbon sink (see Molgrips doubts for perspective). The result came out at ten to twenty time the urabn area per years. Whcih when I loke at the map meant that within a 100 years there wouldn't be much farm land or vinyards left.

The scale of the CO2 realease is such that carbon sinks as a solution are insufficient. Bigcorporation love to talk about the maount of forests they've planted as part of their green washing but it isn't an answer.

You're tinkering around with a tiny percentage of the carbon being released which was stored up in sediment over millions of years. You can't increase atmospheric carbon levels to Cretacieous or Devonian levels and expect the planet to cope - because it didn't cope back then. In the Devonian it became a green-housed desert until the presumably volcanic excess carbon was absorbed by marine organisms at converted into limstone and oil.

Cutting CO2 emission is the only solution and if carbon neutral/low carbon wood burning (depending on where and how) is part of the energy mix that allows that then article such as the Guardian article really aren't helpful in a world with x million automobiles running on diesel and petrol and in a country heated with gas.

The problem is, Neil, that whilst you worry yourself about how much carbon can be tied up in soil you're fogetting that however much that is it's insignficant because you don't have enough soil.

Sorry, now you're really just talking bollocks. Soil is the largest terrestrial pool of C. This is pretty basic stuff Edukator. You're starting to make me realise what Brian Cox must feel like having to deal with cretins like [url= http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-16/professor-brian-cox-vs.-senator-malcolm-roberts/7746576 ]Malcolm Roberts[/url].

Just accept that you don't know quite as much about this as at least two others on this thread, shut up, and you might even learn something.

No educator, m not worrying, I'm just interested. I know nothing about it but my gut feel is it isn't scalable.

I actually agree with most of your points, but your not making them very well now.

Oh good grief, more name calling and bad language. It doesn't help

As I said, I'm done working for the day. But given the level of inaccuracy, bollocks is probably the most scientific term to describe it. And Malcolm Roberts is definitely a cretin.

I did find a decent starting point for some of this by the way: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/soil-carbon-storage-84223790

Ed. Settle down. You are making this into a personal fight, and if there's one thing guaranteed to do nothing for climate change, it's that. No-one changes their mind because you've pissed them off.

The thread is about things that can be done. And yes, stopping burning fossil fuels is one of them. You've made that point. Now leave the slanging match alone - it pisses people off, it makes the thread unreadable, and it actually turns people off the 'green' message.

Let's debate the science and the solutions without insulting each other please.

Cutting CO2 emission is the only solution

It's the main one yes, but we still need to figure out how to do that on a national scale. Now if I were in charge I'd be in charge of a left-wing big government and I'd invest in making alternatives work and then discourage high CO2 activities with tax...

Didn't Blue Planet 2 have Sir David saying that far more carbon is fixed by plankton in our oceans, than by plants and trees on land?

~30 years ago while at school, GCSE Geography was raving about how we had all these new renewable and eco-friendly power sources becoming a possibility, to replace fossil and nuclear fuels. Yet here we are, decades later, with this newer technology seeming to still be quite a minor percentage of our power sources. While the likes of China are bellowing out quantities of smoke akin to the UK's industrial revolution in the mid 19th century.

Didn't Blue Planet 2 have Sir David saying that far more carbon is fixed by plankton in our oceans, than by plants and trees on land?

It is (hence why I was careful to state I was talking about terrestrial stocks). The trick is keeping it there as the oceans warm and acidify.

with this newer technology seeming to still be quite a minor percentage of our power sources. While the likes of China are bellowing out quantities of smoke akin to the UK's industrial revolution in the mid 19th century.

On the other hand, renewable usage is increasing very quickly and China is passing environmental legislation all the time... So we might be doing it - question is, are we already too late?

zokes - Still not a customer

No, northwind, it works exactly like that. If you put 20 tonnes of C into the atmosphere as CO2, then you need to offset that immediately with 20 tonnes of C being sequestered at the same time.

That, sorry, but it's a completely ridiculous way to think about growing trees- maybe one that comes from a manufacturing or lab based viewpoint? You only have to replace it immediately with an equal sized tree if you only had one tree, or if trees didn't grow. In the real world, you aren't replacing it immediately- you're replacing it about 20 years [i]before[/i] you burned it. You can't just discount planning ahead and the growth cycle from your thinking.

I'm not saying that the general thrust of your argument is wrong, you realise, but this part of your description doesn't survive contact with an actual forest. And it's a logical error that biases the argument against wood burning by insisting on the impossible while dismissing the real.

That, sorry, but it's a completely ridiculous way to think about growing trees- maybe one that comes from a manufacturing or lab based viewpoint? You only have to replace it immediately with an equal sized tree if you only had one tree, or if trees didn't grow. In the real world, you aren't replacing it immediately- you're replacing it about 20 years before you burned it. You can't just discount planning ahead and the growth cycle from your thinking.

Ultimately, burning wood now increases CO2 now.

ransos - Member

Ultimately, burning wood now increases CO2 now.

Of course, but only because it was sequestered in the past. It doesn't matter why a sustainable forest was planted- it doesn't require prescience.

What does make a difference, as you say, is burn vs not burn. But that's aside from the point I'm making about how to think (or not think) of that cycle.

Zokes, I'm a geologist, soil profile - water chemistry was on of my specialities at Welsh Water. On a worldwide basis one of the problems we are facing is soil erosion. The idea that you can stock any signifacnt amount of man-released CO2 in soil on a planet with intensive agriculture, an ever increasing population, growing desert... Just deson't hold up. The potential is orders of magnitude too low and decreasing. At best we can hope to reduce the trend. As your post is in contradiction with the conclusions of the paper you link I'll quote the conclusion for you to read:

CONCLUSION - SOC is a vital component of soil with important effects on the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Storage of SOC results from interactions among the dynamic ecological processes of photosynthesis, decomposition, and soil respiration. Human activities over the course of the last 150 years have led to changes in these processes and consequently to the depletion of SOC and the exacerbation of global climate change. But these human activities also now provide an opportunity for sequestering carbon back into soil. Future warming and elevated CO2, patterns of past land use, and land management strategies, along with the physical heterogeneity of landscapes are expected to produce complex patterns of SOC capacity in soil.

Of course, but only because it was sequestered in the past. It doesn't matter why a sustainable forest was planted- it doesn't require prescience.

What does make a difference, as you say, is burn vs not burn. But that's aside from the point I'm making about how to think (or not think) of that cycle.

There is a reasonable argument for supporting the burning of forestry residues, mill wastes and consumer wastes (because short-term carbon release would probably happen anyway) but I'm very far from convinced there is significant scope for expansion.

Expansion depends on how you wish to see the landscape in future. Do you like wild moorland Scotland or would you like to see the Caledonian forest back again? The conifer plantations in Wales have been an ecological failure IMO because:

Surface water acidification due to scrubbing
Reduced habitat due to monocultures
Increased downstream flooding due to drainage
Acidification of surface waters due to draining and aeration of peaty gleyed podsols with aeration and acidification of the orgainc layer.

I put together a paper for Welsh Water and successfully oposed planning permission for a conifer forest on the basis of the above, however the Forestry commission swamped us with applications knowing we didn't have the resources to contest all the applications.

However the planting of a diverse deciduous woodland would avoid most of those problems whilst providing an ever increasing carbon sink (insignificant in the greater scheme of things but still a positive) and a source of wood as both a building material and fuel.

a source of wood as both a building material and fuel

Hmm.

Broadleaf species take a lot longer to grow, right? So wouldn't that make the timber much more expensive? And therefore make it difficult to sell as building material?

Going on German prices then a German stem of pine is about 80e and reaches maturity at 60-80 years, Beech is a low as 40e and reaches maturity at around 100 years, Oak is 150e or more and won't be harvested at less than 150 years. The fastest and highest financial return is on pine so that's what's grown most rather than the Beech which forms the natural landscape. In Wales legislation is needed to prevent planting exclusively pine because without legislation that is what commercial foresters will plant.

Diversity creates more habitat, reduces disease and when combined with selective felling (rather than clear felling) better maintains the soil profile.

ransos - Member

I'm not quite sure what your point is? Zokes is arguing that the problem is one of the immediacy of combustion, and I tend to agree. Put another way, what would happen to our forests if there were no biomass burning?

Fair enough, the thread's wandered around a bit- my point's just about the forest lifecycle, and the simple fact that you don't have to replace a grown tree instantly with another grown tree to have a sustainable cycle. Zokes seems to want to discount the lifecycle of trees completely, which is irrational- it's farming not building. If you applied the same mindset elsewhere nobody would ever harvest a crop because they'd have to replace it instantly with another crop ready to harvest.

ransos - Member

Yes, but the only reason it doesn't stay sequestered is because of choices we are now making to release it back into the atmosphere. If you make the timescale long enough, you could argue the same about coal.

That's not really true- trees aren't immortal. If you abandon a managed forest, the trees will still die and release their captured carbon (over a longer timescale, but still relatively short), and the trees in managed forestry tend to have fairly short mean lifespans (because of the species we plant, the way we plant them, and the shitty ground we tend to plant them in) Coal may return its carbon to the atmosphere over geological time, trees will do it in human time.

The broader point is that thinking of trees as a simple manufactured product doesn't work, not just in this specific way but in a bunch of others. For instance- wood that goes for burning or biomass isn't the same wood as goes for construction. The former isn't suitable for the latter, and the latter is too valuable to waste on the former. You don't turn a mature dougie into pellets and you don't build a house with a stunted sitka. A managed forest produces trees that are fit for all sorts of different purposes and you can't just say "use it all for X".

Down my way in Sussex, there is a lot of replanting away from pine on F.C. land. One wood has @5000 oak saplings planted, and a lot of chestnut/birch is grown/harvested/coppiced.

The difference in vegetation under those canopies compared to the dead pine forests is immense.

When trees are felled at maturity then the main trunk goes to the mill and is used for construction wood, the off-cuts and branches unsuitable for that go to the splitter for firewood and the rest of the wood removed goes for pellets. The stump remains in the ground as habitat and to preserve the soil (which unrooting would damage) and stripped smaller branches and twigs are left in place to decay as habitat and compost for the next trees planted.

Exceptions include wood grown for paper pulp, usually pine or Eucalyptus which are harvested at the age prodctivity is maximal and fire wood. (there are probably other exceptions)

Edit: that's excellent, dants'.

I thought Zokes was arguing that burning wood now as carbon neutral is not sustainable, which it's not at scale due to competing land uses, food production being the largest.

Ego massaging ecologically sustainable small holdings are vanity projects that are not relevant at scale, because there isn't enough land for all of humanity to exist like this.

Zokes entire point is that demand is moving towards outstripping current supply capacity and creating a leading edge bulge in emissions that isn't currently being catered for by sustainable planning, and won't be unless planting is stepped up. It's been moving this way for some time.

You're both correct, because you're talking about different things.

Separately, the FC also has a remit for conservation and recreation as well as strategic wood reserve, hence the deciduous planting. They've been underperforming in habitat diversity for ooh, all of their existence.

Separately again, some of the statements spouted re emissions from combustion in this thread are somewhat lacking in depth of knowledge, but given the amount of deviation and handbag slapping already, it's probably best to leave that for another day.

Edukator - Reformed Troll

When trees are felled at maturity

Which in a lot of cases is the minority of the forest. Maturity's a hazy concept of course, and one that can change- a lot of the scottish forestry was planted to produce a lot of smaller trees, relatively quickly, for paper pulp and is now being thinned to produce a smaller, bulkier final crop. Which produces a huge amount of wood that's very suitable for burning

IIRC only 2/3ds of harvested sitka goes to sawmills/processing for poles- I think that includes pre-maturity thinning harvests. And I think it's correct to say that even with green timber a minority of it comes out as the finished product- the rest is offcuts, failed cuts and particles.

So that all ties into the wider point about oversimplification, sitkas don't all grow til they're 50 metres tall then get turned into planks, the whole "don't burn it, do something else with it" doesn't often stand up. The coproducts that go for burning or panels weren't ever going to be a house or a rocking chair and they can't be left in the ground.

That's all for commercial forestry, of course- it's totally reasonable to suggest we just stop harvesting, and use them solely as a carbon sink, but that has a huge commercial impact and a lot of these forests aren't that well suited to it.

some of the statements spouted re emissions from combustion in this thread are somewhat lacking in depth of knowledge

Edukate us or you're just joining in with the

handbag slapping

with your accusation of

handbag slapping

because this:

I thought Zokes was arguing that burning wood now as carbon neutral is not sustainable, which it's not at scale due to competing land uses, food production being the largest.

makes even less sense than Zokes' own attempt and will upset Zokes and/or Ransos just by including "wood burning" as "carbon neutral" even though stoneage "man" managed to do just that.

Thats one of the problems with clear felling and replanting monocultures, Northwind. The thinning is due to the practice of over planting and then selectively thinning. Trees grow at different rates so in a clear fell some trees still won't ne at maturity but are felled all the same. I too mentionned that pulp tress are harvested younger at maximum mass productivity.

All these factors mean that there's plenty of wood for firewood and pellets produced by a sustainable forest even if that isn't the first objective.

If you abandon a managed forest, the trees will still die and release their captured carbon

I don't think they release it all.

As trees decompose the products decomposition can follow a variety of paths. If the tree is on a hill being slowly eroded then some (most) will ultimately follow the erosion path. In a sinking zone such as a delta then the organic material will be buried and end up in the sediment and end up as coal if burried sufficiently. In the UK trees are usually grown on eroding hillsides so:

If the wood ferments then one of the by-products of fermentation is CO2 released to the atmophere (other gases such as Methane CH4 too). If consumed by other plants it may be fixed as new fibre, if consumed by animals then the carbon will be rejected or stored as flesh or breathed out as CO2. If the organic material leaves in surface water then it enters the river's carbon cycle and may be either released as gas or used by plants and the food chain. If it's stil in the river when the water meets the sea there's a good chance it will be sedimented as flock and incorporated in sediment unless consumed by marine animals or plants.

If you want to explore further then you need to look at each of those paths and research further.

Zokes, some way back before the kids started fighting, you said:

One of the other issues with tidal is that whilst it's endlessly predictable, it's not always there when you need it. A big tide at 2am isn't much use to anyone.

Secondly, the tide comes at different times around the coast, so whilst a single massive site doesn’t solve the problem, and any big source is going to suffer the same infrastructure challenge as wind you can generate tidal power somewhere on the uk coast 24/7.

Thirdly, it should be possible to generate tidal power through a barrier that floods a little like cruachan when the sun and moon decide, but is released when demand is there. There were mills a few hundred years ago that did this on a fairly small scale.

Of course there are genuine and NIMBY issues with large scale tidal relating to ecology, shipping etc. And it may be the dream of free energy doesn’t add up, but people used to say that about wind, and thought the danish were crazy for investing it it.

[b]Edukator:[/b]

The idea that you can stock any signifacnt amount of man-released CO2 in soil on a planet with intensive agriculture, an ever increasing population, growing desert... Just deson't hold up.

That presumes that you're accepting business as usual. As we're waving our willies about what we do, I lead a team of researchers on soil organic matter dynamics at a national science agency. As I said, this is actually my day job... If you're quoting paragraphs from articles back to me though, you'd do well to read all of it, including the penultimate sentence: [i]"But these human activities also now provide an opportunity for sequestering carbon back into soil. "[/i]. Like I said, try reading.

[b]Northwind:[/b]

That, sorry, but it's a completely ridiculous way to think about growing trees

But I'm not thinking about growing trees. I'm thinking about the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, which is what matters for the context of global warming. Think of it as sub-prime lending on the climate - it can be tolerated for a while, then it gets too popular, et voila, collapse. Only this time it's the planet we're talking about, not a few banks.

If you abandon a managed forest, the trees will still die and release their captured carbon (over a longer timescale, but still relatively short),

No, they will release some of it, whilst the rest becomes more stabilised in the soil, and released over centennial timescales - the sort of timescale we need to give ourselves breathing space. It also improves soil fertility, health and function, amongst which includes is susceptibility to erosion (which again is another can of worms, as if the C in eroded soil eventually ends up as buried sediment in a lake or estuary, it's probably even more stable than it was in the soil.).

For clarity, I'll say this again. I am simply coming from the perspective of how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere, and how our energy generation activities impact that. Burning wood rather than coal reduces that (e.g. Drax). Burning locally sourced wood reduces it further (e.g. Edukator). However, none of these are carbon neutral, and at the national and certainly the global scale, they are not capable of fulfilling the world's energy requirements. As others have said, we started burning coal primarily because we ran out of trees in the first place...

[b]poly:[/b]

That’s slightly misleading though isn’t it? Firstly whilst power at the wrong time of day is not as useful as instant quick response power there is demand 24/7 (albeit variable) and some options for power storage exist (and as move to more electric vehicles this will increase).
Secondly, the tide comes at different times around the coast, so whilst a single massive site doesn’t solve the problem, and any big source is going to suffer the same infrastructure challenge as wind you can generate tidal power somewhere on the uk coast 24/7.

Thirdly, it should be possible to generate tidal power through a barrier that floods a little like cruachan when the sun and moon decide, but is released when demand is there. There were mills a few hundred years ago that did this on a fairly small scale.

Of course there are genuine and NIMBY issues with large scale tidal relating to ecology, shipping etc. And it may be the dream of free energy doesn’t add up, but people used to say that about wind, and thought the danish were crazy for investing it it.

Thanks Poly. We can store water from high tides in lagoons or estuaries, depending upon the design of the installation. This would depend upon whether the system is there to generate near constant output (turbines spin one way as the tide comes in, and the other way as the tide goes out), or a burst of energy whereby the high tide is released at a faster rate.

I think tidal energy, especially somewhere like the UK with its massive and varied tidal ranges has a substantial place in a future energy mix, and this will probably be a mix of underwater turbines, estuarine lagoons, and stand-alone lagoons with no physical connection to the coast. For me, the biggest issue is the undeniable ecological impact, but that has to be weighed against the ecological impact of business as usual. An 8GW barrage across the Severn, whilst locally quite destructive, is definitely less impactful than the impact of climate change globally, and possibly even on that very same estuary.

"But these human activities also now provide an opportunity for sequestering carbon back into soil. ". Like I said, try reading.

I have which is why my original contrinution which so upset you was "The problem is, Neil, that whilst you worry yourself about how much carbon can be tied up in soil you're fogetting that however much that is it's insignficant because you don't have enough soil."

Against the context of soil loss and appauvrissement you claim that soil sequestration is an answer to global warming. If you really want to convince me you'll have to do and presnet some maths because you're looking at 10 gigatonnes of C to sequester a year in soil which for the reasons I've already stated is currently losing carbon.

I didn't rubbish what you said on the previous page but

Sorry, now you're really just talking bollocks. Soil is the largest terrestrial pool of C. This is pretty basic stuff Edukator. You're starting to make me realise what Brian Cox must feel like having to deal with cretins like Malcolm Roberts.

Just accept that you don't know quite as much about this as at least two others on this thread, shut up, and you might even learn something.

Soil is the largest terrestrial pool of C.

is false (insults not included)

Carbon represents .03% of the earths mass, very approximately 1000 ppm in the earth's crust. The amount in soil is tiny compared with these totals. If you are looking for the highest concentrations in one pool then look at carbonate rocks.

Basisc stuff as you say and worth checking before you accuse someone of "talking bollocks".

If you are looking for the highest concentrations in one pool then look at carbonate rocks.

Are carbonate rocks actively cycling? Do they form part of the living terrestrial ecosystem? Aside from leaching of limestone etc., and its use as lime in agriculture, which is a very small proportion, the answer is no.

When the carbon cycle is discussed, we're typically talking about things we perturb, i.e. organic carbon in the terrestrial system. So, enjoy your faux oneupmanship, and as I said, do some more reading:

NORA.NERC.AC.UK "http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/517116/1/1-s2.0-S0016706117300095-main.pdf"

From the other paper you quoted but neglected to read earlier:

[i]The amount of C in soil represents a substantial portion of the carbon found in terrestrial ecosystems of the planet. Total C in terrestrial ecosystems is approximately 3170 gigatons (GT; 1 GT = 1 petagram = 1 billion metric tons). Of this amount, nearly 80% (2500 GT) is found in soil (Lal 2008). Soil carbon can be either organic (1550 GT) or inorganic carbon (950 GT). The latter consists of elemental carbon and carbonate materials such as calcite, dolomite, and gypsum (Lal 2004). The amount of carbon found in living plants and animals is comparatively small relative to that found in soil (560 GT). The soil carbon pool is approximately 3.1 times larger than the atmospheric pool of 800 GT (Oelkers & Cole 2008). Only the ocean has a larger carbon pool, at about 38,400 GT of C, mostly in inorganic forms (Houghton 2007). [/i]

zokes - Still not a customer

But I'm not thinking about growing trees.

Well yes, that's exactly my point- you're having a conversation about burning wood without thinking about growing trees.

you're having a conversation about burning wood without thinking about growing trees.

I'm not, I'm having a wider conversation about the implications of energy production on the climate, of which biomass can only be a very small part.

I said as much four posts above:

For clarity, I'll say this again. I am simply coming from the perspective of how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere, and how our energy generation activities impact that. Burning wood rather than coal reduces that (e.g. Drax). Burning locally sourced wood reduces it further (e.g. Edukator). However, none of these are carbon neutral, and at the national and certainly the global scale, they are not capable of fulfilling the world's energy requirements. As others have said, we started burning coal primarily because we ran out of trees in the first place...

The moment we start thinking about each technology in isolation is the point at which we'll never get a solution. The task is huge, will require a massive reduction in energy consumption, and just about all the technologies we have at our fingertips or just beyond them. Conventional biomass can play a small part in that, but the facts remain that a) it's not carbon neutral, and b) there's not enough of it for it to become a major player. Further, burning it is often not the smartest thing to do (wood excepted). Some form of biodigestion followed by pyrolysis will produce gas and liquid energy outputs, and more stable carbon in the form of char that can be used as a soil improver in some instances. And if we're talking about growing energy crops, except in areas where you can't grow much else for various reasons, planting trees probably isn't the smartest option anyway.