It is the dearth of the daily news paper that is closing mills. Happened here in the 90s. The entire northern half of New Hampshire is still a mess because of the paper mills closing and no replacement jobs coming in behind it. There just isn’t much market for the wood now.
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same down here, except we courted Mercedes, Toyota, Honda, and Kia and replaced the forestry jobs with auto manufacturing. Tom is right I think, if not for the union-free “cheap” labor down here, those companies would have probably gone to South America or somewhere else.
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Glad you got more jobs we are union free and labor up here is cheap but no one wants to put a factory where power is expensive.
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Dan, If only more people would get into wood gasification for home, vehicles, and power. there would be a market for wood. When you figure you can buy wood and still drive for pennies on a mile, or heat the home, that is some real cost savings.
People in the world need to wake up and start breaking away from the ball and chain of what the oil cartels have shackled us all too. The WK Gasifier and all the other good gasifier designs have given us the tools to do it.
But it is going take a new kind of mind set of the people to do it.
I’m I there yet, no. But I know I’m heading in the right direction to be free from gas dependency of daily driving or power generation. (This is strange talk from someone who worked 35 years in the hydro power industry).
When the grid goes down and you can’t get gas, you are ready with lights on and a way to drive.
MY HAT IS OFF TO ALL OF YOU THAT HAVE DONE IT.
Changing the world one person at a time.
Bob
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Actually, we still have mills running. I think the big thing that happened here was updating the old mills, which led to consolidation. When they did away with the short wood mills they made fewer bigger mills to handle the process. But now there is little local market for wood. And to sell much wood you have to be a pretty big tree length logger. The mills still run, and the wood still gets processed, but fewer local mills means fewer local mill jobs, which brings the need for replacement. Maybe the newspaper has something to do with it, I don’t know. A lot of our mills switched to chip mills. Also the poultry industry here has grown substantially and they create some of the pine market making shavings for bedding—at least the local market.
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Not to mention the popularity of all these bands saws taking over.
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True, we quit making that kind of paper a long time ago. Magazine paper only nowadays.
However tough competition from low cost parts of the world give us a hard time. Cream cake eating days are over.
Tom, that statement is controversial. Probably true 30 years ago, but ever since I´ve watched my salary drop by 20% and work hours going up by 10%. Work load is at least doubled and I bring home a headache and an untouched lunchbox most shifts. Meanwhile the shareholders I work for have multipled their profits.
I know farmers and self-employed claim they have much longer work hours. However I do a lot of that kind work too but consider it beeing part of my free time.
Fortunately, with the help from you all, I´ve been able to cut costs myself. The gasoline I save DOWing equals about a months salary a year 
Not to mention all the fun.
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JO I completely agree with you about the unions. Over the 20 years I was in industry as a controls engineer I saw companies freeze pay while the CEO took a 5 million dollar bonus and performed stock by backs. I almost got fired for asking that CEO when he explained in the large group meeting how he justified telling us the company couldn’t afford to give us a 2% cost of living raise when his bonus alone would equal a 10% raise for everyone else in the room. I was speechless when he replied that payroll is just which the company needs to minimize if they are to maximize profits. Yes he really said that in a large group meeting full of his employees. This is how out of touch with reality the rich have become. That additude that employees pay is less important them profit and bonuses needs to end. I routinely worked 60 plus hours a week as as salary so with no overtime and never once saw a bonus check. I grew up on this farm and am back here now trying to make a living. I can say in both cases you work long hours. The difference to me was as a controls engineer I loved what I did not where I had to do it or how I was treated. Now I love where I live and enjoy doing things I don’t find enjoyable that wall is a prime example I don’t find fixing a barn something I want to do it is just something that needs to be done. But at the end of the day I am tired and glad to know my barn is getting fixed. I earn far less money now but when I build something now I know it is mine and I can do it the way I want without having to make compromises to make someone else happy.
My point is yes I agree over the last several decades companies have put profits over people we live in an age of greed.
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Sounds like you’re movin’ in the right direction there Dan.
I’d have significant trouble having to work like that myself. I wouldn’t say I wouldn’t do it, but I’m not sure what it would take exactly to make me go to work for such people. I know that many have little choice in their context. I’m just exceedingly grateful that my context allows me to work for myself. At the same time, I think many, many people feel “trapped” in their context when they really aren’t. They just aren’t willing to pay the price to live a “simpler”/cheaper lifestyle and to do without until they can afford what they want. Most people trapped in corporate American jobs are there because they want to live a lifestyle that costs more than they can make back at the farm or where ever else. I guess that’s what folks here are always talking about. Discovering freedom in their context…not having someone controlling them…stuff like that. Looks to me that you’re better off fixing your own barn wall than working to maximize someone else’s profits.
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Before this discussion turns political again I would like to touch the original thread subject.
Nowadays there´s a lot of talk burning firewood and cows farthing being the largest enviromental hazards.
I get a lot of questions about DOW exhaust emissions. I know Wayne had analysis of the woodgas made at Auburn and Koen is analysing fuel as well. Are there any analysis made on exhaust and how well an IC engine burns the woodgas fuel? I suspect there are lots of “It depends”, but I would like to be able to refere to some kind of proof.
I´m already very well aware of that emissions represent only a fraction of the toltal automotive enviromental impact, but people seem to want to focus on the tailpipe.
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Good morning JO
6 or 8 years ago my truck ( 93 dakota ) was tested at the tail pipe on gasoline and wood gas . The test showed the emissions were much cleaner with wood vs gasoline . The numbers at the time did not mean much to me ( over my head ) but the operator of the analyser said the truck would easily pass any of California emission test which has the strictest laws in North America.
I have written and posted the numbers somewhere in the past but am having trouble finding them .
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Good point we where getting lost in the woods again pretty soon we won’t be able to see the forest through the trees… lol
My argument to those people who say I am doing a bad thing burning wood is that all life depends on a carbon cycle. Using wood only releases carbon which the tree pulled out of the atmosphere. The problem isn’t CO2 it is the fact that with oil we pump carbon and hydrogen (basically the two elements that make up all oil and methane products) out of the ground as a liquid or solid think coal. When we burn this fuel from deep in the ground the carbon and hydrogen join with oxygen in the atmosphere and change the very mix of the air we breath. Burning wood doesn’t do this because the carbon came from the atmosphere in the first place. So it isn’t CO2 and methane we need to worry about it is where the carbon and hydrogen comes from that is the issue. With wood and cows the answer is they came directly out of the environment and are just part of the cycle of life. With oil it is pumped up out of the ground and added to the atmosphere combining with oxygen on the process and changes the actual makeup of the atmosphere. If you think you don’t burn enough gas to change the environment because it is soo big just look at how many billions of barrels are use in a year then think about how long we have been burning ff. Think how big a container it would take to hold all it all from over that entire 100 plus years. That is the difference the wood and cows only use what is in the environment as part of the cycle of life oil comes from deep in the ground outside of the environment for all practical purposes and changes the environment when it is added to the atmosphere. So what comes our of the tail pipe isn’t the issue but where the carbon that is used comes from.
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JO, I agree my statement was short and in many ways incomplete. Corporations seem to have gained the upper hand in negotiations… TomC
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Good points Dan. And Jo.
And we are wandering far away from the thread. Although I do enjoy the conversational quality, the discussions are good, often bringing up information and perspectives new to me.
Regarding cattle and methane. The concern people raise is that methane is said to have a far greater heating effect ( ~ x 40) than if it was CO2. In some time the methane will break down into CO2 and water vapour, but meanwhile it’s significant. All ruminants produce methane, and we have a lot of cattle on the planet.
But, it isn’t a simple calculation, none of these issues are a consideration of one factor. Ruminant methane production varies with diet. Grass fed animals produce much less. Some dietary additives are said to reduce methane.
Grain feed is apparently the worst for producing methane, so that incriminates feedlots, and dairy.
But cattle normally raised need pasture. And pasture builds up organic matter in soil and sod, significant offset. Plus pasture is valuable natural habitat, as hay land often is, much more than cultivated fields.
It seems many of these blanket statements come from city people who have no grasp of the whole picture, or militant vegans who think we should be all eating lentils and beans. 
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Give that man a sigar… and put that Carbon O2 back in another tree…
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Forest fires? – I always favored cultivating our forest for their best health. But I have been blasted on other forums; they said it was better to let the forests burn. I guess I’m to simple to totally buy that scheme. Sounds like good out door work, great products, more efficient than wild fires and lots of jobs.
Methane; I have a few years experience in oil and gas industry. Gas wells and lines leak gas (methane).
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Forest fires are actually need in the redwood and some other forests i can’t remember which ones now but the trees adapted to forest fires and the heat of a fire is needed to get the seeds to actually grow for new trees. I think some of the trees in Australia are like that as well. But over here on the east coast no they are just a waste of good wood.
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Aspen survive forest fires because it is more of a root plant.
I bet redwood seeds could be stratified by people. Maybe Gary Gilmore would know.
Interesting stuff no matter how ya slice it.
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Boreal forest is probably the world’s largest biome needing fire, it’s integral to the regeneration. Clearcut logging can roughly emulate that process, but burning is better, as it cleans the ground and releases a jolt of nutrients in the ash.
Aspen is mostly a root plant, stands tend to be clonal, and rank amongst the largest and the oldest organisms (80,000 years) on earth, clonal stands extending up to a known 106 acres, probably not the only one.
I had heard that natives practiced selective burns to enhance the eastern American forests, so that when the settlers arrived, they had never seen the like of the quality of timber. I have no criteria to judge that claim, but it seems possible.
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The native Americans before the 1900’s would burn forests areas that need it in the fall to rejuvenate them in the northwestern and other states. That forestry management was taken over by the government U.S.forestry and put a stop to that kind of management. Put a stop to having any kind of forest fires. Good old Smokey the bear campaign. And now our forest are a dry over grown under brush tindling mess, just waiting for a spark to start a Wild Fire and we have more forest on fire than ever in history in all the western, northwestern and Rocky mountain states. They created a multi billions dollar industry of tax payers monies to fight wild fires.
They went as far as to shut down all the small lumbering operations to save a poor endangered spotted owl that only could live in old timber forests. Which was NOT true facts or studies. Now that forest is now infested with the Pine Boring Beatle. Tens of thousands of dieing dry forest trees. Wood not worth for the harvest of lumber any more.
Just plane old bad forestry management of the U.S. Forestry Service period. And some of them are starting to admit it of their pass practices.
Ok I’m done ranting. But the truth is the truth. I hope they change their management ways for the good of our trees.
I love our trees, yes I’m a tree hugger. Use them up for our needs and replant 100 more when you cut 1 down.
Bob from The Ever Green State.
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