The native Americans defiantly did a lot of forest mantaince here on the east coast. The only burning I know about that they did was to open up small areas maybe 5 to 10 acres where they would plan on having a village and also to get blueberries and other Bush plants in that they used for food. This is also very important for a lot of native animals like deer which really prefer the boundary between woods and fields.
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Bob thanks for that i had only a little knollage of the issues out west. I have heard something about poor management but I didn’t realize there was a time that the forest service did burns in the past. I would really rather see clear or selective cutting then burns it just seems like such a waste to burn trees. There must be something if only bio fuel electricity that we could do with that wood so it does work for us.
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Burning was done after selective cutting was done in certain areas that I worked in, now 45 years ago. In the form of slash burning. But by then the logging was on the way out, of being done on U.S. Forestry land. The BIG Private land forestry farming took over and is still going on the West side of the state The logging U.S. Forestry land was all but shut down because of a Spotted OWL? People took pictures of the owl in new growth areas, that shut them up real fast. But the laws of legislation through the state was pasted to protect the spotted owl and the damage was done and set into motion to this present day. I have read the spotted owl population has seriously declined in the fire ridden areas of our state, Duh.
Bob
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Charcoal is being added to cow feed with exceptional results in controlling methane. It sure beats putting charcoal filled diapers on them : -) .
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I also read about the Indians and their forestry management. They also use wood as a fuel source. Yes, they were better than us at managing the forest. One could think of them as being one with the forest.
But now we are a lot smarter. We do not want to touch the forest until it is sick and burns a thousand acres. Then the rains can wash the soil away. Unlike the Indians that worked in patches at a time. I’m sure they found a lot of uses for wood.
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The indians did what we still have to learn: being sufficient and sustainable, only few people are actually preaching those words…
Nature, to be sustainable, needs care… But who care’s ?
I show that there is a choice that can be made, so are many others showing that it can be done… tiny drops on a huge hot plate…
About Methane and CO2, comparing as air pollution; CO2 adsorps / retains more heat and does not get diluted / broke down over time. It covers our earth atmosphere as a thick blanket. More blanket = less cold…
Sustainability means being able to see the (un) balance and to do what is needed…
I do what i can do best in that matter, sometimes feeling like a Don Quichotte against windmills… but every build is putting more weight behind my words. Using social media as a building stone to make a strong foundation. Making the difference by doing.
I live in a place where people actual ask me to get more of my idea’s on the table, just build whatever i study… i am a happy man.
Government here does not think about short time profit, but long term sustainability…
Even sometimes that not being obvious…
Since i am an registered R&D engineer, i have some liberty to build and test, maybe a good idea if everybody who build to register himself as a R&D engineer ?
In my case, people come , listen and start doing… and i crave the postings here on DOW, wanting to learn more…
Learning to use words to convince some ignorance…
I have many pictures in my head, 
but which to show i don’t know… it all depends the audience…
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Koen, you’re on the correct path! Over here the government is in extreme short sightedness mode. How do we keep this mess going one more day, they ask? Big business is all about profit numbers in a spreadsheet, end of the month numbers is worshiped like a God.
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Koen,
How does coal (the fossil fuel kind) actually rate on your list when used as fuel for a power plant?
I can not comment on power plants but using it for three years taught me that it is corrosive and the ash was a problem. I was happy to stop using it.
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I would need to build a coal gasifier and put it on my pickup for that sake… ( Driving on… )
But the carbon content is lower then Charcoal 60% vs >80% and it contains more sulphur + , smoke is a lot more acid containing.
The good news: all coal burners can run much more clean, no mods needed, on charcoal…
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Thanks Koen for giving us this tool.
I, like all others using local purpose grown wood-bio-fuels, have to often defend our using ways.
Your chart is an important tool.
In all works it take many different special purpose dedicated tools to get a complete job/picture done.
A picture made only of one color is flat and lacks depth; perspective.
A world running on only one single fuel-energy source “as Best”, is the same.
tree-farmer Steve Unruh
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Commenting on the “political”, “right way”, of enrgy-going-forward . . . .
Reflect on this:
On last weeks in the USofA Black Friday shopping pig-out extravaganza frenzy an estimated ~165 million in the US insisted on buying-in to to that commercial over-hyped save-money, by spending it: NOW.
Looked at another way . . . ~150 million opted-out by either stayed home, socializing; or out-of-doors recreating.
Be the lemming who stays home keeping the home fires burning.
Your chosen energy uses defines you much more than stylish clothing or the trendy vehicle you would drive.
tree-farmer Steve unruh
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Well, I even got this wrong. I thought Black Friday was all about charcoal. - - Dang!
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Some nice data/research paper
note the mentioning of gasification of coal, then picture yourself wood instead of coal, then re-read with the new picture in mind…
I <3 DOW / DOC
http://web.mnstate.edu/marasing/CHEM102/Chapter%20Notes/Ch_04%20ho.pdf
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Good morning KoenVL,
As much as I would want to hearts-like your put up info link for the good engineering data in it I cannot.
Far too much social slamming at the end of that article.
Examples: the US, Canada, (Russia lest out) societies/cultures span whole continents. As very mobile cultures we within out countries travel around a lot for family visiting, educations, and seasonal recreation. THREE hard travel days minimum to hop one side to the other on these by the best of roads and rail. So most will jet fuel-gulp fly. Very, very disingenuous to compare these to Japan, UK, France, Germany, even Norway.
Spread out with relatively low population densities it makes co-generation of manufacturing and power source heats impossible to implement as high of utilization as like as in these high urban dense country/cultures.
In fact all three of this “energy-pigish” countries/cultures have; and do still have; the means to make within themselves all of their energy usages.
Their choices to “hog” worldwide energy varies. Our Top-Down energy companies and politicians in the US do this to hold down consumer prices and over stimulate our economy. Profit dollars, and keep-seated votes.
Russia it seems to be to generate hard cash and politically/socially control their masses.
Ha! Canada? I’d let Canadians speak for them selves.
In my local rural living area there has settled many originally from Finland/Sweden/Norway of a sect of fundamentalist Lutheran Christians. They believe the Bible to multiply and “have as many children as God will bless us with”. They are now a current US/culture shunned sub-culture as “too many children, resource pigs”. My wife and I childless, not by choice, just say; “They are having our share.” These strong family values folks are our best of neighbors.
I think that social forced Top-Down reforming should have been left back with Mao’s 1960’s horrible cultural revolution. Has no place in engineering articles.
tree-farmer Steve unruh
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I didn’t see the social slamming part Steve but I know Canada usually scores amongst the highest on the energy use chart. We are an energy exporting and raw materials producing country as a whole. Steel, Aluminum, wheat, soybeans, pulses, oil, natural gas, Timber, Pulp and Paper, you name it industrial processing takes a lot of energy. We export lots of energy dense things produced for many parts of the world that therefor have lower energy signatures. Then we live in a place that’s a wee bit cold; we mention this from time to time… Then the place it just a little big; getting around takes a lot more energy then most places. And yes we gorge at the trough. It would be interesting to compare our urban densely populated areas to others. It would offer a better picture.
Cheers, David B.
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I agree, no “people should have or people should do”, but real “i do’s and i don’t do by myself” count…
Most of those articles are just copy paste from others peoples work, very few, and i mean really very few, do actually their own experiments and write an essay on it…
That’s why i love to say it again and again… i learn more here on DOW then studying from new generation engineers work…
I have never seen an engineers essay/publication that actual reflects his own build/results/innovation…
But i haven’t read everything yet…
So, i stop typing and going to build some…
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I tend to agree with David, I see the article as benign, it observes some inescapable facts, and as Koen observes, the material seems to be cut and paste.
Canada I think is an odd case, a hybrid country in many ways. Often very good people, generous and community minded, but also a history of the most cutting edge capitalism and technology aimed at resource extraction and profiteering.
In my observation you have to distinguish between the Canadian people and what corporations dwelling here do. More generally that applies all over the world. Canada happens to be situated where there are many resources corporations want to extract, and lots of energy is available to do so, farming being no small part of corporate profit making.
We have also entirely bought into the “American dream” of suburbia McMansions and personal motoring, which seemed like such a sensible choice in the days past of $20 a barrel oil that we supposed would never run out.
David makes a good point, that despite the widely spread centers of population, it seems to me that most of the personal activity is within those urban centers, the population power consumption is probably similar to many countries, but automobile use is excessive.
I subscribe to the notion of peak oil, so it’s not hard for me to question the future of suburbia and personal motoring. But regardless, rail has always been a far superior transport system, public trolley cars beat the pants off of buses, and nowadays could be driven automatically, commuter trains beat the heck out of highways full of personal vehicles, train cars are literally 100 times more efficient than semi transport. So just on the basis of efficiency I believe our north American culture could do with a rewrite.
I don’t see flying for casual amusement as an individual right. The environmental and resource cost is just too high. Consider that half of the world’s population couldn’t afford the price of the airport tax to save a child’s life. Only so much to go around, and better goals to fulfill first. IMHO.
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And make nice guitars ! 
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Very interesting documentary .
Hidden deep in the mangrove swamps of the Niger Delta lie hundreds of illegal refineries, “cooking spots”. It’s the stronghold of hostage takers and armed groups. For some ten years these men have been spreading terror in the region. Few cameras have been able to penetrate the closed worlds of these oil thieves. For one month?with the assistance of one of their number?we managed to film the everyday existence of the traffickers. On the one side, Nigeria. An extremely unstable region with economic and political stakes on a global scale. It’s the biggest oil producer in Africa and one of the ten biggest producers in the world. 95% of its revenues derive from this “black gold” On the other side, Western countries, major consumers of fuel, for whom oil is indispensible. Between the two, the inhabitants of the Niger Delta, cast aside from this manna and the enormous profits generated by the “black gold”. Driven by a sense of dispossession, they engage in increasing armed action to deviate a part of the oil production. Nicknamed “Bonny Light”, it’s one of the purest crude oils in the world. It is so pure, they say, that you could run an engine with it without any refining… exactly as it is extracted. However, the robbers of the Delta still have to refine it. They put the “crude” into drums that have been cut in half, heat it and sprinkle it with chemical products. It’s a dangerous operation. It can explode at any moment. So that their clothing doesn’t catch fire and turn them into human torches, the traffickers work naked, in a choking atmosphere, without the slightest protection. They have no other choice. To survive, they must take risks. Once refined, the fuel is put into buckets before being transferred into cans. It is then refined by traditional methods and distributed on the parallel markets of neighbouring countries. This “black gold” road passes via Cameroon, Benin, Togo and Ghana. However, in the Delta, oil is above all a plague. The water is filthy. The earth, fields and forests are polluted. Here, oil is a curse. All the villagers live below the poverty line. In the village of Okrika there is no drinking water or electricity. So, in order to survive, most of the farmers have a strange occupation. They fish for sand. Such is the case of Daniel, 55, who in order to feed his family tirelessly scours the beds of rivers for sand. It’s an unthinkable job, harsh and exhausting, for this new Nigerian slave. Every day, and sometimes at night too, and totally naked, he dives to depths of 5 metres to fill his buckets with sand. When his boat is full, he has to deliver it far away, at the mouth of the river. Once his boat has been unloaded, he must start his labours all over again. Once the oil has been stolen and refined, it has to be delivered. Neighbouring Benin is a major consumer. In the south of the country, along the border, oil trafficking is a real industry that supplies 70% of national consumption. Every day, 25 year-old Antoine risks his life to transport stolen oil on his motorbike. A real “bomb on wheels”, he carries more than 700 litres of oil on each trip, with the sole protection of the Voodoo gods!
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