Site Discussions

Great article! When science and the use of statistics get distorted to support any agenda then we are cheated out of finding a true answer to the problem in question.

I am a retired owner of a forest products company and was taught in forestry school that science should be pure because opinion is not.

Thanks Dave. So pleased we still have intelligence to challenge academia.

The thing that breaks my heart about all this is, having lived with oil heat and wood heat, I would give an appendage to be able to go back to pushing a button and having the house warm. I hate heating with wood. It’s dirty, exhausting, body-straining, creates complex storage problems, and gives me six months of sinusitis. Yeah, the science indicates that burning wood is better than fossil fuels. I’m not going to argue with that. I just think it’s a tragedy that humankind spent so many generations trying to come up with a better way to create warmth and power, only to find it has a long-term negative effect on a global scale. What a BUMMER!

Mr. Mance,

Thank you for a thoughtful response that leaves the door open for further learning and discussion.  Wouldn’t it be nice if that happened more often?

I wish to point out one thing: With regard to carbon dioxide, I’m not sure that burning wood is always better than burning coal, gas, and oil if that wood is being burned to produce power.  The original VPR piece was about heating with wood, so I suspect that’s what you had in mind.  The distinction between heat and power is important given that heating with wood is 3 times more efficient than making power with wood. From purely a carbon standpoint, the news about biomass power often bleeds into biomass heating to negative effect even though the two are very different uses of wood.

Thanks for hearing me out.

Well said, Dave. Especially the point comparing wood harvesting to fossil fuel extraction which always results in adding more carbon to the equation that could have remained locked up.

An old growth forest actually has less carbon-consuming capability than, for example, a recently clear cut forest. Research shows that stomata densities ( where CO2 enters the leaf to be converted to carbohydrate during photosynthesis) are much higher in a dense stand of new growth following a clearcut than in an old growth forest.

Thanks for this added perspective. As I listened to the VPR piece, I wondered about the issue along the lines discussed here, but did not take the time (and perhaps lacked the perspective) to frame the question this articulately.

The skunk stink is hard to bear and embarrassing when we have company. We cannot find an opening where a skunk could get under the house, but one got under there. How can we lure it out? It is January.

VC 2040 ...when the cast damper is closed should there be any flame going up?  As I understand the operation all the exhaust should exit through the cat.  My stove continues to have flames going up. How does your stove operate?

Is there a list of the 100 snail species in NH?  F&G doesn’t list them.

I think ‘quiet parlor of fishes’ is from Walden. Can search for it in Google Books.

The wording appears in Walden, in the chapter “The Ponds in Winter”. 

Nope. All the maples should run at roughly the same time.

Can you let me know where you found the quote by Thoreau? That is a beautiful image. I’d like to use it in a poem.

We used to find praying mantises as well as walking sticks every summer when I was a kid around 1980 in Nashua NH. I have not seen either one in my adult life.

Thank you for your article. It makes me want to get out on the ice—though with a great eye toward safety! Remarkable the role of water in the facts of life. I recommend Charles Cockell’s - THE EQUATIONS OF LIFE: HOW PHYSICS SHAPES EVOLUTION.

My husband and I just moved into a new home, and we’re not very happy with the amount of heat it uses, so we’re thinking of installing a fireplace to help with this. Your article had some great information about wood pallet stoves, and I liked how you said that if we do get a system like this, it needs to be checked and cleaned once per year. Thanks; we’ll keep this in mind when deciding if a wood pallet stove is right for us.

Once it falls below freezing, I keep a 1.5 gallon Dutch oven which I fill with HOT water; I call it our raccoon hot tub! Youngsters and adults adore the hottub—One Baby fit nose to butt was so excited it began chasing its tail, running in circles for minutes! Question: bathing in water in freezing winter, do they get frostbite? If not, why not?

Today while looking through census from 1880 in Franklin County, someone listed thier profession as “Bark dealer”. You answered my question and more, thank you!

Thanks for this helpful article summary. I was trying to figure this out, myself. Do you think the species of maple you’re tapping should factor into whether to start sooner or later?