We own over 50 acres of woodland, so firewood is continuously available- and yes, we manage the woodland to make best use of the timber and replant continuously. HOWEVER, I am not really convinced that wood-burning is a sensible eco-option when all factors are considered.
On the old forum there was debate about the CO2 cycle. Summarising, the argument 'for' was that woodburning simply returned to the atmosphere the carbon previously absorbed by the growing tree, and which would anyway be liberated by decay. The argument 'against' was that burning fossil fuels was doing exactly the same thing, but with a time lag of a few million years, and anyway an unfelled tree would carry on absorbing more carbon and there was no guarantee that burned wood would be replanted.
However there are I think two further arguments against. Firstly, burning timber produces far more gases than just CO2. There is a whole range of nasty toxic compounds emitted, depending on the temperature. Overall, wood smoke is a very dangerous carcinogen. Secondly, wood left to rot returns humus to the soil and also supports both directly and indirectly an immense array of fauna and flora in the rotting process. Sanitised woodland denies bats, bird, fungi, insects, bugs and ferns etc homes and /or food which abound in dying or rotten trees.
Perehaps at best there is only a case for burning timber which is being discarded after a useful life in buildings, furniture etc?

I don't believe wood burning stoves in rural areas are likely to cause any health problems, concentrations in the air at ground level would never get high enough, and the availability of locally produced wood fuel is attractive. BBQs and burning prunings etc in the garden is a worse risk because you haven't even got a flue to get the smoke above roof level. In an urban area it is a different matter and we have seen the effects of widespread burning of solid fuels in the smogs that were common before the Clean Air Act.

I don't agree with chopping down trees specifically for firewood, growing trees are far too valuable a resource, but firewood is a good use for off-cuts, thinnings and scrap timber and forms part of the traditional pattern of woodland management. There is no "magic bullet", pollution free energy source. Best that we can do is develop a range of options each of which can play a part in replacing some of the energy we currently get from fossil fuels.

As Chris says there is no clean energy source - solar panels, wind turbines, hydro-electric etc all require infrastructure, components and maintenance which in turn require mineral extraction, transport, manufacturing, instalation etc.
As with all forms of energy generation we need to do what we can to limit the impact.

I'm very concerned about the instant CO2 of burning down the rain forests which is a massive source of emissions. I don't think it is a bad thing to burn scrap wood, forestry thinings, off-cuts etc for fuel. If we didn't they would just rot on the ground or in landfill or be burnt on bonfires producing emissions anyway.

I'm not bothered about the other pollutants. If they were that bad Ray Mears would be dead already.

Burning wood is more sustainable than gas or coal. Burning wood from sustainable supplies enhances the environment in as much as it puts money into woodland management.

My supplier, FSC certified is a forester who looks works on huge areas of woodland is devon/somerset. A certain amount of wood needs to be cleared to maintain the balance of light and also preserve the area for tourism etc. All of the logs I got this year have been seasoned for 2 years and is beech wood cleared because of the drought conditions of recent summers affected the roots making the trees dangerous as they were on road sides and pathways. It would be a shameful waste not to utilise this as a resource. Also much of the firewood comes form coppice woods where the trees are pruned and therefore continue to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

Personally I would like to see more of the UK converted to woodlands. To much land is occupied by the meat industry. Maybe if we cut down on meat production we could grow more trees and crops.

As for pollution. Why is wood burning worse than coal gas? You can get dry seasoned wood, also efficient stoves are available. More should be done to encourage clean burn technology.

The problem with that scenario Biff is the last bit -- it gets burnt again not stored -- ever increasing interest in wood burning means more and more CO2 is released and less and less left stored in wood.

What I was talking about was storing the CO2 after the wood is burnt. It is using the trees as CO2 atmospheric scrubbers. This actually works better than artificially trying to get the tiny amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere. It is relatively easy to capture CO2 from the flue gas where it forms the bulk of the gas.

If we have already released more CO2 into the air than is safe, this may be the best route.

A lot of people burning a little wood = more CO2 than that which comes from the rain forests.

So should we be advocating joining them?

Posted By: biffvernonThe process of photosynthesis - combustion - flue gas - capture - storage looks likely to be the most practicable route, and the heat energy produced is a bonus

I hadn't quite thought of it like that - neat.

Posted By: Chris WardleNo reason why we need to burn the timber to use forestry as a carbon sink. We could just plant a whole lot more durable timber and, when it is mature, use it for making high quality furniture and in long lasting buildings. The CO2 is then locked up indefinitely

That's equally good Chris - buildings are a prime place to lock away unoxidised HC--- hydrocarbons (timber and other biomass, hemp husks etc) nice and dry and warm so they don't rot (oxidise back to CO2 and H2O) for the forseeable.

Posted By: biffvernonIt is using the trees as CO2 atmospheric scrubbers. This actually works better than artificially trying to get the tiny amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere. It is relatively easy to capture CO2 from the flue gas where it forms the bulk of the gas

This also is a good way of looking at it - provided the woodburning is instead of, rather than in addition to, burning other kinds of fuel (fossil) that haven't recently scrubbed their carbon content out of the atmosphere.

The latter (in addition to) is of course what's going to happen - all growth of renewable, nuclear etc energy supply will be gratefully lapped up by an energy-hungry world while oil will continue to be burnt just as fast as it can be produced - and it's being produced today faster than ever before and will continue to rise till it peaks somewhere in the next 10yrs. There's probably still as much fossil fuel going to be burnt over the next 50yrs as has been burnt in total so far - so get scrubbing!

Posted By: biffvernonIt seems to be bumping along a plateau at around 85 million barrels per day. Light sweet crude has already peaked and we're probably at about the peak for all liquids. Time will tell

My guess is that it's a temporary plateau.

Posted By: biffvernonThere is a lot of uncertainty about how quickly coal and the unconventional oils can be exploited

As oil price really begins to go up and up steadily (which hasn't quite taken hold yet), driven not by supplies running out but by demand (China etc) rising fast, then it gets economic to extract these unconventionals and I think the growing demand will be partly met, i.e. production growth will resume. In fact, as price rises and rises, the peak could be postponed for quite a while. However oil eventually will become too expensive to burn as cheap fuel, reserved only for mobile fuel i.e. air and surface transport, and for chemical feedstock.

OK, that's good news. Means the price will go up even more steeply and oil will become unaffordable as static fuel all the sooner. But that of course means coal will return (no shortage of that).

Posted By: biffvernonThe rate of production is perhaps more important than the final total

Another important point - but that rate of production must include coal.

Anyway, all that we enlightened ones achieve by a) demand reduction and b) substitution of renewables for fossil burning, will have no direct effect on slowing the global rate of production/burning of fossil fuels, because if we're consequently consuming less, the spare will just be gratefully soaked up by the fuel-hungry developing world - in fact all we'll achieve is to slow the rate of fossil price increase a bit, for their benefit!

That's not to say we shouldn't pursue a) and b), but do it c) to get out of Putin's power, d) to no longer need to rape the Middle East, Nigeria etc, d) as a practical way for the unenlightened to rediscover Gaia, how we're part of her, and treat her with some respect, or to put that another way, e) get our own house in order.

I'm sure that humans' long-term future is to resume harnessing ever-increasing quantities of energy (nothing's going to stop us heading out for the stars) but just now we have to take a step back and learn how to do so without fouling our own nest, wherever that may be - and that's actually a state of mind, of awareness, of consciousness - spiritual in fact. That's our present task, in these 2 or 3 decades, and it's going well in my opinion.

More good news.

BTW, a far higher priority than giving up air travel, is that we should all give up cement and concrete. The cement manufacturing industry - just manufacturing, not using - produces more CO2 than the entire air industry, manufacture and operation, and is rising just as fast. But anti-air-holidays is a far easier target for the self-righteous and puritanical, than the other. If there's one kind of thing our precious fossil reserves should be used for, it's life-enhancing stuff like cheap travel. Not all travellers are drunken Benidorm-bound, who couldn't tell if they were still in Bradford. Imagine a world where overseas travel was only available to politicians, business, military and media. It's the fact than everyone can go and see for themselves, that now limits the ancient tradition of spreading lies and myths about foreigners, for god knows what motives.

I don't see how cheap air travel is particularly life enhancing Tom. Make it cheap and we just take it for granted and start going on stag dos in Prague etc. Most people who travel on cheap flights are after a good sun burn and cheap ale. They could be doing the same in the UK now we have Wetherspoons and tanning booths on every street corner. I would think it more life enhancing for people in developing countries to have a bit more of a share of the fossil fuel pie. Why can't we level the playing field and tax all carbon fuels equally?

Concrete is really useful stuff but I do agree that we should be using a lot less of it. I still don't understand while we have to have such monolithic footings under everything we build these days. Go back 100 years and they just chucked some flat bits of stone in a trench and bricked off that. I think compressed earth blocks made on site could make real in roads into embodied energy in building by replacing bricks and concrete blocks. I'd like to see this research more thoroughly and then put into practice in the UK particularly as we have such poor structural timber resources.

Please explain, Tom, how you think things are "going well" because all I see is things going badly and its starting to depress me... I could do with cheering up a bit....