According to the journal Nature Geosciences, “increasing concentrations of black carbon have substantially contributed to rapid Arctic warming during the past three decades.”

A paper from that journal, “Climate response to regional radiative forcing during the twentieth century,” was authored by climate researchers Drew Shindell, at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Greg Faluvegi of Columbia University. Shindell, Faluvegi, and many other climate scientists believe that limiting black carbon sources may “buy the world some time” in the race to control climate change as richer nations develop their climate change policies and begin taking the slow steps towards overhauling their carbon heavy energy sources.

The researchers assert that aerosols are responsible for “half or more” of Arctic warming. Unexpectedly, their paper’s claims and recommendations sparked a flurry of critical emails, perhaps due to confusion over the atmospheric roles of different aerosols.

Read more of this story »

Read more of this story »

Clean and Super-Efficient Wood Heating
Super-efficient wood burning heaters with lots of mass are called by many names: masonry stoves, russian stoves, finnish stoves or finnish fireplaces, mass heaters. Though mass heaters may look like traditional fireplaces, they’re actually very sophisticated heating devices.

Burning wood in a mass heater doesn’t involve feeding in wood a few pieces at a time. The wood is added all at once, lit, and burned as quickly and as hotly as possible. Because of the high combustion temperature, there’s virtually no smoke. Combustion is so complete that, with the exception of a bit of smoke released when the fire is first started, most of what comes out of the chimney is carbon dioxide and water vapor.

Read more of this story »

A man identified only as Bob contributed this story to Coast to Coast, saying the owner told him the wood burning oven catches combustible fuels from wood coals which condenses any moisture. The dried fumes are fed to the engine, and it runs!

Location of the truck is unknown, and the image came from the article.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, heating and cooling amounts to 46% of all energy consumed by our homes. Water heating uses another 14%. In coastal California, where extreme heat is rare and winters are mild, a properly sited, well designed passive solar home can generate its own heat and hot water, and do without air conditioning.

Historically, few homes are so well sited or built. Since our area has more heating days than cooling days, most homeowners need a heating system. What few know is that many indoor air quality problems can be by-products of forced air heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems installed in their homes.

Read more of this story »

Right?

What do you mean, wood burning can be green?

In fact, masonry heaters (which are also sometimes called “Finnish heaters” or “Russian heaters”) can be a green source for heating a home. While a traditional fireplace may be only 10% efficient (which is to say not!), a masonry heater can be 90% efficient. A well insulated house (even in a cold, Canadian location) can be heated on a single cord of wood per season. In a sense, a masonry heater is to a traditional fireplace what a compact fluorescent (or, even better, and LED light) is to an incandescent bulb.

The key, as is the case with passive solar heating, is thermal mass. When heating is taking place, you want to capture and store as much of that energy as you can, so that you can use it throughout the day. The masonry heater does this with a large structure containing a series of baffles, all of which gets heated up from a fast, hot-buring fire. By using a series of baffles in the structure, the heater ensures that most of the heat goes into the stone of the heater itself, rather than shooting up the chimney to be wasted, as is the case with a traditional fireplace.

Once heated, the thermal mass of the heater slowly radiates heat into the surrounding space over the course of a day. Because the heat radiates from the thermal mass in a straight line, spaces in direct line of sight to the heater are going to be better served than small closed-off rooms away from the heater. A masonry heater is not likely to be something that can easily be added to an existing home. The design of the entire house needs to be considered in order to get the best use from a masonry heater.

The carbon impact with this kind of wood burning is actually fairly benign. Firewood contains recently sequestered carbon, carbon removed from the atmosphere during the life of the tree. This carbon is re-released to the atmosphere when the wood is burned, where it can be reclaimed by other trees and plants. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, have had their carbon sequestered for millions of years. By burning fast and hot, the masonry heater produces less of the soot, creosote and other by-products that are formed when a fire smolders and burns slowly. This makes it less polluting as well as more efficient.

A masonry heater doesn’t make sense for every location (nor does any other technology). It would make no sense to have one in a city where the firewood needed to be trucked in from a distant source. But for a location where firewood is a readily available local resource, it can be worth considering. And with a masonry heater, burning wood can be a green heating method.

Sources:
Alternative-Heating-Info
Green Mountain Soapstone
Heat Kit
Tulikivi