Firewood demand is soaring (Maine)

[jpak]

http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/5114424.html

Annie Manley is seeing things she's never seen and hearing stories she's never heard before as office manager at J&M Logging in Augusta.

"People that usually order two or three cords of wood are ordering five or six now," she said. "It's amazing. Just this month -- the month of May -- we've cut about 135 cord."

Manley and others who deal in firewood say the demand is increasing significantly as the price of oil skyrockets.

People are afraid they will not be able to afford to heat their homes this winter; older people who should not be lugging wood are planning to buy outdoor boilers, Manley said.

<more>

edit: my brother told me local pellet stove dealers are swamped and cannot guarantee delivery of stoves for this fall.

teh panic iz on...

[Old and In the Way]

1. I've got 2 years worth of seasoned on-hand.

Will probably buy 3-4 cords of unseasoned this fall. If it gets too ridiculous, I'll cut my own.

[ingac70]

2. Smart move. n/t

[phantom power]

3. Here comes the nation's gut-check on sustainable wood burning.

[Warpy]

4. No shit

The only way to satisfy demand is to lift the restriction on industrial hemp, use that for paper along with leftovers from logging and other cellulose waste products.

We're going to have to rethink a lot of things in the coming years.

[phantom power]

6. I have an abiding fear that we'll burn down our remaining forests...

in a last gasp. It's fairly similar to my abiding fear that we'll flat-top the Appalachians in a last coal blow-out. Incidentally, nailing our coffins shut with the corresponding CO2-blowout.

[Mojorabbit]

11. I thhink you are right

my freeper BIL stated as much this past weekend. He also said we need to drill so many wells that you would have to walk over oil wells to get around. Sigh.

[tom_paine]

16. Fucking idiots. I have no patience of left to be polite or politically correct.

Your BIL is a fucking idiot.

[jpak]

8. Fraser Paper in Millinocket closed last week due to high oil costs

http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2008/05/29/katahdin_paper_closes_paper_mill_in_millinocket_maine/

The wood it *won't* use this year will more than make up for increased firewood consumption...

[phantom power]

10. As negative feedback goes...

that isn't too comforting. I guess any kind of negative feedback is going to look like that one way or another. Contraction of industry.

I wonder how many cords of wood that plant used each year.

[jpak]

12. That mill consumed about 100,000 cords per year

which would supply 4 cords per year to 25,000 Maine homes...

[bananas]

5. Newspaper and magazine subscriptions will skyrocket

as people search for fuel to burn.
I feel sorry for the mailman.
:)

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. "Brown Cloud" Particulate Pollution Amplifies Global Warming

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=109712

Press Release 07-087

"Brown Cloud" Particulate Pollution Amplifies Global Warming

Jeopardizes Asian water supplies, contributes to Himalayan glacier melt

August 1, 2007

Scientists have concluded that the global warming trend caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases is a major contributor to the melting of Himalayan and other tropical glaciers. Now, a new analysis of pollution-filled "brown clouds" over south Asia by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., offers hope that the region may be able to arrest some of the alarming retreat of such glaciers by reducing its air pollution.

The team, led by atmospheric chemist V. Ramanathan of Scripps, found that atmospheric brown clouds enhanced solar heating of the lower atmosphere by about 50 percent. The results are in a paper in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

The combined heating effect of greenhouse gases and brown clouds, which contain soot, trace metals and other particles from urban, industrial and agricultural sources, is enough to account for the retreat of Himalayan glaciers in the past half century, the researchers concluded.

...

"The conventional thinking is that brown clouds have masked as much as 50 percent of global warming by greenhouse gases through so-called global dimming," said Ramanathan. "While this is true globally, this study reveals that over southern and eastern Asia, the soot particles in the brown clouds are in fact amplifying the atmospheric warming trend caused by greenhouse gases by as much as 50 percent."

...

[jwirr]

9. There are some pretty big wood piles here in Minnesota also.

[tom_paine]

13. When the shit hits the fan, our vast population will strip the forests bare.

People wonder what happened to the Anasazi, or the culture on Easter Isalnd.

What could the last person who cut down the last tree on Easter Isalnd have been thinking?

Why, most of the same things WE are thinking.

Plus a change, plus a la meme chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same)

[bhikkhu]

15. ..

[NNadir]

14. Don't worry. All of Maine's forests have been sustainably managed in family hands for generations.

Each landholder is able to invite 40 peasants to a locally grown dinner at harvest time.

Besides, Maine has so much wind and solar power, it hardly needs wood. It has demanded that Canada shut off the Sable Island Gas lines.