Which is more expensive:brush removal or prescribed burn?

[Jim Matthews]

We have experts here, and I do mean experts, with several big plantations who have offered to go to the western part of the country to give advice on how to manage their resources. They were pretty much laughed out of the state of Cali from all the tree huggers and green deal hippies over there.

CITATION OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN
What's the highest point in swamp country - 150 feet?

The well managed, long-settled Blue Ridge forests are third and fourth generation forests.

Outside of the occasional Okefenokee fires, it's not much of a problem here. It all has to do with management.

Never mind the drought.

https://www.drought.gov/drought/states/oregon

Oh, and by the way, the reason the Okefenokee burns out of control occasionally, is because much of it is Federal land that will not allow prescribed burns. Only natural fires can occur so the tinder builds up significantly because most of it is pines.

Anybody live in the swamp?

Give it a rest.

[Roger Feeley]

Tom,
you wrote that you dump the stuff in a dry creek bed. Are there plenty of good places for that stuff or are people wondering what to do with it.

i ask because I ran across an interesting new business. There’s a guy who is going to use pyrolysis to convert biomass to bio-oil. He will then get companies wishing to be carbon neutral to pay him to pump that oil into the ground. His plan is to use either injection wells or Kansas salt caverns. The world is full of failed pyrolysis schemes but this chap may have something. The problem with bio-oil is that it takes a lit of post processing to remove water and contaminants. He does care about that because it’s all going int the ground.

what he has is a fairly efficient atmospheric carbon capture scheme. Carbon is taken into plants from the atmosphere. His pyrolysis process produces bio-oil and syngas which is used to fuel the process. The output is very concentrated carbon in the form of oil. Another virtue is that his bio-oil is heavier than water so it wants to stay buried.

he says he can refine his process to $45/ton of oil. There are a great many companies who would like the marketing karma of being carbon neutral but they just can’t get there. That’s his market.

He’s planning to use corn stalks. I wondered if he could use collected forest biomass.

[Brian Holcombe]

It’s worth considering that Carbon offsets can be bought at $10/ton.

[Lonny Rowley]

I live in the Great Northwest, and I'm not going to minimize climate change because here in Oregon we have had the hottest years on record these past 5 yrs. That being said, we also have a horrible record of forest management. I lived in Central Oregon during the great Pine Beetle infestation. It's probably still going on but you don't hear about it anymore. Anyways, when the Beetle killed off countless 10's of thousands of trees, instead of harvesting the trees while there was still usable lumber, the forest service decided to just let them stand. Over the course of several years, those trees were allowed to stand and drop dead debris on the forest floor. We had several huge fires in the regions where these trees stood because those areas are very prone to fires set my lightning. Needless to say, all that debris and dead trees was like burning paper. Yes, it's expensive to do forest management the way it should be done but tell that to the people that just lost their homes and in some places entire neighborhoods. One thing about the Pine Beetle though, it starts its life out under the soild and eventually makes its way up the tree as it matures and bores into the Pine tree thus killing it. Many, many decades ago, forest fires were allowed to burn by the Native Indians because they understood that those low burning fast fires would kill off the Beetle. Not only that but less desireable brush was burned off as well and the huge Pines thrived. A big Ponderosa Pine has very thick bark and can sustain a low and fast burning fire. Maybe it's time to go back and ponder how Native Americans managed the environment because the White man hasn't done such a good job.

[Jim Matthews]

I manage a few hundred acres of timber, on relatively flat land. There is no way there would be a forest here, of any kind, if we didn't get periodic rains.

It seems like even the Sahara was not always a desert. No forest management plan would have changed that.

I couldn't have said this better.

Same thing happened to the tree cover in Iceland.
Once the topsoil is gone, there's literally nothing to save.

[Lonny Rowley]

Again, it's too little too late. Forest management is appalling or should I say forest mis-management. The wind event we had here in Oregon was truly out of the ordinary. I live close to the Columbia Gorge and we're no stranger to wind but have never in my 66 yrs. experienced that high of wind that time or year and coinciding with recently ignited forest fires. It was a deadly mix of events. We have had the last 5 yrs. of hottest years on record for Oregon. Idiots are out intentionally setting fires as well. Just yesterday the arrested a man for setting a fire. He had just been released from jail for setting a fire a week earlier.

[mike stenson]

Well, the 100 years of fire prevention forest management policy sure didn't work out. Did it. Combine that with a record drought, and every year being hotter than the last.. and poof.. the west burns.

[Mike Soaper]

"Once the topsoil is gone, there's literally nothing to save."

My guess is that much of top soil comes from the fallen leaves, pine needles, branches and trees that some folks want to, or need to, clean up.

When I was digging holes for my home I was struck by how thin the topsoil layer is, 6-10", compared to the diameter of the planet and considering how long the woods in this area have been living.

[Stan Calow]

To the original question of which is more expensive, I think the premise of the question assumes that there would be equal outcomes. Thats probably dependent on too many variables to make generalizations. But it doesn't really matter as the American public is too short-sighted to spend tax money on preventive measures of any kind, for any disaster. We'd much rather pay higher insurance rates and fund charitable bailouts than prevent developers from building in danger zones.

[mike stenson]

To the original question of which is more expensive, I think the premise of the question assumes that there would be equal outcomes. Thats probably dependent on too many variables to make generalizations. But it doesn't really matter as the American public is too short-sighted to spend tax money on preventive measures of any kind, for any disaster. We'd much rather pay higher insurance rates and fund charitable bailouts than prevent developers from building in danger zones.

The scale prevents either. Which is ultimately the point.

[William Chain]

Beware those exploding trees!

[Roger Feeley]

Wouldn’t those be power that’s created without adding carbon. This guys process is subtractive.

[Doug Garson]

Wouldn’t those be power that’s created without adding carbon. This guys process is subtractive.

Not sure I understand what you are saying (or who's post you are responding to). If he is using pyrolysis to convert biomass (corn stalks or waste wood) to oil he's not removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the biomass removed the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If he converts the biomass to oil then burns it to generate power he's putting the carbon back in the atmosphere so at best its carbon neutral.
I agree carbon neutral is good because it reduces the amount of power generated by burning fossil fuels which adds net carbon to the atmosphere.

[Roger Feeley]

Not sure I understand what you are saying (or who's post you are responding to). If he is using pyrolysis to convert biomass (corn stalks or waste wood) to oil he's not removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the biomass removed the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If he converts the biomass to oil then burns it to generate power he's putting the carbon back in the atmosphere so at best its carbon neutral.
I agree carbon neutral is good because it reduces the amount of power generated by burning fossil fuels which adds net carbon to the atmosphere.

doug, it’s my understanding that when plants convert CO2 to O2, they keep the carbon. To my knowledge, plants don’t get much carbon from the soil. So I can reasonably assume that the carbon in any plant came from the atmosphere. If I could figure out a way to extract and concentrate that plant carbon, I am taking carbon from the atmosphere. That’s what this guy is doing. He’s just letting nature gather carbon for him. Then he’s converting that plant carbon to oil. To be fair, some benefit is lost when he takes the syngas output of the pyrolysis to power the process. But in the end, he gets a lot of carbon in a stable form and then he stores it underground.

[Doug Garson]

doug, it’s my understanding that when plants convert CO2 to O2, they keep the carbon. To my knowledge, plants don’t get much carbon from the soil. So I can reasonably assume that the carbon in any plant came from the atmosphere. If I could figure out a way to extract and concentrate that plant carbon, I am taking carbon from the atmosphere. That’s what this guy is doing. He’s just letting nature gather carbon for him. Then he’s converting that plant carbon to oil. To be fair, some benefit is lost when he takes the syngas output of the pyrolysis to power the process. But in the end, he gets a lot of carbon in a stable form and then he stores it underground.

OK if he converts the biomass to oil and then permanently stores the oil underground I agree he is removing carbon from the atmosphere (with natures help). I misunderstood and thought he was producing oil to burn for power generation. I believe what he is doing is referred to as carbon sequestration. Thanks for clarifying, I was wondering why he was storing the oil underground thinking that it was intended for power generation. Love to see a link to an article about the process.