As I sit in my study to write, the fire in the hearth is radiating ambient warmth. It crackles and spits and fills the room with the subtle aroma of nature. Coals glow under burning logs and flames jump and dance and reach for the sky.
It was a different story a few hours ago when I arrived home from work. Stepping out of the climate controlled car, I was knocked breathless by the four degree temperature. Inside my 150 year old uninsulated house the temperature was not much better. Cursing the fact that I had once again run out of split wood for the fire, I changed clothes, donned a parka and made my way back outside for the all too familiar ritual of battling with the log splitter.
Once the fire is lit, it takes an hour or so to build sufficient heat to start warming the house. Only after I have showered and cooked can I then relax. It’s the same most nights.
Meanwhile, outside the trees groan and strain as the wind surges through their branches to throw sleet at the window panes. The dog and cat ignore the wintry assault on the house and stretch out side by side on a mat in front of the fire. It’s the kind of weather that is best spent curled up on the lounge with a glass of red and a book, fire roaring against the chill.
But there’s a different kind of chill affecting proponents of the open fire and slow combustion wood heaters. The release of a report by NASA suggests that domestic wood burning is a significant contributor to global warming.
According to the report, black carbon, or soot as it is more commonly known, is the third highest contributor to global warming after Carbon Dioxide and Methane. It is caused by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, wood and vegetation, as well as emissions from diesel engines.
Apparently microscopic soot particles are blown around the globe absorbing and releasing solar radiation thereby heating the atmosphere. When they fall onto polar caps, particulates darken snow and ice blocking the capacity to reflect sunlight which results in a quicker melting rate. This then increases the exposed dark land masses, resulting in further energy absorption and higher than otherwise rates of global warming.
It’s not all bad news. The research that informed the report, conducted by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, affirms that addressing the ‘soot issue’ can have immediate global ‘cooling’ effects. Soot drops out of the atmosphere very quickly, whereas carbon dioxide hangs around for hundreds of years. Reducing black carbon emissions would not only have an immediate impact on global warming, allowing time to effectively address the more difficult and longer term issues of carbon dioxide and methane production, it would also significantly reduce the level of air pollution.
This is a great relief. Not only in the knowledge in that there is an immediate solution to addressing global warming successfully, but for me, it means there is a justifiable reason to cease using the open fire as my sole source of warmth, and consider some kind of alternate heating.
It’s not that I don’t already have an environmental conscience – I do. The open fire leaves less of a carbon footprint than say, electric heating. After all, it is a well known fact that the burning of fossil fuels in electricity substations is a prime contributor to global warming in the developed world. And the wood I use in my fire is from ‘residual’ sources, that is, wood from trees that have already fallen by natural means (age, storms, etc). The fuel is hardwood and raw (untreated) and I burn it as hot as I possibly can – an absolute necessity both because open fireplaces are notoriously inefficient with generally only a 20-25% effectiveness in room heating, and of course, to reduce the smoke generated by the fire.
No. The relief I feel is related to the possibility of not ever having to gather the ‘environmentally healthier residual’ wood or perform the dance of the log splitter again! Intensive labour goes into ensuring a minimum level of warmth each night during winter. Each season, forethought is required to determine the needs of the following winter. There are local government requirements that need to be adhered to, to meet minimum requirements and avoid being served with a ‘Smoke Abatement Notice’. This includes burning only seasoned dry wood. Seasoned wood is wood that has been felled for an extended period to allow for the drying out of internal saps and juices. The sourcing of appropriate fuel, cutting it into slabs then loading it into a trailer takes days; the unloading the trailer and stacking the wood piece by piece takes hours. This pile then has to sit for at least a year to age. At the beginning of each winter, the seasoned pile then has to be moved from the back of the property to the carport for easier access to split and cart.
Saying no to this break-breaking work to prevent freezing through winter would be most beneficial (on so many levels). The report from NASA, entitled Global Warming in the 21st Century: An Alternative Scenario and published in the Journal Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry, has been taken on board by governments around the world.
Our own government has developed policy based on the findings. The federal Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts has expressed concern that the current level of domestic wood burning for heating exceeds the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for Particles. The Department is working with state and local governments to reduce the use of domestic wood burning and improve the “management of woodsmoke emissions as an air quality priority”.
It is true that air quality is greatly affected by the soot emissions. The statistics are mind boggling. The soot component of air pollution is increasingly implicated in respiratory and cardiac problems worldwide. In fact a recent study estimated two million deaths each year in the developing world relating to respiratory illness, mostly due to wood burning stoves in poorly ventilated houses. Closer to home there are hundreds of thousands of asthma and bronchitis episodes attributed to air pollution and costing government millions in healthcare.
State governments have commissioned their own research to assess the rate of their soot emission. The New South Wales Department of Environment and Climate Change has found that in the Sydney region, domestic solid fuel combustion contributes 53% of carbon content of the air on a winter weekday and as much as 67% of carbon emissions on winter weekend day – more than the emissions from vehicle exhausts!
The problem with burning wood in combustion heaters, wood stoves and indoor open fire places, is that whilst burning, the wood breaks down into a complex mixture of gases which are then released into the atmosphere via the flue or chimney. These gases don’t always breakdown sufficiently and as they are hit the air, they cool and condense into tiny droplets of oils and tar known as particulates. The particulates by themselves cannot be seen, but lots of particles together are seen as woodsmoke.
The global warming issue is compounded by the danger to human health posed by particulates in woodsmoke. Whether visible or not, soot is readily absorbed through the lining of the lung into the blood stream via normal breathing processes (a little hard to avoid), contributing to heart disease and cancer as well as the aforementioned chronic respiratory illnesses.
I myself want to reduce my carbon footprint. Like most environmentally conscious citizens, I am aghast at the thought of contributing to the respiratory illnesses of the populace. I thought I would gladly forgo the use of the open fire for heating purposes in lieu of alternative means of heating. (Though an hour after I made this decision, wearing so many layers I could barely bend my arms or legs, I thought it best to delay the implementation to avoid the onset of hypothermia, until I actually had an alternative source of heating available to me.)
Out of necessity, as I do every winter evening, I made my way outside. The floodlight on the corner of the house throws shadows into the carport where this season’s woodpile is. I pick up the nearest log and place it strategically on top of the splitting stump and reach for the log splitter. The splitter is heavy and it’s an effort to hoist it. I turn back to the stump with splitter poised at shoulder height – the log topples off. I let the splitter fall; the blade wedging in the stump. I release the handle and reach down to pick up the log, also heavy. With a grunt (and remembering to lift with my legs not my back), I plonk it back on the stump. The wedged splitter prevents it from sitting flat. I hold the log on the stump with my thigh as I attempt to pull the splitter from it. It does not come easily. I turn my body so I have one knee holding the log up, and place the other foot on top of the stump to prevent it from tipping as I reef the splitter handle up with both hands. It releases suddenly, flying back over the top of the stump. Instinctively I lunge after it sending both the log and stump tumbling. Losing my balance I fall over the stump and land within centimetres of the upright splitter head.
I go through this process (dancing with the log splitter does not incur such catastrophic trips and tumbles every single time) over and again until I can split each log into pieces that are a manageable size to carry inside. It takes about an hour until I have enough cut to last the evening. Then I have to cart them inside. The wheelbarrow helps with this task, at least to the bottom of the deck stairs. Another half hour passes until I have the wood stacked at the back door. By the time I have finished I am covered in wood dust and exhausted but somewhat warmer. And though in the short term the fire will continue to be used, government guidelines on effective wood burning will be strictly adhered to (mostly).
Whilst there are many government initiatives to reduce carbon emissions from domestic wood burning in Australia, they tend to be focused in city locations where the density of woodsmoke emissions is highest. In some city centres for example, the federal government offers generous rebates to upgrade domestic heating from combustion stoves and open fireplaces to new, more effective and environmentally friendly heating alternatives such as biogas or solar heaters. Here in the country however, the incidence of wood burning for heating remains very high. Upgrading to more efficient forms of heating not only remains prohibitively expensive, it also (dare I say) challenges the culture of country living.
Still, I yearn for the day that I can come home from work, push a button and have instant heat! What bliss! An extra hour or so every night would be mine to spend as I wish. Weekends would become more about leisure than surviving the winter. No more splinters. No more backaches. No more battling the sleet and snow and icy wind to perform the dance of the log splitter. And most importantly, I would be contributing to the reduction black carbon emissions (soot) which are a major component of air pollution and a causative factor in global warming.
City Observationist 