Fire --how to make

Build a house, make some millwork, doors, trim, furniture. I have two antiques from 1840.

If I build a fire using downed non growing material from the natural shedding of our forest as trees have a life expectancy just as all living things do. I release the same amount of CO2 as if I left the wood on the forest floor to decompose on its own over a relatively short period of time in the big picture. Oxidation is oxidation for the most part and heat is the byproduct just over longer time span.

Wood has been deemed carbon neutral because of the time span of it storing CO2 and releasing CO2. Oil and coal just have a longer time span but function much the same. Man puts time into a perspective given mankind’s time on the planet and or our individual time on the planet. Both are quite short when looking at the total time life of all kinds has been on the planet.

We do what makes us feel good but our impact is pretty small and not always as wise as we think.

Around here there are all kinds of well intentioned plans to turn farm land back to “nature” and it is driving farmers nuts as a lot of the land they rely on farming they don’t own. What they can afford to lease it for and make a profit and feed the masses is far less than the government will pay the owners to do nothing and allow it to go back to nature in an unnatural way that makes it forever a mess and to return it back to farm land cost prohibitive. The effort put into clearing the land and making it into prime farming land took the last 100 years and the population and the demand for food has only grown. Managing resources has given way to let nature take its course. That is fine if we all want to go back to 1700-1800 life styles, but I don’t think people are willing or even able to do that and the number of people involved may just make that imposable if they were willing.

Recently around here farmers have been contacted about contracts to convert farm land to solar and the dollar figures being thrown around have a lot of them wondering if this is even real.

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Nicely explained bud16415.

Indeed there is a slower release of CO2 as things rot. Much of the carbon in the rot is also recycled back into living organisms and soil without becoming CO2 first.

Sequestration is a slow process and takes a long time. That is the reason to do what we can to increase it. At the moment natural means are the only good choice we have that has a chance at significant impact. That is not to discount the importance of finding ways like injecting CO2 into cement (rather than the air) which strengthens the cement, and reduces to some degree the immense carbon footprint of that industry.

I have digressed far enough off the topic of how to make fire. I enjoy a camp fire myself. For eons our ancestors have stared into the flames, and watched the shimmering of the red hot embers. How many ways has fire shaped us over those eons, and how many thoughts and dreams were dreamed? How many deep human connections formed next to the warmth of a fire? A campfire is the closest I can come to glimpsing an answer. Learning to make fire deepens that glimpse.

In the West we are anxiously awaiting some rain and snow so we can have camp fires again in the woods.