I don’t understand why you’re being downvoted.

Your point is absolutely correct and as far as I can tell you pointed it out genuinely, not facetiously. Edit: read other later posts here: didn’t know about the bacteria part. Learned something today!

This is absolutely not my area of expertise but intuitively there are two categories of energy sources: one which releases co2 (or other climate change impacting gases) and one which doesn’t. Wood, oil, gas, coal falls into the former. It’s just a question of time as you say until the loop closes. Solar, wind, thermal, etc would fall into the latter as far as I can tell.

He gets downvoted because the real question is if burning wood causes climate change. Instead, he prefers to debate the exact meaning of closed loop.

Wood burning does not cause climate change provided it's matched by reforestation efforts.

As others point out, the real problem with wood burning is it's effects on air quality.

Most wood burning happens in more rural areas where people are harvesting the renewing resource on their own land, like fallen trees in winter. Many times, areas need to do controlled burns to prevent uncontrolled wild fires, and it's better to manage that burning for a purpose, useful heat, that lessens the heat needed from other energy sources that aren't renewable.

In California’s mountains (Sierra Nevada range and similar) people who want to burn wood legally have to use pellets. The stoves that burn them are meant to comply with pollution regulations. People kinda don’t like them but they use them.

Montevideo didn’t seem like a place where suburbanites were burning wood of any form, but I was there in the summer, just for a day.

Got any sources? I know many people, including a firefighter and sheriff, that burn wood outside on the many burn days, or use it in wood fireplaces.

Here's one such county ordinance https://www.tuolumnecounty.ca.gov/365/Burn-Program

I have family in Mono County.

https://trademarkmammoth.com/woodstove-inserts-and-epa-compl...

Given that EPA regulations were cited, I assumed that the same rules apply everywhere. It seems instead that the harshest rules apply in one town.

Isn't coal the result of a massive accumulation of plant matter that couldn't be digested by any organism?

But then, once the current mushrooms and bacteria manage to digest it, there is no way for it to accumulate again like that.

Petrol might be a different story, coming from the plankton falling at the bottom of the sea instead.

Coal is not a renewable resource because bacteria and fungi evolved to decompose wood before it turns into coal. That's why almost all coal comes from (nomen omen) Carboniferous Period.

A fun theory, but it's wrong. The likely explanation is tectonic:

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-ancient-fo...

That's kind of missing my point. I obviously know that coal is not renewable.

The point was: When you burn wood today the atmosphere isn't going to be like "oh, but that CO2 was absorbed out of the atmosphere during the last 100 years, so that CO2 shouldn't contribute to global warming".

As long as we haven't solved climate change any CO2 released into the atmosphere should be avoided. It's okay to burn wood that would have rotted anyway.

But if you cut down a healthy forest, burn it and say "but it will be reabsorbed when the forst grows back, it's a closed loop" that's technically correct, but it still contributes to global warming because we now have additional CO2 in the atmosphere. Simply because it takes time for a forest to grow.

The closed loop argument is only really valid long term and when we've already solved climate change.

> Technically coal is also a closed loop of carbon because the CO2 once came from the atmosphere.

As you say, the loop has to close on a timeline shorter than the greenhouse gas effect's impact on climate. That can be true of wood but not coal.

The CO2 is going back into the atmosphere regardless, if the wood is not burned, it will decompose.

Sure, but the CO2 from burning wood goes into the atmosphere right now. The CO2 from decomposing wood goes into the atmosphere over time, sometimes even over the span of years, depending on environmental conditions.

And, regardless, it's not like we only burn wood that's starting to decompose. Quite the contrary.

Coal is possibly a closed loop on a geologic scale, while trees are a closed loop on a human lifetime scale. If a cut 100 acres, and burn it, replant it, I'm net neutral. If I burn the same amount of coal, I don't have the 100 acres to plant. Coal adds net carbon to our system on the timeline we care about.