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Comment by fjni | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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