Hoping to buy wood? Get in line (Maine)

[jpak]

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=150388&ac=PHnws

People looking to lower their home heating bills by burning more firewood are out of luck if they haven't already ordered.

Most firewood stocks were committed to regular customers by the end of October, several dealers say, and what's left on the market is either green wood not suitable for immediate burning or hard-to-find -- and pricey -- seasoned or dry wood.

"I'm certainly seeing more people," said John Sylvester of Alfred, who sells about 300 cords of green and seasoned firewood a year. "They're getting frightened because (heating costs) have taken such a dramatic increase."

Today, many dealers in southern Maine have phone messages on their machines saying they are out of stock, or down to selling just green wood. Prices have stayed steady at between $150 and $180 for green wood in the last year, but seasoned wood has jumped from about $220 a cord to as high as $275.

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[pscot]

1. There's a glut of the stuff here in rural Washington

Last winter's storms blew down thousands of trees. Small landowners have had a hard time giving the wood away. By next year things will be back to normal.

[AlecBGreen]

2. $275?!

Here in VA, a cord of split, seasoned firewood runs $100 at most, and thats counting delivery.

[jpak]

3. We have much colder winters and a lot more demand up here

I get green ash and birch $125/cord for 12 foot logs - and that is a bargain...

[NNadir]

4. You mean biomass supplies aren't infinite?

I believe there is plenty of forest to be clear cut for dunderhead renewable fantasies. Maine isn't Cameroon quite yet, but it will be when Sable Island is gone.

The nice thing about clear cuts though, is you can put wind farms where the forests used to be, right?

[kestrel91316]

6. My, you sure do enjoy the nasty gloating.

Tell me again why you come here - because it's obviously not to make friends.....

[NNadir]

8. I come here to inject a note of something called "reality," into a dire situation.

In fact, 50 years of denial has placed the world at the abyss.

You, apparently come here to make happy talk because, apparently you couldn't care less about this fact. You seem to be under the impression - maybe learned in preschool - that if we all make nice, all the bad things will go away.

I am not in the least interested in your friendship. I consider all of the world's anti-nukes as a huge part of the cause of this disaster, if you must know. My opinion of anti-nuke snake charmers could not be more clear or more consistent.

According to your little kumbaya sing song, I cannot call "dangerous fossil fuel waste" dangerous fossil fuel waste. Bullshit. I couldn't care less while you put your hands over your ears and yell "Nyah. Nyah. Nyan. I'm not liiiiiiiiiisssssstening!"

I am still waiting to find out how you justify the claim that carbon dioxide is not connected to fossil fuels, why it is not dangerous even though it kills millions of people per year and why it is not "waste." But you won't bother to explain it, because you'd rather whine about me. Maybe you think I'm new at this.

Why don't you, your pal and a few sockpuppets sit down for a nice glass of Allen's coffee brandy and talk all about how you might power Mom's E350 with biodiesel some day?

[jpak]

7. No - seasoned firewood is in short supply

again, reading comprehension

There are plenty of Maine produced wood pellets...

Grand Opening held Friday for Corinth Wood Pellets

http://bangordailynews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=147864&zoneid=500

CORINTH — Corinth Wood Pellets, the largest single pellet manufacturing plant in the United States, held its grand opening Friday.

After 16 months of planning and preparation, owner Ken Eldridge said he’s ready to start next week producing an estimated 140,000 tons of wood pellets per year that will be sold both domestically and overseas.

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The second phase of the project is expected to be completed by the end of the year, and additional lines will allow the company to produce more than 300,000 tons of pellets a year.

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Maine's first wood pellet plant to begin operations next year

http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2006/10/28/maines_first_wood_pellet_plant_to_begin_operations_next_year/

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"All of the money will now stay in the state of Maine. All of the jobs will be in Maine," Linkletter said. "I cant think of any reason for anyone to object."

The new plant would dry and compress sawmill residue, forest thinnings, corn and grasses into pellets that can be used to heat homes, schools and businesses.

Rybarczyk explained that the pellets burn at 90 percent efficiency, compared with 70 percent for oil, but that the "biggest advantage is this will all come from Maine."

The new facility, he said, will require 200,000 tons of raw materials a year and will be able to produce enough pellets to heat 33,000 homes, displacing approximately 13 million gallons of fuel oil.

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...and more to come...

Old Town pulp mill running, more jobs promised

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Red Shield Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ed Paslawski touted several projects planned in addition to the pulp operation, and said that in the next 12 months, his company intends to make $100 million in capital investment in the site.

A Red Shield subsidiary also is developing four wood pellet lines and a commercial scale pellet cogeneration plant.

Products produced by the University of Maine advanced engineered wood composites facility additionally are slated to be commercially manufactured at the site.

"The potential sales for that are international," Paslawski said.

http://bangornews.com/news/t/news.aspx?articleid=150615&zoneid=500

...and *green* unseasoned firewood (that no one wants). FYI - seasoned firewood orders must be placed far in advance of the winter heating season. A simple concept far beyond the comprehension of anyone from New Jersey....

[NNadir]

9. Oh. I see.

We have all this talk about the future...again.

Investiment...

By such and such a date...

I see also that you haven't become any better at counting. Maybe you think that we all believe that there are 33,000 homes in Maine.

Actually, the population of Maine is something like 1.3 million and 80% of the heating systems in that state - the largest fraction in the country - are heated using dangerous fossil fuel oil.

As for New Jersey, we have a problem here with wood burning pollution and I confess that I am a part of that. I have been burning downed trees in my yard for more than ten years now, splitting all the wood by hand using my renewably powered axe. I know that the pollution is not good, but I reason that the carbon dioxide would at least, escape any way, since the wood is already down. Thus I reason that the damage caused by the pollutants is probably less than the pollution that would be caused by burning dangerous natural gas. Since 50% of my electricity is nuclear however, it may be that the electric heater is even cleaner. I try to use as little gas as I can, relying more on electricity and wood, which in my case, happens to be free.

Now, one can, in fact, have people who are not energy retards who come from Maine. We don't have any such people here now, but a while back there was a fellow or gal named "MaineGreen" who was quite bright and well informed. I don't think he went around drinking much Allen's Coffee Brandy with 40 or 50 people who drove over to his estate for local turkey, but I don't know. I liked that correspondent much, and enjoyed talking with him or her.

As for all this stuff about "seasoning," I note that next year the wood companies will invariably cut more wood. Happy. Happy. Maybe they can get some wood shipped in from the lumber companies in Sumatra that have been cutting wood like crazy to make palm oil plantations for our German pals.

I do note that the indoor burning of biomass, according to the World Health Organization, causes about 4 million deaths per year. You couldn't care less.

Maine consumes about half an exajoule of energy per year:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/state/state_energy_profiles.cfm?sid=ME

This is about 5 times as much energy as is produced by Cameroon, which has more than 10 times more people as Maine. Cameroon's forests - it's a renewable energy paradise that Maine may aspire to be - are disappearing at a rate of 0.9% per year.

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTEEI/Data/20799687/Cameroon.pdf

According to Professor Daniel Gbetnkom at the University of Yaounde II,

In Cameroon, the supply of fuel wood from forests accounts for over 60% of the energy consumed and has been increasing at a rate of 2.5% per year since 1974-1976 (Cleaver, 1992, P.65). The forestry sector occupies the first place in export tonnage and third place in foreign earnings...

http://www.csae.ox.ac.uk/conferences/2004-GPRaHDiA/papers/2p-Gbetnkom-CSAE2004.pdf

You couldn't care less.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tablee1.xls

Maine has no intention of replacing its dangerous fossil fuels with biomass and all the attempts to sweep issues of scale under the rug to create a misleading impression that it is doing so are meaningless frauds.

Now, you can whine all you want about New Jersey - and I am aware of the efforts of your little anti-science cult to attempt to poison my kids with your fucking particulates and other carcinogens by attempting the destruction of our Oyster Creek nuclear reactor - right now we have some of the cleanest electricity in North America. In fact, our per capita production of carbon dioxide (factoring in our population of 8.7 million vs your population of 1.3 million) is 79% of what Mainers produce, mostly because we rely heavily on nuclear power and Maine is just a fossil fuel hole.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggrpt/excel/tbl_statefuel.xls

If you don't know what you're talking about, make stuff up.

[jpak]

11. "I see also that you haven't become any better at counting"

ummmm...the smaller of those two mills produces enough pellets for 33,000 homes.

The larger of the two will produce enough each year for 100,000 homes.

Two more mills under development in Maine will produce enough pellets for 70,000 homes

Combined, they will produce enough pellets for >200,000 homes each year

(clue: there are ~500,000 households in Maine)

and, currently, >50% of Maine homes burn wood to reduce oil consumption.

do the math...

*if* you can...

So what is this bizarre psychotic nonsense about importing wood from Sumatra and Cameroon???

(I know, bizarre psychotic nonsense)

and what is this????

"I am aware of the efforts of your little anti-science cult to attempt to poison my kids with your fucking particulates and other carcinogens by attempting the destruction of our Oyster Creek nuclear reactor."

I know, bizarre paranoid (in the truest sense of the word) psychotic nonsense.

Maine produces proportionally more electricity from renewable sources (60% of in-state demand) than Nuclear New Jersey - which *imports* 35% of its electricity from out-of-state-dangerous-fossil-fuel power plants.

..and people who live in natural gas-heated glass houses in Nuclear New Jersey (which is a fraud) should not throw "made up" stones.

[Canuckistanian]

5. I just paid about $130 for a cord here

And I consider myself damn lucky to get it. It's really in demand in my area.

[midnight armadillo]

10. There's no shortage of wood in Maine...

...just a shortage of well-insulated homes using solar to heat in the winter.

The Maine Solar House: www.mainesolarhouse.com