It doesn't really matter. Even the cleanest stoves output a fair amount of particulate matter [0]. The range in the EPA's database is 0.3 grams/hr to 2.5 grams/hr. That's not a huge range, and it's a lot of particulate matter in your air by any standard.
Also, frequency and volume counter dispersion pretty well. That's why cities are smoggy: all the pollution from cars and cooking (lots of tailpipes, vents, or "chimneys") adds up. These cities are far worse environments for people specifically because of the air quality, which leads to higher rates of asthma, general respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, developmental issues in children, and cognitive impairment.
There's a lot of defense of wood-burning stoves in this thread, from "get a catalytic stove" to "it's natural", but there's been a lot of research on this. It's bad, it's always been bad. I get the appeal: you can buy a piece of property, get off the grid, heat your home totally self-sufficiently. I've watched a lot of off-the-grid YouTube, I'm into it haha.
But heat's a really inconvenient problem if you face the fact that burning wood is very unhealthy, and very bad for society/climate change at scale. Maybe you can do geothermal, but not everywhere--plus you can't DIY, and getting a crew to come out isn't 100%.
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Overall I agree with the sentiment that nuclear should have been the solution. I buy into the indictment of the greens; they got most things right, but it really does seem that they've succeeded in categorizing nuclear as a dirty fuel, and that will cost us significantly in the short term as we experience the dip between titrating off of fossil/nuclear fuels and ramping up our wind/solar/geo/tidal power.
That seems wild to me. I know alternate histories are hard, maybe we avoided a nuclear apocalypse by not converting all of our power generation to nuclear and I'm Monday-morning-quarterbacking the whole thing from an alternate timeline where humanity still exists to the degree where we still have things like internet forums. But a lot of things would be a lot better if we'd done that--and not blown up Earth.
Yeah, of course we should be all running on nuclear power. Burning wood in a responsible way locally is just a sad fallback. May the propaganda and ideas of the various green European parties who brought us here burn in hell.
Also, frequency and volume counter dispersion pretty well. That's why cities are smoggy: all the pollution from cars and cooking (lots of tailpipes, vents, or "chimneys") adds up. These cities are far worse environments for people specifically because of the air quality, which leads to higher rates of asthma, general respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, developmental issues in children, and cognitive impairment.
There's a lot of defense of wood-burning stoves in this thread, from "get a catalytic stove" to "it's natural", but there's been a lot of research on this. It's bad, it's always been bad. I get the appeal: you can buy a piece of property, get off the grid, heat your home totally self-sufficiently. I've watched a lot of off-the-grid YouTube, I'm into it haha.
But heat's a really inconvenient problem if you face the fact that burning wood is very unhealthy, and very bad for society/climate change at scale. Maybe you can do geothermal, but not everywhere--plus you can't DIY, and getting a crew to come out isn't 100%.
---
Overall I agree with the sentiment that nuclear should have been the solution. I buy into the indictment of the greens; they got most things right, but it really does seem that they've succeeded in categorizing nuclear as a dirty fuel, and that will cost us significantly in the short term as we experience the dip between titrating off of fossil/nuclear fuels and ramping up our wind/solar/geo/tidal power.
That seems wild to me. I know alternate histories are hard, maybe we avoided a nuclear apocalypse by not converting all of our power generation to nuclear and I'm Monday-morning-quarterbacking the whole thing from an alternate timeline where humanity still exists to the degree where we still have things like internet forums. But a lot of things would be a lot better if we'd done that--and not blown up Earth.
[0]: https://cfpub.epa.gov/oarweb/woodstove/index.cfm?fuseaction=...