Ahmed wrote:
Of course, affect is important concerning the forest, and this seems justified to me, because in what it would be better to judge only in terms of utility?
We will have to have as factual a debate as possible on our energy choices ... Fossil fuels and global warming or shale gas and its possible "small problems" or wind turbines which spoil the landscape and "purr" a little or photovoltaics which spoils our beautiful red tiled roofs or hydraulics which flood alleys or nuclear power and its risk Chernobyl / Fukushima or woody biomass and deforestation or annual biomass and the risk of starving the poor or biomethane and starving energy crops ...
In short, there's always something wrong!
Finally, it will be a bit of all that ... As little as possible ...
I am relaunching the "pellet heating" debate. I heat my house with around 4,5 tonnes per year. That would represent a big tree per year !!!
A bit of Wikipedia:
According to the last five annual inventory campaigns carried out by the national forest inventory from 2007 to 20111 on the whole of the French territory, the forest in metropolitan France represents 16,3 million hectares, that is a rate of afforestation of 29,7% ...
In mainland France, the rate of afforestation has increased sharply since the XNUMXth century thanks to major reforestation efforts ...
Some key figures :
While it still covered almost the entire territory around the year 400 (Julius Caesar speaks in "La Guerre des Gaules" of "Hairy Gaul"), the French forest has only 8 to 9 million people. hectares in the mid-nineteenth century: this corresponds to the maximum expansion of agricultural land and rural population, before the start of the rural exodus;
11 million hectares in 1950: the forest has gained a little, but the absence of mechanization and the maintenance of high agricultural densities limits the movement of agricultural abandonment and abandonment;
16,3 million hectares on average in 2009: mechanization has led to a shrinking of agriculture on the potentially most productive or easily mechanizable portions.
In metropolitan France, in 2011, the standing volume was 2,5 billion cubic meters.
The annual organic production in volume of living trees amounted to 86,4 million cubic meters for France on average over the period 2006-20101. It is 51,9 Mm³ for hardwoods and 34,5 Mm³ for conifers.
In short, if there were only pellet heating with high-efficiency boilers, the annual production would be quite close to the consumption of 15 to 17 million households (roughly, my 4,5 tonnes is 5 or 6 cubic meters ...)! Surprising, no ????
There, we would not "destroy" any forest: we would collect what grows back! [even if obviously the management by plots consists in "shaving" such plot every 25 to 50 years ... and to replant]
It was just a reflection that I wanted to share. Not to be right. Just to show that the forest is not about to disappear!