John Baymore on sun 6 jul 97
------------------
.........cut.........
I am reminded of the recent CM article showing pictures of a pot that was
fired in a wood kiln for 12 days in a anagama kiln in Japan. You can count
me among the tree huggers here.
.........zap.........
Gorgeous pot, it was.
As to Japan's penchant for wood kilns and their conspicious consumption of
wood for the few remaining anagama and noborigama kilns still fired with
wood........
If I can take the liberty to generalize, Japan has decided that it is worth
burning those trees for the production of those pots. The balance of
resource consumption / destruction of environment to percieved resulting
value came out in favor of the pot. Not so in their valuation of the
personal automobile. Many pots are far more expensive to buy than
automobiles (my bet would be that the cost of the one pictured would buy a
car here), and many households who don't have personal cars do own
expensive pots.
Japan as a country may burn a lot of wood cut specifically to fire the
kilns. However, their mass transit network of trains, subways, and buses,
is incredible, and makes the US penchant for the private automobile look
pretty dismal. On the whole, the automobile is FAR more of a pollution
problem than the wood kiln. As a country, their efforts in this regard FAR
offset the pollution aspect of a few potters cutting down a few trees and
burning wood, IMO (notice the lack of an H). Even in the more rural
areas of much of Japan you can get pretty much anywhere utilizing some form
of mass transit.
Try that in the US. I can't get even get to the next town over from here
without a car.
I react to articles in the paper about the vast traffic jams and the long
daily commutes in the LA or NYC area (as just one example) in a far more
concerned way than I do the consumption of 8 tons of pine anywhere. The
pollution from 8 tons of pine is MINISCULE compared to the consumption of
oil by all the cars sitting in one LA traffic jam for a few minutes. And
the manganese fume (fine dust) that is spewing out of their tailpipes (from
the new MBE replacing lead additives) concerns me more than the escaping
flyash and particulates out of all the woodburning potters in the states of
California and New York put together.
In the overall global balance of nature, our cars do FAR, FAR more damage
to the world than Japan's (and our) wood kilns do. We may all be very
aware of potters and kilns, we should be cause we're really into this
thing, ..... but we are just a wee little speck in the overall scheme of
things. The number of people who drive automobiles incessantly is a lot
bigger splotch. As Karl said in his post, it is not that our kilns are
cleaner than the power plant, it is that there are less of them and we burn
far, far less fuel.
AFTER we have addressed the large pollution problems like the dependance on
the private automobile in the US, the gross inefficiency of centeralized
electric power generation, no effective mass transit, and the lack of use
of clean energy sources (water, solar, etc) and there is STILL a need to
cut emissions in the US, then I'll concede that we need to look at the
exhaust emissions of potters kilns, ........ all types of potters including
wood, gas, oil, sawdust, and electric firing potters. And woodstoves and
fireplaces. And also recreational vehicles like snowmobiles, jetskis,
gokarts, and so on. And barbecues, and lawnmowers. The potential list is
long.
The comment recently made here on the paper pulp plant's emissions being
overlooked right near the Tozan kiln site is a prime example of the
inequity of this developing situation. It will be about power bases and
what is politically expedient, not what is truly the best for the
environment. I am sure that the inspectors involved in the Tozan kiln
situation are aware of the clouds of sulphurous smoke coming out of the
paper mill. One of two things is at work there. Either the papermill has
purchased the so-called RIGHTS to emit high levels of pollution (not sure
if this exists in Canada like to does in the US), so it is OK to pollute at
that level, or the inspector is consciously or subconsciously aware that
the owners and managers of the paper mill are powerful people and can
affect his job, his livelyhood, and his life.
If your job is to monitor air quality, and you get a complaint about two
sources, you have to pick which one you will do something about first. If
you are actively working on a problem, then you can justify getting your
paycheck to your bosses, so you have to do something to occupy your time.
One pollution source is from a small bunch of sort of anachronisms who are
a little on the fringe of the mainstream society (sorry....but artists are
NOT considerd mainstream by most of society), who produce little revenues
in the community, and pay few taxes. The other source is from a major
employer of people in the area, which produces a product bought at some
time by the majority of the community's residents, and the business is a
major taxpayer to the local governments. Which to choose..............
hum.........
It's not rocket science. It's political science ....g..... .
Being a potter contributes to the consumption of natural resources and the
attendant pollution the extraction and processing of those resources
entails. I could just as easily say that we all should stop using copper
carbonate in our slips and glazes. (You can count me among the mountain
huggers here ....g.... ) There are a lot more potters in this country
using copper than there are wood firers. And there are more copper greens,
blues, and red glazes being made than long firing, unglazed, fly-ash
decorated wood-fired pots.
As proof, I'd refer everyone to go to the western edge of the Salt Lake
City valley area, and look at the ENORMOUS pit and tailings piles caused by
the mining of copper ore by Kennicott Copper. Where there is now a huge
hole in the ground (and I mean REALLY HUGE), there once was a MOUNTAIN that
was bigger than the hole=21 All this desecration of a beautiful natural
landscape just for copper.
And in this pit, night and day (it's often lit), are huge shovels and
trucks consuming large quantities of deisel fuel, and belching black smoke
out of their exhaust pipes. This mine continually dumps processed tailings
onto the surrounding land, contaminating it with the trace copper and the
trace materials from the refining. Huge amounts of clean water are flushed
into the pit to try to control the dust, and this water is contaminated
with the copper laden dirt being dug before it seeps back into the
groundwater. Nearby are the mines' refineries with their chimneys, water
pipes going in, and wastewater pipes going out. Green and red can't be
worth all this.
What....... we use only a tiny bit of that copper in the grand scheme
of things? And some of that copper comes from other places than the SLC
area. And not every potter uses copper in the same way. Or the same
volume. And our use of copper is for a =22more noble=22 purpose.... the =
making
of art.
Exactly my point. Our use of copper is not much different than our use of
wood, natural gas, oil, propane, or electricity. Or from using up
fireclay, feldspar, dolomite, or iron oxide. Or anything else we use. We
consume resources in the making of pottery. We make pollution. Directly,
or indirectly. Pretty simple.
No matter how you do this art form, you DO have an impact on the earth.
You can look at the mines producing feldspars, clays, and so on in exactly
the same way as the Kennicott copper mine. Most of the production of all
of these mines is used for other things than art pottery. But we DO use
some of it. Your consumption of propane for your gas kiln or coal for your
electric kiln is the same thing. The more pots you make, the more you
consume and pollute.
While in Japan last year I became facinated with noren. These are the
small curtains, often of blue and white indigo-dyed fabric, that are hung
in doorways. On shops, the position of them on the enterance indicates
whether the shop is open or not. When one enters a room, the noren tends
to make you bow. A bow represents a humbleness.... a deference. In that
effect, it is very much like the low openings into a tea ceremony house
that force you to kneel and bow to enter. To humble yourself.
I liked this aspect...... I have one which I brought back with me on the
door I use to enter the studio from my house. This little bow reminds me
each time I go into the studio that I owe a great deal to the world to be
able to make pottery at this point in time, and reminds me that I should
take this privelege seriously. Seems dumb, sort of, but you know........
it works. It does make me think each time I bow to duck under the noren.
It makes me more aware that I work WITH the clay, water, and fire. That it
is not some right, but a gift. It has become a daily ritual already.
What all this comes down to really is the following:
How much pollution and resource consumption can we actually justify for the
production of art pottery in the last couple of years of the 20th century
and the beginning of the 21st?
Tough one to ponder.
Best,
John Baymore
River Bend Pottery
22 Riverbend Way
Wilton, NH 03086 USA
603-654-2752
JBaymore=40Compuserve.com
(Who is off to make some pots=21)
The Shelfords on tue 8 jul 97
Thanks to John Baymore for his very thoughtful presentation of
pollution-related issues in >Re: Wood, gas, firing..... and consumption and
>Re: Burning Wood.
In following this thread up to John's contribution, I was at first delighted
to see such a strong defense of the wood-firers position, and then gradually
dismayed at the occasional claims (if I read them right) that there really
isn't any very serious air pollution problem and that the so-called
greenhouse effect is just a kind of political ploy by fanatical greenies.
DO let me join the tree-, mountain-, air-, water- (etc.) huggers here. AND
the population-control freaks.
According to the WorldWatch Institute:
- world carbon emissions continue to grow, jumping an additional 2.8% in
1996, the largest annual gain in a decade. The US, at 23% of the world
emissions is the biggest producer, and China at 14% is by far the fastest
growing producer (no pats on the back for Canada here, we just have fewer
people. So far.)
- "The 13 warmest years on record have occurred since 1979, with the four
warmest being during the 1990's.... some 60 of the world's largest
insurance companies signed a statement in 1966 urging governments to reduce
emissions of carbon from fossil fuel burning." (They're worried about
escalating weather-related insurance claims.)
- "The mainstream scientific community, represented by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change - 2500 of the world's leading atmospheric scientists
- now finds evidence that human activity is indeed altering the Earth's
climate."
It seems to me that it is not so much a question of whether there is a
problem, as the nature and source of the problem, and its most practical
solution. Politicians, in their less than endearing fashion, continue to
make a big splash about straining at gnats, in the (unfortunately
well-founded) hope that attention will be distracted from the whole-sale
gobbling of camels.
Wood-firing, although we are honour-bound to keep it as clean as we possibly
can, is certainly one of the more runt-like gnats on the global scene. "The
print run of the Sunday New York Times alone requires 75,000 trees."
(WorldWatch again.) Even if some of that is recycled paper, the trees fell
at some point, just the same. That would fuel one HELL of a lot of kilns
for a long time. And burning wood (scrap from sustainable plantations that
is, not the old-growth and mixed forests we need for our air and our souls
and our fellow-creature's lives) is not the same as burning fossil fuels, in
terms of upsetting the balance of carbon in the atmosphere.
The earth has shown itself to be remarkably benign and flexible in the
amount of exploitation it can take and still heal. But it manifestly has
its limits. And sometimes, "something is broken which cannot be mended".
We had a friend who was the manager for a large estate in Scotland. The
climate there does not allow easy growing of trees, as the wind and cold
flattens them when they are still seedlings. So they hatched the plan of
ploughing deep furrows to create 5-6 ft. high earth berms, to give the
seedlings some protection until they were strong enough to survive the wind.
In ploughing those furrows they came across the evidence of huge trees that
had been cut by tools a few thousands of years ago. The early Picts and
Scots had clear-cut their forests, and the subsequent (possibly resulting)
shift in wind and climate prevented them from ever growing again.
I really don't think properly managed wood-firing, or even studio-electric,
makes much of a dent in our battered ecology, but we can't afford, in
arguing this, to claim that there ain't any problem anyway. Lavish and
even competitve use of resources (see the Salmon War between the US and
Canada - "you're using too much of this resource, so I'm going to use too
much too - so there!") is hardly an approach for us to copy, however ticked
off we may be.
OK, I've had my rant. Thanks (whoever you are) for reading this far!
And thanks again to John, and to everyone who has been in this thread - it's
been a fascinating cross-section.
- Veronica
____________________________________________________________________________
Veronica Shelford
e-mail: shelford@island.net
s-mail: P.O. Box 6-15
Thetis Island, BC V0R 2Y0
Tel: (250) 246-1509
____________________________________________________________________________
kinoko@junction.net on tue 8 jul 97
John, No problem in the personal sense. We simply opted NOT to fire with
wood after we had done so for over 25 years,in Canada and Japan, a short
stint as "advisers" in Nigeria. Surely,wood-firing is a part of the problem
of pollution,albeit a small one but it is heartening to see consciousness
raised and to keep banginh away at the problems which certainly effect us
all. Thanks for an excellent post. Don
Morrill>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>------------------
>........cut.........
>I am reminded of the recent CM article showing pictures of a pot that was
>fired in a wood kiln for 12 days in a anagama kiln in Japan. You can count
>me among the tree huggers here.
>........zap.........
>
>Gorgeous pot, it was.
>
>As to Japan's penchant for wood kilns and their conspicious consumption of
>wood for the few remaining anagama and noborigama kilns still fired with
>wood........
>
>If I can take the liberty to generalize, Japan has decided that it is worth
>burning those trees for the production of those pots. The balance of
>resource consumption / destruction of environment to percieved resulting
>value came out in favor of the pot. Not so in their valuation of the
>personal automobile. Many pots are far more expensive to buy than
>automobiles (my bet would be that the cost of the one pictured would buy a
>car here), and many households who don't have personal cars do own
>expensive pots.
>
>Japan as a country may burn a lot of wood cut specifically to fire the
>kilns. However, their mass transit network of trains, subways, and buses,
>is incredible, and makes the US penchant for the private automobile look
>pretty dismal. On the whole, the automobile is FAR more of a pollution
>problem than the wood kiln. As a country, their efforts in this regard FAR
>offset the pollution aspect of a few potters cutting down a few trees and
>burning wood, IMO (notice the lack of an H). Even in the more rural
>areas of much of Japan you can get pretty much anywhere utilizing some form
>of mass transit.
>
>Try that in the US. I can't get even get to the next town over from here
>without a car.
>
>I react to articles in the paper about the vast traffic jams and the long
>daily commutes in the LA or NYC area (as just one example) in a far more
>concerned way than I do the consumption of 8 tons of pine anywhere. The
>pollution from 8 tons of pine is MINISCULE compared to the consumption of
>oil by all the cars sitting in one LA traffic jam for a few minutes. And
>the manganese fume (fine dust) that is spewing out of their tailpipes (from
>the new MBE replacing lead additives) concerns me more than the escaping
>flyash and particulates out of all the woodburning potters in the states of
>California and New York put together.
>
>In the overall global balance of nature, our cars do FAR, FAR more damage
>to the world than Japan's (and our) wood kilns do. We may all be very
>aware of potters and kilns, we should be cause we're really into this
>thing, ..... but we are just a wee little speck in the overall scheme of
>things. The number of people who drive automobiles incessantly is a lot
>bigger splotch. As Karl said in his post, it is not that our kilns are
>cleaner than the power plant, it is that there are less of them and we burn
>far, far less fuel.
>
>AFTER we have addressed the large pollution problems like the dependance on
>the private automobile in the US, the gross inefficiency of centeralized
>electric power generation, no effective mass transit, and the lack of use
>of clean energy sources (water, solar, etc) and there is STILL a need to
>cut emissions in the US, then I'll concede that we need to look at the
>exhaust emissions of potters kilns, ........ all types of potters including
>wood, gas, oil, sawdust, and electric firing potters. And woodstoves and
>fireplaces. And also recreational vehicles like snowmobiles, jetskis,
>gokarts, and so on. And barbecues, and lawnmowers. The potential list is
>long.
>
>The comment recently made here on the paper pulp plant's emissions being
>overlooked right near the Tozan kiln site is a prime example of the
>inequity of this developing situation. It will be about power bases and
>what is politically expedient, not what is truly the best for the
>environment. I am sure that the inspectors involved in the Tozan kiln
>situation are aware of the clouds of sulphurous smoke coming out of the
>paper mill. One of two things is at work there. Either the papermill has
>purchased the so-called RIGHTS to emit high levels of pollution (not sure
>if this exists in Canada like to does in the US), so it is OK to pollute at
>that level, or the inspector is consciously or subconsciously aware that
>the owners and managers of the paper mill are powerful people and can
>affect his job, his livelyhood, and his life.
>
>If your job is to monitor air quality, and you get a complaint about two
>sources, you have to pick which one you will do something about first. If
>you are actively working on a problem, then you can justify getting your
>paycheck to your bosses, so you have to do something to occupy your time.
>One pollution source is from a small bunch of sort of anachronisms who are
>a little on the fringe of the mainstream society (sorry....but artists are
>NOT considerd mainstream by most of society), who produce little revenues
>in the community, and pay few taxes. The other source is from a major
>employer of people in the area, which produces a product bought at some
>time by the majority of the community's residents, and the business is a
>major taxpayer to the local governments. Which to choose..............
>hum.........
>
>It's not rocket science. It's political science ....g..... .
>
>Being a potter contributes to the consumption of natural resources and the
>attendant pollution the extraction and processing of those resources
>entails. I could just as easily say that we all should stop using copper
>carbonate in our slips and glazes. (You can count me among the mountain
>huggers here ....g.... ) There are a lot more potters in this country
>using copper than there are wood firers. And there are more copper greens,
>blues, and red glazes being made than long firing, unglazed, fly-ash
>decorated wood-fired pots.
>
>As proof, I'd refer everyone to go to the western edge of the Salt Lake
>City valley area, and look at the ENORMOUS pit and tailings piles caused by
>the mining of copper ore by Kennicott Copper. Where there is now a huge
>hole in the ground (and I mean REALLY HUGE), there once was a MOUNTAIN that
>was bigger than the hole! All this desecration of a beautiful natural
>landscape just for copper.
>
>And in this pit, night and day (it's often lit), are huge shovels and
>trucks consuming large quantities of deisel fuel, and belching black smoke
>out of their exhaust pipes. This mine continually dumps processed tailings
>onto the surrounding land, contaminating it with the trace copper and the
>trace materials from the refining. Huge amounts of clean water are flushed
>into the pit to try to control the dust, and this water is contaminated
>with the copper laden dirt being dug before it seeps back into the
>groundwater. Nearby are the mines' refineries with their chimneys, water
>pipes going in, and wastewater pipes going out. Green and red can't be
>worth all this.
>
>What....... we use only a tiny bit of that copper in the grand scheme
>of things? And some of that copper comes from other places than the SLC
>area. And not every potter uses copper in the same way. Or the same
>volume. And our use of copper is for a "more noble" purpose.... the making
>of art.
>
>Exactly my point. Our use of copper is not much different than our use of
>wood, natural gas, oil, propane, or electricity. Or from using up
>fireclay, feldspar, dolomite, or iron oxide. Or anything else we use. We
>consume resources in the making of pottery. We make pollution. Directly,
>or indirectly. Pretty simple.
>
>No matter how you do this art form, you DO have an impact on the earth.
>You can look at the mines producing feldspars, clays, and so on in exactly
>the same way as the Kennicott copper mine. Most of the production of all
>of these mines is used for other things than art pottery. But we DO use
>some of it. Your consumption of propane for your gas kiln or coal for your
>electric kiln is the same thing. The more pots you make, the more you
>consume and pollute.
>
>While in Japan last year I became facinated with noren. These are the
>small curtains, often of blue and white indigo-dyed fabric, that are hung
>in doorways. On shops, the position of them on the enterance indicates
>whether the shop is open or not. When one enters a room, the noren tends
>to make you bow. A bow represents a humbleness.... a deference. In that
>effect, it is very much like the low openings into a tea ceremony house
>that force you to kneel and bow to enter. To humble yourself.
>
>I liked this aspect...... I have one which I brought back with me on the
>door I use to enter the studio from my house. This little bow reminds me
>each time I go into the studio that I owe a great deal to the world to be
>able to make pottery at this point in time, and reminds me that I should
>take this privelege seriously. Seems dumb, sort of, but you know........
>it works. It does make me think each time I bow to duck under the noren.
>It makes me more aware that I work WITH the clay, water, and fire. That it
>is not some right, but a gift. It has become a daily ritual already.
>
>
>What all this comes down to really is the following:
>
>How much pollution and resource consumption can we actually justify for the
>production of art pottery in the last couple of years of the 20th century
>and the beginning of the 21st?
>
>Tough one to ponder.
>
>
>Best,
>
>John Baymore
>River Bend Pottery
>22 Riverbend Way
>Wilton, NH 03086 USA
>
>603-654-2752
>JBaymore@Compuserve.com
>
>
>(Who is off to make some pots!)
>
>
*****************************************
*****************************************
** Don and Isao Morrill **
** Falkland, B.C. **
** kinoko@junction.net **
*****************************************
*****************************************
David Hendley on thu 10 jul 97
Well, I've been gone for the last 8 days and have been catching up on
the wood-firing - ecology discussions.
I live in a rural, semi-economically depressed area and just spent a
week in North Dallas, my childhood home. All this country bumpkin hay-seed
can say is GOOOLLLYY. The waste and affluence are mind boggeling.
My house is gone!!! My Mom sold it several years ago. The next time
it sold it was known as a "tear down". Someone paid something on the order
of $200,000 for it and then spent more to have it demolished. There is
already an ostentatious, too-big-for-the-lot, house built in its place. This
was a very nice house I grew up
in - 3 bedroom, 2 bath, big rooms, built in the late 1940's, and well
maintained. 99.9% of the world's population would not even DREAM of ever
living in such a nice house. By the way, this is nothing unusual - only
about 30% of the original house are left in the area, and their days are
numbered.
The neighbors told me it took half a day to get rid of it. Not even
one day! Not one brick or one stick was salvaged! The next time you see the
tailings from a copper mine think about all the wiring and plumbing from my
house that is in the landfill. The next time you see an ugly clear-cut,
think of all that rotting lumber.
Here we are, we potters, trying our best to be responsible,
meanwhile most people never give such things the slightest thought. The
contrast is amazing. Anyone who THINKS about what they are doing, and why,
is already miles ahead of the general population.
Another interesting story that's come to mind:
Way back in 1973, when I was a pottery student at Big Creek Pottery
in California, threre was near-hysteria because of propane shortages. There
was quite serious talk of potters being put out of business because "they
use too much gas and they will not be supplied until all the households have
what they need". (Potters have always had a lot of clout).
I long ago learned that creative people will find a way to handle
any obsticles that are thrown their way. I have no doubt that we'll still be
"turnin' and burnin" years and years from now...
David Hendley
Maydelle, Texas
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