Turn Waste Wood into Home Heat: Buy a Pellet Stove

Well,it would make sense if you see the whole picture which the article touches on momentarily as it should.Its about burning pellets.Large amounts of carbon dioxide and ammonia and methane are released naturally by rotting leaves alone.Add to this the dead sticks,dead fallen trees, dead animals and insects that get naturally recycled thru the 'carbon-ammonia-methane cycle' every year and its a vast amount of carbon DIOXIDE released into the atmosphere every year.Been this way for about the last couple of billion years.When you burn the leaves,wood and sticks all you are doing is speeding up the process from a couple of months to five-ten years that it takes for this stuff to rot fully into the ground.Dont worry though,no one tells you that carbon dioxide breaks down into carbon and oxygen in free air in about 25 years if it's not used up by the vegetation.Thats why you don't see as much carbon dioxide(less than 3% of the atmosphere is CO2)as you do oxygen,lots more vegetation using CO2 than there are using oxygen.Anyways,loggers log the trees to make wood products on vast tracts of tree farms.Been doing this for about 180-200 years or so here many more in Europe.The sawmills waste is turned into a viable money maker for them and necessary (and expensive if using other forms of heat like oil)expenditure for the consumer.A cheaper way out,I have heard of people netting $750-$2000 savings a year by changing to pellets.I was hoping they would touch on the pellet making machines for farms and residential use where leaves and grass clippings and garden waste are turned into pellets.WOuld have liked to see more on that.

Could the auger and blowers be run off a small solar panel & battery?

This information makes no sense to me. "If the shavings here weren’t made into pellets, they’d rot on their own, slowly returning most of the carbon they contain to the atmosphere. This carbon is on its way up anyway. Turning the wood shavings into pellets and using it for home heating just ties into a part of the carbon cycle that’s operating whether we make use of it or not. Contrast this with ancient carbon released from far underground by burning fossil fuels, and you can see that carbon emissions from burning wood should not be regarded the same."

The carbon released slowly has to be less harmful than if it is released all at once in burning.

I had a pellet stove. It did not work well for me, likely because I have a drafty house. I am heating with wood now.