Japan to see normal to above-average temperatures this winter

Get a wood stove! I'll be burning my usual free firewood. No fan heaters in my house.

Oh, Matt, you might get lynched by the Green mob for uttering such non-PC thoughts.

brrr its too cold already. wishes spring weather all year through

Don't know about that, it's cold here already. Not sure if I can make it through this winter.

We'll see about that...

This reads almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy: "Look at the pendant. Look at it. Loook... You will not need to use heating this winter, everything will be much warmer this year."

Personally, I find it cold already and will of course turn on whatever heating device I feel I need to use, whenever I feel like.

A well designed modern wood burning stove can be very environmentally friendly, if operated correctly and properly dried firewood is used.

They cannot forecast the weather one day ahead, never mind several months.

Interesting - the Hong Kong observatory is saying the opposite for the region... one newspaper said women may need to wear warmer clothes.... anyway, if it's a cold winter, we can all blame the Chinese.

@Scrote

My thinking exactly...

I have found this year to be cooler than the past couple of years. Maybe it is just that I am getting used to Japanese summers and have never been a fan of cool temperatures. I sure hope this predicition is right...I hate waking up with snotsicles!

Power supplies may be stretched this winter in Hokkaido, where the Japan Meteorological Agency says it is more likely temperatures will be average or above average between November and January.

Interesting that they say this because the same agency stated that WINTER WILL BE COLDER THAN AVERAGE. Many places are already below zero at night, and forecasts put first snowfall not too long from now (except in mountains where it already is)

HEPCO states 3% surplus expected after 10% reductions, which is smaller than any one plant provides. If any plants go offline unexpectedly it will mean power outages, at least spot outages.

A well designed modern wood burning stove can be very environmentally friendly, if operated correctly and properly dried firewood is used.

The wood-burning stoves look really good - nice and rustic, with gentle flames that create a great atmosphere in the room. I'd love to have one, but there are three factors that prevent us buying one.

(1). No timer function - you have to start from scratch on a cold morning, setting and lighting the fire. By the time it's caught and before the room has warmed up, it's time to leave for work. And you can't just turn it off at the flick of a switch.

(2). The grate has to be emptied of yesterday's ashes before you can set the fire - a very dirty job. Brings back not-very-good memories of my childhood when we had an open fireplace.

(3). In Japan, the danger of fire spreading in an earthquake. I understand the modern stoves are designed to keep the burning material safely enclosed even if the stove should topple over, but I'd still worry about it.

I couldn't get past the first sentence of this article...."restrained"..?? Anyway, cheers for a long a deep ski season.

Yeah burn wood, what else? Live in caves? Wear animal skins? Hello... this is not Ice Age, there are far better and safer heating equipments available in 2012! If everyone is saving power then we shall have no problem regarding power problems but u know few human beings care and most of just dont until their heaters are running!!

@Waxman simmer down, no one is forcing you to get a Wood stove.

SquidBertOct. 26, 2012 - 01:44PM JST

@Waxman simmer down, no one is forcing you to get a Wood stove.

For a sizable population of people who use all-electric housing (and those with gas mains after a few hours/days), power outages will mean wood stoves and carbon monoxide poisoning. It happens every year, hearing of people who freeze to death because they don't want to pay for heating, or poison themselves burning things without proper exhaust.

@Cleo,

1 They are not exactly commonplace, but I have seen some models that have gas starters possibly also with timers I don't remember.

2 Fire proof bucket next to the stove, just pull the little box out and empty it into the bucket. Once a week sweep the leftover ashes into the grater box.

3 My stove is not going anywhere, it is standing on, and attached to, a concrete construction that goes down to the foundation. It is also surrounded on three sides by fireproof bricks.Heat is exchanged to the bricks,which retains and slowly releases the heat for a long time after the fire goes out. The front still gives of direct heat to the room.

If anyone is considering to get a wood burning stove for the main purpose of heating, remember to choose a design that doesn't suck hot air from the room out trough the chimney, such stoves will heat the area surrounding the stove, but actually makes the rest of the house colder as outside air seeps in to replace the air sucked out by the stove.

The best models are those that have a separate pipe for air intake that can be routed to the outside of the house, but there are other design solutions involving something like a heat exchanger that also helps with this problem.

Wood stoves is definitely not the solution for everyone, but they are a great complement if you live somewhere where you have access to firewood. Chopping the wood is a great back strengthening exercise to.

Basroil,

A properly installed wood stove with the chimney pipe kept in good order is not going to cause carbon monoxide poisoning. Even if I close the vent on the chimney completely, all that happens is that the fire dies out. We are not talking about an open fireplace here.

Using some type of wood stove meant for outside use, inside the house is deadly of course, but also moronic.

SquidBertOct. 26, 2012 - 02:17PM JST

Using some type of wood stove meant for outside use, inside the house is deadly of course, but also moronic.

Yes it is a dumb thing. But when people can't get power to run their heating they will probably turn to things they shouldn't. A good chunk of Hokkaido runs all electric (or at least needs electricity to run some subsystem), and a good chunk of that population live in apartments that can't properly support alternative heating methods. If JMA and HEPCO are right about winter, it will be a very fine line between no problems and major issues.

I am sorry to hear that you are having problems up there in Hokkaido, basroil. In the rest of Japan ( at least the places I've been to) there seems to be very little dependence on electricity for heating. And from what I have heard, Hokkaido houses commonly depend on gas for heating. But I don't live there like you.

A well designed modern wood burning stove can be very environmentally friendly

What about carbon emissions and smoke toxins?

Above average temperatures often means above-average snowfall.

@Nessie,

Regarding carbon emissions,

Any combustion of wood will at its maximum only release the same amount of co2 that was absorbed during its growth. Ie. zero carbon release. In fact if the wood was left in the forest to rot, it would eventually turn into methane which is a much stronger green house gas than co2, the methane would after tens of years in the atmosphere break down to co2 and water, so you would end up with the co2 in the air anyway, unless the wood was buried deep under soil in which case the carbon could get sequestered for a long time.

So onto the toxins,

This was exactly why I stated a modern well designed stove, because they burn the wood at very high temperatures with optimum oxygenation. This in combination with properly dried fire wood makes for a very clean burn, with very little soot or toxins.

Above average temperatures often means above-average snowfall.

A good snowfall is usually good, it insulates the house and keeps heating costs down.

@zichi,

Yes, judging from temperatures, hours of sun-shine, rain fall and the rate of which weed grows in my garden, I would estimate that your number is perhaps even a bit on the low side.

http://www.jatan.org/eng/japan-e.html http://www.ecotippingpoints.org/our-stories/indepth/japan-community-forest-management-silviculture.html

Not sure your wood burning idea is good at all. While Japan certainly has good forest growth overall, all of that would go towards stopping wood imports rather than for fuel. Believe it or not, LNG is far cheaper than wood kW per kW (thermal energy), and you won't see massive wood burning again.

Wood burning in addition to wood imports would accelerate climate change, and perhaps even make winters milder, at the cost of much hotter summers. No energy source is without consequence, not even "renewables" or "biomass".

The way I read that first page is that, indeed the Japanese forest industry needs to be revived.

' Maintenance such as weeding, cleaning cutting, thinning and pruning is needed for plantation management. However, demand for domestic wood is low and maintenance such as thinning is not put into practice.'

Extracting energy from the forest, or planting energy forest is a good way to do so. You wouldn't use good saw-able wood for fuel, you use the thinning wood and left overs from the wood industry. Additionally there is lots of unmaintained land area that can be used for planting fast growing energy forest.

Believe it or not, LNG is far cheaper than wood kW per kW (thermal energy),

LNG Is also a lot cheaper than nuclear power, so I guess that means that we wont see nuclear power again either?

SquidBertOct. 26, 2012 - 05:44PM JST

LNG Is also a lot cheaper than nuclear power, so I guess that means that we wont see nuclear power again either?

Blatantly off topic... And also incorrect, even assuming a doubling of the price of nuclear post Fukushima

Additionally there is lots of unmaintained land area that can be used for planting fast growing energy forest.

Who owns it now? You are advocating stealing from someone's land, or having a company legally purchase land or use rights, both which are not cheap regardless of where you go.

??? With a country as volcanic as Japan, they need thermal power plants running on wood chips? I would think the country was tailor-made for geothermal power generation.

Early seasonal cooling and severe seasonal cooling are meterologically distinct phenomena. The hew and cry over potential summer power shortages proved completely and utterly ridiculous. Can we, with that experience, now trust forecasts that threaten shortages for winter?