[averagewall]

Important downside explained half way through: "if we were to convert every vehicle, or even just a significant number, to wood gas, all the trees in the world would be gone and we would die of hunger because all agricultural land would be sacrificed for energy crops."

[baud147258]

Energy crops (subsidized by the government) has already replaced agricultural land for Ethanol fuel production, up to 1% of cultivated land worldwide being use for it.

[Synaesthesia]

In the last years of WW2 I think Japan chopped down the last of its trees to make a bit of aviation fuel.

[Flavius]

Wait, what? There's absolutely no evidence that "Japan chopped down the last of its trees". Why would you say such a thing? You enjoy lying on the internet?

[Synaesthesia]

I saw it in the documentary series “The world at war”. I think the episode about Kamikaze fighters. Japan had virtually no oil supplies. Here’s an article about it. http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/05/the...

Ok they don’t chop down all of their trees. Of course they still have trees.

[codewritinfool]

Why am I laughing so hard at this?

[tzahola]

I'm pretty sure there are pre-WW2 trees in Japan.

[perl4ever]

It appears that about 12.5% of Japan's land area is old-growth forest. [1] However, I believe it is also true that there was a fair amount of deforestation in the WWII period, and that today, the majority of the forest is modified or plantations.

[1] https://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/archive/Japan...