Friday, February 16, 2018

Am I getting warmer?


With sub-zero wind chills and mounds of snow all around us, it is not uncommon to hear someone sing praises to global warming.  Obviously, occasional cold temperatures do not necessarily mean the warming of the atmosphere is a left-wing farce.  Climate change happens.  It always has.  Up for debate is the role man plays in the cycle.

Environmentalists have lobbied the government to impose increasingly strict limitations on emissions.  Industry spends billions of dollars adding pollution controls to clean and monitor what they release to the atmosphere.  While we certainly have a responsibility to protect our environment, I believe many of the fear mongers overestimate the power man has over God’s creation.

I grew up in a small town in the 1950’s where four intersecting railroads were just beginning to transition from coal-burning steam locomotives to diesel.  Many of the homes had coal furnaces.  There were no precipitators or pollution controls of any kind.  Black smoke belched from smokestacks and chimneys.  Those who did not burn coal usually heated with fuel oil or kerosene.  We had no natural gas available to us.  The air was dirtier, but we didn’t seem to notice.  Smoke was just smoke.  Is it possible the earth is warming because we have cleaned the air too much?  Did the dust in the atmosphere reflect the suns radiation, keeping the earth cooler?

Scientists blame global warming on carbon dioxide emissions now.  If we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, and if plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, why do carbon dioxide levels increase, and oxygen levels remain constant?  As far as I know, our atmosphere pretty much remains about 20.9 percent oxygen.  And, if carbon dioxide is heavier than air, what is it doing floating around in the atmosphere?  Why doesn’t it sink to the ground?  I am sure some environmentalist will give me an answer.  (Sorry if I am starting to sound like Andy Rooney.)

Most every time an environmental protection story appears on the television news, it is accompanied by video of a smokestack spewing a white plume into the air.  Oh my, look at all that stuff polluting the air that we breathe!  What they do not explain is this.  The white plume is water vapor, a by-product of government-mandated scrubbers cleaning the effluent before it leaves the stack.   Look at the following example.




Here are four smokestacks.  All four are in operation emitting product from coal-fired boilers.  The difference is that two of them have scrubbers removing sulfur dioxide from the effluent.  Two of them do not. 

First question:  Which smokestacks have the scrubbers?  Most people might say the two on the right look cleaner, but if you answered the two on the left, you would be correct.  The process is called flue gas desulfurization where emissions pass through a lime slurry that neutralizes the acidity before it is released into the air.  The effluent picks up moisture in the process and what you see coming from the stack is simply water vapor.  At the time this photo was taken, the two stacks on the right did not yet have scrubbers installed. 

Second question:  Which of the stacks will you likely see on a television news report about environmental concerns?  Probably not the ones on the right without scrubbers because what they release into the air is practically invisible.  I believe the general public, and the lawmakers that represent them, have become more vigilant about air quality from seeing what they perceive to be pollutants that are actually harmless by-products of mandated pollution controls.

While we have a moral obligation to respect our environment, let us not forget that God gave us these resources to use.  Because God creates through wisdom, his creation is ordered.  God willed creation as a gift addressed to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him. (CCC299)  Our secular society believes it is the only one in charge, a very naïve approach.  Yes, we need to keep our environment clean, as we would our own personal hygiene, but do not let it become an unrealistic obsession to the point where we forget who is really in control.