marshg246
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- Jul 12, 2015
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I remember the excitement of the coal truck coming to my Grandmother's house, opening a door to the coal chute into the coal bin in her basement. She would pack wet towels around the door to the basement. Then a couple of hours after the delivery go in the basement and gently sweep up the coal dust and put it in the furnace along with a couple shovelfuls of coal.Just my observations of the changes. I do remember when we were supposed to freeze to death. Movies were even made to call it out. I remember one being about a girl having a nightmare that she was burning up in the heat, but was actually freezing to death.
I also remember many places burning coal. Schools, factories and homes. The coal trucks pulling up. The back of the truck rising up, Men with square canvas bushel baskets having the coal dumped from the raised truck box and dumping it down the coal chute into the basement. Cinders being used to pave driveways and even tracks.
As their coal towers were torn down decades ago, I thought they were out of business. I was wrong https://wisconsin.wholesale-durable.org/657904-schneider_fuel_supply_co.htm https://wisconsin.wholesale-durable.org/657904-schneider_fuel_supply_co.htm
If you look at my profile, you will see that I am a field construction boilermaker.
I believe in the late 60s or early 70s anti pollution equipment was starting to be developed. Precipitators https://www.google.com/search?q=how+does+an+electrostatic+precipitator+work&client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=37d8bbf9c1461c28&sxsrf=ACQVn0-hNzSN9T_jgFE1kLITGALv0xqL9w:1714495474997&ei=8h8xZqu1PKzUp84P95aiwAM&oq=precipitators+meaning&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiFXByZWNpcGl0YXRvcnMgbWVhbmluZyoCCAYyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEdIl1NQAFgAcAF4AZABAJgBAKABAKoBALgBAcgBAJgCAaACB5gDAIgGAZAGCJIHATGgBwA&sclient=gws-wiz-serp
Bag houses https://iac-intl.com/baghouse/
Scrubbers https://www.machengineering.com/how-wet-scrubbers-work-to-remove-air-pollution/
I was an apprentice when the Pleasant Prairie Power Plant was being built. https://www.wgtd.org/news/pleasant-prairie-power-plant-ends-operation
When were on the roof of the boiler house (250' up) we could pick out the cities by the brown haze over them. Racine, Milwaukee and such.
Toward the end of my working years, working at the plant, we would take break on the roof. I could no longer pick out the cities.
The point of what I'm wondering about. Has the removal of particulates from the air allowed more heat to find its way to earth? The timing coincides with freezing/lack of pollution controls to warming and pollution controls. When I ride on roads that are shadded in spring time, I can come upon section of ice, while unshaded areas are actualy hot. The same is true when riding after the rain has ended. Dry in the open, wet in shade.
Did the lenendary London Fog start to disapate in this same time frame? The moisture would cling to the coal dust particles?
I ride through the forrest of southern Wisconsin. They used to be cooler. The tmber was mostly sold off, so there is not much teperature change when entering them now.
I'm not advocating returning to pollution, just trying to state what might be another added cause to what is causing our problems.
My qualifacetion is that I finished High School.
I was once told that the "London Fog" was really smog - no clue if that's true, but I've been to cities where there appeared to be fog that was actually smog and it was damned near unbreathable air - in the early 70s if you were on NY Ave in Washington DC in the afternoon in August, you would swear that you were in a garage with the doors and windows closed and a car running! In those days I was required to wear a tie - glad I was since it gave me something to breathe through.
In the late 90s I went to Seoul Korea in August on a military mission. I remarked about how terrible the air was in the city. I was shown an official US military report stating that the US military considered a day in Seoul to be equivalent to smoking 7 packages of cigarettes in a day. Fortunately, I was staying outside the city where things were only bad, not terrible.