Hello blog readers. My name is Tim Mehallick and I am a friend of Matthew Sabatine. In light of all of the propaganda that comes from the contemporary Liberal, Progressive Democrat agenda concerning energy alternatives, I thought it to be helpful if I offered my own assertions of truth that I derived from my own personal empirical data.
Before doing so, I will provide you with a little personal background. I am sixty three years old and have forty years experience in industry as a manufacturing engineer. I graduated from Penn State University in 1969 and I have work experience in heavy manufacturing, home building electronic component manufacturing and rocket engine mechanization.
I hold a patent (now expired) for the design of an improved dental operatory unit and was honored by the state of Virginia for design contributions to the state sponsored energy efficiency program held in 1991.
This should indicate to you that I possess a fair background in the sciences and business economics. I will now list some assumptions that I will use in my discourse. I am certain that for those in the age range of 18 to 25 years old are the ones with little or no actual experience and real knowledge of America prior to the age of the EPA. You are unaware of the living conditions we had when our local economy was largely made of manufacturing and companies had to constantly battle the labor unions.
The school systems were different from today, we had to know right from wrong, correct from incorrect and there were no awards for just existing in the system. Calculators and computers did not exist for the average user, so arithmetic problems were solved manually.
I shall also assume that you do not watch or even minutely consider any truth to be a part of any of the things that oppose your beloved liberal bias news services. You have been led to believe in a large amount of pseudo science for your positions on eating versus health, economic models, conservation, and religion.
There are basic assumptions on my part and are not to be interpreted as my either agreeing or disagreeing with any specific argument.
I will begin with three of the topics brought up in a recent “going green” blog: that of pollution versus cancer, global warming versus burning coal and alternative energy sources.
Cancer versus pollution: In 1996, my mother died from brain cancer which had spread from her lung cancer. She was a very heavy smoker right up to the moment that she was told she had cancer. She quit this horrible addiction, something that is far worse than any other type of addiction (if you believe the hype) in about 5 seconds flat. She butted out her cigarette and never lit another. Most addictions have withdrawal symptoms, but she experienced none. She did live in a small manufacturing town which borders coke ovens; coke being a commodity necessary for steel production during World War 1 and World War 2. My mother was in her 70’s.
On Christmas morning of 2003, my sister, age 35, died from brain cancer. She was a Navy nurse—practitioner who spent her career tending to the health needs of the dependents of active duty personnel. She did not smoke and was young enough to have missed most of the local industrial pollution. So, why is she dead?
My father, age 88, has smoked all is adult life, beginning with his successful return from a b17 bombing mission of Hitler’s National Socialism Germany. Upon returning to America, he resumed his work as a mason. I can recall summer days helping to unload 80 pound bags of Portland cement. After a half of an hour, the cement dust would be thick in the air. I would stop to drink water and breathe in some clean air; the old man would light a cigar. He continues to smoke today, with no apparent ill effects from 68 years of respiratory abuse. So, why isn’t he dead?
We need a medical construct that allows for both of these conditions. If pollution and smoking actually caused cancer, my father should have died before either my mother or sister, and my sister (who was 5 years younger than me) should have outlived me.
I propose that the answer lies in the possibility of a cell growth regulating mechanism being in every person and or animals. This mechanism that begins to diminish as everyone ages at varying rates. The first evidence of this change might be seen in hair growth rate. When I was young, I never had to trim my eyebrows, nose hairs or ear hair. My haircuts were spaced at 45 day intervals. Now that I am in my sixties, nose hair must be trimmed weekly, as with eyebrows. My hair begins to look shaggy in just three weeks, thus requiring a trim with ear hair included.
My 88 year old father requires about half the attention to these grooming needs so I will conclude that his cell growth regulation mechanism is better than mine.
How does this relate to our discussion? First, pollution and/or smoking do not cause cancer. That is a grossly simplistic statement used to satisfy the unthinking mind. The body’s need to eliminate toxins and repair tissue damage requires an increase in cell replacement. The more cells that you produce to heal the problem, the greater the possibility of generating a cancer cell will be. The weaker your cell regulation system is the larger the possibility becomes.
Second, most of the man made industrial pollution has been controlled. I would estimate that vehicle exhaust has had pollution reduced by approximately 95%. Coal fired power plants are required to capture heavy soot particles. Oxides of nitrogen are somewhat transitory in nature, being captured by water vapor and being delivered to the ground where they may contribute to nitrogen fixation and plant growth. Sulfur oxides work in somewhat the same way, but the main sources of these gases are the world’s active volcanoes.
I did a little web search and found two sites that may be of interest to you:
The following statement was copied from an eighty plus page, government document: “Air Quality Observation Systems in the United States” Draft Report January 2010.
“A Carbon Observatory mission, which failed on launch in early 2009, was to join the A Train to measure CARBON DIOXIDE with the precision required to map global distribution of CO2 sources and sinks on regional scales. A U.S. replacement mission for OCO is not currently scheduled, but Japan’s Greenhouse gases Observing Satelite (GOSAT), launched in January, 2009, will globally monitor carbon dioxide and carbon hydrogen.”
In my review of this document, I did not find any other references to the measurement of carbon dioxide. Maybe there are no other precise measurements? Interesting? The document may be seen at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/aqrs/reports/aqmonitoring.pdf
I shall continue to read this document and relay to Matthew any further findings. The bottom line to all of this is that the majority of manmade gases going into the environment are well controlled. Nature, on the other hand, is beyond our influence.
Let’s now consider the issue of global warming and burning coal. This combustion process has as its principal chemical products carbon dioxide and water vapor. It is generally disputed that the carbon dioxide causes an increase in atmospheric temperature. Some of the answer lies in the document just introduced. We can begin with that document.
A United States map is included in this document and may be found on page 11. It is interesting to note the key for this map. If you study it closely you will see that there is no reference to the monitoring of carbon dioxide. Further, if you look at the Table of Contents and List of Figures you will find no direct reference to carbon dioxide but you will find nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide references. I am being redundant, but if carbon dioxide is so relevant why isn’t it a high priority on the monitoring system?
Another noteworthy observation is the distribution of monitoring stations. Most of the monitoring is done on the densely populated coast lines. If those readings are used to represent the entire atmosphere over the United States, the conclusions would be much higher than if readings were taken in a uniform distribution of monitoring stations. This would give as many readings from the plains of the mid west as readings from the high density coastal regions. The wind currents do tend to equalize molecular concentrations in the atmosphere and the uniform distribution of stations would provide not only a better average value but also some insight into the change in concentration of molecules.
So how much carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere? In terms that you may visualize, approximately 387 parts per 1,000,000 parts. This number, expressed as a percentage is .09387% or 3.o87/100th of 1%. Compare this to oxygen, which is 21% or 210,000 parts per 1,000,000 parts. My data source is: Universal Industrial Gas, Inc. and may be found at
Just click on “Gas Properties, Uses and Safety” then click “Air.” I know that this corporation is viewed as “capitalistic” but if you or a family member needs supplemental oxygen to maintain your quality of life, you damn well better rethink your position on such companies.
So how hot must carbon dioxide get in order to increase the atmospheric temperature 1 degree Fahrenheit? By averaging, using 387 as the number of heated molecules, the temperature of the carbon dioxide would have to be 2,701.5789 degrees Fahrenheit! This is a simplification, but valid because the claims I have heard involve high altitude gases; therefore ground level heat effects are minimal with regard to this particular argument. The above shows the lack of congruency between media claims and measurable scientific reality. Enjoy your current inexpensive use of coal fired electricity and do so, guilt free.
The above discussion does not include the influences of heat retention by water vapor, solar absorption by ground based heat sinks such as buildings and dark pavement or solar reflection by airborne particulates.
Our society demands a clean atmosphere, devoid of dust and dirt, then complains about how and where this super transparent atmosphere makes the days too hot and causes us to get sunburned. As Spock would have said, “Fascinating!”
Most of you were not alive when I was young, so you are clueless about the real pollution that existed in and around the Pittsburgh area. I remember trips down Pittsburgh as a child. You could see the flare gases being burned at the stacks of J&L Steel. This company occupied the strip of land along the parkway from the Bates St. exit to Second St. which was distance of at least ¼ mile. The building on the opposite side of the parkway had a yellowish soot on them indicative of sulfur. This smell would mix with diesel bus fumes that exited the vehicles at street level and blew into your face. Soot would land in your hair and on your clothes. The soot would blow off your car as you exited the parking garages. If you were leaving the garage at rush hour, you idled your car’s engine, and in those days, the cars had no pollution controls. The exhaust fumes would envelope the car. But that’s not all! Remember, most people smoked during that era. With all of this horrible environmental bodily abuse, you would think that people dropped like flies on a cold morning. But such was not the case. It just wasn’t the big deal much like how it has become today.
I worked for General Electric just after college and spent time installing a control system for a metal pickling and annealing line, located at Weirton Steel. I would arrive early in the morning and leave at afternoon shift change. During that work day, my eyes would become irritated and bloodshot. My chest would hurt and I would cough constantly. But best of all, the atmosphere pitted the chrome plating on my car’s bumpers! Again, I say that today’s uninformed youth have no real concept of air pollution. You have been misguided with factual gross inaccuracies and have been pushed into believing simplistic answers and this leads us to the last topic of the three; alternative fuels.
I do not intend to go into great detail on this subject at this time. I will remind everyone that we have experienced the great failure of one solar company, Solyndra, after being given more than $500 million and this is just the beginning. The failure is blamed on foreign competition but that really isn’t the problem. The real problem is that the efficiency of solar energy is much too low to be practical and these results in the need for massive surface area of collection, the creation of battery capacity that would resemble office buildings in size and energy conversion from DC to AC for efficient transmission. The same problems exist for solar. T. Boone Pickens wanted to do wind power but soon dropped this project for lack of feasibility. You can find web references by typing his name.
The best alternative is the production of synthetic oil from readily available hydrocarbon waste products and from renewable natural gas. I am working on this alternative and will ask Matt to post items of interest as they become available. I close this blog with one thought, do not just accept but do your investigations before you believe and accept.
