is fairly new,
but concerns were raised over 100 years ago if the clipping above is anything to go by, look at the date, 1912, this article can be found in the digital archives of
the National
Library of New Zealand and as it happened, an identical story had appeared
in an Australian newspaper a month prior, in the 17 July 1912, issue of The
Braidwood Dispatch and Mining Journal, as found in the digital archives of
the National Library of Australia,
an even deeper dive reveals that the text of this news item has its origins in the March 1912 issue of Popular Mechanics, where it appeared as a caption in an article titled “Remarkable Weather of 1911: The Effect of the Combustion of Coal on the Climate — What Scientists Predict for the Future” and the future is now with us.
Plus they got their maths wrong then and exaggerated the truth. The true figure is 1/3 of what they published!!
ReplyDeletecoal with a carbon content of 78 percent and a heating value of 14,000 Btu per pound emits about 204.3 pounds of carbon dioxide per million Btu when completely burned. Complete combustion of 1 short ton (2,000 pounds) of this coal will generate about 5,720 pounds (2.86 short tons) of carbon dioxide.