THE ENGINEER IN ME ASKS “WHY?”

Do you remember the teamsters’ union commercials saying “if you got it a truck brought it”? This is a true statement. It is also true that the trucks, trains, ships, and planes that brought it to you burned diesel fuel.

I submit that the one thing mankind has created which most improved the human condition is the diesel engine. Think for a moment about how many thousands of people a single farmer can feed using a tractor compared to working with a team of horses. Once man learned to make steam engines to do our work we quickly moved on to internal combustion engines. Fossil fuels burned in power plants make most of the electricity we all depend on. Today armed with regulations, taxes and lawsuits environmental zealots both inside and outside of the government are waging war on every industry in America. Claiming the moral high ground of a “cleaner environment” they seek to eliminate manufacturing and transportation. The engineer in me asks why?

Do you remember when the villain was acid rain? Some very smart chemists and engineers figured out how to scrub the sulfur out of fuels and emissions eliminating the majority of the sulfuric acid. Lead in the fuel was toxic so we developed unleaded fuels to solve the problem. Now we are hammered in the news media that carbon dioxide is the villain “greenhouse gas”. If you bother to look it up you will learn that only one tenth of one percent of the “greenhouse” effect is caused by CO2. The fact is that the vast majority of the greenhouse gas in our atmosphere is water vapor. Given that the negative effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are so insignificant why does it get all the play in the media? The engineer in me asks why.

I believe that it is precisely because there is no way to burn fossil fuel without making CO2 that it is such a perfect weapon for environmental zealots in their war on industry. Demonize CO2 and the fossil fuels that produce it and you have a tool to take control. Regulations put in place by the EPA exist today that mandate emissions standards that no engine manufacturer can meet. The agency has to keep extending the deadline for compliance or no diesel powered machines could be built. The newest engines fail to meet the emissions criteria and cost twice as much but this does not stop the crusade. In our society it is somehow viewed as noble to be against things even without offering an alternative. Oh but what of wind and solar power you ask. In the real world alternatives must stand up to a practicality test. That farm tractor is just not practical without its internal combustion engine.

We regulated our steel mills out of existence. Our leather is tanned in other countries. Goods of all kinds are made off shore and imported at the expense of American jobs. We were the industrial pioneers who taught the world how to make almost everything we use. Now owls are used to stop logging and fish cause us to remove dams. The next thing you know the anti-everything perpetual opposition crowd will be telling us that fracking technology is bad. Oh wait, they already are trying to stop fracking.

The engineer in me asks why we allow a small hand full of people with no practical solutions to destroy our way of life. These same people who would not accept being denied the products produced by the very technologies they condemn. Why do we accept a media that demonize the profit made by oil companies while ignoring that the government makes many times as much profit from oil related taxes? If we let the anti-everything crowd win then who will get to decide which people make up the 7/8 of the world’s population that must freeze to death or starve. Technology has elevated us from the horse and buggy to the space age. I have designed and installed industrial plants all over the world and seen the improvement in living conditions technology produces first hand. Only here at home have I experienced this animosity. The engineer in me asks “why”?