Junkscience.com reports this is what the print copy looks like today for this article by Eugene Robinson. Note what looks like black unfiltered pollutants spewing skyward:
But when you look at the original photo, you notice something different:
![NEPA_banner_leadart[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/nepa_banner_leadart1.jpg?quality=83)
The caption reads:
Silhouetted against the sky at dusk, excess steam, along with non-scrubbed pollutants, spew from the smokestacks at Westar Energy’s Jeffrey Energy Center coal-fired power plant near St. Marys, Kansas. AP Photo/Charlie Riedel
Here is what the stacks look like in broad daylight – steam:
Apparently, WaPo hasn’t learned a damn thing since we last called them out for using this very same photo and had readers send complaints to their omubudsman. See:
The Washington Post Eilperin emissions trick
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Actually that’s water vapor. Steam is the gaseous form of water and is invisible. Moot point though.
Phil. says:
May 24, 2013 at 7:48 am
I’m sure you will be aware that there is mercury in wood. Biomass burning only differs from coal burning in respect of when the plant matter took up the mercury. What’s the difference between mercury that was taken up 300M years ago and mercury taken up 50 years ago?
Same applies to sulfur. Domestic biomass burning does not scrub sulfur.
A good family friend grew up in LA in the 30’s. He had great stories about the beaches, orange groves and idyllic life back then. But he also told stories about the smog. It was seasonal and also based on time of day. He said a lot of the volitiles in the smog were quite natural because all over the LA basin there was off gassing of petroleum and tar that had come to the surface over centuries if not milleniums. This preceeded most of the bad traffic and smog producing power and manufacturing. Smog was a natural part of the area.
The Washington Post is bird cage liner and Eugene Robinson is the most partisan hack you will ever read.
Billy Liar says:
May 24, 2013 at 9:20 am
Phil. says:
May 24, 2013 at 7:48 am
I’m sure you will be aware that there is mercury in wood. Biomass burning only differs from coal burning in respect of when the plant matter took up the mercury. What’s the difference between mercury that was taken up 300M years ago and mercury taken up 50 years ago?
Same applies to sulfur. Domestic biomass burning does not scrub sulfur.
So what? We’re discussing what’s in the effluent stream from those smokestacks not what might be in domestic biomass effluent!
Well… no offense but just because we only see steam and nothing else it doesn’t mean that “non-scrubbed pollutants” don’t spew from those smokestacks.
Sergiu Z says:
“…just because we only see steam and nothing else it doesn’t mean that ‘non-scrubbed pollutants’ don’t spew from those smokestacks.”
So why don’t you tell us what it does mean? No more ‘what-ifs’. Quantify those “non-scrubbed pollutants” for us. Show us exactly what you’re arm-waving about.
The alarmist crowd is always trying to force scientific skeptics to prove a negative like this. The reason is simple: they have lost the basic argument, so they resort to logical fallacies.
dbstealey says:
May 24, 2013 at 10:55 am
Sergiu Z says:
“…just because we only see steam and nothing else it doesn’t mean that ‘non-scrubbed pollutants’ don’t spew from those smokestacks.”
So why don’t you tell us what it does mean? No more ‘what-ifs’. Quantify those “non-scrubbed pollutants” for us. Show us exactly what you’re arm-waving about.
Already done in post above at: May 24, 2013 at 7:48 am
No pollution control technology is 100% effective. Ofcourse there are non-scrubbed pollutants eminating from almost every smoke stake. But everything you are looking at in the photograph is water vapor. The non-scrubbed pollutants are too small to be visable.
Dear EW3,
Indeed, watching the willful destruction of the freedom secured by the Constitution you so valiantly promised to defend and protect must make you sad. I’m so sorry. Of all the people in our land who deserve to stand tall with hope in their hearts and a look of pardonable pride on their faces on Memorial Day, it is our veterans.
Thank you, so much.
Forever grateful,
Janice
(thanks to you, I grew up in a land of freedom)
P.S. John Wayne was an old man by the time I was born. I was one of those little kids about whom he probably wondered whether any of us would care about our wonderful country at all by the time we grew up. Well, I do. I love America so much I would die for her, if I had the opportunity. America and its freedom will outlive the twisted puppet in the Whitehouse. The truth is marching on. You did not serve in vain, Mr. EW. In the hearts of millions of us, young and old, love of liberty and of our country burns brightly. America lives!
This is for you, EW:
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=john+wayne+patriotic+video&view=detail&mid=4F5376C39E9AFAE45EF34F5376C39E9AFAE45EF3&first=0&FORM=NVPFVR
God, bless America.
Why would promoters of ‘climate change’ start using truth or facts to support their cause?
Peter says:
May 24, 2013 at 9:00 am
“Actually that’s water vapor. Steam is the gaseous form of water and is invisible. Moot point though.”
I fear you have it the wrong way round.
The camera can lie. If you shoot the steam with the sun behind your back, it appears light, BUT move to the other side, where the steam is back lit and it appears a lot darker and that’s the propaganda shot they’ll want to use.
@Phil –
Please inform us where you got those numbers from. If they are not specifically from that plant, they are bogus.
Every large plant in the USA that emits Volatile Organic Compounds OR heavy metals must have a scrubber or oxidizer (incinerator) on any and all stacks. This has been laws since the early 1970s and the plants were given time to meet the standards set then and revised from time to time. Each new plant had to meet the standards from day one.
American industry spent hundreds of billions of dollars to meet the standards, and industry has met them well. It is disengenuous to pretend that American industry has not done everything in its power to meet the standards set by Congress. As a general overall review a comparison of the air in any US city in 1960 and 2010 will attest to that.
If the scrubbers and oxidizers are not doing a perfect job (but they are damned close), what is the green remedy? To shut down all our power plants just because they don’t meet your 0.000% VOC and heavy metal standard? Which is not what is required by law?
Do you want to be the one who pushes the button to shut all those plants down? And then to explain to freezing kids and starving kids why they are dying? And why all the operating rooms have no lights?
People today who didn’t live before 1970 have no idea what real pollution is.
REAL POLLUTION:
At this link is a photo of China in 2009: http://www.chinahush.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/20091020luguang10.jpg
And these of Pittsburgh in the 1930s and 1940s (respectively):
http://images.mnn.com/sites/default/files/user/137915/PittsburghAirPollution02.jpg
http://images.mnn.com/sites/default/files/user/137915/PittsburghAirPollution01.jpg
http://images.mnn.com/sites/default/files/user/137915/PittsburghAirPollution04.jpg
http://images.mnn.com/sites/default/files/user/137915/PittsburghAirPollution03.jpg
You people think a mouse is an elephant.
If you want to deal with pollution in the 2010s, you need to go talk to the government in China and India. If you aren’t willing to do that, stfu. The west has cleaned up our air to a fabulous degree. Go talk to Mao’s successors, if you have the nads to do it.
Steve Garcia
Phil at 7:48 said:
That seems to be an accurate description of what’s shown.
The non-scrubbed pollutants would be 5% of the sulfur and 75% of the mercury and ~80% of the particulate matter. The mercury levels in that coal are about 0.07ppm and about 10,000,000 tonnes of coal are burned there per year so that’s about half a tonne of mercury emissions pa. Total sulfur is about 0.3% so that’s 30,000x.05=1500 tonnes Sulfur emissions pa.
The point that the caption and you missed is that those stacks are scrubbed which explains why you see steam plumes. The EPA Clean Air Markets Division Air Markets Program Database shows that all three units at the Jeffrey Energy Center have “wet limestone” for SO2 control and “Low NOx Burner Technology w/ Closed-coupled/Separated OFA for NOX control. The 2012 station emission rates were for SO2 is 0.02 lbs SO2 per mmBtu and 1300 tons and for NOX 0.13 lbs NOX per mmBtu and 8787 tons. Wet scrubbing also removes mercury so your emission estimate for the facility is far too high. Finally the suggestion that 80% of the particulate emissions are released is absurd. All three units there have electrostatic precipitator controls and I would expect control levels of at least 95% meaning that only 5% of the particulates are emitted and assuming that the scrubber does not control particulates. Describing these “dirty” stacks as spewing pollutants because of the visible plume is simply wrong.
Even a “dirty” power plant that could arguably be “spewing” pollutants may not show a dirty plume. For example, Homer City power plant in 1998 emitted 168,550 tons of SO2 and I would not argue the point their stacks “spewed” pollutants. A picture of those stacks during that year would probably not show a plume because there are opacity standards that limit the opaqueness of the plume to less than 20%. Particulate control is relatively inexpensive and generally prevents opaque plumes. It is only when there is a scrubber adding moisture that you get the visible plumes.
Looks like Phil’s trolling again.
“Looks like Phil’s trolling again.”
As usual. His own blog gets no traffic, so he comes here.
“So what? We’re discussing what’s in the effluent stream from those smokestacks not what might be in domestic biomass effluent!” Ahhhhh,yes. I see phil trying to obfuscate,again. Doncha all KNOW that mercury,sulfer,carbon,etc are DIFFERENT in biomass,then in anything else? (mostly due to the extra-ordinary amount of grants,subsidies,etc).
Go back to beeyotchin about farmers, phil. BTW…when are you going to practice what you preach?(rhetorical)
The Big Oil funded d-word industry would like you to believe it’s “just steam”, but we know it’s actually the deadly dihydrogen monoxide!
“… deadly dihydrogen monoxide!” [frank Frank Kotler] Bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaa!
Hey, D. B. Stealey, I forgot to mention above, that John Wayne video (link in 11:50 post) is for you, too. (if there are other vets here, pipe up! — in the meantime, THANK YOU, SO MUCH!)
Thank you so much for protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States of America!
rogercaiazza says:
May 24, 2013 at 2:13 pm
Phil at 7:48 said:
“That seems to be an accurate description of what’s shown.
The non-scrubbed pollutants would be 5% of the sulfur and 75% of the mercury and ~80% of the particulate matter. The mercury levels in that coal are about 0.07ppm and about 10,000,000 tonnes of coal are burned there per year so that’s about half a tonne of mercury emissions pa. Total sulfur is about 0.3% so that’s 30,000x.05=1500 tonnes Sulfur emissions pa.”
The point that the caption and you missed is that those stacks are scrubbed which explains why you see steam plumes.
Didn’t miss it at all, that’s why I quoted the efficiencies of the scrubbers in my post!
The EPA Clean Air Markets Division Air Markets Program Database shows that all three units at the Jeffrey Energy Center have “wet limestone” for SO2 control and “Low NOx Burner Technology w/ Closed-coupled/Separated OFA for NOX control. The 2012 station emission rates were for SO2 is 0.02 lbs SO2 per mmBtu and 1300 tons and for NOX 0.13 lbs NOX per mmBtu and 8787 tons. Wet scrubbing also removes mercury so your emission estimate for the facility is far too high.
As I said the scrubbers remove about 25% of the Mercury and I accounted for that in my estimate.
Finally the suggestion that 80% of the particulate emissions are released is absurd. All three units there have electrostatic precipitator controls and I would expect control levels of at least 95% meaning that only 5% of the particulates are emitted and assuming that the scrubber does not control particulates.
Take it up with Westar energy, it’s their data.
Justthinkin says:
May 24, 2013 at 5:30 pm
“So what? We’re discussing what’s in the effluent stream from those smokestacks not what might be in domestic biomass effluent!” Ahhhhh,yes. I see phil trying to obfuscate,again. Doncha all KNOW that mercury,sulfer,carbon,etc are DIFFERENT in biomass,then in anything else? (mostly due to the extra-ordinary amount of grants,subsidies,etc).
Go back to beeyotchin about farmers, phil. BTW…when are you going to practice what you preach?(rhetorical)
Why on earth are you babbling about biomass and farming for? Billy Liar mentioned biomass for no obvious reason take it up with him. As to farmers I don’t ever recall mentioning them.
dbstealey says:
May 24, 2013 at 4:17 pm
“Looks like Phil’s trolling again.”
As usual. His own blog gets no traffic, so he comes here.
Which blog’s that? Your question’s been answered, was there any point to it or was it just more of your trolling?
Chill, Phil. Just because the planet is falsifying your belief system is no reason to get snippy.☺