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Goodbye Old King Coal Generation.

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Old King Coal Generation was a merry old soul, 

But soon is not to be.....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50520962


Z.

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    When I started work at a nearly new Coal fired Power Station , considered like its late 1960s/early 1970s siblings an exemplar of modern technology , perhaps half a million jobs in the UK were directly linked to coal in some form (anyone got a better estimate?) many more indirectly in some parts of the country. The Selby complex (which I went down) was considered to have world leading productivity, with reserves to last generations.  There was some nascent understanding of acid rain, bit little else more beyond relatively local pollution, which was being cleared up, with major city buildings being “scrubbed up” after years of soot accumulation from domestic coal fires, industrial furnaces and steam locomotives. Rivers in much of the country, especially major cities were horrible, stinking, filthy and often biologically “dead”.  


    So what can we as engineers do?  On the stairway at Savoy Place their portraits close together, are two Engineers who began in Victorian times to address pollution. One Thomas Parker happens to have grown up in the same street as me and was member number 324 of our institution, so I’m biased.  http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/genealogy/Parker/Coalite.htm .  The second  Joseph Bazalgette became better remembered    https://www.ice.org.uk/what-is-civil-engineering/civil-engineer-profiles/sir-joseph-bazalgette


    We have already come to understand the challenge of changes to the climate.  Even if the minority opinion that this is part of a cycle of natural perturbations or changes outside of our control is valid, the problem still needs to be addressed, if much of world coastal development is to remain intact, agriculture to thrive etc. Who are the visionary engineers who can affect this and why?  What should we be foreseeing, that we haven’t yet?    

      

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  • 0
    When I started work at a nearly new Coal fired Power Station , considered like its late 1960s/early 1970s siblings an exemplar of modern technology , perhaps half a million jobs in the UK were directly linked to coal in some form (anyone got a better estimate?) many more indirectly in some parts of the country. The Selby complex (which I went down) was considered to have world leading productivity, with reserves to last generations.  There was some nascent understanding of acid rain, bit little else more beyond relatively local pollution, which was being cleared up, with major city buildings being “scrubbed up” after years of soot accumulation from domestic coal fires, industrial furnaces and steam locomotives. Rivers in much of the country, especially major cities were horrible, stinking, filthy and often biologically “dead”.  


    So what can we as engineers do?  On the stairway at Savoy Place their portraits close together, are two Engineers who began in Victorian times to address pollution. One Thomas Parker happens to have grown up in the same street as me and was member number 324 of our institution, so I’m biased.  http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/genealogy/Parker/Coalite.htm .  The second  Joseph Bazalgette became better remembered    https://www.ice.org.uk/what-is-civil-engineering/civil-engineer-profiles/sir-joseph-bazalgette


    We have already come to understand the challenge of changes to the climate.  Even if the minority opinion that this is part of a cycle of natural perturbations or changes outside of our control is valid, the problem still needs to be addressed, if much of world coastal development is to remain intact, agriculture to thrive etc. Who are the visionary engineers who can affect this and why?  What should we be foreseeing, that we haven’t yet?    

      

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