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| K36 288 In Chama Yard |
One my son's asked, "How do you (me) reconciled your strongly held opinions on Global Climate Change with your decision to volunteer on a coal burning steam railroad?"
I have been accused of a lot of things but mostly I am accused of being a green fanatic, or "Doomer", or railroad nut – So, I want to know how much this railroad is contributing to our ongoing climatic problem. So I looked up some rough numbers and guesstimated some others.
Remember, this is all an estimate but the numbers certainly give a close enough rendering to the story, so here goes:
I figure, this is a guesstimate, based on the widely acclaimed “WAG” method. The Railroad uses about 2,000 tons of coal annually. That is three locomotives using 3.5 tons a trip over a 182 day season or around 2,000 tons or 4,000,000 pounds of coal.
That is a really scary amount of coal which when burned creates a frightening amount of smoke naturally leading one to think it must make a real mess of the climate when burned, or does it?
For starters, the majority of the visible "smoke" a steam locomotive emits is actually steam. The steam evaporates harmlessly in the dry Colorado/New Mexico air. The remainder, the black smoky part, is coal ash and particulates which almost immediately precipitates out seemingly on the heads of anyone in the open car, including the Docent. A tiny invisible and still measurable portion is Carbon Dioxide - CO2 - a long-lasting green house gas.
The real climate damage comes from the part you can't see, the CO2. To find out about that let's do some comparisons.
Based on the usual internet sources from Wikipedia to "How stuff works - Science" and even a glimpse from a Coal advocate I came up with the following:
A single 100w incandescent light bulb if burning continually amazingly consumers 714 pounds of coal a year. So 4,000,000 pounds of coal power generation is equivalent to 5,500 100W incandescent bulbs and this is roughly equivalent to a season's run on the Railroad - right?
Let's jump to the other end of the scale, this gets messy, and look at the real users of coal - electrical generation. A modern high efficiency coal power plant uses 3,337 tons of coal, that's 6,674,000 pounds, a day, or 2,436,010,000 pounds a year to generate 500MW of power. So the Railroad uses less in a season than a 500MW power plant uses in a day - right?
In 2012 in the U.S. alone we generated 1,643,000 Gwt (1,643E+15) of power from coal annually. I can't even write that number, it is astronomical, and then you divide and multiply and get a lower but still astounding number of pounds of coal. Well hopefully you get the idea now...
Yes every little bit is important but let's keep things in the proper perspective.
What's the potential environmental damage of running three steam locomotives for 182 days? Less damaging than the number of incandescent light bulbs in a smallish town.
What's our heritage worth? It's priceless.
Think about it.
