"politics of high smokestacks" was when e.g. Germany got higher smokestacks, since we initially killed the local plant life when burning coal. Now, we can kill the whole planet at once, but only a tiny bit. Problem solved, until we later said "actually, use filters, not (only) high chimneys".
Thanks for having been to my Ted talk.
Next up: Why climate change made the filter solution not work, either — with cutting edge science claims back from 1856.
(Damn, the actual timeline for 1950-1980 and 1856 mixes these two issue non-chronologically. Sorry, to be fair: we were completety certain of climate change in 1990, when we saw that the 1970s era cooldown was not a new trend, but just a decade of a brighter albedo due to particle emissions.)
That's basically what I remember: the leading reason is that a steel furnace needs a lot of heat to build up a lot of pressure and push carbon in, and higher chimneys help provide that.
Others like Japan found another way to achieve the necessary temp/pressure, but it hardly scaled as it needed to during the industrial revolution.
TBH the "let's avoid smoke" aspect sounds like a retcon, the mythical London smog is a testament of that.
jodrellblank · 6h ago
> TBH the "let's avoid smoke" aspect sounds like a retcon
Yes, that’s what the article says:
“ When you look at all the pictures of the factories in the 19th century, those stacks weren’t there to improve air quality, if you can believe it. The increased airflow generated by a stack just created more efficient combustion for the boilers and furnaces. Any benefits to air quality in the cities were secondary. With the advent of diesel and electric motors, we could use forced drafts, reducing the need for a tall stack to increase airflow. That was kind of the decline of the forests of industrial chimneys that marked the landscape in the 19th century. But they’re obviously not all gone, because that secondary benefit of air quality turned into the primary benefit as environmental rules about air pollution became stricter.”
Mistletoe · 5h ago
People hate on Reddit but this is why I love Reddit, I got the answer in a few seconds as opposed to the original article pontificating and padding forever about it.
tracerbulletx · 15m ago
It's not an article. Its a transcript of an entertaining educational video on one of the best engineering youtube channels in the world and a gift to society. It says that it's a transcript at the top of the text for goodness sake.
kelnos · 1h ago
That's a bit uncharitable towards the article. If you're just looking to answer a question as simply as possible, you're going to want a different source than if you're curious about the background and history of something.
lelanthran · 51m ago
> That's a bit uncharitable towards the article.
I didn't think so; I also tried to read the article, but spreading out a 20 word answer over what seemed like 2000 words of navel-gazing got me out of there in a hurry.
h1fra · 3h ago
as always, this channel makes your watch 20minutes of something you couldn't care less and you always end up amazed
mcthorogood · 1h ago
Calculating smokestack height was in my undergraduate chemical engineering curriculum that I completed in 1976. Height is required so that the National Air Quality Standards in the U.S. Clean Air Act are not violated at the base of the stack.
saagarjha · 9h ago
Huh, I always assumed it was because wind speeds would typically be faster higher up, creating lower pressure to draw up air.
potato3732842 · 5h ago
At first that's true. That's why chimneys all have a more or less minimum height above the roofline (and people can get away with little to nothing for a house on a ridge line or like an ice fishing shack or something).
Beyond the minimum the effect tapers off and what TFA is talking about starts mattering.
ErrorNoBrain · 11h ago
i always assumed it was so the factory (and the neighbors and roads) weren't covered in smoke
e40 · 2h ago
Nah, they care not at all about the neighbors. They built the factory in the bad part of town for a reason.
wahern · 24m ago
More often poor people moved near industry because the land was much cheaper on account of it being less desirable. There are some high-profile modern examples where industry moved into existing communities, but that's historically atypical.
Of course by the 3rd of 4th generation it becomes a distinction without a difference. But understanding patterns of development is important. If today you want to prevent poor people from tomorrow living in polluted areas, rich people have to make it easier to build affordably in nicer areas--e.g. allow increasingly dense development so poor people don't get pushed toward industry.
pfdietz · 4h ago
There's a related technology that creates downdrafts by cooling air. In a region with warm air near cold water (like, say, Los Angeles, with cold ocean water), injection of the water at the top of a large tower can cool the air, causing it to descend.
This was proposed to be used, again in Los Angeles, as a way to not only generate power (via turbines at the bottom of large hyperboloidal towers) but also clean pollutants from the air. I don't think it ever went anywhere (probably too expensive) but it would work at least in principle.
einpoklum · 7h ago
I leafed through that page, and it still seems like the answer is: "To make sure the pollutants are dispersed and/or carried away enough to reduce exposure of people around the base."
Am I wrong?
dweekly · 7h ago
You're right, but the less intuitive part is that the stack makes the air rise much more quickly; the exit velocity is higher the taller the stack.
kortilla · 5h ago
That’s secondary. Smoke stacks were tall long before people cared about pollution (1800s).
eulgro · 8h ago
The amount of AI generated imagery in the video is baffling.
michaelt · 6h ago
Except for the sci-fi city at the 40 second video mark, I'm pretty sure it's almost all real video, just brought from a big stock video provider.
If you want video of a drone flying over a power plant or hot air balloons taking off, you can license them from stock providers, just like with stock photos.
Of course, it does share some of the cues of AI-generated content - but I suspect a lot of these AI companies buy a lot of stock content for their training datasets.
geerlingguy · 5h ago
Some of the stock content providers are also polluting the waters a bit as well, allowing AI generated stock clips to be added :(
Thanks for having been to my Ted talk.
Next up: Why climate change made the filter solution not work, either — with cutting edge science claims back from 1856.
(Damn, the actual timeline for 1950-1980 and 1856 mixes these two issue non-chronologically. Sorry, to be fair: we were completety certain of climate change in 1990, when we saw that the 1970s era cooldown was not a new trend, but just a decade of a brighter albedo due to particle emissions.)
I like the backgrounder about Sudbury.
Others like Japan found another way to achieve the necessary temp/pressure, but it hardly scaled as it needed to during the industrial revolution.
TBH the "let's avoid smoke" aspect sounds like a retcon, the mythical London smog is a testament of that.
Yes, that’s what the article says:
“ When you look at all the pictures of the factories in the 19th century, those stacks weren’t there to improve air quality, if you can believe it. The increased airflow generated by a stack just created more efficient combustion for the boilers and furnaces. Any benefits to air quality in the cities were secondary. With the advent of diesel and electric motors, we could use forced drafts, reducing the need for a tall stack to increase airflow. That was kind of the decline of the forests of industrial chimneys that marked the landscape in the 19th century. But they’re obviously not all gone, because that secondary benefit of air quality turned into the primary benefit as environmental rules about air pollution became stricter.”
I didn't think so; I also tried to read the article, but spreading out a 20 word answer over what seemed like 2000 words of navel-gazing got me out of there in a hurry.
Beyond the minimum the effect tapers off and what TFA is talking about starts mattering.
Of course by the 3rd of 4th generation it becomes a distinction without a difference. But understanding patterns of development is important. If today you want to prevent poor people from tomorrow living in polluted areas, rich people have to make it easier to build affordably in nicer areas--e.g. allow increasingly dense development so poor people don't get pushed toward industry.
This was proposed to be used, again in Los Angeles, as a way to not only generate power (via turbines at the bottom of large hyperboloidal towers) but also clean pollutants from the air. I don't think it ever went anywhere (probably too expensive) but it would work at least in principle.
Am I wrong?
If you want video of a drone flying over a power plant or hot air balloons taking off, you can license them from stock providers, just like with stock photos.
Of course, it does share some of the cues of AI-generated content - but I suspect a lot of these AI companies buy a lot of stock content for their training datasets.