SF Chronicle: Is that big locomotive emitting half the exhaust it did before?
One gets the idea pretty clearly, and this is not to pick on my local paper the San Francisco Chronicle or Kelly Zito, who reports today on Amtrak Locomotive No. 2015 and its new pollution control equipment. But…right in the second paragraph it says without equivocation that the engine has “a nearly 50 percent reduction in diesel exhaust” and, a bit later, that this is thanks to new “power assemblies, water pumps, and radiators.”
I wasn’t there. Maybe its fuel mileage has just doubled. More likely however is that the new gear actually cut its efficiency a tiny bit – meaning more CO2 in the air – while removing dangerous soot, heavy metals, dangerous radicals, and other minor but nasty components of this diesel’s exhaust. So one very strongly suspects it is still diesel exhaust but it is not such dirty diesel exhaust - and there might well be a bit more of it than before.
Terminology and literal meanings of words do matter.
Nice looking engine in any case.
- Charlie Petit
