Word: coaling
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...than the sum of the parts. One and one make three. A late 19th century engineer, Wilhelm Maybach, working for Daimler, puts together the newly invented perfume spray with the newly discovered gasoline and comes up with the carburetor. In 1823 Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh, working with a throwaway coal tar by-product, naphtha (used to clean out dyeing vats), stumbles across the fact that it will liquefy rubber. So he spreads the rubber between layers of cloth and invents the raincoat...
...emerges--the way it has always emerged. In the history of scientific and technological endeavor, there are few if any cases in which the end was exactly what was intended at the beginning. In the mid-19th century, William Perkin sought a way to make artificial quinine out of coal tar and ended up with the first aniline dye. Alexander Graham Bell thought the telephone would be used only to inform people of the arrival of telegrams. Alessandro Volta designed a eudiometer for exploding bad-smelling gases with electricity. It ended up as the spark plug. A 1983 interuniversity computer...
...Mainstream scientists have been warning for years that by burning oil, coal and other fossil fuels, humans have created a blanket of carbon gases that traps heat in our atmosphere and warms the planet. The last two years were the hottest in recorded history, and recent wild weather patterns suggest that this global warming will bring with it an ever expanding plague of economic and human catastrophes...
...sunny Clinton administration waffle about win-win solutions, job creation through emissions cuts and other Pollyannaish prescriptions, the truth is that only a painful adjustment of the contemporary American lifestyle could achieve that goal. Converting old coal-burning power stations to more energy-efficient forms of electricity production, for example, will be costly. The gas-guzzling SUV can't be the vehicle of choice for the middle class in a nation cutting back its gasoline consumption...
...which accounts for at least one quarter of "greenhouse gas" emissions despite comprising only 4 percent of the world population, is slated for a 7 percent cut from 1990 levels. Reducing emissions, of course, is a painful process for industrialized nations, because it requires cutting back on coal-burning power stations and on the consumption of gasoline and other oil-based fuels. To understand the magnitude of that pain in the U.S., it is worth noting that America's booming economy is continuing to produce substantial annual increases rather than reductions in carbon gas outputs...