From time to time people have asked about my career as a scientist and where I stand on certain environmental issues like global warming. I’m going to try to write something here that is concise enough to hold interest yet informative enough to put some issues to rest.
I hold a few degrees, one of them being a BS in Chemistry and most of my career I was Chief Chemist for ConocoPhillips, the energy company. I am also a Six Sigma Black Belt. Specifically, I worked at a plant that made petroleum coke, or carbon, and so my expertise is in the carbon world. Along the way I was voted Chairman of the American Society of Testing Materials (ASTM) Petroleum Analysis Committee, and was awarded the ASTM Special Recognition Award for my developing a method to analyze carbon for impurities by X-Ray spectroscopy.
Now for the good stuff. In 1994 I was part of a team that won the DuPont Environmental Award for our technology we developed to filter particulate (dust, dirt, carbon) from the .storm water leaving our plant. What we did was to take railcars packed with our product, carbon, and filter all the effluent from our plant through them like a giant fish tank filter, sending crystal clear water to the Ohio River. It was a simple idea, but was soon implemented at many other plants.
In 2004, as a Six Sigma Black Belt, I came up with a process of making our product with less than half the natural gas to fire our units. That amounted to saving tens of thousands of cubic feet of natural gas to the tune of more than one million dollars in savings in operating costs per year. The collateral results were that plant and others that followed our lead now pump way less heat into the atmosphere and sulfur emissions were cut by more than 20%.
I could go on and on and mention other little things I’ve done like putting in personal time judging science fairs, taking old lab equipment to schools, all because it’s the right thing to do, but I hope that makes my point.
My point is, before any more of you tree-hugging, TV infomercial-educated, patrons of the environment bad mouth me because I once worked for an oil company, you need to ask yourselves, “What am I doing?” besides bitching, I mean. Because, people, that bandwagon is one short ride. There comes a time when it is not enough to talk a good game, throw around slogans and catch phrases, and you actually have to prove your theories, as I think I have.
