The Pot Is Boiling

Patented 311 years ago today, the steam engine has a mixed legacy

Perhaps he was watching the pot boil as he was making tea.

Whatever the inspiration, English inventor Thomas Savery realized the power of steam. On July 2, 1698, he patented the world's first steam engine.

In his 1936 book Links in the History of Engineering and Technology from Tudor Times, Rhys Jenkins called Savery's creation "a new invention for raiseing of water and occasioning motion to all sorts of mill work by the impellent force of fire, which will be of great use and advantage for drayning mines, serveing townes with water, and for the working of all sorts of mills where they have not the benefitt of water nor constant windes."

Indeed, this "impellent force of fire" -- with critical improvements made later by Scottish inventor James Watt -- marked the beginning of a sea change in modern human history -- the Industrial Revolution, an era of extraordinary growth in manufacturing, agriculture, transportation and mining.

But though this era of industry has made our lives easier in countless ways, its legacy hasn't necessarily been a good one in regard to the environment.

Increased amounts of global-warming carbon dioxide emitted into Earth's atmosphere from all this productivity has also radically increased global temperatures. In the last 250 years, human activity has increased carbon dioxide levels by 30%.

"Since the start of the industrial revolution...emissions of greenhouse gases have been making this blanket thicker at an unprecedented speed," according to "Climate Change As A Global Challenge," a 2007 United Nations paper. "This has caused the most dramatic change in the atmosphere’s composition since at least 650,000 years ago."

The report adds, "If emissions continue to rise at their current pace and are allowed to double from their pre-industrial level, the world will face an average temperature rise of around 3°C this century. To explain the magnitude of such seemingly insignificant global temperature changes from a different perspective: the difference between the present average global temperature and an ice age is 5°C.

Hopefully the United States Senate will take the lead of the House of Representatives, which just passed a landmark energy and climate change bill -- and that more countries (especially big emitters like China) will follow suit.

"The House’s approval last week of a bill capping greenhouse gases was a remarkable achievement, almost unthinkable six months ago," states a June 30 New York Times editorial.

"Yet all of the hard work -- the hearings, the negotiating, the arm-twisting -- will add up to zero if the Senate cannot be persuaded to do the same, and preferably better. The country would be left with an outdated energy policy and the planet would be stuck with steadily rising emissions."

Considering all the available data, any action taken now to mitigate the effects of climate change would certainly be better than watching the pot boil.

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image: the 1698 Savery Engine, based on the designs of Denis Papin