To the editor:

The Dec. 5 ‘We cannot eat money’ letter focuses on serious health effects we will suffer if we allow coal fired power plants to inject sulfates into the atmosphere to reflect solar radiation. I am saying state government should let the Sherco plant at Becker MN keep running because:

1. You’re never going to have squeaky-clean air. The U.S. averages about 68,000 wildfires per year , according to NOAA. Volcanoes annually emit up to 25 million tons of sulfur dioxide. How is it that we can survive our state of Minnesota being blanketed in Canadian wildfire smoke, but then call coal-fired power plants “death factories” while their scrubbers are so efficient at removing sulfates and other pollutants that they actually contribute to global warming?

2. There is no empirical evidence that the CO2 coming out of that plant will cause global warming. (Man’s portion of atmospheric CO2 is way too small).

The Dec. 5 ‘Ignoring greenhouse gas effects’ letter says I list the amounts of atmospheric gases but avoid discussing the effects of those gases. True. So here’s my )Oct. 2, 2019 letter:

The Sept. 9 Mankato Free Press editorial said: “Of all the greenhouse gases (GHG), methane is one of the most potent because it so efficiently absorbs heat in Earth’s atmosphere. It is dozens of times greater at warming the Earth than carbon dioxide (CO2).” Actually, methane’s heat capacity (kJ/kgK) at constant volume is only about 2.5 times that of CO2. The “dozens of times greater” comes if methane is propagated over a hundred years, according to the EPA.

Of all GHGs, water vapor (WV) is the most abundant. There is over 25 times more WV than CO2; and over 5000 times more WV than methane.

How much more heat is held by WV, compared to CO2, and methane? WV holds about 55 times more heat in the atmosphere than all CO2; and holds about 4310 times more heat than all methane in the atmosphere

In other words, WV is holding about 1375 times more heat than ‘man-made’ CO2; and about 8620 more heat than ‘man-made’ methane.

Phil Drietz

Delhi