Letter From the Publisher: Keto & Carbon
Heat Treat Today publishes eight print magazines a year and included in each is a letter from the publisher, Doug Glenn. This letter first appeared in the Heat Treat Buyers Guide print edition.
Publisher and Founder
Heat Treat Today
In the world of dieting and food, it is pretty much commonly accepted that today’s diet or medical advice will be proven wrong tomorrow. For example, it used to be that coffee was good for you; then it became bad for you; then good again. The Atkins Diet, heavy on protein and light on carbs and fats, was once considered the best way to lose weight — today, not so much.
Just this week, I was visiting with a heat treat industry legend in Brighton, Michigan. He and his wife own a building in downtown Brighton where their son runs a successful microbrewery business. On the wall near the bar area, there is an old, 1900s-vintage newspaper advertisement for a miracle elixir that was purported to cure any ill. The ingredients in the elixir were ingredients that one would be arrested for possessing in today’s world — think cocaine, etc. — and are known to be poisonous today. But back in the day when the ad for this elixir was published, the contents were widely accepted as a miracle cure for many ailments.
The point being that yesterday’s “truth” quite frequently is shown to be untrue over time.
Enter the “carbon” debate.
This last week I also attended three trade shows: AISTech in Pittsburgh, Fastener Fair USA, and Rapid+TCT (both in Detroit). Especially at AISTech, but also at the other two events, the discussion of carbon neutrality and green technologies was rampant. It is safe to say that carbon is today’s bad boy element. According to the prevailing science of the day, carbon is the source of many of our societal problems. Carbon dioxide (the stuff we exhale until we die) is considered to be the single most dangerous compound in the universe — one that will be responsible for the extinction of man if it goes unchecked.
What if we’re wrong about carbon in the same way that we’ve been wrong about a myriad of other things? What if carbon really is good? What if increased levels of carbon dioxide result in more vegetation growth (because green things LOVE carbon dioxide), resulting in a natural stabilization of the environment? What if we fi nd out that our concern about the badness of carbon has been misguided? What if we fi nd out that we’re actually doing more harm to the earth by minimizing the amount of carbon dioxide?
I know it sounds crazy, but if we can learn anything from history, it is this: We are often wrong about those things that we feel so strongly about and those things we once thought were right are wrong, and those things we once thought were wrong are right.
Based on history, approaching the carbon problem with a degree of humility and caution seems appropriate. Much like the Keto Diet has recently been all the rage but may well be yesterday’s diet fad, we should also remember, although on a much longer timeframe, that carbon and carbon dioxide may one day be our friend.
It could happen!
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