Rolling Coal: Is it bad?
Recently in the diesel world there has been a lot of hype surrounding the act of rolling coal.
Rolling coal is when diesel vehicle owners purposely amp up the amount of fuel injected into engine cylinders and disable emission reducing devices, with the intent to create enormous amounts of black smoke. The black smoke is created by unburnt fuel particles sticking together.
The diesel industry as a whole has made huge strides in reducing the bad emissions that contribute to global warming, created by diesel engines in the past 10 + years. Many individuals that “roll coal” are purposely disabling devices that are meant to reduce these harmful emissions. As a result of this, the EPA has recently put in place laws the forbid the sale of truck parts that bypass, defeats, or renders inoperative any emission controlling devices.
Many truck owners are not happy and in response are releasing a wrath of black smoke on the closest Prius they can find. So the question needs to be asked: is rolling coal really that bad for the environment?
While it is true that black smoke emissions are bad for the environment and contribute to global warming and the use of far more precious fuel than needed is reckless, rolling coal is not likely to have that much of an environmental impact unless hundreds of people rolling coal turns into hundreds of thousands of people rolling coal.
So while it may be rude, unnecessary, waste-full and potentially dangerous to other motorists, rolling coal alone isn’t going to turn Antarctica into Phoenix anytime soon, but it is contributing to the problem and giving the 99% of responsible diesel owners a bad name.
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