Cecil, whoever that is, states that water is one of the primary oxidation products of combustion. There is an easy way to see this at least with natural gas.
Put a pot of cold water on a gas stove and turn on the flame. For a few seconds, while the pot is still cold, water from the gas flame will condense on the pot, forming a rather substantial dew.
If you can see this phenomenon on an electric stove, sell tickets. Its absence confirms that the water comes from the gas flame.
pjcamp
A link to the column is appreciated. I believe you are referring to Water contains hydrogen and oxygen. Why doesn’t it burn?
Welcome to the SDMB, and thank you for posting your comment.
Please include a link to Cecil’s column if it’s on the straight dope web site.
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Cecil’s column can be found on-line at the link provided by bibliophage.
moderator, «Comments on Cecil’s Columns»
Or look at the plume from any large coal-fired power plant in your area, especially during Winter.
Anthracite, us mere lay people can’t tell the difference between condensing steam and white smoke.
Except that coal plants in the US don’t produce white smoke.
If you look at the stack from a US coal plant, you will see the following colors, which indicate the following items:
White - steam.
Blue - Sulfur trioxide, or SO[sub]3[/sub]. Means that they have some combustion problems.
Yellow-Brown - Nitrogen oxides, or NO[sub]x[/sub]. Although all plants emit this, you typically only see this in large quantities in Eastern plants that have been grandfathered into Clean Air Act legislation.
And in very rare cases,
Black - means that something is terribly wrong, or the plant has just started up or is just shutting down. Or is on fire.
Oh yes. When the Nebraska Highway Patrol burned some marijuana at the plant at Grand Island, it gave an odd red-green tint they said. And a pleasant sense of well-being… 
Oh, wait. So this is what is means to be “baited”.
Ahem. You can tell the difference between steam and white smoke because the same power plants don’t have giant white plumes in the summer. In the summer, the emissions are mostly invisible. In the winter the steam condenses more quickly and you get a white plume. If they were making white smoke there would be no seaonal difference.
Actually, there was a thread over in GQ a few months ago where some mope insisted that you could acutally burn water if you had a really hot bonfire…jeez, what a loser…
Mostly true. If the unit has a wet stack Flue Gas Desulfurization system, however, you can see quite a white plume in the Summer as well. So these units typically have a 40% opacity limit year-round as a result. Lawrence Unit 5, in Lawrence, KS, is an example of this.
Silly me, to forget mentioning the wet stack Flue Gas Desulfurization system. Yeah, I, uh, should have, uh, remembered, er, that…
Well, I think it’s interesting. We’ve got a factory here (a grain miller, actually) that has a constant white plume, summer or winter (granted, the winter plume is really huge–you can see it 20 miles away), and they keep telling us patiently, “It’s just steam, it’s just steam,” but I always wondered. Now I know to look for different colors.
Well, my fine Duck, you have to be careful about assumptions here. My examples are valid for US coal plants in particular. Other manufacturing facilities may or may not be emitting something from their stacks which is not just steam - although for a millers, I would imagine it is.
For example - Marley Cooling Tower has a factory south of Olathe, KS, that for two days emitted a cloud of white plastic fragments like fake snow, that coated every car, house, and person within an eighth of a mile from their stack. I witnessed it, and thought “why is it snowing in August?” People were not happy, to say the least…