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Archive for September 23rd, 2011
Is fracking environmentally friendly
Posted by Guardian: Andrew Simms and Rob Lyons on September 23rd, 2011
Guardian: Andrew Simms: 'Fracking represents real and substantial risks to people and the environment'
Shale gas and tar sands are big, sticky and controversial. Energy-intensive and messy to extract, the fossil fuel industry sees them as a buffer during the dying days of conventional cheap oil. In Canada, the debate has taken an almost hallucinatory turn, rightwing blow-hard political activists have begun promoting tar sands as "ethical oil". The intellectual gymnastics are achieved by implying that the...
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Mongolia’s high plains herders warily eye coal truck
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2011
Reuters: A lone cement ribbon bisecting hundreds of miles of shale and scrub on the high plains of Mongolia's Gobi Desert may be a talisman or curse for nomadic herders that trace their lineage to the empire of Ghengis Khan.
Carved into the Gobi by the Hong Kong-listed Mongolian Mining Corporation (MMC), the 147-mile (245-km), two-lane road is due to open next month, allowing the company to speed up cargoes of coal to China from its expanding Ukhaa Khudag mine.
Ukhaa Khudag is not well-known but is...
German states block carbon capture law
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2011
Spiegel: The German government had hoped to push through a new law allowing the testing of underground greenhouse gas storage, in hopes of slowing climate change. But on Friday the country's states blocked the plans by rejecting the proposed bill. Germany could now face action by the European Union.
Plans in Germany to test underground carbon dioxide storage to combat global warming have been blocked by the country's upper legislative chamber. The Bundesrat, which represents the 16 federal states, rejected...
Hydrofracking Leases Subject of Regrets in New York
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2011
New York Times: Four years ago a man and a woman knocked on Katharine D. Dewart’s door, offering easy money for the use of her land.
Handing her a brochure that included serene before-and-after pictures, they explained that a natural gas company was seeking to drill somewhere on her 35 acres of wildflower fields surrounded by hemlock woods in this Tompkins County town near Ithaca.
Ms. Dewart, 68, served lemonade and signed, accepting $1,909 upfront and royalty payments of 12.5 percent of any sales of gas extracted...