Friday, February 21, 2014

second take


As if ExxonMobil’s monstrosity in Chalmette or Baton Rouge isn’t having the same effect on the neighbors, Exxon’s CEO is suing about a water tower in his neighborhood.

The partially built "monstrosity," as the lawsuit calls it, is adjacent to both Tillerson's Bar RR Ranch and Armey's property. The suit alleges that the water tower is diminishing neighbors' property values and "causing unreasonable discomfort and annoyance to persons of ordinary sensibilities."

 

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

petcoke and coal

Converting tar-sands oil into usable fuels requires a huge amount of energy, and much of the black gunk that's refined out of the crude in this process ends up as petroleum coke. Petcoke is like concentrated coal – denser and dirtier than anything that comes out of a mine. It can be burned just like coal to produce power, but petcoke emits up to 15 percent more climate pollution. (It also contains up to 12 times as much sulfur, not to mention a slew of heavy metals.) In Canada, the stuff is largely treated like a waste product; the country has stockpiled nearly 80 million tons of it. Here in the U.S., petcoke is sometimes burned in coal plants, but it's so filthy that the EPA has stopped issuing any new licenses for its use as fuel. "Literally, in terms of climate change," says Stockman, "it's the dirtiest fuel on the planet."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-u-s-exports-global-warming-20140203#ixzz2sOXsISRN

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