Science and Technology

Feds: Greatest Risk for Summer Power Grid Problems Is in Texas

It's that time of year again, when the feds single out Texas' precariously thin power reserves. Even California -- a state not known for electrical reliability -- is projected to experience fewer problems with its power grid as the summer heat drives residents to their thermostats. A reserve margin ... More >>

Does Free Streaming Help Album Sales? It Worked for Daft Punk, At Least.

Last week, on Wednesday, May 29, Steve Knopper of Rolling Stone.com detailed Daft Punk's domination of the Billboard album chart with the release of their eagerly-awaited Random Access Memories. The article moves into territory deeper than simple retail numbers, though. Knopper even dug into the num ... More >>

Coal Is Making a Comeback, and Nobody Burns it Like Texas

For a time, coal was moribund, on life support. We thought perhaps the country was permanently shrugging off its dependence on the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Coal-fired power plants were being mothballed en masse. The share of electricity generated by them fell 25 percent between 2005 and 2012. ... More >>

Chris Hughes is an Engineer Who Knows the Difference Between Correct and True

Every community has its movers and shakers. Some are more outwardly apparent and get the social accolades, while some go unmarked by much of the community that they impact. Musician, college professor, sound engineer, poet and Denton resident Chris Hughes is of the latter category -- motivated by ma ... More >>

In the Wake of Spills, the EPA is Urging Tighter Review of the Proposed Keystone Pipeline

Back in March, the Keystone XL pipeline's approval looked practically assured. Construction of the 1,179-mile leviathan, connecting Alberta's tar sand mines with Texas Gulf Coast refiners, was already well underway in Texas. The State Department said Canadian tar sands production would proceed apace ... More >>

Texas Sues the Feds, Part Infinity: Greg Abbott Wants to Take Greenhouse Gas Challenge To Supreme Court

Last summer, Texas, Big Oil interests, the automotive industry and other assorted industrial polluters were dealt an unambiguous defeat in a legal challenge to dismantle greenhouse gas regulations. The Feds, a federal appeals court panel ruled, were "unambiguously correct" for setting limits on carb ... More >>

Trinity East's Vapor Chase

Drilling thousands of feet into the earth is a cakewalk compared with dealing with City Hall.

Angela Hunt and Scott Griggs Want a Vote On Trinity East Drillsites in 30 Days

Before term limits and elections change the complexion of the Dallas City Council in unknowable ways, Scott Griggs and Angela Hunt want an up-or-down vote on proposed natural gas wells along the Trinity River. Last month, the Dallas Plan Commission voted down the permits for drilling outfit Trinity ... More >>

The Biggest Mistake Most Bands Are Making With Facebook

Are you a musician? Is your group having issues? Ask Fan Landers! Critic Jessica Hopper has played in and managed bands, toured internationally, booked shows, produced records, worked as a publicist, and is the author of The Girls' Guide to Rocking, a how-to for teen ladies. She is here to help you ... More >>

Okay, Illegal Downloads Probably Are Hurting The Music Industry

This would have surprised me no matter who had turned it up, but there was a special irony in learning that illegal music downloads "aren't hurting the music industry" from a beleaguered print magazine's free-news arm: Illegal downloads aren't hurting the music industry, new study claims | ti.me/10 ... More >>

Plan Commission Prepares to Vote for the Second Time on Fracking Along Trinity River This Thursday

For Trinity East, the Fort Worth-based shale gas producer, the Dallas Plan Commission meeting this Thursday is make or break. Nearly six years ago, the company bid on drilling city-owned land while Dallas sought to shore up a budget shortfall. Since then, the company shelled out tens of millions of ... More >>

Rafael Anchia Files a Bill to Help Texas Export its Natural Gas

State Representative Rafael Anchia of Dallas filed legislation Friday that he hopes will position Texas to lead the sustainable age. He describes it as a launching point for a dialogue in the Legislature, a "shell" of a bill that will eventually drive workforce development for the next generation of ... More >>

Whole Foods Announces GMO Labeling and Transparency Goal

Austin-based Whole Foods Market has announced that by 2018 all products in U.S. stores must be labeled to indicate if they contain any genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This move by the natural and organic foods retailer marks the biggest step in a growing movement led by consumers and various ... More >>

How the Bastards Win: A Greedy Lying Bastards Review

State Department's New Keystone XL Pipeline Report Proves Battle to Stop Tar Sands Is Probably Already Lost

On Friday afternoon came the unheralded release of a pretty important preliminary analysis from the State Department regarding the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, a conduit for diluted bitumen mined in Alberta and destined for the Texas Gulf Coast petroleum refineries. The takeaway, however, has to ... More >>

ERCOT Says There May Not Be Enough Juice in the Power Grid To Prevent Rolling Blackouts This Summer

Just in case all this temperate whether has lulled you into the perception that the Texas power grid doesn't have the thinnest margin of safety between lights on and lights out anywhere in the country, here's a reminder: Summer is coming. ERCOT, the grid operator for most of Texas, says the odds th ... More >>

City of Dallas Owns Stake in Irving Well That's Already Been Drilled By Trinity East

Before City Manager Mary Suhm struck a secret side deal with natural gas producer Trinity East to drill on parkland in the Trinity River floodplain, there were two, lesser-known gas wells situated in Irving that Dallas stood to collect royalty checks on. According to Railroad Commission of Texas d ... More >>

Plano Lawmaker Authors Bill to Strip Cities of Right To Regulate Oil and Gas Drilling

State Representative Van Taylor, a real-estate investment banker from Plano, has introduced legislation that would settle, once and for all, who gets the last word on drilling under private property: That would be the Railroad Commission of Texas. The bill, filed Tuesday, would strip from Texas mun ... More >>

Dallas' City Plan Commission Just Got a Very Special Workshop on How Safe Gas Drilling Is

When we last left the beleaguered members of the City Plan Commission, they were opting to once again delay a vote on energy company Trinity East's application to drill for natural gas in the floodplain along the Trinity River. This morning, the CPC was subjected to a four-hour workshop on gas drill ... More >>

Environmental Groups Wants EPA Investigated Over Dropped Parker County Case

Greenpeace, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Public Citizen -- along with more than 80 other groups from across the country -- are calling on the EPA Inspector General to investigate the agency's withdrawal from legal action against a company accused of contaminating a water well through its ... More >>

Mary Suhm's Drilling Memo Shows Typical City Hall Pattern: Decide, Then Pretend to Listen

So Mayor Mike Rawlings responded, sort of, to Schutze's post this morning about City Manager Mary Suhm's double-super-secret letter of understanding with gas drilling company Trinity East, in which she promised the city's staff would do its level best to get the company the permits it needs to drill ... More >>

Plan Commission Puts Off Vote on Fracking Permits, Begging City Council to Do Something

The Dallas Plan Commission voted to delay any decision on permitting natural gas wells in the Trinity River floodplain, telegraphing a clear message Thursday to City Council: Your move. Commissioner Gloria Tarpley remains none too pleased about being asked to consider a permit that currently runs af ... More >>

EPA: Dallas-based Luminant Produces a Hell of A Lot of Greenhouse Gas, And So Does Fracking

The Environmental Protection Agency -- that scourge of freedom-loving Texans -- just released a nifty little interactive greenhouse-gas database that will almost certainly threaten your liberty, the free market and the Second Amendment, somehow. For starters, the data it compiled indicates Dallas- ... More >>

A Year Since Disclosure Law, Fracking Fluid Remains a Mystery

A year ago, a Texas law was supposed to bring the raw ingredients used in hydraulic fracturing out of the shadows and into the sunlight. The process, which involves blasting millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals into shale formations a mile below the surface, isn't subject to the federal ... More >>

Texas Lawmakers Want a Ban on Texting While Driving. But Do the Bans Even Work?

In Austin yesterday, state lawmakers were joined by Texans whose family members were killed in texting-related car accidents for an emotional press conference in support of a texting-while-driving ban proposed by Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, and Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo. A nearly identical ... More >>

In Texas, a Company is Now Fracking Uranium

Because injecting mysterious chemical cocktails deep underground to release hard-to-reach deposits of natural gas hasn't proved controversial enough, miners are staking out a new frontier: uranium fracking. Yep. Uranium Energy Corp., a Canadian company with extensive operations in the "uranium belt ... More >>

The EPA Cut a Deal To Drop Lawsuit Against Fracker in Parker County Case of Flaming Water

We've long wondered why EPA backed off of a lawsuit against Range Resources, the driller accused of contaminating a Parker County man's water well with natural gas and levels of benzene, a carcinogen, above safe drinking water standards. It issued an endangerment order against the company in Decembe ... More >>

U.S. Electricity Grid Watchdog to ERCOT: You Aren't Doing Enough to Keep Lights on in Texas

Gerry Cauley, the chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Council, the national, industry-funded grid-integrity watchdog, is pretty worried about Texas. Power-reserve margins here have slipped below the levels recommended to meet peak demand, and future projections show it will on ... More >>

Absence of Two Plan Commissioners Could Tip the Balance in Favor of Fracking

It seemed a bit puzzling last week when Joe Alcantar, chair of the City Plan Commission, asked that the CPC reconsider Trinity East's request to drill in the Trinity River floodplain, which the body had just gotten through denying. Perhaps Alcantar, who voted in favor of Trinity East's proposal, ha ... More >>

Proposed Frack Site on Trinity River Floodplain Will Include a Gas Processing Plant

Trinity East intends to sink natural gas wells in the Trinity River floodplain, but it isn't the well pad itself that will consume most of that controversial real estate -- it's the natural gas processing plant they plan to set up right next to it. According to site plans for the Elm Fork lease, T ... More >>

Dallas Plan Commission To Reconsider Illegal Floodplain Fracking, For Some Reason

Last time the City Plan Commission voted to deny a request to frack the Trinity River floodplain, its rationale seemed pretty clear: For now, it runs contrary to a city law that says fracking land prone to flooding isn't such a swell idea. The commissioners felt plum awkward on December. 20. With l ... More >>

Protesters Are in the East Texas Trees Again to Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline

As of around 2:30 yesterday afternoon, two Keystone XL pipeline protesters were perched atop platforms strung through the trees in East Texas, aiming to block construction of what may soon become the longest pipeline in the Western Hemisphere. The controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which could be ... More >>

Hold Me, Nerd. Things Might Get Crazy.

As City Plan Commission Takes No Action On Gas Drilling, XTO Reportedly Pulls Its Drilling Request [Updated]

Back in September, using the format of a totally ridiculous board game, we recapped the fight over gas drilling on land owned by the city of Dallas. At that point, the drilling task force had long since wrapped up its work, and a vote from the City Council on new drilling regulations was imminent, w ... More >>

Former EPA Chief Al Armendariz Said Frackers Lit a Well on Fire, So the Frackers Lawyered Up

Range Resources, a company that fracks shale formations across America, wants controversial former EPA regional chief Al Armendariz to shut up about what happened in Parker County. The company's lawyer sent him a letter recently insisting that "(he) cease from making further false and disparaging co ... More >>

Texas Electricity Generators Got Another Big Bailout from State Energy Regulators Yesterday

Here we are, some 10 years into the deregulation of the Texas electricity grid, and a crisis approaches. Supply, it is predicted, will not keep pace with demand in the very near future. Generators say electricity prices are simply too low to justify the financing of new power plants. In fact, in at ... More >>

Clean Energy Coalition Calls for PUC to End Foot-Dragging on Solar Regulations

Wind, sun and bullshit: Texas has plenty of all three, and we've done a good job converting wind to electricity. So, why hasn't the sunny Lone Star State done more to create more power from the sun? Well, you could blame the bullshit. Today in Austin, The Clean Energy Works for Texas coalition, a ... More >>

The Printable Gun: The Times Is Freaking Out About a Still-Nonexistent Invention

Last week, we told you about Cody Wilson and his group Defense Distributed, which would very much like to create a printable gun using a 3D printer. Not so much because Wilson plans on stockpiling weapons in his dorm room, but because, as he told us, he's trying to make a point about civil libertie ... More >>

"Don't Frack My Park Day" Comes to White Rock This Weekend

On Saturday, a tad more than 1,400 people are expected to turn out to clean up their local green space for Dallas' It's My Park Day. The city launched the annual event last year as a way to give neighbors a sense of ownership of their parks and, one assumes, to squeeze a little bit of free labor out ... More >>

Report Predicts More Shutdowns of Coal-fired Power Plants, But Not in Texas

Rock-bottom natural gas prices have forced the wonks over at the Brattle Group to revise their national prediction for the number of coal-fired power plants likely to retire in the coming years steeply upward. And when we say steeply, we mean by some 25 gigawatts, or roughly enough electricity to po ... More >>

FrackNation Creator Phelim McAleer Fibs About Parker County's Flaming Hose Case

Fracking is finally getting the Hollywood treatment. Promised Land, an anti-fracking film conceptualized by The Office's John Krasinski, co-written by Dave Eggers, starring Matt Damon and Hal Holbrook, and directed by Gus Van Sant (Milk, Good Will Hunting), is set in a hard-luck Pennsylvania farming ... More >>

A Moron's Guide to the Fracking of Dallas

In this week's print edition, staff writer Anna Merlan provides a handy guide to natural-gas drilling debate in Dallas. Read on for a primer, a glossary of terms, a look at the opponents and supporters and a special fracking board game! Important civic issues have a way of sneaking up on you. They ... More >>

New Study Shows Fracking is Bad For Dallas' Air Quality. Environmentalists Want City Hall to Take Note

Much of the fracking debate has focused on if and how carcinogens like benzene and hexane find their way into the air and water supplies. Less attention has been paid to the impact of gas drilling on ozone levels, which is significant. Just how significant is hinted at in a new study published in th ... More >>

How Texas Came Within an Atom's Breadth of Discovering the God Particle

Who's Watching the Watchers in Review of Controversial UT Fracking Report?

University of Texas prof Chip Groat's ties to the natural gas industry raised a few eyebrows last month after a report he served as lead researcher on gave the hydraulic fracturing process a clean bill of health. "New Study Shows No Evidence of Groundwater Contamination from Hydraulic Fracturing," t ... More >>

After Dueling Presentations, City Council Still Isn't Quite Sure What To Do About Gas Drilling

We promised you a throwdown during yesterday afternoon's gas drilling hearing before the city council, the first step towards an updated ordinance on drilling within city limits. Dallas Drilling, meanwhile, guaranteed a "smackdown." It's possible in retrospect that those were slight overstatements, ... More >>

How Do You Get From Dallas to Houston in an Electric Car? Wait About Five Years.

When you set aside any aesthetic hangups and knee-jerk assumption that any vehicle without an internal combustion engine is a piece of junk, it's pretty hard to argue that electric cars aren't a good idea. If we're are going to drive anyway -- and current habits and decades worth of automobile-centr ... More >>

The Frackers and the Environmentalists Will Square Off at Dallas City Hall This Week

This was all supposed to be wrapped up months ago. The City Council formed the Gas Drilling Task Force more than a year ago, which was initially scheduled to wrap things up and have a final recommendation by November. A handful of issues -- proper setbacks, whether to allow drilling in parks and flo ... More >>

Lead Researcher of UT Fracking Report Has Substantial Ties To Industry

Back in February, I wrote about a heavily publicized report released by the University of Texas Energy Institute that billed itself as the authoritative guide for regulators wrestling with the extraction of natural gas from shale formations and the novel combination of directional drilling and hydra ... More >>

Associated Press Says Fracking Debate Based on Bad Science. What Science?

The Associated Press has news for the people who live above the shale formations experts say have transformed America's energy terrain: Critics of the gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing are as guilty of hyperbole, or downright dishonesty, as the industry's most ardent defenders. T ... More >>