Almost a year ago, I drove out to the East Texas pine country, where young men and women were fastening themselves to heavy excavation equipment, enduring scalding blasts of pepper spray from chuckling local sheriff’s deputies. Being there, you could almost believe that these kids were slowing the Keystone pipeline’s…
There’s a growing body of science that says injecting substances underground can cause earthquakes. Here in North Texas, we’ve had plenty associated with the injection of slippery frack water deep into earth. Motionless faults get lubricated into sudden shifting and a country not known for seismic activity suddenly gets active…
While other upscale suburbs are known for having clean air and being far from dirty factories, Frisco went against the grain. The affluent north Texas suburb last year had the distinct honor of being one of only 21 areas in the United States that failed federal air quality standards for…
When it opened last month, the Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden received mostly glowing reviews, and understandably so. It’s hard not to be at least a little awed by a $62 million science playground that packs more than 150 interactive exhibits into eight prime acres at the Dallas Arboretum. For…
It was always the answer. What better way to pave over fears of spills and an unlocked ocean of carbon than by literally paving the soil above the Keystone XL pipeline with a bike path stretching from Canada to the Texas Gulf? The concept, rendered in hilarious detail by the…
Melba Ketchum, the veterinarian-turned-fulltime Bigfoot crusader from Nacogdoches has been riding high this month. First, she and her team released “definitive video and DNA evidence” of the creature’s existence and its kinship with human beings. Then, online animal nomenclature database Zoobank accepted her proposal to give sasquatch the scientific name…
Two months back, the Dallas County Medical Society petitioned the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to crack down on emissions coming from Luminant’s three coal-fired power plants in North and Northeast Texas, which are among the nation’s dirtiest. They based their plea on a white paper commissioned from a Rice…
The black rhino is teetering on the edge of extinction, and it has been for some time. Their numbers have dropped precipitously over the past several decades, dwindling from several hundred thousand a century ago to a couple thousand a decade ago, partly from habitat loss but mostly from poachers…
It’s fun to joke about the filthiness of the Trinity River. It’s even more fun to remind Houston that all that urine and feces and prescription medication we flush down our toilets winds up in their water glasses. By all means, this should continue. At the same time, it’s worth…
Localizing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most confident, depressing predictions yet is no mean feat for journalists. Which is why it helps when actual experts do it for you. Texas Climate News sought out the state’s finest climatologists, oceanographers and public-policy experts. If nothing else, their responses make clear…
At some point the Great Trinity Forest, that relatively untrammeled expanse of foliage in southern Dallas, will have reached capacity for grand, high-profile amusements. That hasn’t happened yet. In November, the Trinity Forest Aerial Adventure Park will make its debut on seven wooded acres off Dowdy Ferry Road just north…
Patrick, the Dallas Zoo’s recently departed lowland gorilla, was never quite a social butterfly, but he wasn’t always quite so angry, either. Embittered by his best friend’s death at the hands of Dallas police in 2004, he retreated further into himself, lashing out at his fellow primates — especially the…
Not long after UT-Austin published an “unprecedented” study (funded by the gas industry, whoops) claiming that fracking wells are safe from methane leaks, a bunch of investors are now accusing one gas company of being dishonest about its methane problem. The natural gas industry has aggressively fought off accusations over…
Dr. Melba Ketchum, the East Texas veterinarian turned Bigfoot-hunting geneticist, is at a loss to explain why the scientific community refuses to take her research seriously. “It’s been rather painful,” she explained in an exclusive, one-on-one interview with WFAA. “I was naive when I went into this. I thought science…
The war for Texas’ lakes continues apace, though it doesn’t look like wildlife officials are holding the line. Despite the state’s best efforts to get us to just dump the damned water out of our boats, zebra mussels may have established beachheads in two more North Texas lakes. DNA from…
Dallas keeps promising not to drill on parkland, yet city officials keep look for ways to allow energy companies to do exactly that. The latest push comes in the form of a draft of Dallas’ proposed fracking law, a long-awaited proposal to outline how natural gas drilling should be regulated…
It’s probably been a while since you read Charlotte’s Web. Maybe a few details from the spider-hatching scene have slipped your mind. If so, here’s a refresher. One fine morning, a tiny spider crawled from the sac. Then another, and another. They were no bigger than the head of a…
Good news: The vast majority of Texans think global warming is real. Seventy percent, according to a just-released study from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. That’s way more than one might expect from listening to the people they choose for statewide office and proof that Texas’ massive, multi-year…
U.S. Representative Ralph Hall isn’t dead. The Rockwall Republican hasn’t even left Congress, forging ahead in a Bob Barker-like battle against the ravages of the time. Despite all that, Hall is now the namesake of a reservoir. Lake Ralph Hall hasn’t actually been built yet. The project, planned for 12,000…
Dallas County recently discovered its sixth person to test positive for the West Nile virus this year, in a season that’s seen one death. It’s a much less troubling situation than last year, when there were 400 human infections and 20 deaths. The Dallas Morning News has an easy explanation…
Last year, we brought you the story of Steve Lipsky, whose little slice of paradise in Parker County became a proxy in the war between the EPA and state regulators. It wasn’t long after Range Resources began stimulating a nearby natural gas well by hydraulic fracturing that Lipsky noticed his…
Next time you’re in Irving, be sure to stop at ExxonMobil’s headquarters and tell the front desk you’re there to give a hug to whoever needs it, because Fort Worth-based Exxon is having a rough couple of weeks. I mean, aside from the $7 billion quarterly earnings. The company’s most…
