The New York Times this a.m. has a handful of stories of interest to locals: a rather long piece recounting the suicide of former Kaufman County District Attorney Louis Conradt Jr., who killed himself Sunday when cops tried to arrest him for soliciting sex over the Internet from a person he thought was a 13-year-old boy; a look at how the Cowboys are faring in the wild card race, now that it looks like they won't win the NFC East; and a piece about how TXU wants to fill the skies with carbon dioxide by building 11 new coal power plants "that will produce copious amounts of global warming gases for decades to come."
Doesn't sound like The Times is too hot on TXU's plans to "put carbon into the atmosphere into the middle of this century or longer." You don't need to be Will Shortz to decipher this particular puzzle. Here are some helpful phrases from the piece: "The operation has released hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide, the main contributor to global warming." "Maybe this is good energy-system planning, or maybe it is environmental brinksmanship." "TXU is embarking on its immense construction campaign without taking account of its role in an emerging environmental catastrophe." "Rick Perry, who has received campaign support from companies that burn or ship coal, has fast-tracked coal permit applications from TXU and other companies." And then there's the entire paragraph:
TXU is not building natural gas plants, which would throw off half as much in carbon emissions as coal plants. In fact, the new plants might sideline some gas plants. The company is considering building a small number of nuclear reactors, which do not produce carbon. It is not aggressively pushing energy conservation, which many see as the cheapest way to satisfy the needs of business and consumers.
Take a deep breath. On second thought, that might be a very bad idea. --Robert Wilonsky