oil

Two crazy environmental stories via podcast

I've been catching up on a backlog of podcasts this week (I haven't used my iPod in weeks; in New York City you almost feel alien if you walk the streets without cables in your ears). From one of my favorites, the NPR Environment podcast, two surprising stories.

The first is from their excellent Climate Connections series, created in conjunction with National Geographic. Who knew that Nigeria's natural gas flares are so big they can be viewed from space? As horrifying as it sounds, apparently, "every year, millions of dollars are literally going up in smoke in Nigeria," as oil-drilling companies burn off unwanted natural gas produced during crude- oil extraction.

What makes this practice so egregious, beyond the fact that it contributes more CO2 to the atmosphere than any other activity south of the Sahara, and beyond the fact that the noxious fumes are destroying the respiratory health of Nigeria's people and dirtying their drinking water, is that the very people who live next to these perennial blow torches often don't have electricity themselves.

The CEO of Ford Motor Co. …

.. wants a roughly $6-per-gallon tax on gas. That’s the only way, he says, Americans will stop "demanding" gas-guzzling cars. No comment.

MIT lab rats cook up a less wasteful gasoline engine

Don't hum the requiem for the gasoline engine just yet. MIT brainiacs say it's easier than imagined to flip a car between the usual gas-guzzling state to a low-pollution, ultra-efficient mode.

The researchers have tested a system that can run on a quarter less than the usual amount of gas without needing any fancy fuel. With the flick of a switch, the setup alternates between regular, spark-triggered combustion and experimental homogeneous charge compression ignition.

In the latter system, premixed fuel and air combust when compressed, spewing less soot and NOx from the engine. Volvo has explored the hybrid technology, but many kinks would need to untangle before you could get behind the wheel.

If car makers adopted such hybrid gasoline ignitions, the petroleum wouldn't get any cleaner, but less of it would be used, potentially adding a few miles per gallon of efficiency to a car. That might keep the grins up at oil companies and gas stations -- but in dreamland, only for a fleeting moment, as the world weans off of fossil fuels. Right?

This and other stopgap car-greening measures of now and the near future are giving people more driving options than ever. What's more interesting -- the novelty of this innovation, or that it's reaching the not-quite-there-yet phase of development more than a century after Daimler and Benz got props for the modern gas engine?

It’s not the same as a carbon tax, and it’s not cool

I’ve noticed that lots of people talk about a carbon tax and a gas tax as if they’re interchangeable, or the same thing, or connected parts of some larger package. That’s bad. Please stop it. A carbon tax is just that: a tax on carbon content. It could take numerous forms, but it’s generally agreed […]

Enemies of the human race

Last week, I put up a post explaining that BP will be increasing their dumping of toxic waste into the Great Lakes.

Congress overwhelmingly approved a resolution condemning BP's dumping -- a resolution sponsored by Rahm Emanuel, a powerful Democratic Congressman.

Now, thanks to some fine investigative reporting by the Chicago Tribune, we find out that BP has been dumping mercury as well, and will continue to do so:

Federal records analyzed by the Tribune show BP puts 2 pounds of mercury into the lake every year from its sprawling plant 3 miles southeast of Chicago in Whiting, Ind. That amount is small compared with the mercury that falls into the water from air pollution, but mercury builds up in the environment and is so toxic that even tiny drops can threaten fish and people.

A little-noticed exemption in BP's controversial new state water permit gives the oil company until 2012 to meet strict federal limits on mercury discharges.

How coal CO2 is different from oil CO2

Our top climate scientist has sent out a really, really long email (where does he find the time?), mostly discussing comments on his recent essay on coal. I think Hansen is the clearest thinker on climate among the top scientists in the field, so I will reprint the email, breaking it up into several postings. The first one addresses "Coal-CO2 versus Oil-CO2":

It’s easy being not green

In an effort to keep expanding the flow of oil, companies such as BP have been trying to extract oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, which is like trying to drink coffee after you've dumped it into sand. The process is so energy-intensive that there is talk of putting the world's largest nuclear power plant on top of the tar sands in order to heat them up enough to use them, and lakes of toxic water have been created there.

And where will that goop go to get processed? BP has decided that it would like to process much of it on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, at its huge refinery, and they have been given a waiver by Indiana and the U.S. EPA to expand their pollution dumping, according to the Chicago Tribune:

The massive BP oil refinery in Whiting, Ind., is planning to dump significantly more ammonia and industrial sludge into Lake Michigan, running counter to years of efforts to clean up the Great Lakes.

Indiana regulators exempted BP from state environmental laws to clear the way for a $3.8 billion expansion that will allow the company to refine heavier Canadian crude oil. They justified the move in part by noting the project will create 80 new jobs.

Under BP's new state water permit, the refinery -- already one of the largest polluters along the Great Lakes -- can release 54 percent more ammonia and 35 percent more sludge into Lake Michigan each day. Ammonia promotes algae blooms that can kill fish, while sludge is full of concentrated heavy metals.

Mystery ads

There’s a series of very strange political videos out recently on YouTube. They parody Republicans, but purport to be campaign ads for Rudy Giuliani. Nobody knows who’s making them, or why. So mysterious! This one’s mildly amusing on global warming and oil: (h/t: reader KW)

Shell and Nat Geo team up to create 5.4 million pieces of trash

A rant: I'm a big National Geographic dork, so it pains me to kvetch about the ton of crap that comes with each issue. Once relieved of its "recyclable" plastic baggie, the fumes usually make me want to hang it on the clothesline for a while to air out, and I would, except a zillion junky inserts would festoon the lawn (excepting the sometimes great map supplement).

But this month's garbage haul topped it all, as a promotional DVD tumbled to the kitchen floor. Called "Eureka," it's a slick nine-minute commercial for Shell Oil dressed up as a movie, complete with a Hollywood score and gauzy cinematography, wherein our hero, the troubled but lovable petroleum engineer with receding hairline, struggles mightily with the problem of how to get more precious oil out of the earth without disturbing a nearby coral reef system, and remains stumped until he looks into his heart and is given the key by a child. Really. And that's not all.