Word: sulfurous
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...lives up to its promise and can economically transform coal into diesel fuel and gasoline, coal-rich countries such as the U.S., China and Germany could depend far less on imported oil. At the same time, acid-rain pollution would be reduced because the liquefaction strips coal of harmful sulfur. Given current world oil prices (about $27 per bbl.), turning coal into gas is economical in China. "A $4-to-$8-per-bbl. increase in the price of oil would make it economically attractive in the U.S. too," says Theo Lee, CEO of Hydrocarbon Technologies...
...1990s, the Clinton Administration was fairly close to striking a deal with the power industry that would have established a comprehensive emissions-trading program. To gain some certainty for their long-range planning, the utilities would agree to mandatory caps on emissions that included not just nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury but also carbon. Companies would have the flexibility of meeting targets in the most efficient manner by buying and selling emissions rights...
...exchange is modeled after the largest and most successful experiment to date involving pollution permits. Under the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, the U.S. government set a cap, or limit, on sulfur dioxide emissions, a contributor to acid rain, and distributed tradable emissions permits. Companies able to reduce their emissions below the cap could sell their unused permits to others. The Environmental Protection Agency says the program has reduced SO[2] emissions more than 30% from 1990 levels and cost industry a mere 20% of what the government originally estimated...
While their hardiness was a big surprise, the microbes' ability to eat hydrogen, sulfur, manganese and other chemicals--a process known as known as chemoautotrophy--was a revelation. Until then, all living systems were thought to depend on photosynthesis, using sunlight as a primary energy source. (Even cave-dwelling or deep-water creatures who never see the sun eat organic matter that ultimately originates from photosynthesis.) But if life could thrive without even indirect contact with sunlight, the amount of potentially habitable real estate on the planet would expand considerably...
...springs aren't particularly scenic, but they are easy to find. Follow the stench of sulfur to a mud-encrusted plateau in the southwest corner of Japan's oldest natural park, Unzen. There, boardwalks loop through clouds of steam and around the three springs. A tangle of steel pipes directs the water to hotels and resorts in the nearby towns of Unzen and Obama, the destinations of choice for Japan's honeymooners, the elderly seeking respite from their rheumatism and anyone preferring a soak to a hike...