Man, if there's two things you don't have enough of when you're deployed in the desert and insurgents keep blowing up your fuel runs, it's beer and Wii. Wait no, it's diesel and water. Luckily researchers have devised a way for soldiers to turn one into the other. Membranes full of tiny tubes condense vehicle and generator exhaust, turning the vapor into liquid water and stripping contaminants along the way. The average soldier needs about seven gallons of water a day -- for drinking, but also for cooking and bathing and so forth. This new tech could make that amount …

This series of photographs from NASA's Landsat 5 satellite, taken over 26 years from 1984 to 2010, shows the toll mountaintop-removal mining takes on a landscape. You can watch the bombed-out area expand, and see that the "restored" scars never look quite the same. For a close-up look at the effects of mountaintop removal mining, there's The New York Times article on Lindytown, bought out and turned into a ghost town by Massey Energy, which didn't want people living too near its MR operations. (People didn't much want to live there, either, once the mining started -- former residents describe …

Finnish company ZenRobotics has developed a robot that can sort out recyclables from construction trash ... about half the time. Doesn't sound exciting? That's because you haven't seen the company's awesomely over the top trailer. IN A WORLD ... WHERE CONSTRUCTION TRASH MAKES UP 50 PERCENT OF THE WASTE IN U.S. LANDFILLS ... ONLY ONE ROBOT ... CAN SAVE US ALL ... FROM HALF OF THAT.

Politico is reporting this morning that House Republicans are gearing up to blame high gas prices on Obama. His offshore drilling moratorium, they say, is to blame for pump costs rocketing towards $5 a gallon. The GOP hasn't specified yet whether this is not intended to be a factual statement, but: This is not a factual statement. FactCheck.org got out ahead of the noise machine three weeks ago. Tank up on these fast facts so you can spank the congressional Republicans in your circle: Obama's deepwater drilling moratorium had zero effect on gas prices. Domestic oil production was up last …

A group of tree-lovers wants to save giant redwoods by cloning existing trees, reports The New York Times. There are a couple of problems with this plan: Giant redwoods are three things: red, wood, and GIANT. Where are you going to put them? (The group says they have plans for slightly more travel-sized trees as well.) Cloning (from cuttings) is actually a pretty common way to propagate trees, but we’re talking about growing new baby trees in an environment 2,000 years removed from the one they’re adapted to. They might not have the defenses they need to survive in a …

Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, has already made great strides in medicine: He’s the one who discovered that chickens turn you gay. Now he’s applying that innovation to legislation, saving the environment by declaring nature to have rights equal to people. The law would act as a bill of rights for nature, including the right to exist free of human alteration, the right not to be polluted, and the right "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities." Yeah, it sounds good in theory, and it’s based on …

The EPA dodged Republican attempts to hobble it this week-- the continuing resolution on the budget bill is going forward without the riders that would forbid the agency to regulate greenhouse gases. But environmental protections still took some hits. What environmental insults have hung on in the continuing resolution? Interior blocked from enacting a “wildlands policy”: This policy would have allowed the Bureau of Land Management to designate areas as protected “wildlands.” “Wildlands” are more flexible for energy exploration than “wilderness,” but Republicans apparently view any attempt at preserving nature as a slap in the face to their oil exec …

The nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant has leveled up to a 7, or “major accident,” topping out the International Nuclear and Radiation Event scale. That puts it in the same category as Chernobyl, the only other level 7 event in history. Does this mean it's time for us all to put on our radiation hazard suits? Not as bad as Chernobyl: Yes, it's in the same category as Chernobyl, but Hugh Laurie is in the same tax bracket as Bill Gates. There's no level above 7 on the INES scale, so all the bad accidents are gonna be …

Grist’s offices are in Seattle, so we take this one really seriously: Climate change is threatening Costa Rica’s coffee crops. Coffee’s a fussy little plant, and it can’t handle extreme temperatures, so yields are going way down as temperature inches up. And if you think that’s a buzzkill, try this: An independent study by a Berkeley energy analyst found that growing pot indoors uses the same amount of electricity as running 30 refrigerators. Processed cannabis, the study says, gives off 3,000 times its weight in CO2 emissions. Can that possibly be right? Crap, back to mushrooms, I guess.

Okay, maybe we're a little late on this one, but seriously: If you saw it already and you don't want to see it again, GET OUT because it is amazing. Everyone else, take a listen -- NOT AT WORK, it is chock-full of swears. Clap your hands! Sing along! Help unf*ck it up! I'm going to lobby hard to make this Grist's official theme music. (More from my new girlfriend Katie Goodman here.)