Grist List

Enviros cross out ‘Bush’ on lawsuit, write in ‘Obama’

It's official. Environmental groups are disenchanted enough with the Obama administration that they've decided to hit it with the same tactic they used for Bush, a tactic that the environmental movement has relied on since time immemorial to get done what needs to be done: suing the crap out of the government.

Today, a suite of environmental groups that includes NRDC, EDF and Earthjustice revived a 2008 lawsuit they'd first brought against the Bush administration. Its aim is to keep people from breathing nasty, dirty, health-threatening air by forcing the government to tighten smog standards.

Soiled diapers can now end up as roof tiles

Babies! They use so much energy that the best thing you could do to save the human race from climate change might be to avoid having one altogether. But if you choose the reproductive path, at least the 6,000 poopy diapers that your offspring will produce in the course of his or her early years could have a second life as part of your house -- specifically, as the shingles tiling your roof.

This is where your plants will come from after the Ecopocalypse

Wired has posted a series of photos of seed vaults, storage units that bank tens of thousands of seeds in an attempt to preserve biodiversity against threats of extinction and climate change, and we can safely say they're the creepiest way of ensuring that species survive. This is some mad-science stuff!

Oil spill is New Zealand’s worst-ever environmental disaster at sea

It's bad when a tanker strikes a reef. It's worse when that tanker is carrying oil that starts tarring some of your country's nicest beaches. It's even worse when bad weather makes more oil leak from that tanker.

That's the series of increasingly problematic events that's been unfolding off the New Zealand coast, and the country's government is now calling it the worst maritime environmental disaster they've ever dealt with. The weather is keeping response crews from doing their thing, and birds and seals are both at risk. Plus, in addition to oil, the tanker was carrying smaller quantities of materials like ferrosilicon, which have the potential to wreak havoc in their own special way.

The Dead Sea may not be so dead after all

The planet is kind of amazing sometimes. Researchers have discovered plumes of fresh water at the bottom of the Dead Sea, deeper than any previous plumes that had been found. And around the plumes: life. Even though most microbes that live in salt die in fresh water and vice versa, some tough little buggers are hanging on in a space where salinity shifts constantly.

Critical List: Invasive species jump the border; Gulf sheen not BP’s fault

While U.S. border monitors were busy looking for terrorists in cargo containers, a slew of invasive species slipped unnoticed into the country.

Whatever that sheen in the Gulf is, it's not BP's fault, okay??

If carbon is a risk (and it is!), the market should adjust for that, valuing companies with high "exposure to climate change" less than those that are climate-resilient. But since markets don't seem to ever do what they should in theory, that hasn't happened yet.

Talking motorbike runs on poop. That is all.

Here's a bike that runs on biogas from human poo, writes messages in the air, plays music, and features a talking toilet. Is it even worth making jokes about this? Is it even POSSIBLE?

Discarded glass bottles can be used to clean up water

Unless you're stranded on a desert island, you should not throw empty glass bottles in the water. But you SHOULD apparently grind up those bottles, mix the ground glass with lime and caustic soda, and put that in the water to clean out toxic heavy metals.

Australian golf course is infested with sharks

Hey, remember that rumor that sharks were roaming the streets after the Queensland floods earlier this year? That may well have been reality. This Brisbane golf course is infested with 10-foot sharks, who washed into the water hazards during a previous giant flood.