Thursday, 12 Oct 2006

Drop Goes the Diesel

Most of U.S. diesel-fuel supply to be cleaner by next week

Diesel fuel will get a major makeover this weekend, thanks to rules drawn up during the Clinton administration and set to take effect on Sunday. (The Bushies would like to get some credit too, for not quashing the rules, like they did so many other Clinton-era environmental advancements.) Cleaner diesel fuel, with 97 percent less sulfur than current diesel, must now make up 80 percent of U.S. diesel supply for on-road vehicles -- and by 2010, it must make up 100 percent. The new fuel formulation will likely cost up to 5 cents a gallon more than diesel now on the market, but will significantly cut down on soot and related emissions, particularly when it's used in new pollutant-filtering on-road diesel engines that must be sold in the U.S. starting in 2007. Engine makers, automakers, and oil companies that had tried to thwart the rules have now seen the writing on the gas tank and are teaming up with environmental groups and the U.S. EPA to actively promote the changes. It's amazing what inevitability can do for an industry's conscience!


The U.S. Green Building Council's LEED guidelines have revolutionized the green-building industry. So why not shoot for the moon and expand those guidelines to apply to entire urban neighborhoods? Sounds good to us. Charles Shaw explains where the council's latest undertaking stands, and profiles a leading architect who just might rock your world -- or at least your 'hood.

Axis of Upheaval

Wobbly earth may contribute to extinction of mammals, study finds

Natural shifts in the earth's orbit and axis correspond to the periodic emergence and extinction of rodents and likely other mammals as well, says a study published today in Nature. Researchers studying 22 million years of rodent fossil records in central Spain found that certain species experienced a slow, fading extinction roughly every million years and every 2.4 million years. The wipeouts correspond with cycles in the ellipticity of the earth's orbit and the perpendicularity and tilt of its axis; the astronomical cycles create periods of global cooling, affecting precipitation, habitat, vegetation, and food availability. The next period of wobbly-earth-induced species turnover is likely tens of thousands of years off; at the rate we're going, we'll probably eliminate most species before it even gets here.


Ever been called a tree-hugger? Ever used the phrase to insult someone else? And just why is it considered an insult anyway? Mark Peters gets all etymological on us as he digs up the roots of tree-huggery, and he suggests some snappy comebacks you can use against the nefarious nuke-kissers out there.

Grist for the Military

Navy divers clean up coastal messes

Navy divers are the latest crazy hippies clamoring to clean up coastal messes. For problems too expensive or vast for civilian government agencies to handle, military divers provide cutting-edge technology and finely tuned abilities -- and in turn, they get to sharpen their diving skillz. This summer, Army and Navy divers helped collect tons of old fishing nets from the bottom of Puget Sound in Washington state -- experience that could come in handy if they one day need to remove harbor-blocking nets during hostilities. Navy divers may also clean up the newly designated national marine preserve in the Hawaiian islands, and plan to remove a 37-acre failed artificial reef of old tires off Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "When you actually see the magnitude of the tires, it doesn't take an environmentalist to know ... we need to get the tires out of there for the good of our country," says Navy Chief Warrant Officer Dan Mikulski. But don't call them tree-hugging (ahem) pansies, he warns: "We're big, bad, hairy-chested deep-sea divers."