HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. PRESIDENT: President Obama turns 48 today (or does he?!) and is celebrating his surprisingly controversial birth by having a working lunch with Senate Democrats at the White House. Obama is expected to talk up his health-care and energy agendas, and will also probably push senators to approve $2 billion more into the popular-but-broke "cash for clunkers" program. (Sources: NPR, Huffington Post, Agence France-Presse)

 

BILL ME LATER: What ever happened to the climate bill, anyway? After narrowly passing the House in June, it's been sitting firmly on the congressional back burner while health care has preoccupied most U.S. lawmakers for the last few weeks — but it's not dormant. While a floor vote probably won't happen until October, the Washington Post reports today that lobbyists are already leaning on senators, even before that chamber has begun drafting its version of the bill. Special interests overwhelmed the House bill, swelling it to 1,427 pages, and there's a similar outlook across the Capitol. Reuters examines several possible scenarios for how the Senate's climate bill might evolve, from senatorial tweaks to simply leaving it up to the EPA. (Sources: Washington Post, Reuters)

 

RAIL SIMPLE: Who wouldn't rather take a train from San Francisco to Los Angeles than a car or an airplane? And simply riding the rails from San Antonio to Houston, Chicago to St. Louis, or Miami to Tampa also usually hits the sweet spot between mind-numbing highway drives and hectic airport adventures. While other countries like Spain and Japan can connect most of their territory with high-speed rail, the United States is way too big for that, at least all at once. Instead, America's railroad renaissance will start regionally, linking cities that are too far to drive and too close to fly. Scientific American takes a look at how such a patchwork approach could help get the country's transportation mind-set back on track. (Source: Scientific American)

 

BEST FOOT FORWARD: Responding to a three-year Greenpeace investigation, several of the world's top shoemakers — including Nike, Adidas and Timberland — are demanding an immediate halt to Amazon rain forest destruction from their leather suppliers in Brazil, the Guardian reports. Cattle ranching is the main reason why people are still tearing down the Amazon, and it's doing more than just damaging the world's biggest jungle — tropical deforestation produces about 17 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than even transportation. (Source: Guardian)

 

NO KIDDING: Looking to shrink your carbon footprint? Why not forgo the pitter-patter of other little carbon footprints around the house? According to a new study by Oregon State researchers, having an extra child is nearly 20 times as important as many other eco-friendly life changes people often make, such as driving a fuel-efficient car or recycling. Population growth may not be as rampant or damaging in the United States as in other countries, but each American child ultimately tacks on more than 9,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the average parent's total, or about 5.7 times one person's average lifetime footprint. The researchers say they aren't advocating for any population-control laws, just trying to raise awareness. (Source: LiveScience)

 

MONGOLIAN DEATH WORM: A New Zealand TV reporter and his cameraman are heading to the Gobi Desert this week, both armed with explosives, in hopes of finding the legendary acid-spitting and lightning-shooting Mongolian death worm, the Brisbane Courier-Mail reports. Known as the "intestine worm" because it supposedly resembles a cow's intestine, the five-foot worm is reputed to leap from the sand Tremors-style, spraying concentrated acid on people or shooting them with lightning from its rectum. It's a cryptozoological creature much like Bigfoot or Yeti, but journalist David Farrier says he thinks the worm's existence is more likely because, "If a Mongolian says they have seen a big worm-like creature out in the desert they haven't really got any reason to lie." Farrier gave himself a 5 to 15 percent chance of finding the worm, but didn't indicate how he calculated those odds. (Source: Courier-Mail)

 

— Russell McLendon