The Morning Briefing: Thurs.

GOING SOFT: We're a country of toilet paper connoisseurs, the New York Times reports this morning; we use more than anyone else — 23.6 rolls per capita each year — and we demand it soft 'n' fluffy, which mostly rules out recycled paper. In fact, only 2 percent of our TP comes from recycled paper, while Europe's and Latin America's recycled ratio is about 20 percent. While up to half of U.S. wipes use paper from tree farms, the rest is from old-growth forests, where trees may be 200 years old and where many threatened animal species are making a last stand. (Source: NY Times)

 

THOU SHALE NOT: The Interior Department has dealt another blow to fossil-fuel development in the Mountain West, as Secretary Ken Salazar on Wednesday blocked a Bush-era plan to open large tracts for oil shale extraction. First, Salazar said, the DOI will study how a shale frenzy might affect the local environment, so it also opened a new round of land leases for research purposes only. "Those who have fantasized that oil shale is a panacea for America's energy needs have been living in a fantasy land," Salazar said. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

 

A MAN ON EMISSIONS: As President Obama unveils the new federal budget today, he's counting on revenue from a carbon-emissions trading system being in place by 2012, the Washington Post reports. Obama called for cap-and-trade legislation during his speech to Congress Tuesday night, and Senate leaders have said they'll introduce such a bill this year. According to the Post, $15 billion of that cap-and-trade money would go to clean-energy projects and $60 billion would go toward tax credits for lower- and middle-income working families. (Source: Washington Post)

 

SALINITY NOW: A novel type of power generation known as "Blue Energy," or salinity power, could turn almost any river delta in the world into a natural, nonpolluting power plant, New Scientist reports. Whether it's the Mississippi or the Ganges, any river that flows into the sea creates an estuary, where freshwater mixes with saltwater. Salinity power is a spin-off of desalination technology; it exploits the chemical differences between fresh and salty water, channeling both into a battery that uses their natural osmosis to generate power. Developers say a proposed project at the Rhine River delta in the Netherlands could generate more than a gigawatt of electricity, or enough to supply about 650,000 homes. (Source: New Scientist)

 

CROC-BLOCKING: Exhausted with crocodiles' stubborn refusal to be relocated, wildlife managers in Florida have begun taping magnets to their heads in an attempt to disrupt the reptiles' "homing" ability. Scientists believe crocodiles use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate, and because they're fiercely territorial, they often return to where they were captured after officials move them to the wild, traveling up to 10 miles a week to get there. By temporarily taping ordinary magnets onto either side of their heads, officials hope to disorient them enough so they can't come back. Unlike the much more common American alligators, American crocodiles are classified as a threatened species, and their small habitat in coastal Florida frequently pits them against people. (Source: Reuters)

 

HASTE MAKES WASTE: That's what many fear will happen with stimulus money that can't find enough "shovel-ready" projects that will actually boost the economy. There's $20 billion in the stimulus package for energy efficiency, much more than any bill in history. The NY Times looks at Knoxville, Tenn., as an example of a city handling the flood of money wisely; city leaders there have been preparing for months to begin weatherizing and modernizing government buildings, foresight that may help its stimulus stipend make jobs and save money in the long run. (Source: NY Times)

 

PSYCHEDELICA: That's the scientific name of a newly discovered species of fish that's covered in trippy peach-and-tan stripes and moves by bouncing on the sea floor rather than swimming. The Histiophryne psychedelica is a type of frogfish, but drastically different from other types known to science. It has forward-facing eyes like humans', a trait its discoverer says he's never seen before. They live among coral reefs and their gelatinous bodies are covered with thick folds of skin to protect them from jagged coral edges. And while other frogfish have been known to push off from the ocean bottom before beginning to swim, H. psychedelica just keeps bouncing, and even seems to prefer crawling with its leglike fins than swimming. (Source: ScienceDaily)

 

— Russell McLendon