Hollywood celebs travel to Arctic to raise global-warming awareness Matt Petersen of Global Green spends his time pondering this weighty question: "[I]n an age and culture that's celebrity-obsessed, how do you in a smart and savvy way use the celebrity to shine the light on the science, on the facts, and on the solution?" When it comes to global warming, the answer is obvious, isn't it? Simply fly Hollywood hotties Salma Hayek and Jake Gyllenhaal to the edge of the Arctic Circle, where they -- with help from some 500 Inuit villagers -- spell out the words "Arctic Warning" on …

293,966 -- population of Iceland3 4,117,827 -- population of Kentucky2 10 -- percentage of Icelanders who believe elves "definitely" exist4 0 -- number of successful elf surveys conducted in Kentucky 11.5 -- percentage of Iceland that is covered by glaciers1 3,240 -- square miles covered by the largest glacier, Vatnajökull1 2 -- tectonic plates visible at Thingvellir National Park5 2.5 -- centimeters a year by which those tectonic plates separate5 1,075 -- years since the world's first parliament was held at Thingvellir6 70 -- percentage of national export income derived from fishing3 2 -- years since the government announced its …

Getting a bird's eye view of the globe. Photo: Marcelo da Mota Silva. The commonplace view of the earth from an airplane at 35,000 feet -- a vista that would have astounded Dickens or Darwin -- can be instructive when we contemplate the fate of our earth. We see faintly, or imagine we can, the spherical curve of the horizon and, by extrapolation, sense how far we would have to travel to circumnavigate, and how tiny we are in relation to this home suspended in sterile space. When we cross the Canadian northern territories en route to the American West …

Congress seeks tax money to make defunct "clean coal" plant dirty again For aficionados of government pork, the energy bill that recently passed the House is the gift that keeps on giving. The latest gem uncovered is a provision that would offer $125 million in loan guarantees to a "clean coal" power plant in Alaska. Now, this pork isn't going to build the plant -- that $117 million ship sailed years ago. No, this new pork is going to convert the "clean coal" plant back into an old-fashioned "dirty coal" plant that, um, works. You see, the experimental facility, originally …

New Yorker launches three-part exploration of climate change Writer Elizabeth Kolbert must have single-handedly accelerated global warming with the jet fuel she burned visiting the Arctic, Iceland, Greenland, Alaska, and the Antarctic to research a big three-part series on climate change for The New Yorker. What did she find? Well, it's all melting. The Alaskan village of Shishmaref is going to be uprooted and moved en masse, thanks to increasing exposure to rising tides and grumpy weather. The Arctic sea ice is melting, thus reducing its reflectivity, thus absorbing more energy, thus melting faster (and so on). Greenland's ice sheet …

Antarctic glaciers rapidly melting Wanna travel to Antarctica, but worried about all that ice? Worry no more. On the Antarctic Peninsula, a 1,200-mile-long mountain chain 600 miles south of Argentina, about 212 of the 244 glaciers are retreating, fast. Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and the British Antarctic Survey studied photos and satellite data from the 1940s to 2001, concluding in the journal Science that, as temps have risen more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit on the peninsula since the 1950s, the glaciers that wrap the mountains there have been retreating at an average rate of about 164 feet a …

Bush climate-change research won't research climate-change effects According to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, the "more research" President Bush is always touting as his response to climate change is overlooking an area some might consider important -- namely, what effects global warming might have on people and the environment (oh, that!). In fact, the GAO report to be released today says that none of the 21 studies of climate change the administration plans to publish by 2007 will include assessments of its possible effects on agriculture, water, energy, or biological diversity (oh, those!). This is in violation of the 1990 …

House passes pork-laden energy bill The House of Representatives approved broad energy legislation yesterday by a vote of 249 to 183. The 1,000-plus-page bill contains some $12 billion in tax breaks and subsidies for energy companies, less than 5 percent of which go to clean energy or energy conservation. It contains a provision that would funnel $2 billion to deep-water oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. It would open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. It would allow "downwind" states to delay meeting air-quality standards until "upwind" states have met them. And it would …

3.7 billion -- world population in 19701 6.4 billion -- world population in 20051 1,535 billion -- kilowatt-hours of electricity used in the U.S. in 19702 3,837 billion -- kilowatt-hours of electricity expected to be used in the U.S. in 20053 6.0 -- percentage of electricity in U.S. consumed in 1970 produced from renewable sources4 6.7 -- percentage of electricity in U.S. expected to be consumed in 2005 produced from renewable sources3 14.7 million -- barrels of petroleum consumed per day in the U.S. in 19705 20.9 million -- barrels of petroleum expected to be consumed per day in the …

The era of cheap oil is coming to an end soon; duck! Cheap oil is running out. A report from the U.S. Energy Department's Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves puts the problem in stark terms: "The disparity between increasing production and declining discoveries can only have one outcome: a practical supply limit will be reached and future supply to meet conventional oil demand will not be available." The exact moment when world oil production maxes out and begins its inexorable decline -- known as "peak oil" -- is the subject of wide disagreement. However, an emerging consensus …