Forget about car emissions for a moment; coal fires, hundreds of which are raging out of control around the world, pump so much carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere that researchers at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science yesterday called them a "global catastrophe." Coal fires burn both above and below ground, usually in abandoned mines or waste piles or in coal seams ignited by fires set to clear trees for farming. They are most severe in China, India, and Indonesia, but are also a problem in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere; some …

Here's another provision to watch out for in the national spending bill: $3.1 billion in disaster assistance for farmers in the wake of this summer's (and, in many places, this winter's) drought. Sounds good -- but if the spending bill is approved, the money will come at the expense of a national conservation program. The brainchild of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the Conservation Security Program was approved last year as one of the very few environmentally redeeming components of the national Farm Bill; it set aside $7 billion to provide payments of up to $45,000 per year to farmers who …

It would seem that preemptive measures are all the rage among anti-environmentalists these days. In Alaska, Gov. Frank Murkowski (R) is awaiting the Interior Department's response to a request he made last year (while still a senator) to prohibit the establishment of new wilderness areas in the state. "Congress set aside all this wilderness, all these national parks and preserves, and we think that we ought to just stop there," said Murkowski spokesperson John Manly. (Fifteen percent of Alaska is designated wilderness.) Meanwhile, in West Virginia, the coal industry has introduced a bill in the state legislature that would prevent …

Chalk one up for Big Energy and its boosters in the White House. On Friday, the General Accounting Office abandoned its efforts to force Vice President Dick Cheney to turn over information about which people he met with while heading up the administration's secretive energy task force. The GAO, Congress's investigative arm, had been fighting for nearly two years to find out who had input into formulating President Bush's biz-friendly energy plan. But under pressure from Republicans, who won control of both houses of Congress in November, the GAO decided not to appeal a December ruling from a federal court …

President Bush yesterday tried out several neat-o gadgets powered by hydrogen fuel cells (a video camera and cell phone, among others) and reinforced the lofty language of his State of the Union speech, saying that he would ask Congress to spend $1.2 billion on "a new national commitment to take fuel-cell cars from the laboratory to the showroom." Enviros and Democratic presidential candidates, however, say the administration's plan is a crock. First, they point out that fuel-cell cars won't be clean unless the hydrogen they run on is generated by renewable energy, rather than from fossil fuels. Second, they aren't …

Dear Umbra, Why does the jet stream move from west to east? Joe Pittsburgh, Penn. Dearest Joe, To get a decent bagel? Image: NASA. There are actually two main global jet streams, the "polar" in the Northern Hemisphere and the "subtropical" in the Southern Hemisphere. The ridiculously simple answer to your question is that jet streams move west to east because the Earth rotates west to east in its orbit. (It also matters that the planet is hotter at the equator than the poles.) A longer explanation would involve Very Complicated Science. Rather than confuse everyone with an overdose of …

Massachusetts is sticking to its guns on clean air, Gov. Mitt Romney (R) announced this morning. The state refused to extend a deadline for heavily polluting power plants to reduce their emissions, meaning they'll have to clean up their acts by 2004. In 2001, then-acting Gov. Jane Swift (R) imposed the deadline on the state's so-called Filthy Five power plants, ordering them to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide by 50 percent. Since then, the owner of one plant, Salem Harbor, has pressured the state to delay the requirement, and the state Department of Environmental Protection seemed ready …

Six GOP senators are throwing a wrench in the Bush administration's plan to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil drilling. The six -- Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, John McCain of Arizona, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois, and Mike DeWine of Ohio -- announced last week that they will oppose plans to attach to a massive budget bill a provision that would open the refuge to oil and gas exploration. The senators seem to be on the same side of the issue as most Americans. A new poll by the …

Former President Bill Clinton will take to the stage with the Rolling Stones this Thursday at an L.A. concert aimed at raising awareness about the looming problem of climate change. Clinton won't be playing the sax, but he will be blowing his metaphorical horn in a speech about the need to tackle global warming, says the Natural Resources Defense Council, organizer of the gig. The show will mark the end of the North American stretch of the Rolling Stones' Licks World Tour.

Los Angeles gets plenty of sunshine, but the city government has dropped the ball on boosting solar power and other clean-energy sources. Almost four years after the launch of a $40 million initiative meant to shift the city toward renewable power sources, the L.A. Department of Power and Water has increased the amount of clean energy it produces by less than half a percentage point, and the city continues to rely on coal, nuclear power, and natural gas. Tens of thousands of L.A. power customers signed up to pay about $3 extra per month to support the development of clean …