What if you could simply leave your iPhone face-up on a table or windowsill in order to trickle charge it and extend its battery? And what if the same technology that turned its screen into a photovoltaic panel also made its display significantly more efficient than current displays, leading to substantially increased battery life even if you're trapped inside a cave? That's the promise of a new technology called a "polarizing organic photovoltaic," developed by researchers at UCLA. In order to show you an image on a conventional LCD screen, objects called polarizers must switch on and off to shade …

In order to draw attention to the perilous state of the Arctic, "Scottish adventurer" Josh Wishart teamed up with fiver other fellows to row 500 miles across the Arctic sea, starting from Resolute Bay in Canada. The journey should take four to six weeks, and the men will row in three hour shifts in order to stave off fatigue. This epic, never-before-attempted row is possible only because climate change has reduced the volume of ice in the Arctic. The team's core message is that if you're not paying attention to the North Pole, you really ought to be. For example, …

If our utility company gives us too much information about the price of electricity -- a cornerstone of the "smart grid" -- we'll probably use that information to crash the grid and cause massive blackouts, says a new study from MIT.  Giving electricity customers up-to-the-minute information about the price of electricity is supposed to allow the smart grid to integrate renewable power sources even as it saves consumers money. The problem is that another cornerstone of the smart grid -- appliances that save us money by only turning on when electricity crosses a certain price threshold -- could easily cause …

Like the airline industry, the shipping industry objects to the E.U.'s decisions to include it in a emissions trading system. Will the federal government be spending less on disaster response in the future? Somehow “let ‘em drown” doesn’t seem like the best possible debt reduction plan. Australia's carbon tax, which was so hotly disputed that people were sending climate scientists death threats, would apply to just 400 of the country's top polluters. Hydro turbines are going into the Puget Sound by late summer 2013. This coming October, oil will sell for $800 a barrel -- at least in fiction. (Hopefully …

It really sucks to be a lobster fisherperson working in the Long Island Sound. Twelve years ago, 90 percent of the lobsters died off because of pesticides or climate change or both. The ones still there have weird-looking shells, a result of bacteria colonizing the sounds, that keep people from wanting to eat them. Things are so bad some of the lobstermen don't even bother fishing for lobster anymore, says the New York Times: Peter Ringen, 71, with decades of experience in the Sound, has turned to $2-a-pound conch over futile hunts for lobsters. He has about 900 lobster traps. …

Wind turbines are loners. They need to give each other space to be effective. But a new design for wind farms, using a different type of turbines than the giant-fan kind going up all over the place, takes a page from a very social group of animals -- schooling fish -- to create the same amount of energy with shorter turbines, in a smaller area of land. These wind farms use vertical-axis turbines, which are often described as looking like egg-beaters. Like an egg beater's blades, the blades of these turbines move around a vertical pole. (More commonly-used turbines are …

T-rex courtesy of Ryan North Here's what the new post-crash barter economy looks like: People are trading housing for dinosaur services. From Vancouver Craigslist: Do you own more than one property? Do you have so many rental homes with no mortgage payments, yet you still feel unfulfilled? Tired of your illegal tenants whining that there are rats in the walls? Have you always wanted your own dinosaur? Now is your chance my friend. In exchange for one of your properties, I will be your personal dinosaur for one year. I will be at your beck and call, 24 hours a …

Here's one invasive species that's never going to end up on an invasivore menu: the brown marmorated stink bug. (This is actually the most appetizing photo I could find.) They smell when you squish them, they get all up in your house, and they ruined $37 million worth of fruit crops last year. And they're likely to make an even bigger mess this year as they migrate into warmer climates. The stink bugs, which are native to Asia, have no natural predators in the U.S., so they were bad enough when they first showed up in eastern Pennsylvania over a …

The Israeli sand cat is extinct in the wild, so its only hope is breeding programs in captivity. The birth of this stupifyingly cute fuzzball at Safari Zoo in Tel Aviv is therefore really good news -- it could help put the species on the path to recovery and reintroduction. But mostly we just like to look at its face.

King Abdullah of Jordan is probably the world's richest Star Trek fan, which explains why he's able to drop the GDP of Burundi on a theme park to celebrate his pop culture obsession. The good news is that the theme park will also be a showcase for cleantech, and will run on some kind of non-specified "green" power. To which we say: "lupDujHomwIj lubuy'moH gharghmey!" Which is Klingon for "my hovercraft is full of eels."