The White Roof Project has a simple mission: Paint black roofs white. Here's what that tiny effort gets you, according to the organization (click the picture for a more extensive infographic): A 24 billion metric ton reduction in CO2 emissions, if every roof is painted white by 2030. That's a year's worth of CO2. $5 billion in energy cost savings for the United States. 14 power plants' worth of energy savings in 11 large cities. Reduction in smog, blackout risk, and heat-related deaths. The approval of Bill Clinton, who wrote last week that "Every black roof in New York should …

Chris Drury, a British artist, created this sculpture, entitled Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around, to express the idea that (JUST POSSIBLY) Wyoming's coal industry and its contributions to climate change had something to do with the explosion of pine beetles in the state. (Warmer winters have allowed them to thrive.) The sculpture happens to be installed at the University of Wyoming, which receives just a tiiiiiny bit of funding from the coal industry, like only a couple million dollars. If the university's leaders thought principles of academic freedom and artistic expression would give them a pass on this …

This chart from the United Nations Environment Programme (click to embiggen) looks complicated, sort of like a traffic sign cross-bred with a banyan tree. But it basically just traces the path of greenhouse gases from polluting industries, through uses, out into the atmosphere. So you can tell at a glance, for instance, that energy industries produce by far the most greenhouse gases, or that most of the methane comes from oil processing and livestock.

Oak Ridge, Tenn., a city with a long history of living alongside nuclear industries, will be processing nuclear waste from Germany. They’ll be taking on almost 1,000 tons of material, and the shipments could start coming this year. NPR reports: Radioactive residue left over from the process will be sent back to Germany for disposal, but opponents have voiced concerns that the U.S. will become the world's radioactive waste processor ... "When you're starting to talk about managing the rest of the world's waste, the German waste looks like the beginning of what could be a large flood of material …

Melting Arctic ice is releasing banned chemicals like DDT, which were trapped there back when they were legal. Post-tornado clean-up in Joplin, Mo. is going slowly. Can water heaters store energy captured by wind turbines and solar panels? A startup called GridMobility thinks so. We all know that wind turbines can kill birds, but what if there's a high risk that those birds could be bald eagles? Then you've got a problem. First of all, you could get in big trouble with the feds if an eagle falls prey to your turbine, but second of all the symbolism is terrible. …

The complicated weave of the Ajiro bike would be work-intensive to achieve through conventional means -- it takes a lot of energy to bend bamboo stalks into shape. So instead, design student Alexander Vittouris tensioned the bamboo over a mold as it grew, then harvested a completed bike frame.  There's probably just going to be one Ajiro for now. Bamboo can grow up to three feet a day, but this is still a much slower process than punching out an aluminum bike frame. Who knows, though ... as the energy use of manufacturing becomes a greater and greater concern, maybe …

I mean, Dave Weigel is a journalist! He wouldn't make things up. What a relief! Rush Limbaugh was right, it's not hot at all, it's just those scientists confounding your mind. Incidentally, Weigel tried for an alternate joke, but, uh, it wasn't a joke: Listen to the end of Limbaugh's rant, and weep.

It turns out that Double Rainbow guy, everyone's favorite non-cat meme producer since Tay Zonday, has a name (it's Paul Vasquez) and a face (it's sort of Cheech Marin meets Hurley). He also has an alternative energy platform and a presidential campaign, of sorts. A Facebook app called Votocracy allows normal (for some value of "normal") people to declare their candidacy, garner votes, and even debate each other in a sort of American Idolesque shadow campaign.  In a race where the "serious" candidates have included Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump, it's becoming increasingly hard to distinguish this kind of reality-show …

Feds are allowed to stay home when it snows, but not when it's so hot that the pavement is literally melting. Wha? Miles Grant of the National Wildlife Federation, writing in an unofficial capacity on his blog: If federal government workers were allowed to telework in the most extreme heat (say, on days when the heat index is forecast to be over 105), there would be several real benefits: Air quality. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments is forecasting unhealthy air for the next few days thanks to a combination of heat and ozone pollution. With about 103,000 federal workers …

Which cities eat up the most gas? Mint.com has the lowdown on how often their users buy gas every month, and how much they spend (click for a larger infographic). The slobbiest gas guzzlers, according to Mint data, are San Jose, Calif. and Birmingham, Ala. The daintiest gas sippers are New York, Brooklyn (a kind of New York), D.C., and Boston -- places with robust public transportation systems. (And also, to be fair, places where it's expensive to buy gas -- people who commute into the city would be crazy not to buy gas in their own suburban enclaves, and …