It seems like we get a new list of greenest, most climate-change-prepared, most bike-friendly etc. cities every week or so. But we never really get tired of looking at these rankings, and checking them against each other to decide where we should fantasize about moving. Today, it's a list of the top greenest cities in North America from Siemens and the Economist Intelligence Unit. This ranking takes into account carbon emissions, land use, transportation, energy usage, buildings, water and air quality, waste, and environmental governance. Drumroll please for the top 10: San Francisco Vancouver New York Seattle Denver Boston Los Angeles …

It's the Atlantic, as you've never seen it before: Cities are red, shipping routes blue, roads green and air networks in white. Click on the image to see the full map of the entire planet.

According to estimates from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the baseline cost of extreme weather (which has always been with us, but which is steadily getting worse due to climate change) in the United States is $485 billion a year -- 3.4 percent of the country's GDP.  This is a complicated number -- it includes not only immediate costs from weather destruction, but also lost crops, power outages, resource usage, retail demand changes, and other indirect effects. Plus, it takes into account the fact that severe weather can be a boon for some industries (snow for ski resorts, for instance, or droughts for …

While we were all distracted by the possibility that New York State will allow fracking for natural gas, two big milestones in the battle to restrict the notoriously environmentally destructive process arrived on successive days: New Jersey bans fracking On June 29, New Jersey became the first state in the Union whose legislature passed a ban on fracking. The vote was overwhelming: After the New Jersey House passed the measure back in March, the state Senate passed it Wednesday with an overwhelming 33-1 vote. Predictably, fossil fuel industry front group Energy in Depth is urging governor Christie to veto the …

A group of energy companies -- like, say, the natural gas industry -- would never, ever mislead the public and politicians about how profitable it could be over the long-term. Obviously, we should just believe the natural gas industry's financial projections, which promise that any negative environmental impacts will be worth the jobs, the profits, and the energy security that come with the promised national gas boom. That's basically been the stance of most legislators in Washington when it comes to natural gas. The picture the industry painted of huge supplies of low-carbon fuel proved really compelling. But now a …

In keeping with the recent trend of wildlife disrupting human activity through sheer numbers, a bunch of jellyfish just shut down a nuclear power station in Scotland. The plant manually shut down operations yesterday because of a "high volume" of jellyfish on its seawater filter screens. (As far as we know, the jellyfish were not having sex at the time, though it's a little hard to tell with jellyfish.) Officials stressed that "at no time was there a danger to the public." Apparently the public of jellyfish just DOESN'T COUNT, DOES IT, FELLAS. No wonder they were going kamikaze on …

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to open up private land in the state to hydrofracking. Children living near Fukushima tested positively for radiation exposure. Want to get all riled up before the weekend? Get your fix of climate skepticism here. Shoppers are more loyal to brands with low carbon footprints. Get your greenwash on today, corporations, or suffer the consequences! In May, the rate of illegal logging in the Amazon doubled: loggers in Brazil are more confident the government will forgive their environmental sins, and apparently they figure, "Why not go for just one more tree?" If that elephant …

Scientists have long known that cows are big contributors to global warming. Livestock produce more than a quarter of the world's global methane emissions every year, and 20 percent of methane emissions in the U.S. It's a side effect of ruminant digestion, and aside from strapping your entire herd into carbon-filter diapers, there's no quick fix -- to cut emissions, you have to carefully manage cattle nutrition so they don't offgas as much. Or so we thought. That was before we discovered wallaby farts.  See, the Tammar wallaby has a digestive system similar to ruminants (i.e. animals that chew their cud). …

Texas is experiencing the driest eight-month period in its recorded history. But in 2010, natural gas companies used 13.5 billion gallons of fresh water for hydraulic fracturing, and that could more than double by 2020. Where's all this water coming from? Oh, it was just lying around, in these aquifers! You guys weren't using it to drink or irrigate or anything, right? Guys? Crockett County, Tx., near San Angelo (which you probably also haven't heard of, but it's not near much else), has gotten less than two inches of rain since October. But water for fracking could soon make up …

Mark Lynas, an author whose pop-sci books about climate change are scrupulous enough to get favorable reviews from the likes of climate scientist Eric Steig, proposed a funny little thought experiment on his blog: Could switching to renewables strip the planet of its sun-protective smog? And if so, will we need to replace it with artificial smog instead? Dirty energy sources like coal and biomass burning are currently filling the earth's atmosphere with a never-ending haze that is cooling the globe by about 1 degree F. If we switch completely to renewables, Lynas postulates, we might have to replace that …