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Daryl Hannah joins tar-sands protest

It can be mildly annoying when movie stars get activist, because it usually just means looking sincere while wearing the ribbon color of the day. Which is why it's kind of cool that Daryl Hannah, who has never really stopped defending the environment since she came out of the ocean in 1984, is headed down to the Keystone XL protests where people are being arrested left and right. 

Jon Huntsman speaks out on climate change

In a tweet last week, Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman made the apparently super-controversial claim that he "trust[s] scientists on global warming." This weekend, he went a step further, telling ABC's Jake Tapper that his opponents' opposition to the idea of climate change is wrongheaded and extremist.

'I'm scared out of my mind' — but still getting arrested to stop the tar-sands pipeline [VIDEO]

More than 100 activists have been arrested so far for protesting against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in front of the White House. Watch on video.

Climate change makes alien invasion more likely

Update: Depressingly, this wasn't funded by NASA at all, although one of the authors is from NASA's planetary science division (he worked on it in his free time). It's still a good read though. (Thanks, Kate Sheppard!)

Here's good news for people who have been trying to draft the tinfoil-hat crew into the fight against climate change: A genuinely not-at-all-made-up-by-me NASA not NASA study posits that global warming could alert extraterrestrial civilizations that humanity is getting too big for its britches, and prompt them to attack us.

PETA is starting a porn site

PETA has finally decided to drop the pretense that they're about something besides ladies in underwear. When .xxx domain names go into action in September, your friendly neighborhood animal rights crazies will be first in line --  and they presumably don't just intend the site for closeups of cow udders and literal beaver shots, but for the barely-clad, barely-legal college students that have become their trademark.

The New York Times thinks the tar-sands pipeline sucks. Here’s why.

The New York Times has come out with an editorial position on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, and it’s unusually definitive, considering that we still have news media trying to represent “both sides” of the climate change “debate.” Here’s how they break it down.

One thing the fall of Tripoli won't get us is cheap gas

It would be natural to imagine that the fall of Tripoli would mean a significant decrease in the cost of oil and the pain that the average consumer feels at the pump. After all, in February, when unrest in Libya commenced, oil prices hit a two-year high. Libya is only the 15th biggest oil exporter in the world, but the oil it exports is of a particularly desirable type.

Up close and personal with blight fungus and bugs

2011 is the International Year of Forests, and as part of their efforts to promote the sustainable forestry, the National Association of State Foresters, which represents state forestry agencies, and the National Network of Forest Practitioners, granted a fellowship to photographer Josh Birnbaum to document the state of the nation's forests.

Birnbaum's first stop was in West Virginia, where he hung out with young foresters (pictured above), visited with the wood industry, traveled with researchers to a post-mining reclamation area, and documented blight fungus.

Levitt to Beaver: Suburbia gets a mixed-use makeover

Designers set out to make Levittown, N.Y. -- the original suburban gold standard -- more livable and less car-dependent.

Helmet laws get in the way of bike-sharing programs

Bike-sharing systems are popping up in cities all over the world, but they've yet to take hold in places where bike helmets are mandatory. Is it time to change the rules?