Here's a bizarre science experiment: Researchers at the U.K.'s Birmingham University are fitting 50 wild penguins with heart monitors to measure the effects of climate change on their habits:

The 'guinea pig' penguins live on the Crozet Islands, in the southern Indian Ocean, about 1,500 miles north of the Antarctic.

The monitors record each penguin's heart rate, location, the surrounding pressure and hence water depth, and the temperature at the back of its throat, telling the scientists when it has swallowed a cold fish.

The birds, famously awkward and ungainly on land, are released back into the wild to go on their usual diving expeditions and caught again a few months later when they return to land to breed.

The scientists expect to find that the flightless birds are swimming and waddling further afield to find food. They'll compare these results to data from the control group, ten penguins that were run through their paces on treadmills while their vital stats were recorded.

So, what does a penguin on a treadmill look like? Click on the video below to find out:

Fidel Castro has denounced the United States' recent drive towards ethanol production as "sinister" and a threat to the "hungry masses" of the world. Castro, who clearly chooses his reading material with great discernment, made the comments in an op-ed piece for Granma, a newspaper controlled by the Cuban Communist Party. Castro has been unwell for many months, but his hatred of the hegemon to the north appears undimmed. The story's headline read "Condemned to premature death by hunger and thirst more than three billion people." Castro described this figure as "cautious," and issued dire warnings about the West converting imported corn to ethanol while millions starve.

There is a grain of truth in Castro's words. Plenty of politicians are looking to cash in on the recent surge in eco-awareness. Ethanol is the perfect vehicle for such opportunists, who couldn't care less about the world's poor. But for my money, Castro is less concerned about the world's starving than about one man in particular: Hugo Chavez. Chavez's Venezuela currently supplies 13 percent of the US's oil imports and generously subsidizes Cuba to infuriate the United States. The last thing Chavez wants or Cuba needs is a greener U.S. energy policy dampening global oil demand. A few thousand words in Granma will go a long way to keeping Castro's sugar daddy sweet. Sick or not, El Commandante is a shrewd operator.

Here's a novel idea: Buy up carbon credits by the boat load, never emit any carbon, and thereby help to reduce the worldwide output of greenhouse gases. As the demand for credits soars, the value of individual credits will skyrocket, and carbon-reduction technologies will become more cost-competitive. At least, that's the theory.

Just last month, CO2quota.org set up a foundation to collect funds and purchase carbon credits—credits they plan never to use. In exchange for giving money, donors receive a certificate detailing how many tons of carbon they've kept out of the atmosphere. It costs about $19 to offset one ton of carbon emissions. (That's a bargain: $28 will buy you just one ton of carbon emissions using green tags.) CO2quota.org says that they buy their credits from The Nordic Power Exchange, and that Deloitte watches over their books. 

Personally, I'm skeptical. To me, this whole scenario sounds about like ripping up $100 bills to help fight inflation. So far the foundation has offset roughly 185 tons of carbon emissions, which actually isn't much—it's the amount of carbon produced by about twenty average U.S. households in a year. I suspect that similar savings could be achieved if those who bought credits just switched to energy-saving lightbulbs. 

But any environmental movement that relies on the generosity of individuals to donate, volunteer, or otherwise sacrifice our way to a greener future will never work, simply because the problem is too big. The only way green technologies will overtake their older counterparts is for the market to deem them to be more profitable.

On top of that, a system as flawed as the Kyoto Protocol can never be the key to solving our climate crisis. The only credits CO2quota is buying up are those issued to companies who cannot meet current CO2 Kyoto targets. Buying the credits will do nothing to help lower the current targets—and it will have no effect on the world's biggest carbon producers, China and the United States, since they don't fall under Kyoto's jurisdiction.

Ultimately, I hope a group like CO2quota proves me wrong.  But first they should probably hire a copy editor:

“The more CO2 quotas we buy – the more expensive it gets for the industry to pollute with CO2. Hopefully, this will make them rethink the continued use of fusil fuels. Let’s buy back our climate!”

I'll take a rain check.

RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP

At the end of January, 75,000 angry people marched in Mexico City to protest the exorbitant price of tortillas. Like much of what happens in Latin America these days, it didn't attract much attention in the United States. But the discontent of poor Mexicans is just the tip of the iceberg in a region that depends heavily on corn.

What's going on? The ethanol boom in the United States is pushing up the price of corn, and that means food prices in the Western Hemisphere and around the world are also on the rise. For a Bush administration deeply worried about anti-American leftism in Latin America, that's a problem. As Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute puts it in this week's Seven Questions:

Our refrigerators are stuffed with corn: milk, eggs, cheese, chicken, pork, beef, yogurt, ice cream—these are all corn products. The risk is that by converting so much of our grain into fuel for cars, we will drive up the price of grain and create chaos in the world grain markets. This could mean urban food riots in scores of low- and middle-income countries around the world.

How can we avoid this dangerous situation? Read the interview to find out. 

 In 2001, atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen theorized that particles suspended in the atmosphere (dust and soot) were blocking up to 15 percent of the sunlight meant to reach the ground in many parts of Asia. Back then, this was considered to be a bad thing—but today, aerosols are hailed as a potential foil to global warming. The map above is a NASA image generated by two of their Earth-imaging satellites, Terra and Aqua. The dark orange areas represent high concentrations of airborne particles, while the lighter areas depict clearer atmosphere. The grey areas have not been mapped. 

NASA notes:

The global aerosol patterns in 2006 were similar to previous years. High aerosol concentrations were observed over western and central Africa (a mixture of dust from the Sahara and smoke from agricultural fires), northern India (where urban and industrial  pollution concentrates against the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains), and northeastern China (urban and industrial pollution). Aerosol optical depth appeared unusually high in 2006 over Indonesia, probably as a result of increased fire activity there. The image also shows the impact of fires in Russia’s boreal forest, which spread aerosols into the Arctic.

The high res version is splendid.

WILLIAM PHILPOTT/AFP

The company formerly known as British Petroleum has finally acknowledged that it tried to cut corners on environmental safety in order to save money prior to the March, 2005, Texas refinery blast that killed 15 people and injured 500. BP successfully lobbied against stricter environmental controls in Texas, which would have forced BP to upgrade the exhaust system that ultimately exploded. Susan Moore, BP's lobbying chief, was even given a $1,000 bonus for saving BP $150 million in monitoring and equipment upgrades.

BP has been in hot water over the past few years for some questionable practices. In addition to facing accusations that it tried to manipulate propane prices in 2004, the company has also had to close down part of its Alaskan operations in March, 2006, after around 267,000 gallons of crude oil leaked out of one of its pipelines and prompted a safety investigation by U.S. regulators. Then six months later BP had to excavate a 50-year-old underground pipeline after 1,000 barrels of gasoil spilled in Long Beach, California. Despite these glaring errors, BP still managed to make a $22.3 billion profit last year. If BP is not intending to move "Beyond Petroleum" just yet, let's at least hope that it will stop cutting corners when it comes to environmental safety.

African elephants are under threat again despite a 1989 ban on poaching the animals for their ivory tusks. A new study led by Samuel K. Wasser of the University of Washington estimated that around 23,000 elephants were killed illegally in 2006 alone, or one in twelve of the entire African population (when you exclude Botswana).

The striking finding is yet another sign that Asia's economic boom is having unexpected consequences around the world, since ivory is highly coveted in Japan and China for use in jewelry and for "hankos," cross sections of the tusk that are popular for use as stamps. Since the world largely lost interest in protecting African elephants during the 1990s, wholesale prices for ivory have skyrocketed to $750 per kilogram in those countries, turning tusk smuggling into a highly lucrative business and decimating the elephant population.

That's not all Wasser and his colleagues found. Taking DNA data information from the largest 535 pieces from a huge cache of smuggled ivory seized in 2002 by the authorities in Singapore, the interdisciplinary team of researchers used a new method to narrow down the range of possible geographic origins for the seized ivory. They quickly ruled out forested areas, honing in on the savanna that crosses the south-central portion of the continent. Their finding embarrassed the government of Zambia, which had claimed in documents that only 135 elephants had been killed illegally in the 10 years prior to the seizure, a number far below Wasser's estimate.

Holding African states accountable is key to halting what Wasser calls "a widespread slaughter of elephants that is getting worse by the day." But countries like Zambia have few resources with which to combat sophisticated ivory smuggling networks with deep pockets and international reach. Saving African elephants from possible extinction will require a global approach, Wasser argues, including public awareness campaigns in Asia (enlisting, say, Yao Ming as an advocate could help) and international aid to overwhelmed African governments. After all, the international community was able to halt the spread of poaching before, in 1989. Now that the scientific tools for tracking poachers are becoming more advanced, it's just a question of will.

ELIZABETH GLASSANOS/FP Original

The International Herald Tribune sent its reporters to seven different cities to find out where the garbage goes. My favorite recycling story? Reporter Andréa R. Vaucher found that Los Angeles' trash sometimes ends up as carpets in Alabama and T-shirts in China.

And Meg Bortin raises a good question: "[W]hat will happen when Asian manufacturing powerhouses like India and China begin to produce even a fraction of the trash produced in the West[?]"

TOM STODDART/Getty

Those who want to bag a lion but lack the hunting skill to track one down themselves are running out of time.  As of June 1, South African lion breeders will no longer be permitted to offer "canned hunts," whereby lions bred in captivity are released into small enclosures and gunned down by tourists for a hefty fee. The practice has long been criticized as unseemly. As the South African minister put it:

To see people who are half drunk on the back of a bakkie (truck) hunting lions which are in fact tame animals is quite abhorrent.

One unforeseen consequence of the ban, however: It may now be necessary to euthanize 3,000 to 5,000 of the lions that have already been raised for the hunts. 

Although neither as famous nor as cuddly as the koala (yes, koala, not koala bear), Australia's tasmanian devils are a national icon, even inspiring the Warner Brothers cartoon character Taz.

But for at least a decade, a deadly cancer has been killing off these native creatures to the point where the tassie devil is now officially set to become an endangered species. The cancer, Devil Facial Tumor Disease (DFTD), causes lesions usually around the mouth of the devils, which then develop into tumors that make it impossible for the animals to eat. Eventually they die of starvation. DFTD is killing almost three out of four of the animals, such that the total population of wild tasmanian devils has declined from 200,000 ten years ago to around 50,000 today.

Scientists still don't know what causes DFTD, or how to detect it before it strikes. While there is some hope that isolated populations may be able to escape the tumors, many researchers fear that this might be the end of the natural population of tasmanian devils on the island of Tasmania. This is because even if they do survive, their dwindled numbers mean that other foreign predators, such as foxes or feral cats, could end up dominating areas once occupied by the devils. This would be a tragic end for the voracious Taz, but Tasmanians aren't giving up just yet.

Handout/Getty Images

The battle over whaling rights is getting heated. That is to say, as heated as anything can be in the frigid waters surrounding Antarctica. Japan has been trying for years to get the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to allow commercialized whaling, enlisting unlikely allies, like landlocked Mongolia, in its cause. Countries that oppose lifting the limits are becoming increasingly annoyed, and in fact most are boycotting a commission meeting going on this week in Japan.

But it's on the high seas that the confrontation is getting really tense—spawning the creation of what may be the world's first whale pirate. Over the past few days, a radical Canadian environmentalist has been harassing Japanese scientific whaling vessels in the Antarctic Ocean. Tactics have included lobbing acid onto the whaler's deck, fouling the ships' ropes, and provoking a collision. The renegade's ships have been stripped of their national registrations, and are now navis non grata in the world's ports. Greenpeace, meanwhile, has been forced into the unaccustomed role of playing the moderate. The environmental organization condemned the attack, and even sent a ship to help one of the whalers after it sent out a distress signal.

If a great flood ravages the Earth in 2207, we won’t have to worry about losing the key to our food supply.

The Norwegian government is paying for the construction of a Noah's Ark that will house seeds of all the world’s food crops. The seed vault—which will hold up to 3 million seed samples—will be built 364 feet inside a mountain on a remote island near the North Pole. It would protect the seeds from apocalyptic catastrophes such as a nuclear Armageddon, an asteroid collision, and the much-feared consequences of climate change.

The site on Spitsbergen, one of Norway’s Svalbard islands, was chosen because of the long-term stability that it will provide. Designers modeled the worst-case scenario for climate change 200 years in the future and determined that the seed vault would still remain above water if the ice sheets of Greenland and the North and South Poles all melted. The surrounding permafrost will protect the precious seeds if the refrigeration system malfunctions.

My only question is: If humans get wiped out in a global catastrophe, who would take the seeds out of the vault?

Back in 2000, I sat in on our interview with anti-globalization activist Lori Wallach. (I was the guy running the tape recorder). Wallach had this great line, which she has often repeated, about two ships passing in the night. One ship is loaded with chopsticks cut from wood in the Pacific Northwest and being shipped to Japan. The other ship is loaded with toothpicks cut from trees in Malaysia and packaged in Japan on their way to California. How could these two companies possibly be profitable?

Wallach's illustration comes to mind when I read sustainability engineer Pablo Päster's latest column. Producing and shipping one bottle of Fiji bottled water around the globe consumes nearly 27 liters of water,  nearly a kilogram of fossil fuels, and generates more than a pound of carbon dioxide emissions. No wonder that stuff is so overpriced.

According to a team of international scientists led by University of Leeds geophysicist Tim Wright, we're witnessing the birth of a new ocean. In remote northern Ethiopia, the team has front-row seats to the show of the next hundred millennia. The earth is slowly being ripped apart by extreme seismic activity at the meeting point of the Arabian and African continental plates, but sometimes it shifts much faster. During the most dramatic period, September 2005, hundreds of cracks in the earth developed in just a few weeks, and sections of earth moved more than 20 feet practically overnight. As the land is pulled apart, Wright says, molten rock will rise from the earth's core and fills in the gaps, forming new land valleys and redrawing parts of the African landscape. At that point, the scientists believe, the Red Sea could come flooding into the region.

It's very exciting because we're witnessing the birth of a new ocean," said Dr Wright. "In geological terms, a million years is the blink of an eye. We don't precisely know what is going to happen, but we believe that it may turn parts of Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea into an island, before a much larger land mass -- the horn of Africa -- breaks off from the continent."