People who know Jimmy Wales well can't stop snickering about the launch of Wikia Green, his new anyone-can-edit environmental site. In his private life, Wales is about as green as Dick Cheney, from what they say. He's been known to toss styrofoam coffee cups out the window as he drives — something we imagine might give his enviroprecious celebrity pals paroxysms. Even green-cheerleading site Earth2Tech is on to Wales's insincerity:

Eternal dilettante Jimmy Wales, the playboy founder of Wikipedia, has a new girlfriend-of-the-moment: Mother Nature. His for-profit offshoot wiki startup, Wikia, has launched Wikia Green, an edit-it-yourself guide to all things environmental. Like his past launched-and-abandoned efforts — anyone remember Campaigns Wikia, Wales's political supersite? — Wikia Green likely won't go far.But it will give Wales something to chatter about the next time he runs into Bono or Sir Richard Branson at a party. We'd bet his celebrity friends are too polite to ask the notoriously cheap Wales if he's actually springing for carbon offsets to make up for all of the emissions he generates through his nonstop round-the-world jet travel. Oh, and should we get into the contribution to global warming he makes through all the hot air that issues from his lips?

Alaska governor Sarah Palin: Good looking, relatively inexperienced. Do you think McCain's team finally decided that's not such a bad combo? I'll let Democrats cringe at the nightmare series of events that could install Palin as our Cutest President Ever. I'm more interested in her gung-ho enthusiasm to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It would be a resource bonanza for her state, which Palin feels is too reliant on federal handouts and big oil companies. But would the extra oil make a difference? Here's a bite-sized summary of stats from the Energy Information Administration, which provides that Bush guy you hate with official numbers:

If Burning Man were still held at Ocean Beach, it would be a lot greener. Eighty-seven percent of the 27,000 tons of greenhouse gases generated by this year's party on the playa come from participants driving and flying to and from the event, according to the Cooling Man project. Cooling Man wants Burners to spend ten dollars each to buy carbon offsets. As a former theme-camper, I know money is tight for attendees this week. So I found you a discount to $9.07:

Lefty think tanks Essential Action and the Institute for Policy Studies have a new study out titled “High Flyers: How Private Jet Travel is Straining the System, Warming the Planet and Costing You Money." It implies some not-so-nice things about jet owners and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin — even if they are left-leaning, Prius-driving friends of Bono. According to the report, private jets negatively impact:

Treehuggers proclaim the threat of environmental catastrophe with rapturous religiosity. The eyes of Valley capitalists bulge at the windfall that awaits who can find a renewable energy solution cheaper than fossil fuels. But East Bay community activist Van Jones is preaching the sermon of jobs, and that's what will win the popular and political will to build the kind of modern, clean-energy infrastructure California and the rest of the country so desperately need. Says Jones:

With a laptop tracking power and gas consumption and CO₂ emissions, Google.org's four plug-in Priuses serve as a test fleet for the charity's $10 million plug-in electric hybrid vehicle research program. And according to the stats, they're already outperforming the company's two regular Prius hybrids across the board. RechargIT.org is a fantastic PR stunt, but is it good science?

No environmental program has ever in the history of ever been more brutally-named than "ReMix," the city's new "Recycling Magazines Is Excellent!" campaign. The plan aims to draw attention to the wasteful practices of the glossies industry, which, AdAge tells us, often prints copies of issues which nobody reads. Stunning. There are some decent ideas in the green scheme (recycled paper is good! Extraneous direct mail is bad!) but it's hard not to walk away with the idea that the only way for a magazine to be ecologically sustainable is to uh, well, flop. So much better for Mother Earth! After the jump, a gallery of magazines so environmentally cutting-edge that they've been dead for years.

The single largest threat facing our environment today? Sports hero/Lagerfeld-engineered cyborg-marrier David Beckham. Mr. Beckham, who plays "soccer" for the fictional L.A. Galaxy, "is responsible for 163 tons of carbon dioxide yearly," according to a British environmental group. This entirely made-up number may mean that David Beckham has the largest carbon footprint in the history of mankind. Beckham owns many cars and homes, flew "flew farther in 2007 than a trip from the earth to the moon", and when he's not playing soccer he drives across the polar ice caps in an ATV. He's not expected to change his Earth-destroying ways this year, as, according to FoxSoccer.com, "the England star is still looking to earn his 100th cap for his homeland when England takes on Switzerland in a February friendly." We have absolutely no clue what that means. [Fox Sports]

Someone named Brittney from Samantha Slaven Publicity in L.A. has written me to ask if Valleywag has a "green issue." Well, we're not a print magazine, Brittney, so that's plenty of trees, ink, and energy saved right there. But do we have a "green issue"? Oh boy, do we. Here's our green issue.

I should include end-of-year lists. But there are three even more annoying artifacts you'll be stuck with every freaking day of the coming year.

A handy rebuttal to the science-challenged handwringers you're stuck with through New Year's Day. Slate's Green Lantern columnist Brendan Koerner has boiled down the facts on global dimming. It turns out to be global brightening, except in India and China. I pared Koerner's piece even further to one snappy paragraph.

"Don't slam the bridge on your way out," chortled this morning's San Francisco Chronicle above a photo of the departing Cosco Busan, which hit the Bay Bridge on its way out from Oakland in November and spilled 58,000 gallons of oily fuel into San Francisco Bay. But as a wannabe engineer, I'm fascinated by the cargo ships that come and go through the Golden Gate.

The wonderful thing about Digg? Critical thinking is not required. You can vote for stories based on your personal belief system, not whether they're, say, true. Take, for example, a brief New York Times story about UPS's cost-saving route software. Digg users translated this into a tall tale about UPS saving 3 million gallons of gas by elminating left-hand turns. Computers save the environment! It's a tale that comforts geeks who believe software will fix everything.

Greenpeace has found a couple of new targets in its latest "Guide to Greener Electronics": Microsoft and Nintendo. Particularly Nintendo, which scored the first perfect zero rating. The environmentalist group, once remembered for facing down fisherman armed with machine guns with rubber dinghies and rainbow flags to save the lives of endangered whales, has been hanging on to its diminishing relevance by attacking Apple for more than a year. The manufactured notoriety has backfired. Steve Jobs tore apart Greenpeace's charges in an open letter. Critics have savaged the organization's Electronics Guides as arbitrary and unscientific. So how is Greenpeace to remain relevant?

After testing the iPhone in U.K. laboratories, Greenpeace researchers said they found it contains toxic brominated compounds, indicating the prescence of brominated flame retardants (BFRs) and hazardous PVC. Sounds unpleasant. Greenpeace published a full report here. In reaction to the news, The U.S. National Center for Environmental Health said it will file suit against Apple for breaking a Californian law which requires products containing certain chemicals to carry a warning label, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The takeaway? However much you love your iPhone, please, for the love of Jobs, do not pry open the case and rub its innards up and down your crotch. It's tempting, we realize. But don't.

We've said it before, and we'll say it again: The only green Burner is a dead Burner. This year's Burning Man arts festival in the Nevada desert has an environmental theme. But an environmental analysis has shown that more than 90 percent of the carbon dioxide spewed by Burning Man participants comes merely in getting to and from Black Rock City, the festival's temporary site. So by all means, pack up your RVs, buy that planet-destroying bottled water, and run your stereos and air conditioning all week off of diesel generators as you celebrate the greening of Burning Man. Go ahead, claim that you're raising "awareness" — at the same time that you're raising the planet's temperature. You're not fooling anyone — least of all Mother Nature.

AT&T, at long last, has recognized the silliness of giving iPhone customers with unlimited data plans a bit-by-bit bill on their usage. Sick of wasting 500,000 sheets of paper each iPhone billing cycle, AT&T is taking measures to stop the wanton murder of trees. Advice to Apple fans: sign up for paperless billing. [Muhammed.Saleem]

Ladies and gentlemen, rev up your RVs, pack your SUVs full, gas up your private jets, and start making your way to Black Rock City, the site in Nevada for Burning Man, the annual art festival and orgy of self-indulgence. The most hardcore of "burners," as attendees call themselves, will start making their way there a week from now. And while you're on the road, guzzling gasoline, make sure to feel really, really guilty about all the carbon you're spewing into the atmosphere. By organizers' own estimates, Burning Man puts 27,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the air. This year, of course, they hope to minimize the impact with a "Green Man." Nonsense.

NICK DOUGLAS — Yahoo co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo just announced that Yahoo is going carbon neutral, meaning that the company will invest in projects to fight greenhouse gas and thus offset Yahoo's effect on the environment. Good on them for staying true to Yahoo's corporate ethos: "Leave no impact on the world." (Photo: Josef Stuefer.)