Venus

The story of the planet Venus provides a cautionary tale, as told by Al Gore.

Earth and Venus are neighbors in the solar system. They are both exactly the same size. Both have almost exactly the same amount of carbon. But ours is in the ground, and on Venus it's in the atmosphere.

The difference is, the temperature here is 15 degrees Celsius -- 59 degrees fahrenheit -- and on Venus, it's 455 degrees Celsius -- or 800-something degrees fahrenheit.

That's relevant to our current practice of taking as much carbon out of the ground as we can, burning it as quickly as we can, and leaving it in the atmosphere.

Mars? Jupiter? Saturn? Gore has nothing to say.

Uranus? We can hazard an educated guess: where the Bush White House inaction on global warming belongs.