Last week, and continuing on this week, energy and climate change will be the hot topics. First off, the latest report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will come out on Friday. The NY Times has already been reporting leaks from the report.

It seems certain, the article says, that the report will be more definitive in linking human activities to global warming and predicting big impacts than the 2001 version. There’s already some controversy about how much sea levels will rise as a result of polar ice melting and concern that such bickering will distract from the larger message.

Today, the Globe ran a feature about geothermal energy, in light of the report released last week by a panel of scientists led by MIT’s Jefferson Tester. The article doesn’t say much that hasn’t already been said in articles from last week, but it does show some simple but cool animated graphics of how mining heat from the Earth’s crust actually works. Some things are best described with pictures.

President Bush endorsed ethanol made from corn as an alternative fuel in his State of the Union address last week. (We wrote about two local companies developing new technologies for turning cellulose from, say, corn stover into ethanol.)

But there’s plenty of skepticism about Bush’s plan to replace 20 percent of gasoline consumption with renewable fuels, mainly corn ethanol. Technology Review (out of MIT) did an interesting Q&A with the head of Stanford’s energy and sustainable development program, David Victor.

Here’s an excerpt:

In my view, this is a dangerous goal because the other technologies [such as cellulosic ethanol] are not available, [and] it really demands that we dramatically scale up our corn-based ethanol program. And I think that has serious ecological problems because of the large amount of land that they’re going to have to put under cultivation. [There are] big economic problems because [making ethanol from corn] certainly isn’t competitive with other ways of making biofuels, such as from sugar.

The other part of the problem is that it now appears that the price of sugar and the price of corn is tied to the oil market. Planters are looking at oil prices and making decision about how much to plant and about how much of their crop they’re going to send into ethanol production and how much into food. So if oil prices stay high, then you’re going to see the prices of these important food products rising at the same time. And there’s already warnings from ranchers, who use corn for feed. And food processors are raising the price of their products and warning their shareholders because the prices of corn syrup and other corn-based feedstocks [are] rising.

And Ernie Moniz, head of MIT’s new Energy Research Council, is also wary. He said recently, according to MIT, that biofuels alone won’t get us to that goal of 20 percent.

“There’s no silver bullet. We’re going to get there only by having a portfolio of fuels, electricity and efficiency.”

Finally: if there’s such a thing as global warming artists, then they will soon have a place to show off their stuff. This fall, the Cambridge School of Weston, a day and boarding high school in Weston, will open The Garthwaite Center for Science and Art, which will include an art gallery. It recently put out the call to scientists and artists for artwork that, I presume, portrays climate change in an artistic way for an exhibit they’re planning. They’re also putting together a symposium on global warming. An intriguing marriage of science and art. I think I might go check it out.