Carbon Dioxide

Act now to reverse the warming trend I hope that the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will bring home to more Marylanders how imminent is the threat from global warming ("Turning up the heat," Feb. 2). Despite Hurricane Katrina and the daffodils that bloomed in Baltimore in January, climate change still seems somehow abstract and far in the future. The truth is, if we don't take urgent action now, we will soon reach a tipping point beyond which the continued warming of the planet will cause unimaginable devastation, including a rise in sea levels that will threaten all coastal areas, including our home state's.

About 60 global warming protesters raised an oversized hourglass outside the State House in Annapolis yesterday, telling Gov. Martin O'Malley that "the time to commit is now" to sweeping cuts in carbon dioxide pollution. "Doing nothing is no longer an option," state Del. Kumar P. Barve, the House Democratic leader, told the sign-waving group in the sweltering heat. "Every major reform that has ever happened in American history has happened first at the state level and then percolated up to the federal level."

Temperatures are rising around the world, ice caps are melting, and storms are becoming more severe. Even the Chesapeake Bay and its surrounding island communities are at risk. Death tolls from the increasing heat are also rising, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health's department of environmental health. It's time for action. Sensational headlines may leave many people feeling overwhelmed about climate change. But global warming can be slowed - and many Americans are trying to do just that.

Scientists and engineers who launched NASA's Messenger spacecraft in 2004 to study the planet Mercury are hoping to learn more about another planet - Venus - when their spacecraft soars by that cloud-shrouded world tonight. Among other things, they would like to know more about global warming on Venus and why the "greenhouse" effect has made that planet's atmosphere hot enough to melt lead, while Earth's climate has so far remained habitable. The $426 million, Maryland-built Messenger spacecraft will fly within about 210 miles of Venus' surface just after 7 p.m. It will use Venus' gravity to bend its course toward a first encounter with Mercury in January, according to mission managers at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory near Laurel.

BLACKWATER NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE-- --Digging through the muck of a marshy island, Brian Needelman is hunting for an antidote to global warming. The University of Maryland scientist is measuring how much carbon dioxide has been trapped in the soil of wetlands planted four years ago. Needelman hopes to prove that creating salt marshes is better than planting trees for removing global warming gases from the atmosphere. If he's right, power companies in search of pollution credits might be willing to invest millions of dollars to build more wetlands here, which could mean a corporate-financed reconstruction of the Chesapeake Bay's largest breeding ground for birds, fish and crabs.

When Doug Gronau looks out the window of his Iowa farmhouse, he sees a profitable investment in the effort to stop global warming. Most people see cornfields. His cropland, which he is prohibited from tilling, is a greenhouse gas credit, packaged and sold on the Chicago Climate Exchange. An anonymous trader snapped up the field's ability to absorb carbon dioxide to offset - on paper - a tiny portion of the carbon dioxide emitted by some distant factory. Gronau, 57, expects a check for $2,800.

BEIJING -- It was only three months ago that international energy officials revised a prediction that China would surpass the United States as the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases by 2009 or 2010. It could happen, they warned, as early as the end of this year. That might have been conservative. China's emissions of carbon dioxide, the most significant greenhouse gas, have exceeded those of the United States, according to a report released this week by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Laser beams fired from the skies over Central Maryland this weekend may lead scientists to better ways of fighting global warming, protecting old-growth forest and even forecasting the weather.At the laser's trigger will be University of Maryland and NASA scientists, flying aboard a four-engine NASA C-130 airplane based at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore.Weather permitting, they will be flying at 20,000 feet, sweeping their laser's 75-foot-wide beam across state forest lands, along the Patuxent River from Bowie to Mount Airy, and possibly the Patapsco River west of Baltimore.

WASHINGTON -- It's not just the heat, it's the humidity that's likely to cause much of the pain of global warming, meteorologists are realizing.Across a swath of the United States, the heat index, a measure of discomfort that takes into account heat and humidity, is expected to soar over the next 50 to 60 years, forecasters predict in the federal government's first study to take increased humidity into account.That could increase the yearly average number of heat-related deaths nationwide, now 1,200, to several thousand, one expert said.

Some people seem to attract mosquitoes more readily than others, and experts say the attraction has mostly to do with the amount of carbon dioxide that comes through a person's skin."

This lush marsh south of Annapolis seems like an alien landscape - clear plastic bubbles dot the watery plain, with curved white pipes poking, periscope-like, out of the tall, green grass. The odd-looking structures spread across Kirkpatrick Marsh are providing researchers with a peek into Earth's future, helping them understand how climate change could alter the world we live in. For the past 23 years, Bert Drake and other scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Shady Side have been monitoring the growth of marsh grasses and plants encased in the clear plastic bubbles on the fringe of the Rhode River.

$18.9 million awarded for stem cell research in Md. The Maryland Technology Development Corp. awarded $18.9 million this week to dozens of researchers involved in stem cell research at private and public institutions across the state. The state has been formally funding stem cell research since legislators passed the Maryland Stem Cell Research Act of 2006. Stem cell research is widely regarded as having the potential to deliver groundbreaking cures to a broad range of health problems and help fuel the state's efforts to become a hub for the biotechnology industry.

Imagine having a virtually limitless supply of clean, renewable fuel to run our cars and trucks, a fuel produced from something as noxious and seemingly useless as pond scum. Fantastic as that may sound, it's no pipe dream to Algenol Biofuels. The three-year-old company aims to make ethanol with blue-green algae, by feeding it a steady diet of carbon dioxide and farm animal waste. A dark horse in a crowded field vying to develop a new generation of biofuels, Algenol is based in Florida, but its research arm is in Baltimore.

Native oysters still better for the bay The Nature Conservancy of Maryland/D.C. applauds the recent decision by Maryland, Virginia and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to focus exclusively on native oysters in Chesapeake Bay restoration and aquaculture efforts ("Native oysters prevail," April 7). We understand this was a complex and difficult decision, with people on both sides of the issue passionate about their positions. We are confident, though, that the best available science has led us to stay true to our native Chesapeake oyster, and not to introduce a foreign oyster.

Market incentives often aren't enough In his column "New way to save the bay" (Commentary, Feb. 12), Robert Wieland suggests that a new approach must be taken as an alternative to standard command-and-control environmental regulations. While I believe that market-based measures can play an important role in restoring the Chesapeake Bay, I also believe that regulation has an important role to play. Aviation offers a clear example of how this works. Today's aircraft fly three times farther on the same amount of fuel than planes did 40 years ago. Because the amount of carbon dioxide emitted is a constant multiple of fuel burned, this equates to about a 70 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emitted per passenger-mile.

Gov. Martin O'Malley said yesterday that Maryland is poised to help shape national environmental policy by passing legislation that would curb pollutants linked to global warming. The bill, which had its first hearing in the state Senate yesterday, is likely to pass this year after proponents agreed in recent weeks to essentially exempt manufacturers from mandates against greenhouse gas emissions. Opposition from unions and manufacturers killed similar O'Malley-backed legislation last year.

Legislation that would commit Maryland to reducing climate-warming pollution 25 percent by 2020 appears likely to pass this year with Gov. Martin O'Malley's announcement yesterday that he would co-sponsor a compromise bill that has won backing from organized labor, industry and environmentalists. The governor backed similar legislation last year, but opposition from the state's unions and manufacturers killed it in the House after it had passed the Senate in watered-down form. "For our prosperity, for our current and future generations, and for the health of our state, which is so vulnerable to rising sea levels, we must take action on climate change now - not later," the governor said in a statement.

No proof man is causing Earth's warming trend According to the editorial "A New Year's resolution" (Jan. 2), tens of thousands of scientists like me are "flat-earth types." I guess my doctorate in chemical physics from Johns Hopkins doesn't give me nearly the qualifications to analyze the science associated with the global climate as an editor with an agenda. If we are going to stoop to name-calling, an appropriate name for people with the view The Baltimore Sun endorses could be "Chicken Littles."

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush could be forcing President-elect Barack Obama to act almost immediately to curb global warming, after years of the Bush administration's fighting attempts to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions. In its final weeks, the Bush administration has moved to close what it calls "back doors" to regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. It barred the Environmental Protection Agency from considering the effects of global warming on protected species.

Maryland raised $18 million this week in an auction of rights for power plants to release climate-changing pollution, officials said yesterday. The bulk of the proceeds from Wednesday's auction in New York will finance energy-saving projects and help low-income residents pay their power bills. The auction of allowances for power plants in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic to emit carbon dioxide yielded a total of $106.5 million for the 10 states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.