Carbon Dioxide

All along, they had been so relaxed. So when it came time for Team O'Neill's horse to make his charge -- a historic one -- the colt moved forward almost nonchalantly. I'll Have Another glided past Bodemeister to win the 137th running of the Preakness Stakes on Saturday at Pimlico Race Course, setting up a chance at the first Triple Crown since 1978. The California-based horse is the 12th to win the first two legs of the Triple Crown since Affirmed edged Alydar in all three races.

Maryland is largely on track to meet its goal of reducing climate-warming pollution 25 percent by the end of the decade, according to O'Malley administration officials, but still needs legislation being debated in Annapolis to put wind turbines off Ocean City , limit sprawl and increase funding for mass transit. A draft plan developed by the Maryland Department of the Environment and to be released Wednesday says the state has nearly all the measures in place to comply with a 2009 law requiring curbs on the state's emissions of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases.

WASHINGTON - President Clinton called yesterday for new federal regulations limiting power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas thought to cause global climatic change, through a system similar to the rules in place for pollutants that cause smog and acid rain. It would be the first time federal regulations would specifically control emissions of carbon dioxide, the main so-called greenhouse gas. Clinton called for similar controls on emissions of mercury, another pollutant that is given off by some power plants but is not regulated under air pollution laws.

  Ever wonder how all those bubbles got into the champagne? Just in time for your New Year's toasts, the American Chemical Society has created a video with an explanation. Unlike other wine, which undergoes one fermentation process, champagne undergoes two. Carbon dioxide gas is trapped during the second one and it dissolves into the wine and forms the bubbles. The bubbles ascend along the length of the bottle, dragging the molecules of the carbon dioxide and about 600 other chemicals that form the aroma and flavor of the champagne.

SHADY SIDE -- In a brackish marsh hard by the Chesapeake Bay, scientists are beginning to suspect that the "greenhouse effect" may not be the environmental disaster it was once thought it might be.Many plants, it seems, love increased amounts of carbon dioxide -- the gas that cars, power plants and factories spew into the air by the billions of tons.Researchers at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center here have spent $1.2 million and five years discovering something greenhouse farmers have known for decades: More carbon dioxide means faster plant growth and reproduction.

WASHINGTON - High concentrations of carbon dioxide in city air may be stimulating abnormal growth of ragweed and other plants that aggravate childhood asthma, health experts warned yesterday. Although the incidence of asthma has increased among all age groups, the sharpest increase has been among children under 4 years old, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC reported in 1998 that between 1980 and 1994, incidence of the respiratory disease among pre-schoolers increased by 160 percent.

  Ever wonder how all those bubbles got into the champagne? Just in time for your New Year's toasts, the American Chemical Society has created a video with an explanation. Unlike other wine, which undergoes one fermentation process, champagne undergoes two. Carbon dioxide gas is trapped during the second one and it dissolves into the wine and forms the bubbles. The bubbles ascend along the length of the bottle, dragging the molecules of the carbon dioxide and about 600 other chemicals that form the aroma and flavor of the champagne.

The friendly tree doctor peers through his pop-bottle eyeglasses and asks that proverbial pick-your-poison question: "You want the good news first or the bad news first?"For more than a decade, Bert Drake has been studying the effects of global warming and increased carbon-dioxide levels on the earth's ecosystems. On one hand, the Anne Arundel County scientist talks about the standard gloom-and-doom findings about the dire consequences of deforestation, traffic emissions and the burning of fossil fuels.

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."

There's yet another downside to our warming climate: bigger and badder poison ivy. When researchers adjusted carbon dioxide levels to match those anticipated during the next 50 years, poison ivy in an experimental pine forest grew much faster and was far more toxic than the plant that annoys us today. In fact, the experimental plants grew twice as fast as normal poison ivy, and their leaves contained a more allergenic form of urushiol, the carbon-based compound that causes contact dermatitis, scientists said.

Richard Haddad's assertions in his commentary on climate change ("Get past alarmism on global warming," Oct. 26) are completely at odds with all reliable scientific evidence and analysis. In a report completed earlier this year, our National Academy of Sciences concluded that global warming is unequivocal, has been primarily caused by human activities, and poses significant risks to humans and nature. Surveys show that 97 percent of scientists who do research related to climate agree that our emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases are causing Earth's climate to change.

In response to Richard Haddad's recent op-ed piece ("Get past alarmism on global warming," Oct. 26), I wish I could understand why he thinks that a growth in world population of 6 billion people in only 207 years when it took all of time to reach 1 billion in 1804 has no effect on a finite planet. We continue to use cars that spew carbon dioxide, industries continue to spew carbon dioxide, etc., etc., etc., and than we continue to cut down trees that absorb carbon dioxide. The things we need to live are being depleted rapidly - air, water, soil - all because of human activity.

I am glad to see that The Sun finally printed a factual response to so called man-made global warming ("Get past alarmism on global warming," Oct. 26). Writer Richard Haddad has it right and every one who has studied high school physics or chemistry should know carbon dioxide is released from sea water as temperature increases. An additional point to be made is that the largest source of carbon dioxide in the world (greater than all power plants combined) is the thousands of square miles of decaying kelp beds in the Sargasso Sea near the equator in the Atlantic Ocean.

I have carefully read and digested Erica Fuhrmeister's piece on geoengineering ("Fight climate change through geoengineering" May 26 )The thrust of her comments is on various ways to combat "global warming," which is neither man-made nor under man's control. Once again you have used valuable space on your editorial commentary pages in an attempt to misinform the public concerning the disproved "global warming" concept. Indeed, the climate is continuing to cool and warm in cycles, as it always does.

BILLINGS, Mont. - Glacier National Park has lost two more of its namesake moving ice fields to climate change, which is shrinking the rivers of ice until they grind to a halt, the U.S. Geological Survey said Wednesday. Higher temperatures have reduced the number of named glaciers in the northwestern Montana park to 25, said Dan Fagre, an ecologist with the agency. He warned the rest of the glaciers might be gone by decade's end. "When we're measuring glacier margins, by the time we go home the glacier is already smaller than what we've measured," Fagre said.

Forests by the Chesapeake Bay are growing two to four times faster than expected these days, researchers have found - a signal that rising carbon dioxide in our atmosphere might be triggering noticeable changes in ecosystems in the Mid-Atlantic. And though scientists warn it's no panacea, the accelerated growth in stands of hardwoods monitored for the past 22 years is an indication that forests might dampen or delay the impact of climate change at least for a while, by soaking up some of the greenhouse gases that most scientists believe are warming the planet.

WASHINGTON - Carbon dioxide, the chief cause of global warming, cannot be regulated as a pollutant, the Environmental Protection Agency ruled yesterday. The decision, which reverses a 1998 Clinton administration position, means the Bush administration won't be able to use the Clean Air Act to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from cars. If the Bush administration had decided that carbon dioxide is a pollutant and harmful, it could have required expensive new pollution controls on new cars and perhaps on power plants, which together are the main sources of so-called greenhouse gases.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was justified in refusing to regulate carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas linked to global warming, as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, a federal court ruled yesterday in a major legal victory for the Bush administration. A coalition of 12 states and numerous groups - including the city of Baltimore - had argued that the EPA was legally bound to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act because global warming was a demonstrable threat to public health and safety.

Forests by the Chesapeake Bay are growing two to four times faster than expected these days, researchers have found - a signal that rising carbon dioxide in our atmosphere might be triggering noticeable changes in ecosystems in the Mid-Atlantic. And though scientists warn it's no panacea, the accelerated growth in stands of hardwoods monitored for the past 22 years is an indication that forests might dampen or delay the impact of climate change at least for a while, by soaking up some of the greenhouse gases that most scientists believe are warming the planet.