Carbon Dioxide

The proliferation of drifting Antarctic icebergs caused by rising temperatures is creating a vast new ecosystem of plankton, krill and seabirds that might have the power to absorb some of the carbon dioxide that is driving global warming, scientists reported yesterday. The researchers, led by oceanographer Kenneth Smith Jr. of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, found that these iceberg-associated communities could cover a significant portion of Antarctic seas. The ecosystems use photosynthesis to take carbon from the atmosphere and convert it into plant life and other forms of organic carbon that can be held in the ocean.

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.

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.

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.

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."

As she stared down into a wide-mouthed plastic jar aboard the R/V Discoverer, Victoria Fabry peered into the future. The marine snails she was studying - graceful creatures with winglike feet that help them glide through the water - had started to dissolve. Fabry was taken aback. The button-sized snails, called pteropods, are hardy animals that swirl in dense patches in some of the world's coldest seas. In 20 years of studying the snails, a vital ingredient in the polar food supply, the marine biologist from California State University, San Marcos had never seen such damage.

Baltimore joined a dozen states and 19 environmental groups yesterday in a lawsuit accusing the Environmental Protection Agency of poorly enforcing the Clean Air Act. The action, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, seeks an order requiring the EPA to tighten standards for carbon dioxide emissions from cars, trucks, power plants and other industries. EPA officials announced Aug. 28 that they lacked authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act. But environmental groups said yesterday that the EPA is ducking its responsibility to control a major cause of global warming.

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.

A federal plan to limit carbon-dioxide emissions would cripple small business, subject Americans to "reckless taxes" and increase "wasteful Washington spending," contends House Minority Leader John Boehner. Does he know that a similar scheme already operates in 10 states from Maryland to Maine? Today, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative will auction off its sixth batch of permits in an effort to reduce power-plant CO2 emissions 10 percent by 2018. So far, it's costing Maryland families maybe $1.50 a month, according to Baltimore Gas & Electric.

Eric Carlson sells an invisible commodity: the soothing of guilt over global warming. And these days, business is hot. His Maryland-based nonprofit organization, Carbonfund.org, which acts as a middleman for donors who want to reduce greenhouse-gas pollution, saw its revenue jump 20-fold last year, to $850,000. The 3-year-old group, benefiting from mounting public concern about climate change, is one of eight or more fast-growing firms across the country that sell "carbon offsets." The industry works this way: People who feel bad about the carbon dioxide pollution created by their lifestyles - for example, flying across the country or driving to the beach - give donations to Carbonfund or other groups, which in turn passes the money on to pollution-fighting projects.