Free Republic

Aerosols' complicated influence on our climate just got more threatening: they could make methane a more potent greenhouse gas than previously realized, say climate modellers.Drew Shindell, at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, and colleagues ran a range of computerized models to show that methane's global warming potential is greater when combined with aerosols — atmospheric particles such as dust, sea salt, sulphates and black carbon. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol assume methane to be, tonne-for-tonne, 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet. But the...

SNIPPET: "(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are both traveling to Copenhagen this week to promote Chicago's bid to host to the 2016 Olympic Games--and they will be making the 3,979-mile trip on separate airplanes." SNIPPET: "As reported earlier by CNSNews.com, a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report cited two cost estimates for an hour of air travel by the president, vice president and first lady. One estimate comes from the White House Military Office, the other from the U.S. Air Force. Using the CRS cost estimates and the inflation adjuster from the Bureau of Labor Statisitcs,...

Independent teams of researchers in the UK and the US have shown that nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere can participate in chemical reactions on the surfaces of buildings, indoors and outdoors, producing harmful pollutants including the respiratory irritant nitrous oxide, the toxic gas nitrosyl chloride and hydroxyl radicals. Rod Jones' team at the University of Cambridge in the UK investigated the fate of NO2 when it comes into contact with glass that has been coated with titanium dioxide.1 TiO2-coated glass is available commercially as a self-cleaning product in which the TiO2 photocatalytically degrades organic dirt in the presence of sunlight. In...

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another.It's a beautiful theory — highways full of electric cars emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants after being plugged into an outlet in our garages overnight. The problem, according to a new Government Accountability Office report, is that the effort may only shift the problem somewhere else. "If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading...

Alternative Energy: A government report says reliance on electric cars will do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and may merely shift our dependence on foreign sources from one set of dictators to another..."If you are using coal-fired power plants, and half the country's electricity comes from coal-powered plants, are you just trading one greenhouse gas emitter for another?" asks Mark Gaffigan, co-author of the GAO report. The report itself notes: "Reductions in CO2 emissions depend on generating electricity used to charge the vehicles from lower-emission sources of energy."

The Environmental Protection Agency took a major step toward tougher reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks Tuesday by giving California the green light to impose new requirements that could become the national model for combatting tailpipe pollution linked to global warming. The EPA granted California's long-standing request — denied by the Bush administration — for a waiver to allow it to pursue more stringent air pollution rules than required by the federal government. It cleared the way to implement immediately a 2002 state pollution law requiring new cars to increase their fuel economy 40 percent by 2016....

LOS ANGELES – Sixty percent of Americans live in areas with unhealthy air pollution levels, despite a growing green movement and more stringent laws aimed at improving air quality, the American Lung Association said in a report released Wednesday. The public-health group ranked the pollution levels of U.S. cities and counties based on air quality measurements that state and local agencies reported to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency between 2005 and 2007. Overall, the report found that air pollution at times reaches unhealthy levels in almost every major city and that 186.1 million people live in those areas. The number...

Aerosols bumped up world’s plant productivity by 25 percent in the 1960s and 1970s, new research suggests The world’s vegetation soaked up carbon dioxide more efficiently under the polluted skies of recent decades than it would have under a pristine atmosphere, a new analysis in the April 23 Nature suggests. The trend hints that relying on forests and other vegetation to sequester carbon may not be effective if skies continue to clear, researchers say. Major volcanic eruptions throw large quantities of aerosols, such as small bits of fractured rock and droplets of sulfuric acid, high into the atmosphere. Those particles...

Darker skies have uncertain effect on global warming.Air pollution that is harmful to human health has increased over all populated continents except Europe since 1973, according to an extensive survey.I can see dimly now: air pollution is on the rise in most areas of the world.punchstock The results play into a long-standing debate over whether the Earth's skies are dimming or brightening, how this affects the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface and what that means for climate change. Two studies published in Science in 2005 concluded that a global dimming trend that began in the 1950s has been...

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - Lowering air pollution in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley would save more lives annually than ending all motor vehicle fatalities in the two regions, according to a new study. The study, which examined the costs of air pollution in two areas with the worst levels in the country, also said meeting federal ozone and fine particulate standards could save $28 billion annually in health care costs, school absences, missed work and lost income potential from premature deaths.

The Milwaukee, Madison and Green Bay areas do not meet tough new air quality standards designed to protect public health and may need additional regulations, federal regulators said Tuesday. The Environmental Protection Agency's announcement drew criticism from a top state air official, who warned it could hurt economic development and do little to improve air quality.The EPA said its review found Brown, Columbia, Dane, Racine, Waukesha and Milwaukee counties have unacceptable levels of fine particulate matter in the air or contribute to problems in neighboring areas. The pollution is largely caused by coal-fired power plants and diesel engines and creates...

Dust storms that fouled Kern County’s air in May could mean months of delay for two major Kern County freeway projects. A project to widen Highway 46 from Holloway Road west to Highway 33 at Blackwells Corner will almost certainly be delayed for five months or more, said Ron Brummett, executive director of the Kern Council of Governments. And the Westside Parkway in Bakersfield, a freeway that’s to run west from a point near Highway 99 to Heath Road, might also be delayed if dickering over air quality standards goes on too long. The Environmental Protection Agency, Brummett said, is...

A judge in Georgia has thrown out an air pollution permit for a new coal-fired power plant because the permit did not set limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Both opponents of coal use and the company that wants to build the plant said it was the first time a court decision had linked carbon dioxide to an air pollution permit. The decision’s broader legal impact was not clear, either for the plant, proposed to be built near Blakely, in Early County, Ga., or for others outside Georgia, but it signaled that builders of coal plants would face continued difficulties in...

Air pollution from power plants and automobiles is destroying the fragrance of flowers and thereby inhibiting the ability of pollinating insects to follow scent trails to their source, a new University of Virginia study indicates. This could partially explain why wild populations of some pollinators, particularly bees – which need nectar for food – are declining in several areas of the world, including California and the Netherlands. The study appears online in the journal Atmospheric Environment. "The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters;...

Cars have been a huge part of our lives. We use them to get around anywhere. It might have been the best invention mankind came up with, but we all hate several common things about cars, such as the cost of gas prices and traffic. We think sometimes in our imagination how awesome it would be if cars had wings, so maybe one day we will fly through terrific! We also despise accidents, high insurance and drunk driving. Sometimes, I feel that we need other alternative means of transportation, such as a subway system in the state of Texas; maybe...

Hydroxyl radicals, nature's atmospheric scrubbers, are produced by nitrogen pollution too. Some types of air pollution might be doing a good turn by creating extra doses of atmospheric cleaner, according to new research. A lab study has shown how nitrogen oxides, a largely agricultural pollutant, can help to make hydroxyl radicals — the natural cleaner-upper of our dirty atmosphere. But in doing so they can also produce more ozone, the major component of smog. The work should help to improve models of atmospheric chemistry, and suggest better ways to control air pollution in big cities. The hydroxyl radical is a...

Beijing events could be postponed in case of heavy pollution: IOC Monday • March 17, 2008 The International Olympic Committee said Monday that it would set up a special panel to recommend the postponement of events at the Beijing Olympics in case of heavy pollution. IOC Medical Commission chairman, Arne Ljungqvist, announcing the IOC's own analysis of air quality data for Beijing, said that the body would be formed with representatives from his commission and from sports federations. "We have to have a mechanism in place to provide the coordination commission with the facts," he said, referring to the IOC...

There's been a lot of talk about the new Trans-Texas Corridor — the next-generation "super-highway" — and opinions are varying. Now the debate is coming to Lufkin's doorstep. On Monday, the American Land Foundation, Stewards of the Range and TURF will hold a workshop at Lufkin's Pitser Garrison Civic Center on how to stop the Trans-Texas Corridor 69. The event runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. A portion of Texas citizens have voiced their opposition to the TTC-69 in public meetings held by the Texas Department of Transportation, but believing they are not being heard, four cities and their...

Mention air pollution, and what comes to mind? Factories. Oil refineries. Auto tailpipes. Now Bay Area smog regulators are trying to crack down on another source that they say is just as significant, even if beloved: home fireplaces. Citing growing medical research that soot causes more severe health problems than was previously realized, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District is proposing a ban on all wood burning in fireplaces and wood stoves in the nine Bay Area counties during winter "Spare the Air" nights. --snip-- If approved, fireplace police would enforce the rules, and neighbors would be encouraged to...

McALLEN — In other parts of the state, transportation officials try to allay property owners' fears that a superhighway from Laredo north to Texarkana will result in a massive land grab. But in the lower Rio Grande Valley, the state's road builders spend more time assuring local leaders that they have a shot at being included. People in the fast-growing border area between Brownsville and McAllen have developed something of an inferiority complex about being the state's largest metropolitan area without an interstate highway. One after another, Valley leaders stepped to a microphone at public meetings last week and made...