Greenhouse Gas

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The hard-won deal at a U.N. global climate conference in South Africa keeps talks alive but doesn't address the core problem: The world's biggest carbon polluters aren't willing to cut emissions of greenhouse gases enough to stave off dangerous levels of global warming. With many scientists saying time is running out, a bigger part of the solution may have to come from the rise of climate-friendly technologies being developed outside the U.N. process. Scientists say that if levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise, eventually the world's climate will reach a tipping point, with melting of some ice sheets and a catastrophic rise of several feet in sea levels.

President Obama's executive order on greenhouse gas emissions is a refreshing first step toward reversing the government's harmful inaction on climate change. With a stroke of his pen, Obama repudiated eight years of the Bush administration's head-in-the-sand approach to global warming. The president directed Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson to consider California's request to establish its own limits for emissions from cars and trucks, action that Bush resisted.

WASHINGTON - Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming have hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said Friday. Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at the oldest monitoring station, which is in Hawaii and sets the global benchmark. The last time the worldwide carbon level was probably that high was about two million years ago, said Pieter Tans of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The debate over greenhouse emissions has become even hotter. By signing the Kyoto Protocol, our administration supports an environmentally ineffective and economically unfair initiative. This protocol, negotiated in 1997 in Japan, has been publicly scrutinized because of unanswered questions and economic pitfalls. Prior to the Kyoto meeting, the Senate voted 95-0 that the United States not sign any agreement imposing unequal commitments on industrialized and developing nations and resulting in serious harm to the U.S. economy.

Seeking to play down the effects of global warming, in October 2007 Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed to delete from congressional testimony references about the consequences of climate change on public health, a former senior EPA official claimed Tuesday. . . . From the Desk of The Vice President of the United States Date: October, 2007 To: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention From: Darth Subject: Public health consequences of climate change hoax I've been going over the 14 - make that 13 pages (note to self: Don't sit so close to shredder)

TRENTON - Democratic lawmakers introduced legislation Monday to force Gov. Christie to stay in a multistate pact to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. The effort to thwart the governor's planned pullout from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) comes amid protests that New Jersey is forfeiting its status as a national leader in green economy and a debate over what impact the state's two years of participation has really had. Christie announced last month that he would pull the state from the initiative by year's end. A three-bill package introduced Monday would foil that by making participation in the initiative a state law and framing deviation from it as inconsistent with the Legislature's expressed intent to support initiatives that combat global warming.

TRENTON - Gov. Christie said today New Jersey will withdraw from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade agreement between 10 northeast states, by the end of the year. The governor acknowledged that humans play a role in global warming but said the program does not address the problem. "This program is not effective in reducing greenhouse gases and is unlikely to be in the future," said the governor, standing alongside Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Bob Martin at a statehouse news conference.

Seven Pennsylvania coal-fired power plants are among the 100 highest industrial emitters of greenhouse gases in the United States, according to data released Wednesday by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Ranking 12th on the national list is FirstEnergy Generation Corp.'s Bruce Mansfield plant in Beaver County, the state's biggest. The other plants are Brunner Island, Conemaugh, Hatfield's Ferry, Homer City, Keystone, and Montour. No New Jersey plants made that top 100 list.

As part of the world's carbon footprint, Montgomery County doesn't even constitute as much as a toe. But the county wants to make an even smaller impression. So today, its commissioners are expected to take a rare step and adopt a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a variety of ways. No other county in Pennsylvania or South Jersey has done so. "It's really groundbreaking . . . and is a real model for what other counties or regional bodies can do," said Brian Hill, president of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, a statewide nonprofit advocacy group.

Chester County is going green. The county last week announced the formation of a 64-member Green House Gas Reduction Task Force that will recommend to the county commissioners ways to deal with climate change and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The panel is patterned after a similar effort in Montgomery County, said Steve Fromnick, director of facilities management for Chester County, who heads the project here. Like their Montgomery County counterparts, Fromnick said his group can't force anyone to do anything and will leave any issues that involve money or taxes to elected officials, the commissioners.