Carbon Dioxide

Soldiers here fired off 12 million pieces of mortar, rifle and artillery ammunition on the training range last year, exercises the Army now knows generated 58.8 tons of carbon dioxide. This post south of Colorado Springs is the first in the Army to begin tracking greenhouse gases emitted by its barracks, tanks and training activities. The next step: cutting emissions by nearly a third. "What we're doing at Ft. Carson is the first deliberate effort to calculate our carbon 'bootprint' and do it in a way that's based on real data," said Tad Davis, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for environment, safety and occupational health.

The bizarre and complicated world of thoroughbred blood testing and sanctions reached the mainstream Thursday, when the California Horse Racing Board penalized the trainer who has won the first two legs of the sport's Triple Crown. The seven-person, governor-appointed board, ruling on a case that has been argued and litigated since the summer of 2010, suspended Doug O'Neill for 45 days and fined him $15,000. The penalty actually carried an additional 135 days of suspension, but that will be voided if there are no further findings involving O'Neill in the next 18 months.

I have read several articles in The Times about the gas cloud that has killed many people in Cameroon, Africa. That gas, carbon dioxide, has been labeled as "poisonous." I submit to you that carbon dioxide is not poisonous. When one dies in an atmosphere of high concentration of carbon dioxide, he has not been poisoned by the carbon dioxide; he dies from lack of oxygen, and has suffocated or asphyxiated, just as if he had been strangled, or if he had drowned. Carbon dioxide is no more poisonous to the person who dies in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide than is the water in which a person drowns.

The fate of trainer Doug O'Neill, charged by California Horse Racing Board enforcement officials with a substance abuse violation involving one of his horses, will be addressed Thursday morning at a board meeting at Hollywood Park. These are usually low-profile procedural meetings, but the item on the agenda involving O'Neill, whose I'll Have Another will take a run at racing's coveted Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes June 9, has triggered much interest and speculation. Racing's enforcement officials ruled that an O'Neill-trained horse, Argenta, tested positive for high levels of carbon dioxide after a race Aug. 25, 2010, at Del Mar. High levels of carbon dioxide are considered evidence of the use of a "milkshake" to illegally boost a horse's stamina.

It is time for more of us to step forward. By "us" I mean the growing number of thoughtful Americans who have recognized the threat of global warming but have tried not to worry about it too much or get involved. Even our president, who talks eloquently about the need to reduce our fossil-fuel consumption, initially rebuffed an environmental group's efforts to have the White House install solar panels (as detailed by Bill McKibben in his Sept. 16 Times Op-Ed article, "This is how they treat their friends?"

Listen up! Carbon dioxide being absorbed by the oceans is having a puzzling effect on fish -- their ears get bigger. The ear structure in fish, known as an otolith, is made up of minerals. Scientists knew that increasing carbon dioxide in the oceans -- absorbed from the atmosphere -- is making the sea more acidic, which can dissolve and weaken shells. They wondered if it also would reduce the size of the otoliths.

Re "Wise Line on Curbing Emissions," editorial, Dec. 2: Although compromise between two ends of the spectrum often seems to be the best resolution in most situations, in the case of environment and pollution that is not so. I was delighted to find out that the European Union was taking such a bold stand in the fight for lower fossil fuel emissions. Unfortunately, I was soon disappointed to discover that the U.S. was not. The world's nations need to pursue a goal that may seem harder to achieve, but will have a better payoff.

Teams of scientists from five different countries who have studied the area in West Africa where at least 1,700 people died mysteriously last August have concluded that the victims were killed by carbon dioxide of volcanic origin. And they warned that the tragedy could be repeated elsewhere without warning.

Researchers had hoped that forests might slow the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels--a primary contributor to the planet-warming greenhouse effect. But a new study at Duke University is less optimistic.

The ocean's rising carbon dioxide levels may cause many coral reef fish to swim toward the smell of predators rather than away from them — and thus toward likely death, marine ecologists said Tuesday. The greenhouse gas' ability to alter fish behavior for the worse points to an "unexpected potential impact of elevated carbon dioxide in the oceans," said Philip Munday, a marine ecologist at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. Much study has been done on the effects of ocean acidification on coral and shelled animals, but little on how the effects would manifest in other forms of marine life, said Munday, who led the study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As reported on the Los Angeles Times Politics Now blog, the Obama administration on Tuesday announced stringent rules to limit carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants. Most climate scientists say that carbon dioxide is the principal gas responsible for global warming. As pointed out in the story by Neela Banerjee, supporters of emissions standards were surprised and pleased to find the administration pushing forward with these new rules, after some indications lately that the president and his administration might pull back from aggressive new environmental protections during an election year.

WASHINGTON - Taking aim at the gases that the vast majority of scientists say are the main contributor to climate change, the Obama administration proposed rules limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new power plants, a move that could essentially bar new coal-fired electric generation facilities. Tuesday's announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency signaled the administration's willingness to weigh in on politically sensitive environmental issues, even if its decisions court controversy in an election year.

At the turn of the last century, Time magazine published a list of what it considered to be the 100 worst ideas of the 20th century. It included Prohibition, leisure suits, the Titanic, cold fusion. You get the idea. I know it's early, but assuming such a list is composed again at the end of this century, I have a nomination. It was an idea proposed in a speech last week. Thomas Donohue was speaking. Not just speaking; the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was giving his annual "state of American business" address, in the 100th year of the chamber's operation, from the chamber's Hall of Flags in its office just across Lafayette Park from the White House.

Greenhouse gases are building at a steep rate in the atmosphere, the nation's top climate agency reported, renewing concern that global warming may be accelerating. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, which indexes the key gases known to trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere, rose 1.5% from 2009 to 2010, the agency reported. The reported rise comes on top of an analysis by the Energy Department last week saying that global emissions of carbon dioxide, a key, long-lived greenhouse gas, had jumped by the biggest increment on record in 2010.

Public bicycle sharing is gaining popularity in cities around the world as people are trading cars for low-cost rental bikes used for short hops around town. While it's hoped this will have a positive effect on the environment, a study finds that it may benefit people's health as well. A study released Thursday in the British Medical Journal focused on a bike sharing program in Barcelona, Spain, which has been in place since 2007. In August 2009, about 182,000 people had subscribed to the service, representing approximately 11% of the city's population (although it was noted that only 1.7% of the population uses it on a regular basis)

Among the more speculative of the proposed solutions to global warming is the notion of capturing the carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and pumping them underground. Still, the collapse last week of one of the nation's most high-profile experiments with so-called carbon capture and sequestration technology is bad news for future generations and further evidence of the need for climate legislation. American Electric Power, one of the biggest utilities in the U.S., announced Thursday that it was tabling its plans to complete a commercial-scale carbon capture system at a coal-fueled plant in West Virginia — despite the fact that up to half of the project's $668-million cost would have been covered by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Automakers are generally doing a poor job in lowering emissions that contribute to global warming, despite continued success in reducing pollution that causes smog, an environmental group said Tuesday. Japanese manufacturers again made the cleanest-burning vehicles, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists' biennial report, which focused on the 2003 vehicles from the six largest automakers in the U.S. market in terms of sales. Honda Motor Co.

James Flanigan's "Technology Strikes Deep Oil Supplies" (July 27), on the profit potential of the oil companies, was correct from a purely business perspective but missed badly when he attempted to deal with the environmental consequences of increased oil consumption. He correctly stated that the oil industry is "fighting the proposal" to limit energy consumption, but then blithely intimated that the industry "will adapt to the new environment." If he meant that somehow a technological solution can be found, then the outlook is grim.

Nine months before California is set to finalize a trading system aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions, participants have the jitters. Litigation threatens to delay the start of the multibillion-dollar program , and industry executives worry that its regulations will fall short of guaranteeing a smoothly functioning market. Fear is growing that it could be susceptible to the fraud that has plagued a similar European system. "It feels as though the sun has risen in the West," Henry Derwent, head of the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Assn., told traders, bankers, entrepreneurs, and oil and utility executives in Los Angeles last week.

There is no magic wand that will bring down the price of gasoline, which has once again crossed the $4 mark in California. But there is a long-term solution that will inoculate us from higher costs in the future. The Obama administration can't do much to lower the price of a gallon of gas, but it is on the cusp of a crucial decision that could help consumers come out ahead because they would need less gas. Officials are quietly working on just how steeply to require the auto industry to cut emissions and increase mileage in the next generation of cars, SUVs and pickups.