Greenhouse Effect

Mirror, mirror on the wall: Who is the greenest of them all? Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has a plan to slash his city's planet-warming greenhouse gases to 35% below the 1990 level by 2030, and make L.A. the "cleanest and greenest city in the country." San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has a blueprint to cut his city's greenhouse gases to 20% below the 1990 level by 2012, creating "the greenest large city in the United States of America."

In proposing two big, expensive dam projects this week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made a novel argument to justify the old-fashioned public works projects. Advocating $4 billion in bonds to build reservoirs in Northern and Central California, the administration emphasized not population growth or the specter of future drought, but global warming.

Oysterman Jim Aguiar had never had to deal with the bacterium Vibrio parahaemolyticus in his 25 years working the frigid waters of Prince William Sound. The dangerous microbe infected seafood in warmer waters, like the Gulf of Mexico. Alaska was way too cold. But the sound was gradually warming. By summer 2004, the temperature had risen just enough to poke above the crucial 59-degree mark.

Gripping a bottle of Jack Daniel's between his knees, Jay Zwally savored the warmth inside the tiny plane as it flew low across Greenland's biggest and fastest-moving outlet glacier. Mile upon mile of the steep fjord was choked with icy rubble from the glacier's disintegrated leading edge. More than six miles of the Jakobshavn had simply crumbled into open water. "My God!" Zwally shouted over the hornet whine of the engines.

Biologist Gerry Kuzyk was hiking with his wife in the remote reaches of the Yukon when he caught the putrid scent of caribou dung wafting through the chill air. Then he saw it -- the biggest pile of animal droppings he had ever seen, 8 feet high and stretching over half a mile of mountainside. Kuzyk, a researcher with the Yukon Department of Renewable Resources, knew there weren't enough caribou in the entire territory to create such an epic mound.

The driest periods of the last century -- the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the droughts of the 1950s -- may become the norm in the Southwest United States within decades because of global warming, according to a study released Thursday. The research suggests that the transformation may already be underway. Much of the region has been in a severe drought since 2000, which the study's analysis of computer climate models shows as the beginning of a long dry period.

In the Kyoto Protocol's accounting of greenhouse gases, the former Eastern bloc is a smashing success. Russia: Down 29% in carbon dioxide emissions since 1990. Romania: A 43% reduction. Latvia: A resounding 60% drop. Reductions such as those across Eastern Europe were the main reason the United Nations was recently able to report a 12% drop in emissions from the accord's industrialized countries over the 1990-2005 period. It was an illusion.

GLOBAL warming has a taste in this village. It is the taste of salt. Only a few years ago, water from the local pond was fresh and sweet on Samit Biswas' tongue. It quenched his family's thirst and cleansed their bodies. But drinking a cupful now leaves a briny flavor in his mouth. Tiny white crystals sprout on Biswas' skin after he bathes and in his clothes after his wife washes them.

The death of a myth begins with stinging eyes and heaving chests here on the edge of the Amazon rain forest. Every year, fire envelops the jungle, throwing up inky billows of smoke that blot out the sun. Animals flee. Residents for miles around cry and wheeze, while the weak and unlucky develop serious respiratory problems.

Everybody in the United States could switch from cars to bicycles. The Chinese could close all their factories. Europe could give up electricity and return to the age of the lantern. But all those steps together would not come close to stopping global warming.

Leaders of the world's largest economies agreed late Friday to an accord on steps to curb greenhouse gas emissions, a deal hailed by President Obama as an "unprecedented breakthrough" in international negotiations but denounced by critics as too weak to avert the harshest effects of global warming. The agreement is not legally binding. But it would set the first emission limits for emerging powers India and China, along with new reduction targets for the United States, which never adopted the commitments of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

International negotiators are quietly making progress here on steps to reduce "stealth" pollutants that contribute to climate change, including soot, refrigerants and methane gas, which together account for nearly as much greenhouse gas pollution as carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, of course, is the poster gas for global warming. Disagreements over how to reduce its emission from cars, factories and power plants have dominated the Copenhagen climate talks so far. But carbon dioxide accounts for only half the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Rae Kwon Chung glanced out the window of a terrace restaurant, down at hundreds of diplomats in suits and activists in T-shirts who milled happily in a grand atrium of Copenhagen's Bella Center. He frowned. His green tea cooled in the cup, barely sipped. "They're all obsessed with the deal and numbers," South Korea's climate-change ambassador said, explaining his frustrations with the negotiators and advocates assembled here to discuss carbon-emission cuts and forge what could be a landmark treaty on global warming.

Climate change conjures up factory smoke, corn ethanol, cap-and-trade, hybrid cars. It also evokes Al Gore, drowning polar bears, African famine and Hurricane Katrina. All these triggers and the issues they invoke, backed by mounting evidence of irreversible risks to humankind, will converge next week in Copenhagen. Our collective political will may yet secure the Earth's equilibrium through an overarching deal -- though short of a treaty -- by the end of the U.N. climate-change conference there.

China vowed Thursday to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half over the next decade, a move that environmentalists and the Obama administration hailed as a major, and perhaps decisive, development toward agreement on a comprehensive climate treaty. FOR THE RECORD China's climate promise: An article in Friday's Section A incorrectly stated that China had agreed to reduce its overall carbon dioxide emissions by 40% to 45% from 2005 levels by 2020. China actually promised Thursday to reduce its "carbon intensity," a measure of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product, by 40% to 45% by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.

When Greg Nickels became Seattle's mayor in 2002, global warming was hardly at the top of the municipal agenda. New York's World Trade Center had been attacked, and officials had to figure out how to protect their own city from terrorism. Boeing was laying off 30,000 machinists, so there was the declining regional economy to deal with. Surely the federal government would worry about climate change. Then came the winter of 2004, when the Cascade Mountains snowpack was so disastrously low that ski resorts -- facing their worst year on record -- laid off most of their employees.

The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a detailed proposal Wednesday for using the government's regulatory powers to curb greenhouse gas emissions -- reassuring foreign allies of the U.S. commitment to fight climate change and warning Congress that the administration will act on its own if lawmakers fail to address the issue. The proposed regulations would apply to large-scale industrial sources of heat-trapping gases, including power plants, factories and refineries, but not to smaller sources such as new schools, as some critics of EPA action had feared.

The world's two biggest producers of greenhouse gases sought to build momentum Tuesday for stalled efforts to craft a global agreement to limit emissions, with China pledging to make sweeping changes by 2020 and President Obama exhorting world leaders to act to avert catastrophe. Critics of the two countries, which together produce 40% of the gases that cause global warming, were cheered by the cooperative tone from Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao at a United Nations summit in New York.

A group of Midwestern Democrats is pushing for tariffs on products from countries that don't limit greenhouse gas emissions, a controversial step that the legislators say is needed to help American manufacturers survive expected emissions restrictions here. The Democrats say the measure would level the playing field for U.S. factories, which will probably face increased energy costs due to global warming legislation backed by the Obama administration. The legislation narrowly passed in the House in June and is pending in the Senate.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has been worried about the cost of complying with Assembly Bill 32, a 2006 law that requires California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Last month, DWP officials decided to beef up their advocacy efforts in Sacramento by bringing in the author of the global warming bill, Los Angeles Democrat and former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez, to advise the department's team of lobbyists. That effort hit a roadblock last week after the five-member panel that oversees the DWP asked its executives to explain the need for a contract worth up to $2.4 million with Conservation Strategy Group, which serves as a lobbyist and bond advisor to the utility.