Global Warming Issues

The environment — especially in upstate New York — took a nasty hit last week when the U.S. Appeals Court in the District of Columbia derailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Interstate Rule.

CAIR, adopted in 2005, was designed to reduce emissions in 28 states of nitrogen dioxide, a leading cause of smog, and sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain. New York power plants produce some of that material, but it is the power plants to our west which have generated the acid rain that has devastated the Adirondacks, where 700 lakes and ponds cannot sustain aquatic life and thousands of acres of high-elevation forests have been laid bare.

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President Bush and his fellow oil baron, Dick Cheney, have spent 7 1⁄2 years doing next to nothing to curb the greenhouse gases that are the chief contributor to global warming. And they made it clear last week that they will leave office in January with their dirty slate intact.

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It’s been a while since an iconic red balloon has soared the skies of Paris, and we’re excited to report that another altruistic beacon is set to grace the city’s sweeping skyline. Airparif recently deployed a giant helium balloon that will provide Parisians with an at-a-glance indication of both atmospheric and inner-city air quality. The Aérophile balloon is the first of its kind and will employ an innovative color-changing system to broadcast an important environmental message.

Part of the problem with addressing air quality is that many pollutants are invisible to the naked eye and thus go unnoticed. Situated in André-Citroën park, the Ballon Air De Paris is visible for a radius of 20 km and is seen by 400,000 people every day.

The tethered helium balloon will change colors to express air quality data collected from six sensors placed around Paris. Three projectors situated in the balloon’s center display atmospheric air quality by changing the balloon’s color from green (very clean) to red (hazardous), and a high-powered laser sweeps the lower half of the balloon to display traffic pollution.

The striking symbol is a valuable tool that will inform the public about the quality of the air they breathe. In addition to promoting public knowledge about air pollution, the local government has expressed hopes that if the balloon becomes orange or red, it will encourage Parisians to adopt eco-friendly practices such as traveling via foot, bike or public transportation, reducing their use of heating, and avoiding the use of airborne solvents.

The project will also offer an emission-free balloon ride that gives passengers a sweeping panorama of the city of light from 150 meters in the air.

Knowledge about human health outgrew the size of a single textbook long ago. Today our understanding of prenatal health alone could fill a small library, from fetal wound healing to the effects of air pollution, X-rays, even methamphetamines on fetal growth.

But if you are over the age of 90, the answers are few and far between.

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A classic baseball story illustrates the damage that rabid environmentalism has done to production agriculture.

It tells about the team manager who went in to play after his regular third baseman committed a series of costly errors. He did little better, and after a disastrous half inning in the field he returned to the dugout, telling his third baseman: “You’ve got third base so messed up nobody can play it.”

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A large wildfire in a national forest spread farther away from the storied coastal town of Big Sur on Monday but forced residents of another community to stay away from their homes for a third day.

Evacuation orders first issued Saturday morning remained in place for more than 200 homes in the rural Cachagua community northeast of Big Sur. The blaze, which already has charred 187 square miles and destroyed 27 homes, was about 1 1/2 miles from the area, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

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Dehydration is one of the risk factors linked to kidney-stone disease, and the paper suggests global warming will exacerbate this effect. The researchers predict that by 2050, higher temperatures will cause an additional 1.6 million to 2.2 million kidney-stone cases, representing up to a 30 percent growth in some areas.

“This study is one of the first examples of global warming causing a direct medical consequence for humans,” said Dr. Margaret Pearle, professor of urology at UT Southwestern and senior author of the paper, which appears in the July 14 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Exelon, the electric company based in Chicago, will promise on Tuesday to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 by an amount larger than its total emissions in 2008, in a bid to shape the debate on carbon dioxide rules and to get a jump on compliance.

Many academic researchers and nonprofit groups have made proposals for cutting emissions, but Exelon’s will be an unusual public presentation devised by a company that hopes to make money in the process. The plan relies heavily on conservation and having existing nuclear plants produce more power, but it includes smaller contributions from wind and sun energy.

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