EPA Head Lisa Jackson is Prepared for Battle. By Juliet Eilperin, WashPost, 12/3/10. “Lisa Jackson's ability to focus on her intellectual priorities has earned plaudits from environmentalists, who see her as one of their most effective champions of public health measures. But it could also put her very mission at risk. As the EPA celebrates its 40th anniversary Thursday, her pursuit of sweeping rules to curb the nation's output of carbon dioxide and other pollutants could trigger a backlash from the newly empowered Republicans in Congress… The White House is being lobbied hard to rein in the EPA when it comes to several proposals, including those on boilers and smog-forming pollutants. And it is unclear how much influence Jackson wields within the administration, compared with higher-profile environmental officials such as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Carol Browner, the White House energy and climate-change adviser.”

Heavier Crudes, Heavier Footprints. By Janet Raloff, Science News, 12/3/10. “Relying on heavy oils and tar sands as the feedstock for liquid fuels will exaggerate the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with fossil-fuel use, a new study finds. Light crudes are the easiest to work with. But as their biggest and most accessible reservoirs have been tapped -- and often tapped out -- the oil industry has increasingly been turning to what has been termed ‘unconventional’ stocks. These are viscous, if not tarry, forms of petroleum. And as the upper graph below shows, the average ‘gravity’ -- viscosity of crude -- has fallen into the heavy range (below an average of about 31 degrees on the American Petroleum Institute scale) beginning in 2000… it takes extra work to convert viscous gunk into the gasoline, diesel and other high-value fuels that power engines the world over. And the extra fuel that powers those upgrades releases bonus greenhouse-gas emissions, thereby upping the carbon footprint of each gallon of refined product created.”

Turning Agriculture from Problem to Solution. By Mantoe Phakathi, IPS, 12/5/10. “Global agriculture contributes in the region of 17% to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, but according to the World Bank, climate smart agriculture techniques can both reduce emissions and meet the challenge of producing enough food for a growing world population. ‘As much as agriculture is part of the problem, it is also part of the solution,’ said Inger Anderson, the World Bank's vice president on sustainable development. Anderson was speaking to agriculture, food security and climate change experts at Agriculture and Rural Development Day, a side event at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico on Dec. 4. Agriculture experts are punting a scenario in which farming delivers a ‘triple win’, sequestering carbon in soil and biomass, gaining greater resilience to drought and higher temperatures, and improve food security and farmers' incomes. Achieving this miracle will require varying interventions in different areas, but examples can already be found.”

Judge Orders Review of ‘Endangered’ Status for Polar Bears. By Matthew Daly, AP, 10/20/10. “A federal judge ordered the Obama administration on Wednesday to review whether polar bears, at risk because of global warming, are endangered under U.S. law. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan wants the Interior Department to clarify a decision by the administration of former President George W. Bush that polar bears were merely threatened rather than in imminent danger of extinction. Sullivan's request, made at a hearing Wednesday in federal court, keeps in place the 2008 declaration by the Bush administration.

“Former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said in May 2008 that the bears were on the way to extinction because of the rapid disappearance of the Arctic Sea ice upon which they depend. But he stopped short of declaring them endangered, which had it been declared would have increased protections for the bear and make oil and gas exploration more difficult… Along with the listing, Kempthorne created a ‘special rule’ stating that the Endangered Species Act would not be used to set climate policy or limit greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming and melting ice in the Arctic Ocean. The Obama administration upheld the Bush-era policy, declaring that the endangered species law cannot be used to regulate greenhouse gases emitted by sources outside of the polar bears' habitat. If the bears are found to be endangered, however, that could open the door to using the Endangered Species Act to regulate greenhouse gases. Sullivan said he would issue a written order shortly, but said Wednesday that the government is likely to have about 30 days to explain how it arrived at its decision.”

Push for Tar-Sands Pipeline Sparks Fierce Hill Debate. By Elana Schor, Greenwire, 10/1/10. "2010 was marked by pitched environmental battles that Congress left unsettled as the clock wound down. But some of the season's most intense political jockeying has come over a seven billion dollar project that lawmakers can neither approve nor veto. The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry up to 900,000 barrels per day of Canadian oil sands to Texas refineries, nearly doubling U.S. imports from a crude reserve ranked as the second-largest in the world… TransCanada Corp. CEO Russ Girling said 'The way I'd characterize the split is, there are those supportive of the import of Canadian oil because the U.S. needs oil for a long time yet to come,' By contrast, he added, critics of the oil sands are 'focused on shutting down what most would say would be the most reliable source of crude oil to America.' TransCanada's message is simple: If America does not take advantage of the oil sands, other nations will... p

"Meanwhile, national and local environmental advocates are meeting TransCanada's efforts with a redoubled campaign of their own. Several Nebraska green groups launched a telephone and Internet tip line this week aimed at collecting local concerns over the company's threat to use powers of eminent domain against landowners who live in the pipeline's planned path. Jane Kleeb, chief of the liberal-leaning Bold Nebraska group, which helped create the new tip line, said she sees TransCanada's volley of radio and print ads in the state 'backfiring' among residents."

Australia's Prime Minister Launches New Bid to Price Carbon. By Amy Coopes, AFP, 9/27/10. "Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard Monday launched a new push to charge for carbon pollution after being punished for a perceived failure to tackle environmental issues during recent elections. Gillard… said she would personally chair a cross-party committee to study ways of slashing greenhouse gases. 'As a government we have consistently said that in order to tackle climate change… we need to put a price on carbon,' Gillard told reporters. 'A carbon price will create an incentive to reduce emissions, drive investment in renewable and low emissions technologies, create certainty for business investment and begin the adjustment of our economy to a cleaner energy future.' Gillard, Australia's first female leader, said the committee would examine ways of penalizing carbon production, including an emission trading scheme, a carbon tax or a hybrid of both."

Nations Strengthen Pact to Stem Methane Pollution. By Eli Kintisch, Science, 10/1/10. "A coalition of 38 nations and several international groups have launched the Global Methane Initiative, accelerating shared efforts to cut pollution of a gas that accounts for about one-fifth of the warming potential of all greenhouse gases. And the climate benefits of cutting emissions of methane are more immediate: It persists in the atmosphere for a decade or so, while CO2 lasts for hundreds of years. Methane is also a more potent warmer. Scientists and advocates mostly lamented the failure in Copenhagen to create a global, comprehensive, and mandatory deal on greenhouse emissions. But there's growing recognition that agreements like the methane initiative can chip away at the problem without requiring arduous political steps. 'Countries can work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today. This shows you can make progress while you work on the most difficult issues,' Environmental Protection Agency official Dina Kruger told ScienceInsider…

"This pact expands and renames the global Methane to Markets Partnership, created in 2004. The U.S. led efforts to create the Partnership, which runs cooperative projects, emphasizes work that does not require new inventions to reduce pollution from the gas. From that organization's 2009 status report: For many of the major emission sources, significant reductions are possible using currently available, cost-effective technologies. Many of the available reduction options involve the recovery and use of methane as a fuel for electricity generation, on-site uses, or off -site gas sales. These actions represent key opportunities for reducing emissions from animal waste management, coal mines, landfills, and natural gas and oil systems. The new initiative expands the partnership by adding waste water, a sector thought to be responsible for 9% of anthropogenic methane emissions. It also will move the focus of nations from simply collecting methane that is emitted to preventing it from being created. That could be done, said Kruger, for example by reducing the amount of yard waste put in landfills, where it is broken down in a way that creates methane. The effort, begun with 14 nations, has funded roughly 300 projects that have led to the removal of the equivalent, in warming terms, of 40 million tons of CO2."

Amidst Growing Signs of Climate Change, Prospects for Climate Legislation Unlikely Before 2013. By Juliet Eilperin, WashPost, September 24, 2010. "For all the visible signs of global warming, weakened political support for curbing emissions means the United States is unlikely to impose national limits on greenhouse gases before 2013, at the earliest. Several leading GOP candidates this fall are questioning whether these emissions even cause warming, while some key Democratic Senate candidates are disavowing the cap-and-trade bill the House passed in 2009. 'I don't see a comprehensive bill going anywhere in the next two years,' Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told a Washington policymakers conference sponsored by Reuters on Tuesday [9/21/10]. This disconnect has left environmentalists and many climate scientists pessimistic… Even some Democratic Senate candidates are playing down the prospect of a federal cap on carbon emissions. Bennet, during a debate with Buck this month, said he opposes the House-passed climate bill, and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal -- who backed Senate climate legislation in 2009 - recently told one voter that 'cap-and-trade is dead.'"

A White House Rebranding for Global Warming? By John Collins Rudolf, NYTimes, September 20, 2010. "Is the White House trying to rebrand global warming? That's the impression that some conservative-leaning media outlets and blogs formed after recent remarks on climate change by John P. Holdren, a top White House science adviser. In a speech in Oslo on Sept. 6, Dr. Holdren called 'global warming' a 'dangerous misnomer' because it implied that the impact of greenhouse gases would be gradual, uniform across the planet and 'quite possibly benign.' Rather, he said, changes to the climate are rapid when viewed in terms of the capacity of society and ecosystems to adjust; the impact is distributed unevenly; and the outcome will be overwhelmingly negative for most of the globe. A better term would be 'global climate disruption,' Dr. Holdren said."

World 2009 CO2 Emissions Off 1.3% But Up 17% Since 1990.A layer of smog can be seen above Manhattan through the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York May 21, 2009. By Vera Eckert, Reuters, Aug 13, 2010. "Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2009 fell 1.3% to 31.3 billion tons in the first year-on-year decline in this decade, German renewable energy institute IWR on August 13. The Muenster-based institute, which advises German ministries, cited the global economic crisis and rising investments in renewable energies for the fall in emissions. Global investment in renewable installations for power, heat and fuels last year rose to 125 billion euros ($161 billion) from 120 billion in 2008, IWR said... 'The energy-induced CO2 output in China in 2009 due to its economic growth has grown to a level now that is as high as that of the U.S. and Russia combined,' said [IWR director Norbert Allnoch]. China in 2009 was in top position with 7.43 billion tonnes after 6.81 billion in 2008, followed by the U.S. with 5.95 billion (6.37 billion 2008). Russia was in third position, just before India, and followed by Japan... Global CO2 emissions are still 37% above those in 1990, the basis year for the Kyoto Climate Protocol."

French Emissions at 1990 Level. AFP, August 12, 2010. "France's carbon dioxide emissions have remained constant over the last two decades despite efforts to curb the potent greenhouse gas, a government agency reported Thursday. Between 1990 and 2007 -- the most recent year for which figures are available -- total CO2 emissions increased slightly from 438 million to 439 million tons, according to the ministry for sustainable development. While the country has become more energy efficient during that period, the ministry noted in a report, increases in production and consumption have more than offset gains in efficiency. 'Technical advances have led to a decrease in emissions per unit of production and consumption,' it said. 'But due to an increase in the volume of production and consumption, the quantity of CO2 emitted in France has remained roughly the same.'"

Borehole Network Confirms Permafrost Is Thawing Worldwide. By Victoria Barber, Anchorage Arctic Sounder, August 13, 2010. "An expanded network of boreholes across the northern hemisphere has confirmed that permafrost throughout polar and sub-polar regions is thawing, say scientists who studied the topic during International Polar Year. 'You look at a whole hemisphere and see the patterns everywhere,' said Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor with the snow, ice and permafrost group at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, and lead author of a paper [PDF, 11 pps] documenting the research. Romanovsky and his colleagues launched a campaign to improve the global network of boreholes for International Polar Year, a science program focused on the Arctic and Antarctic that ran from 2007 to 2009… Using information collected from 575 boreholes located throughout North America, Russia and the Nordic region, researchers found that permafrost temperatures during the International Polar Year were as much as 2 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than they were 20 or 30 years ago."

Indonesia Walks a 'Tricky' Path Toward Growth and Sustainability. By Jessica Leber, ClimateWire, March 22, 2010. "Four decades of aggressive development have stripped Indonesia's forests nearly half bare since the time when a young Barack Obama lived there from 1967 to 1971. In June, the U.S. president plans to revisit his childhood home as he aims to forge closer ties with the emerging but often overlooked Asia-Pacific power. Climate change will be a top agenda item in developing a new U.S.-Indonesia bilateral partnership, administration officials said in a briefing last week. The visit comes as Indonesia's government tries for a greater voice in U.N. climate talks and has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas output 26% over the next decade. It says it will raise that target to 41% if enough foreign aid comes under a climate deal. But the world's fourth most populated nation also faces intense pressure to maintain a 6% growth rate in its gross domestic product to employ its expanding workforce... Still, some 80% of Indonesia's greenhouse gas output comes straight from its landscape, as loggers and paper companies clear natural forests and grow plantations, miners cut through forests with roads, and palm oil producers drain carbon-rich peatlands and clear them with fires that can burn out of control."

The Wrong Kind of Green. By Johann Hari, The Nation, March 4, 2010. "Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests--and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as 'unworkable' and 'unrealistic,' as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal? At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted 'brands' in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters--and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.

"You would expect the American conservation organizations to be joining the great activist upsurge demanding we stick to a safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: 350 parts per million (ppm), according to professor and NASA climatologist James Hansen. And -- in public, to their members--they often are supportive... But behind closed doors... it seems its leaders have come to see the world through the funnel of the US Senate and what legislation it can be immediately coaxed to pass. They say there is no point advocating a strategy that senators will reject flat-out. They have to be 'politically realistic' and try to advocate something that will appeal to Blue Dog Democrats. This focus on inch-by-inch reform would normally be understandable: every movement for change needs a reformist wing. But the existence of tipping point -- which have been overwhelmingly proven by the climate science -- makes a mockery of this baby-steps approach to global warming. If we exceed the safe amount of warming gases in the atmosphere, then the earth will release its massive carbon stores and we will have runaway warming. After that, any cuts we introduce will be useless. You can't jump halfway across a chasm: you still fall to your death. It is all or disaster...

"Already, shining alternatives are starting to rise up across America. In just a year, the brilliant 350.org has formed a huge network of enthusiastic activists who are demanding our politicians heed the real scientific advice -- not the parody of it offered by the impostors. They have to displace the corrupt conservationists as the voice of American environmentalism, fast. This will be a difficult and ugly fight, when we need all our energy to take on the forces of ecocide. But these conservation groups increasingly resemble the forces of ecocide draped in a green cloak. If we don't build a real, unwavering environmental movement soon, we had better get used to a new sound -- of trees crashing down and an ocean rising, followed by the muffled, private applause of America's 'conservationists.'"

China and India Join Copenhagen Accord -- Sort Of. Guardian, March 12, 2010. "China and India wrote to the UN's climate secretariat today agreeing to be 'listed' as a parties to the Copenhagen accord, the last-minute agreement that emerged from the chaos of the UN's summit in Copenhagen. The action falls short of full "association" and highlights the gulf between the US - the strongest backer of the accord - and the other key nations on how to deliver a global deal to combat climate change. Since Copenhagen, there has been confusion over how a legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can be achieved. All observers, including the UN's top climate official, Yvo de Boer, are now clear that no such deal will be signed in 2010, with a meeting in South Africa in December 2011 now seen as the earliest date. At the heart of the disagreement is whether a new global treaty, like the existing Kyoto protocol, must be agreed unanimously by all 192 members of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and be a continuation of Kyoto, which enshrines bindings carbon cuts on industrialised nations but not on developing ones."

Study Says Undersea Release of Methane is Under Way. By Cornelia Dean, NYTimes, March 5, 2010. "Climate scientists have long warned that global warming could unlock vast stores of the greenhouse gas methane that are frozen into the Arctic permafrost, setting off potentially significant increases in global warming. Now researchers at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and elsewhere say this change is under way in a little-studied area under the sea, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, west of the Bering Strait. Natalia Shakhova, a scientist at the university and a leader of the study, said it was too soon to say whether the findings suggest that a dangerous release of methane looms. In a telephone news conference, she said researchers were only beginning to track the movement of this methane into the atmosphere as the undersea permafrost that traps it degrades. But climate experts familiar with the new research reported in March 5 issue of the journal Science that even though it does not suggest imminent climate catastrophe, it is important because of methane's role as a greenhouse gas. Although carbon dioxide is far more abundant and persistent in the atmosphere, ton for ton atmospheric methane traps at least 25 times as much heat.

"Until recently, undersea permafrost has been little studied, but work so far shows it is already sending surprising amounts of methane into the atmosphere, Dr. Shakhova and other researchers are finding. Last year, scientists from Britain and Germany reported that they had detected plumes of methane rising from the Arctic seabed in the West Spitsbergen area, north of Scandinavia. At the time, they said they had begun their work hoping to gain data to predict future emissions and had not expected to find evidence that the process was under way. It is 'indispensable' to keep track of methane in the region, Martin Heimann of the Max Planck Institute in Germany said in a commentary accompanying the Science report. So far, Dr. Heimann wrote, methane contributions from Arctic permafrost have been 'negligible.' He added: 'But will this persist into the future under sustained warming trends? We do not know.' Dr. Shakhova…estimated that annual methane emissions from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf total about seven teragrams. (A teragram is 1.1 million tons.) By some estimates, global methane emissions total about 500 teragrams a year."

Pacific Northwest Forests Act as Massive Carbon Banks. By Kim Murphy, LA Times, March 4, 2010. "The thick, wet forests of the Pacific Northwest are the carbon storage powerhouses of the U.S. -- in fact, they store more than 1-1/2 times as much carbon as the entire amount of carbon dioxide burned in fossil fuels throughout the country each year, a new study [PDF, 5 pp] shows. Two analysts for the Wilderness Society looked at data compiled by the U.S. Forest Service and identified 10 national forests, from the Tongass in southeast Alaska to the Siskiyou in southern Oregon, that together store about 9.8 billion metric tons of carbon on a total of 19 million acres. By absorbing carbon dioxide, forests accumulate and store carbon in trees, roots and soil -- a valuable depository for greenhouse gases that, if released into the atmosphere, might contribute to climate change. 'To get a better idea of how much carbon this really is, we could compare it to the CO2 equivalent contained in the fossil fuels burned n the U.S. each year, about 5.8 billion metric tons,' said Ann Ingerson, an economist for the Wilderness Society who co-authored the analysis with Mike Anderson, a senior resource analyst at the organization.

"The federal Environmental Protection Agency estimates [PDF, 18 pp] that about 11% of greenhouse emissions are offset each year in forests, urban trees and agricultural soils…While forests act as carbon banks, logging, past studies have shown, often results in a large portion of a forest's stored carbon to be emitted back into the atmosphere, either through the burning of excess vegetation or the decay of what's left, Anderson said. That was one of the points of the study: about 1 million of the 19 million acres of forests named as the heavyweight carbon banks have no formal protections in place against logging or other development."

Methane Levels May See 'Runaway' Rise. By Michael McCarthy, The Independent, February 22, 2010. "Atmospheric levels of methane, the greenhouse gas which is much more powerful than carbon dioxide, have risen significantly for the last three years running... leading to fears that a major global-warming 'feedback' is beginning to kick in. For some time there has been concern that the vast amounts of methane, or 'natural gas', locked up in the frozen tundra of the Arctic could be released as the permafrost is melted by global warming. This would give a huge further impetus to climate change, an effect sometimes referred to as 'the methane time bomb'. This is because methane (CH4) is even more effective at retaining the Sun's heat in the atmosphere than CO2... Over a relatively short period, such as 20 years, CH4 has a global warming potential more than 60 times as powerful as CO2, although it decays more quickly.

"Now comes the first news that levels of methane in the atmosphere, which began rising in 2007 when an unprecedented heatwave in the Arctic caused a record shrinking of the sea ice, have continued to rise significantly through 2008 and 2009... There is a fear that rising temperatures may have started to activate the positive feedback mechanism. This would see higher atmospheric levels of the gas producing more warming, which in turn would release more methane, which would produce even further warming, and so on into an uncontrollable 'runaway' warming effect. This is believed to have happened at the end of the last Ice Age, causing a very rapid temperature rise in a matter of decades... The new figures were revealed at a major two-day conference [7/22-23] on greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, at the Royal Society in London. They were disclosed in a presentation by Professor Euan Nisbet, of Royal Holloway College of the University of London, and Dr Ed Dlugokencky of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado… Many climate scientists think that frozen Arctic tundra, like this at Sermermiut in Greenland, is a ticking time bomb in terms of global warming, because it holds vast amounts of methane, an immensely potent greenhouse gas. Over thousands of years the methane has accumulated under the ground at northern latitudes all around the world, and has effectively been taken out of circulation by the permafrost acting as an impermeable lid. But as the permafrost begins to melt in rising temperatures, the lid may open -- with potentially catastrophic results."

Extensive 22-Year Field Project Finds Trees Growing Faster in Mid-Atlantic States. By David A. Fahrenhold, WashPost, February 20, 2010. "Jess Parker, a forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Institution, has spent the past 22 years on a research project so repetitive, so time-consuming, that it impresses even researchers with the patience to count tree rings. Since 1987, he and a group of volunteers have embraced thousands of trees, slipped a tape measure behind them, and wrapped it around to measure the trees' girth... He tracked about 50,000 trees on 55 plots between the Washington DC and the Chesapeake, typically returning every three years to measure them as they grew. His volunteers included an emergency room doctor in search of peace, trained scientists in search of a hobby and retirees following orders from their wives...

"Last year, when Parker analyzed the mountain of data his team had collected, he found something surprising: Their trees were adding bulk at a surprisingly fast rate. Parker said the best explanations for this all seemed to relate to climate change. Temperatures in the area have risen by three-tenths of a degree; the growing season has lengthened by 7.8 days; and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen. All of those might speed up photosynthesis, the engine of tree growth. Which sounds, at first, like a good thing. It would appear that trees were helping more than expected to reduce the world's greenhouse gases, sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and using it to make leaves and branches.

"'The danger of that, of course, is that this can't go on forever,' said Kenneth Feeley, a professor at Florida International University. He meant that, even if there was enough carbon dioxide to support more fast growth, the trees would eventually run out of water or plant food. Their growth would slow down, and they would stop absorbing so much carbon. Other researchers, such as Feeley, say it wouldn't have been possible to notice this trend in the mid-Atlantic if Parker and his crew had not measured so many trees over so much time. This month, when Parker and his team published a paper on their work, it was received as a key piece of evidence about the ways that climate change could be having subtle but important effects on forests. Others have found similar growth in different parts of the world, as warmer weather and more carbon dioxide fuel tree growth. In the tropics, however, some studies have seemed to show trees growing more slowly: It might now be too hot for some trees there."

Study Finds Extra CO2 Enabling Trees to Grow Faster. By Leslie Kaufman, NYTimes, February 2, 2010. "Forests in the eastern United States appear to be growing faster in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a new study has found. The study centered on trees in mixed hardwood stands on the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland that are representative of much of the those on the Eastern Seaboard. All are growing two to four times as fast as normal, according to a study published in Tuesday's issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. After controlling for other variables, scientists concluded that the change resulted largely from the increase in carbon dioxide... Geoffrey G. Parker, a co-author of the paper and an ecologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md., said his research indicated that the local forests were adapting to the rise in carbon dioxide by absorbing more. 'My guess is that they are already sopping up some of the extra carbon,' he said. But Dr. Parker said it was unclear whether the trend could be sustained. 'We don't think this can persist for too long because other limiting factors will come into play, like water availability and soil nutrients,' he said."