The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a multi-state plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants in a 10 state region in the northeastern US that extends from Maine to Maryland. The compliance period for the Initiative started January 1, 2009 and was preceded by two auctions of CO2 emission allowances. RGGI is the first mandatory market based program in the US t...

All environmental pollution, including emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), imposes costs on people who did not create the pollution. This is an example of an economic externality—a consequence or side effect of an action that is not experienced by the individual or entity from which it originates, and that is not reflected in prices. The damages and associated costs to society that GHGs cause...

The direct release of nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) from wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) is important because it contributes to the global greenhouse gases (GHGs) release and strongly effects the WWTP carbon footprint. Biological nitrogen removal technologies could increase the direct emission of N2O (IPCC, 2006), while CH4 losses are of environmental, economic and safety concern. Cu...

Future stratospheric ozone concentrations will be determined both by changes in the concentration of ozone depleting substances (ODSs) and by changes in stratospheric and tropospheric climate, including those caused by changes in anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs). Since future economic development pathways and resultant emissions of GHGs are uncertain, anthropogenic climate change could be ...

Agriculture is one of the largest contributors of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) responsible for global warming. Measurements of gas fluxes from dung pats suggest that dung is a source of GHGs, but whether these emissions are modified by arthropods has not been studied. A closed chamber system was used to measure the fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2...

1820 An understanding of greenhouse gases (GHGs) associated with agricultural production is a key area of interest in the current scientiic literature due to the potentially negative inluence of agricultural GHGs associated with global climate change. Managing Agricultural Greenhouse Gases focuses on the national GRACEnet project initiated by the USDA–ARS in 2002 and provides a current summary ...

Serious international discussion on global warming did not start until the singing of the Framework Convention on Climate Change at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. It was not, however, until five years later that the first United Nations conference to enact a binding international agreement to control the emissions of greenhouse gases was held in Kyoto, Japan—the Kyoto Protocol. Thi...

A common view is that the current global warming rate will continue or accelerate. But we argue that rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO(2) greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as chlorofluorocarbons, CH(4), and N(2)O, not by the products of fossil fuel burning, CO(2) and aerosols, the positive and negative climate forcings of which are partially offsetting. The growth rat...

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are vital components of the earth’s atmosphere, trapping heat around the earth, maintaining temperatures necessary for human existence. Until the Industrial Revolution, these gases existed in a natural equilibrium with the environment. Since that time, anthropogenic activities such as fossil fuel burning and land clearing have increased the quantity of GHGs, such as carb...

Carbon dioxide currently accounts for about 49 percent of the radiative forcing of the atmosphere that is attributable to greenhouse gases (3.0 watts per square meter [W m-2]; Houghton et al. 2001). Tropospheric ozone and black carbon are responsible for another 18 percent, and the well-mixed greenhouse gases (GHGs)—principally methane, nitrous oxide, and various halocarbons—are responsible for...