12 states sue EPA for data on toxins - Yahoo! New

Twelve states sued the Bush administration Wednesday to force greater disclosure of data on toxic chemicals that companies store, use and release into the environment.

The state officials oppose new federal Environmental Protection Agency rules that allow thousands of companies to limit the information they disclose to the public about toxic chemicals, according to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the lead attorney general in the lawsuit.

The change lets 100 polluters off the hook in New York alone, he said.

The EPA, however, said the change improves the Toxics Release Inventory law and eases requirements only on companies that can certify they have no releases of toxins to the environment.

The EPA this year rolled back a regulation on the law signed by President Reagan after the deadly Bhopal toxic chemical catastrophe in India in 1984, according to the states involved in the lawsuit. That law required companies to provide a long, detailed report whenever they store or emit 500 pounds of specific toxins.

The new rule adopted this year requires that long accounting only for companies storing or releasing 5,000 pounds of toxins or more. Companies storing or releasing 500 to 4,999 pounds of toxins would have to file an abbreviated form, said Katherine Kennedy, New York's special deputy attorney general for environmental protection.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in New York City seeks to invalidate the EPA's revised regulations.

"The EPA's new regulations rob New Yorkers — and people across the country — of their right to know about toxic dangers in their own backyards," Cuomo said. "Along with 11 other states throughout the nation, we will restore the public's right to information about chemical hazards, despite the Bush administration's best attempts to hide it."

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said the EPA's action cripples a 20-year program that required companies to report the amount of lead, mercury and other toxins they released.

"Polluters can release 10 times more toxins like lead and mercury without telling anyone," he said.

EPA spokeswoman Molly O'Neill had no comment on the suit. Companies that can show they release none of the toxins can avoid filing long and time-consuming reports, she said.

The change, O'Neill said, is "making a good program better."

California Attorney General Jerry Brown said more than 300 companies in California can conceal data under the new EPA rule, and a New Jersey official agreed.

"This rule change is a move in the wrong direction," said that state's environmental protection commissioner, Lisa P. Jackson.

States had not tried to negotiate a compromise before suing, noting that environmental groups and others have criticized the EPA's decision for more than a year.

"We feel the only course of action was to file suit and remedy this in the courts," said Cuomo spokesman Jeffrey Lerner.

The other states suing the EPA are Arizona, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

UN panel gives dire warming forecast

Global warming is "unequivocal" and carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere commits the world to an eventual rise in sea levels of up to 4.6 feet, the world's top climate experts warned Saturday in their most authoritative report to date.

"Only urgent, global action will do," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, calling on the United States and China — the world's two biggest polluters — to do more to slow global climate change.

"I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more constructive role," Ban told reporters. "Both countries can lead in their own way."

Ban, however, advised against assigning blame.

Climate change imperils "the most precious treasures of our planet," he said, and the effects are "so severe and so sweeping that only urgent global action will do. We are all in this together. We must work together."

According to the U.N. panel of scientists, whose latest report is a synthesis of three previous ones, enough carbon dioxide already has built up that it imperils islands, coastlines and a fifth to two-thirds of the world's species.

As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, according to the report.

Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, says the report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore this year.

The panel portrays the Earth hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace and warns of inevitable human suffering. It says emissions of carbon, mainly from fossil fuels, must stabilize by 2015 and go down after that.

In the best-case scenario, temperatures will keep rising from carbon already in the atmosphere, the report said. Even if factories were shut down today and cars taken off the roads, the average sea level will gradually rise over the next 1,000 years to reach as high as 4.6 feet above that in the preindustrial period, or about 1850.

"We have already committed the world to sea level rise," the panel's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, said. But if the Greenland ice sheet melts, the scientists said, they could not predict by how many feet the seas will rise, drowning coastal cities.

Climate change is here, they said, as witnessed by melting snow and glaciers, higher average temperatures and rising sea levels. If unchecked, global warming will spread hunger and disease, put further stress on water resources, cause fiercer storms and more frequent droughts, and could drive up to 70 percent of plant and animal species to extinction, according to the panel's report.

The report was adopted after five days of sometimes tense negotiations among 140 national delegations. It lays out blueprints for avoiding the worst catastrophes — and various possible outcomes, depending on how quickly and decisively action is taken.

"The world's scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice," Ban said, looking ahead to an important climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, next month. "I expect the world's policy makers to do the same."

The report is intended to both set the stage and serve as a guide for the conference, at which world leaders will begin discussing a global climate change treaty to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

That treaty, which expires in 2012, required industrial nations to reduce greenhouse gases and a smooth transition to a new treaty is needed to avoid upsetting the fledgling carbon markets.

"This report will have an incredible political impact," Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate change official, told The Associated Press. "It's a signal that politicians cannot afford to ignore."

The United States opted out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing that the science was unproven and that the burden of mandatory emission cuts was unfair since it excluded fast-growing China and India.

Chief U.S. delegate Sharon Hays said doubts have been dispelled. "What's changed since 2001 is the scientific certainty that this is happening," she said in a conference call late Friday. She did not indicate that Washington would abandon its policy of voluntary emission cuts.

China and India have said any measures impinging on their development and efforts to lift their people from poverty were unacceptable — a point likely to be heeded at the Bali talks.

The report offered dozens of measures for avoiding the worst catastrophes if taken together — at a cost of less than 0.12 percent of the global economy annually until 2050. They ranged from switching to nuclear and gas-fired power stations, developing hybrid cars, using more efficient electrical appliances and managing cropland to store more carbon.

Ban said a new agreement should provide funding to help poor countries develop clean energy resources, adapt to climate conditions and give them the technology to help themselves.

He said he witnessed the devastation of climate change in disappearing glaciers of Antarctica, the deforested Amazon and under the ozone hole in Chile.

"These scenes are as frightening as a science fiction movie," said Ban. "But they are even more terrifying because they are real."

Oil spill keeps crabbers away in SF

Many crabbers stayed off the water Thursday at the start of the Dungeness crab season amid health concerns due to last week's oil spill in San Francisco Bay.

Crab catchers and buyers at the city's famed Fisherman's Wharf said the bad publicity surrounding the spill means many consumers won't want to eat crab from the region.

"It just takes one crab and you'll have a problem. It's a lawsuit waiting to happen," said Max Boland, director of sales at Alber Seafoods, a wholesaler on the wharf.

Local crabbers had asked the governor to delay the opening of the entire commercial crab fishery. But the state announced Wednesday that only the San Francisco Bay and waters within three miles of the coastline, from San Mateo County to Point Reyes, would be closed. Dungeness crab, a delicacy, is usually caught more than three miles offshore.

Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game, said the department consulted with all sectors of the fishing industry before deciding which areas should be closed.

"All of us were concerned about the human health issue," Martarano said. "There was a wide range of opinion, and we took everything into consideration."

Miles of beaches are still shut down after the freighter Cosco Busan struck the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in heavy fog on Nov. 7, spilling 58,000 gallons of oil into the bay.

Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal probe into the spill, and the governor also has promised an investigation. Officials have ruled out mechanical error and are focusing on the actions of the pilot and crew.

But the investigation into the cause of the crash hit a snag Wednesday when Chinese crew members of the Hong Kong-based cargo ship refused to speak with federal investigators. Some crew members had previously spoken to the Coast Guard, but new criminal and civil investigations have apparently led the crew to hire lawyers and refuse interviews, said National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman.

The NTSB could subpoena the crew members.

The Coast Guard has been criticized for a lapse of several hours between when officials knew the spill was 58,000 gallons — not 140 gallons as initially reported — and when that information was made public.

Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen told lawmakers the Coast Guard will review its own response, including whether its emergency plan for the bay is adequate. The process will include the city of San Francisco, the state of California and others.

EPA targets fish farms with permits

Federal environmental officials have a new permitting process designed to cut down on pollution that trout farms and other aquaculture producers discharge into the Snake River.

The Environmental Protection Agency permits, scheduled to take effect Dec. 1, require the industry to reduce by 40 percent the amount of phosphorus — a chemical byproduct of fish feces — discharged into the river, which flows across southern Idaho.

"These fish processors under rules of the old permit didn't have a phosphorus limit, but now they do," said Sharon Wilson, the EPA specialist who helped write the new rules.

The permits are written to cover aquaculture producers in every corner of Idaho, the nation's leading producer of commercial rainbow trout.

But the area of biggest concern is a 55-mile stretch of the Snake River downstream from Twin Falls, the epicenter of the state's $90 million per year farm-raised trout, catfish, caviar and alligator industry.

For decades, federal and state environmental regulators have sought to reduce the amount of phosphorus discharged by the industry, as well as by farmers and public waste treatment facilities.

Phosphorus is blamed for fueling algae blooms and excessive weed growth, diminishing water quality and reducing oxygen levels critical to wild fish and other aquatic life.

Government and industry officials say the new rules will affect producers in different ways.

Through negotiations with the state Department of Environmental Quality, each producer was assigned a different discharge limit based on size and current emission levels, said Bill Stewart, an EPA environmental protection specialist in Boise.

But under a pollution trading program, producers are allowed to take the total available phosphorous permitted and divide it up among themselves.

For example, trout producers in danger of exceeding individual caps can buy pollution credits from a competitor operating below his allotment.

The trading program will be monitored by the state and an independent board. Wilson said credit prices will be negotiated between the buyer and seller and dictated by the market.

"There is a limit as to what they will be allowed to trade," Wilson said. "But our overall goal is to reduce the pollutant load in the stream."

For some producers, meeting the new cap could mean simple management changes or switching to a fish food lower in phosphorus. Others have had to invest in new waste pond technology, industry officials said.

Most producers believe they can still operate profitably, said Randy MacMillan, vice president of Clear Springs Foods, the region's biggest rainbow trout producer.

"We bit the bullet and figured out what we needed to do to allow our company to produce fish profitably and still meet the environmental requirements," MacMillan said.

Experts to prepare global warming report

If there's one document on global warming policymakers might put in their briefcase, this would be it. On Monday, scientists and government officials gather in Valencia, Spain to put together the fourth and last U.N. report on the state of global warming and what it will mean to hundreds of millions of people whose lives are being dramatically altered.

Unlike the past three tomes, this one will have little new data. Instead, it will distill the previous work into a compact guide of roughly 30 pages that summarizes complex science into language politicians and bureaucrats can understand.

It will be the first point of reference for negotiators meeting next month in Bali, Indonesia, to decide the future course of the worldwide push to curb greenhouse gas emissions after the 2012 expiration of the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, the landmark agreement that assigned binding reduction targets to 36 countries.

The last of four reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "integrates all the elements, the connections between them," said one of its authors, Bert Metz, of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

U.N. officials delayed the Bali meeting by several months until after the report is released, expecting it would add political momentum to the conference.

Though the IPCC was created in 1988 to assess the science of global warming, its work gathered a momentum this year that has helped reshape opinion in the public and governments.

In the ultimate validation, the IPCC's warnings of man-induced climate change shared the Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore, the world's best-known global warming campaigner.

"The reactions that I heard from politicians around the world is that they were shocked by the reports and that they should be acted on," said Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate official.

The United States, Australia and many developing countries that shunned the Kyoto treaty are now ready to begin discussing a successor agreement at the Bali conference, De Boer said.

"There is a growing consensus that Bali needs to achieve a breakthrough to put negotiations in place, and that's very encouraging," he said. "But it's not going to be a piece of cake."

The studies issued earlier this year painted a dire picture of a planet in which unabated greenhouse gas emissions could drive average temperatures up as much as 11 degrees by 2100.

Even a 3.6-degree rise could subject up to 2 billion people to water shortages by 2050 and threaten extinction for 20 percent to 30 percent of the world's species, the IPCC said.

While some people will go thirsty from lack of rain, millions more will suffer devastating floods; diseases will proliferate; the food supply may at first increase in some areas, but will plummet later; countries that are now poor will grow still poorer.

The scientists set out a basket of technological options to keep the temperature rise to the minimum, with investments amounting to about 3 percent of the world's gross domestic product — far less than what the IPCC said it would cost later to fix the damage caused by higher temperature increases.

Campaigners are looking for the final "synthesis report" to emphasize the action governments can take, the consequences of inaction and the brief time remaining to put that action into gear.

"We would want to emphasize the urgency which comes from the science," said Stephanie Tunmore of the Greenpeace environmental group. "We know what's happening, we know what's causing it, and we know what we have to do about it."

A draft report of about 60 pages — distilling the previous three reports totaling more than 4,000 pages — has been circulating for months to governments, environmentalists and scientists for comment. The authors gathered in Valencia last week to incorporate some of the comments into the final draft.

Starting Monday, delegations from 145 countries meeting in this Spanish Mediterranean city will review the Summary for Policymakers, the critical document that becomes the single most important reference for nonscientists.

Each line must be adopted by consensus — and sometimes the use of a single word can be heatedly contested.

The final document is due to be released Saturday. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's presence at the unveiling is meant to underscore its importance.

"I expect some scuffling over the final language," especially over the urgency and the level of certainty of some predicted events, said Peter Altman, of the Washington-based lobby National Environmental Trust.

Despite the haggling, the political input into a scientific document is essential, because governments cannot later disown it.

"After the summary is approved, it becomes the property of the governments," said Metz, who was one of about 40 scientists working on the final draft. "It becomes difficult for them to ignore the conclusions that they were subscribing to."

California sues EPA over global warming

California and 14 other states are demanding urgent action on global warming from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, arguing in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the environmental and health risks are mounting every day that the Bush administration delays action.

But a quick remedy to the problem may not be in the cards, even if the EPA makes a decision about California's plan to give its drivers cleaner cars that emit fewer greenhouse gases.

A tangle of lawsuits is expected to follow, no matter what the EPA's decision is, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledged Thursday.

"We sue again, and sue again and sue again until we get it," he said at a Capitol news conference.

The lawsuit stems from a feud between states that want to take aggressive action to address one of the leading causes of global warming and the Bush administration's hands-off approach to regulation.

In California, scientists predict global warming will reduce the mountain snowpacks — the state's largest source of water — while rising sea levels will submerge coastal homes and erode beaches. Warmer temperatures will wither crops that can't survive in longer, hotter summers. Wildfires will char forests.

About a third of the state's greenhouse gas emissions come from cars, pickups and sport utility vehicles, a figure that will only grow if they are not regulated and the nation's largest state continues to attract millions more new residents.

Without its auto regulations, California will have a hard time meeting its ambitious goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, Air Resources Board chairwoman Mary Nichols said.

"We will have to find emission reductions elsewhere, from our industries and from our cities and our people. And we can't do that," Nichols said. "We need this technology, we know it's there."

California's lawsuit against the EPA, filed in U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., seeks to force a decision about whether California can enact the country's first emission standards for cars and light trucks.

The state first sought permission nearly two years ago after it adopted an anti-pollution law to control emissions from cars, light trucks and sport utility vehicles. More than a dozen other states have followed California's lead.

EPA administrator Stephen Johnson said last summer that he would decide by the end of this year. His spokeswoman, Jennifer Wood, said Thursday that it was "unfortunate that California is more interested in getting a good headline than allowing us to make a good decision."

Meanwhile, automakers are trying to block the standards, saying that a patchwork of regulations that vary from state to state complicates their manufacturing and increases costs. California also is defending its regulation in numerous lawsuits in both state and federal courts.

Automakers also argue that controlling carbon dioxide levels creates a fuel-economy standard, which only the federal government can set.

Wade Newton, a spokesman for The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said it was premature to say whether his organization would sue the EPA if it approves California's waiver. However, he acknowledged the debate will likely continue.

California officials say automakers can improve technology, use alternative fuels, improve vehicle air conditioners and trade clean-air credits among manufacturers to meet the tougher emission standards.

While the federal government sets national air pollution rules, California has unique status under the Clean Air Act to enact its own regulations if it gets approval from the EPA.

Other states can follow the federal rules or California's standards if they are tougher. The EPA has granted about 50 such waivers over the past 40 years, for the use of catalytic converters, leaded gasoline regulations and other measures.

Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington joined California's lawsuit against the federal government.

"We are filling the void left by the Bush administration's refusal to protect the environment," New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said in a statement.

The governors of Colorado, Florida and Utah also have said their states would adopt the standard.

The EPA initially refused to act on California's application, saying the agency did not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that it does have that authority.

As a result, the EPA is now developing greenhouse gas regulations scheduled to be released by the end of the year. Environmental groups say those rules will likely be weaker than the California proposal.

State officials say they need the matter resolved soon because the auto-emissions law applies to vehicles starting in the 2009 model year, which companies start marketing as early as January.

Pollution turns China river dark red

Industrial discharge and household wastewater have polluted a northern Chinese river so badly that the water is dark red in some sections and has caused chronic illnesses among villagers, a government publication reported.

Some of the 50,000 villagers living along polluted stretches of the Futuo River in Hebei province said sweet potatoes and soy beans grown there were tough and would not soften with cooking, the state-run China Environment News reported. Oil pressed from peanuts harvested in the area smells bad, the report said.

China has some of the world's most polluted waterways and cities after two decades of breakneck industrial growth. The government has struggled in recent years to balance environmental concerns with economic growth.

One stretch of the Futuo River, once a place for boating and fishing, was flowing reddish-brown, with inches of white foam floating on some parts.

"The river looked like a white boa constrictor slithering into Anping County," the Oct. 30 report said.

Water drawn from a 400-foot well in the county was red and had a strong odor. Skin, circulatory and gastrointestinal diseases were common and chronic, the report said.

Last year, tests showed the amount of organic pollutants in the water was 37 times more than is allowed according to national standards.

The report blamed wastewater and industrial discharge from paper, dye, leather and soap factories in five counties upstream for the pollution in Anping.

A woman at the Anping county environmental protection bureau confirmed the report but referred questions to the bureau director, who was out of the office and could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Think tank: Climate affects security

Climate change could be one of the greatest national security challenges ever faced by U.S. policy makers, according to a new joint study by two U.S. think tanks.

The report, to be released Monday, raises the threat of dramatic population migrations, wars over water and resources, and a realignment of power among nations.

During the last two decades, climate scientists have underestimated how quickly the Earth is changing — perhaps to avoid being branded as "alarmists," the study said. But policy planners should count on climate-induced instability in critical parts of the world within 30 years.

The report was compiled by a panel of security and climate specialists, sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Center for a New American Security. The Associated Press received an advance copy.

Climate change is likely to breed new conflicts, but it already is magnifying existing problems, from the desertification of Darfur and competition for water in the Middle East to the disruptive monsoons in Asia which increase the pressure for land, the report said.

It examined three scenarios, ranging from the consequences of an expected temperature increase of 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2040, to the catastrophic implications of a 10-degree rise by the end of the century.

At the very least, the report said, the U.S. can expect more population migrations, both internally and from across its borders; a proliferation of diseases; greater conflict in weak states, especially in Africa where climates will change most drastically; and a restructuring in global power in line with the accessibility of natural resources.

Left unchecked, "the collapse and chaos associated with extreme climate change futures would destabilize virtually every aspect of modern life," said the report, comparing the potential outcome with the Cold War doomsday scenarios of a nuclear holocaust.

"Climate change has the potential to be one of the greatest national security challenges that this or any other generation of policy makers is likely to confront," said the report.

Among its contributors were former CIA director James Woolsey, Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling, National Academy of Sciences President Ralph Cicerone, President Bill Clinton's former chief of staff John Podesta and former Vice President Al Gore's security adviser Leon Fuerth.

The report listed 10 implications of climate change that policy makers should consider, including rising tensions between rich and poor nations, the backlash resulting from massive migrations, health problems partly caused by water shortages and crop failures, and concerns over nuclear proliferation as nations increasingly rely on nuclear energy.

The global balance of power will shift unpredictably as trade patterns change, it said. China's importance in the climate equation will grow as it increases emissions of greenhouse gases, and Russia's influence will increase alongside its exports of natural gas, the report said.

Attention began to focus earlier this year on the strategic consequences of climate change. But the latest report, more than 100 pages long, is among the most detailed analyses published so far on security aspects.

Last April, a a panel of retired top-ranking military officers issued the alarm that global warming was a "serious security threat" likely to aggravate terrorism and world instability.

The Office of the National Intelligence Director said the following month it has begun working on an assessment of the national security implications of climate change.

Fires spew tons of global warming gas

In one week, Southern California's wildfires spewed the same amount of carbon dioxide — the primary global warming gas — as the state's power plants and vehicles did, scientists figure.

A new study by two Colorado researchers shows that U.S. wildfires pump a significant amount of the greenhouse gas into the air each year, more than the state of Pennsylvania does. It raises questions about how useful it is to plant trees to offset rising carbon dioxide emissions and soothe environmental consciences.

Because the California wildfires occurred just as the study was about to be published, the researchers calculated how much carbon dioxide was likely to come from the devastating blazes Oct. 19-26. It's a lot: 8.7 million tons.

That's more than the state of Vermont produces in a year. And it's also more than the 6 million tons estimated by California's air control agency, which used a different calculation method.

On average, wildfires in the United States each year pump 322 million tons of carbon dioxide. That's about 5 percent of what the country emits by burning fossil fuels, such as gasoline and coal, according to the new research published online Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal Carbon Balance and Management.

"It is quite a big chunk," said study co-author Jason Neff of the University of Colorado at Boulder. But he adds: "It's nothing compared to our fossil fuels burning."

Mostly when scientists look at carbon dioxide emissions, they spend their time on the stuff that man adds to power industrial life. But Neff and Christine Wiedinmyer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., looked at forests, which act as a sponge and absorb some of the carbon dioxide, but which also burn and produce it.

"The problem is that what goes in, comes out," Neff said.

In recent years, some people who want to compensate for their personal contributions to global warming (from driving gas-guzzling cars or heating huge houses) have paid groups to plant trees to soak up that extra carbon in the air. It's called a carbon offset.

Over several decades or centuries, replanted trees will capture some of the gas, but the first few decades it will be at a reduced rate, Wiedinmyer said.

"There's a real danger here that in the offsetting program you feel you've done your bit," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who wasn't part of the study. "You've got to be a little bit more creative than to think that you're going to solve global warming by planting trees."

In previous studies, scientists have shown that a general increase in American wildfires — but no one event — is linked to global warming. That raises the possibility of a self-feeding cycle, Wiedinmyer said.

The scientists used satellite imagery, computer models and combustion rates to determine how much carbon dioxide is released during a fire, Wiedinmyer said.

Last week, the California Air Resources Board estimated that just under 6 million tons of carbon dioxide were released by the recent fires. The board estimates that for every acre burned, the carbon dioxide emissions are equivalent to two cars driven for a year, said board spokesman Stanley Young. More than half a million acres have burned in Southern California.

Young and Wiedinmyer said estimates do vary widely on scientific method.

The paper finds remarkable differences state by state and month by month. August is the worst month for carbon dioxide emissions from fires.

The Western continental United States is responsible for more than one-third of the country's carbon dioxide from fires. But Alaska is king. Alaskan fires produce twice as much of the greenhouse gas than burning fossil fuels in that state. Alaskan fires make up 27 percent of the nation's yearly fire-related carbon dioxide emissions.

In the Lower 48, California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, Louisiana, Montana, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and Texas are top 10 emitters of carbon dioxide through forest fires.