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White House threatens greenhouse gas bill veto

NASA to study arctic climate change
Washington (UPI) Jun 8, 2010 - NASA says it will conduct its first dedicated oceanographic field campaign to determine how the changing climate is affecting the Arctic Ocean. The project, called Icescape, begins next Tuesday aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy, the newest and most technologically advanced U.S. polar icebreaker. NASA scientists said the Arctic Ocean, unlike other oceans, is almost completely landlocked, making it an ideal location to study ongoing climate changes in a marine ecosystem. "The ocean ecosystem in the Arctic has changed dramatically in recent years, and it's changing much faster and much more than any other ocean in the world," said Icescape chief scientist Kevin Arrigo of Stanford University.

The Healy will begin ocean sampling in the Bering Strait and then continue across the southern Chukchi Sea and into the Beaufort Sea, NASA said. In early July the Healy will head north into deeper waters to sample thick, multiyear sea ice and take samples within and beneath the ice. The five-week, $10 million project will involve more than 40 scientists and include such instruments as an automated microscope taking continuous digital photographs of phytoplankton cells to determine the quantity of various species. Floats with near-real-time satellite communication will be placed in the ocean to measure temperature and various biological and optical properties. The project is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) June 8, 2010
The White House Tuesday cited the specter of the Gulf oil spill as it threatened a presidential veto of a Republican bid to block the government's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Officials said that the bill, designed to crimp the power of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would prevent the implementation of 2007 decision by the US Supreme Court, requiring the government to decide whether carbon dioxide gas emissions pose a threat to human health.

The White House said the legislation, expected to face a vote in the Senate on Thursday, would also block a government program promoting new fuel economy standards and cutting oil consumption.

"It would also undermine the administration's efforts to reduce the negative impacts of pollution and the risks associated with environmental catastrophes, like the ongoing BP oil spill," the administration said in a statement.

"As seen in the Gulf of Mexico, environmental disasters harm families, destroy jobs, and pollute the nation's air, land and water," the statement said.

"If the President is presented with this Resolution of Disapproval, which would seriously disrupt EPA's ability to address the threat of (greenhouse gas) pollution... his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the Resolution."

Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, who is sponsoring the bill, said that the effort was needed to decide "whether or not Congress or unelected bureaucrats, at the EPA, should set climate policy for this country."

"The overreach we see by the EPA is truly unprecedented in terms of overreach into the legislative branch by the executive," she said.

"The EPA intends to take control of climate policy and take it away from the Congress. This is absolutely unacceptable."

Republicans say that efforts by the government to impose new regulations to control greenhouse gas emissions would hamper big business and severely harm the economy as it recovers from the worst economic crisis on record.

Obama is pushing Democrats in Congress to use the Gulf oil disaster, which he says shows the folly of over-reliance on fossil fuels, to launch a new bid to pass climate change legislation that is mired in the Senate.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, said that Republican backing for the amendment amounted to a giveaway to big oil firms, at a time of national crisis spawned by the Gulf disaster.

"This giveaway, otherwise known as the Murkowski disapproval resolution, is backed by oil company lobbyists because it would increase the nation's consumption of oil by at least 455 million barrels, and probably waste several billion more," he said.

"With Republicans standing up for Wall Street, health insurance companies and now big oil companies, this begs the question -- is there any special interest Republicans will not protect?"



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