Other observers have written that the focus on carbon dioxide above all else has been misplaced, since quick wins are available in other areas like cutting methane emissions or black carbon soot.

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An unusually hot summer set such fires across the country and the peatlands around Moscow generated a smog that blanketed the city with carbon monoxide and soot.

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For now ArvinMeritor is marketing its plasma fuel reformer to the commercial trucking industry, which is scrambling to comply with tough new emission laws that are looming in Europe and the U.S. By 2007 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will require a 90% reduction in the amount of soot (unburned carbon).

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The authors say that while cutting back on soot is important, cutting carbon dioxide emissions is the best way to address climate change in the long term.

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These are pollutants, particularly ozone and soot, that do not hang around in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide does, but have to be renewed continually if they are to have a lasting effect.

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