A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the first-ever regulations aimed at reducing the gases blamed for global warming, handing down perhaps the most significant decision on the issue since the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases could be controlled as air pollutants.

The ruling was a major victory for President Obama and his EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, above.A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington concluded that the Environmental Protection Agency was "unambiguously correct" in using existing federal law to address global warming, denying two of the challenges to four separate regulations and dismissing the others.

Michael Gerrard, director of the Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, said no one expected the "complete slam dunk" issued by the court Tuesday. He opined that the decision is second in importance only to the Supreme Court's ruling five years ago.

Tuesday's ruling quickly became fodder for the presidential campaign, and put the two candidates' environmental views into stark contrast. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, said "My view is that the EPA is getting into carbon and regulating carbon has gone beyond the original intent of the legislation, and I would not go there."

But the court on Tuesday seemed to disagree with Romney's assessment when it denied two challenges to the Obama administration's rules. The judges - Chief Judge David Sentelle, appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, and David Tatel and Judith Rogers, both appointed by Democrat Bill Clinton - flatly rejected those arguments.