A lot of it.
Check out the picture above and you’ll see it: beige coloring on what would otherwise be bright white snowpack.
This isn’t just a curiosity. The relatively dark color of dust causes snowpack throughout the Western United States to absorb more solar energy than it otherwise would, and thus melt out earlier and faster, resulting in major headaches for water managers. More disturbingly, the dust storms that cause this buildup could be harming human health.
With all of this in mind, I emailed my colleague at the University of Colorado, Jason Neff, who conducts research on this issue. Neff, director of the university’s Environmental Geochemistry Laboratory, wrote me back right away: “The dust is particularly dirty this year!” The cause: A series of dust storms that deposited one layer after another of the stuff atop of the snow. As the snow melts, the dust concentrates, eventually leaving a very dirty surface.
NEWS SOURCE: Discover Magazine
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The escalation in dust emissions — which may be due to the interplay of several factors, including increased windstorm frequency, drought cycles and changing land-use patterns — has implications both for the areas where the dust is first picked up by the winds and for the places where the dust is put back down.
“Dust storms cause a large-scale reorganization of nutrients on the surface of the Earth,” said Janice Brahney, who led the study as a CU-Boulder doctoral student. “And we don’t routinely monitor dust in most places, which means we don’t have a good handle on how the material is moving, when it’s moving and where it’s going.”
Based on anecdotal evidence, such as incidents of dust coating the snowpack in the southern Rockies and a seemingly greater number of dust storms noticed by Western residents, scientists have suspected that dust emissions were increasing. But because dust has not been routinely measured over long periods of time, it was difficult to say for sure.
“What we know is that there are a lot of dust storms, and if you ask people on the Western Slope of Colorado, or in Utah or Arizona, you’ll often hear them say, ‘Yeah, I grew up in this area, and I don’t remember it ever being like this before,’ ” said CU-Boulder geological sciences Associate Professor Jason Neff, Brahney’s adviser and a co-author of the paper. “So there is anecdotal evidence out there that things are changing, but no scientific data that can tell us whether or not that’s true, at least for the recent past.”
For the new study, recently published online in the journal Aeolian Research, the research team set out to determine if they could use calcium deposition as a proxy for dust measurements. Calcium can make its way into the atmosphere — before falling back to earth along with precipitation — through a number of avenues, including coal-fired power plants, forest fires, ocean spray and, key to this study, wind erosion of soils.
The amount of calcium dissolved in precipitation has long been measured by the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, or NADP, which first began recording the chemicals dissolved in precipitation in the late 1970s to better understand the phenomena of acid rain.
Brahney and her colleagues reviewed calcium deposition data from 175 NADP sites across the United States between 1994 and 2010, and they found that calcium deposition had increased at 116 of them. The sites with the greatest increases were clustered in the Northwest, the Midwest and the Intermountain West, with Colorado, Wyoming and Utah seeing especially large increases.
NEWS SOURCE: CU Boulder
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Such comments reflect a conventional wisdom in the climate debate. Climate sceptics, or deniers as they are often called, are presented as all-powerful forces bankrolled by rich corporations who have wielded their awesome power to block efforts to deal with the threat of human caused climate change. How do we know that climate sceptics have such power? As Martin Wolf explains, it is the "world's inaction" on climate policy which reveals their power.
From this perspective then, a key challenge of securing action on climate change is to defeat the sceptics – to drive back the forces of darkness so that the forces of good might prevail. Victory will be achieved by winning the battle for public opinion on the state of climate science.
However, a closer look at the logic underlying such arguments reveals a chain of causality which scholars of the public understanding of science have long critiqued as the ineffectual "deficit model" of science. Even more troubling, there is reason to believe that the focus of attention by climate campaigners on sceptics actually works against effective action.
The so-called "deficit model" suggests that the public lacks certain knowledge that if it were known properly (so closing the deficit) would lead them to favor certain policy actions. In other words, if only you understood the "facts" as I understand them, then you would come to share my policy preferences.
The deficit model helps to explain why people argue so passionately about "facts" in public debates over policies with scientific components. If you believe that acceptance of certain scientific views is a precondition for, or a causal factor in determining what policy views people hold, then arguments over facts serve as political debate by proxy.
Dan Kahan, professor of psychology at Yale Law School, has conducted several studies of public views on climate change and finds that the causal mechanisms of the "deficit model" actually work in reverse: people typically "form risk perceptions that are congenial to their values." Our political views shape how we interpret facts. On an issue as complex as climate, there are enough data and interpretations to offer support to almost any political agenda. Thus we have arguments over the degree or lack of consensus among scientists, and see efforts to delegitimise outlier positions in order to assert one true and proper interpretation. Added to the mix is the temptation to push "facts" beyond what science can support, which offers each side the opportunity for legitimate critique of the excesses of their opponents. These dynamics can (and do) go on forever.
In the first half of the 20th century, the American political commentator Walter Lippmann recognized that uniformity of perspective was not necessary for action to take place in democracies. He explained that the goal of politics is not to make everyone think alike, but to help people who think differently to act alike. A vast body of scholarship supports the limitations of the deficit model, yet it remains a defining feature of debates over climate policy today.
NEWS SOURCE: the guardian
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"We're coming up on the best apple trees in Boulder," said Welty, a geographer and Ph.D. student specializing in glaciers in the University of Colorado's Environmental Studies program. He was approaching a front-yard grove of trees.
Last summer and fall, Welty said, he never went to a supermarket for fruit. He had two apple trees in his own yard, but began looking for more produce when he bought a cider press. Once he started paying attention, he was astonished at the bounty, and determined it should be shared. Now, it can be, thanks to a website Welty started with a fellow CU student with shared interests in computers and urban foraging.
And the sharing goes well beyond Boulder.
Want to find walnuts free for the picking in Iowa City? Locate loquats in New Orleans? Discover where a mulberry tree grows in Brooklyn? Check out fallingfruit.org, the site Welty and Caleb Phillips launched in March. They have gathered information mapped by amateur enthusiasts across the country, and delved into inventories many cities and towns keep of trees on public spaces.
"I go around now with my head up in the canopy, looking for new things," Welty said.
When he's not cycling or walking the streets of Boulder looking up, his head is bowed over his laptop, searching for new sources or opening e-mails with offers of maps. As word spread, fallingfruit.org went international, with information coming from Australia, Britain, India, Israel and elsewhere. Welty was even sent a map of breadfruit trees on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
NEWS SOURCE: The Denver Post
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As an assistant professor in the Center for Science and Technology Policy in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), his research interests include the cultural politics of climate change and carbon-based economies and societies. In addition, he’s looked at how “outlier” perspectives (particularly climate contrarians and countermovement groups) gain traction in public discourses. See article
His books include “Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change” (2011) and another that will be released in June titled “Successful Adaptation to Climate Change.”
NEWS SOURCE: CU Connections
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The work, called attribution research, doesn't challenge the scientific consensus that climate change is happening. Instead, it strives to understand the regional effects of global warming by determining whether increased greenhouse gas levels did—or didn't—cause a particular weather event. But the findings can be confusing. For instance, scientists say that climate change made Hurricane Sandy worse, but that it had nothing to do with historic floods in Thailand. Warming probably didn't cause this year's severe winter storm, Nemo, but it may have supercharged it. It caused some droughts, but not others.
Adding to the confusion is a trend that worries some experts: People on both sides of the climate divide tend to promote only those attribution studies that support their beliefs. Whether a conscious decision or not, this selective use of research is further polarizing the national conversation on climate change, experts told InsideClimate News.
"When a new study comes out, it should be informing our understanding of the topic," said Gretchen Goldman, an analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists who studies how research is used to inform policy decisions. "But the reverse is happening. People who have predetermined opinions about climate change are only searching for information that supports their views."
The treatment of two stories published by the Associated Press last month, less than a day apart, illustrates the trend.
The first, titled "Global Warming Didn't Cause Big U.S. Drought," was about a report by five federal agencies, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which concluded that climate change didn't cause the 2012 drought. The second, "Greenhouse Gases Make High Temps Hotter in China," covered work by Chinese and Canadian researchers that found the highest temperatures in China have been made worse by global warming.
Both articles were written by Seth Borenstein, a respected science journalist. Both studies underwent a rigorous scientific process and peer review. Neither study challenges the consensus that the earth is warming because of human activities.
"Attribution research is about the details of climate change, not whether it is happening," said Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at NOAA and co-author of the drought study. "The warming of the planet is well founded in evidence. We aren't arguing otherwise."
However, in the days following the articles' publication, each side in the climate war promoted the story that best fit their argument.
Read the entire article, including comments from Max Boykoff of Environmental Studies
NEWS SOURCE: inside climate news
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Mari Elise Ewing accepted a tenure-track position as an assistant professor of Environmental Studies at Austin College. Austin College is a selective liberal-arts college in Sherman, Texas dedicated to excellence in undergraduate education. In addition to continuing research in socio-ecological systems, Mari Elise will co-teach Fundamentals of Environmental Studies as well as design and teach mid- and upper-level courses that complement the existing curriculum
NEWS SOURCE: Environmental Studies Program
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After three years of faculty effort and more, we will begin to take the first steps needed to propose two new colleges or schools here at the University of Colorado Boulder. It has been 50 years since CU-Boulder created a new school or college, more than 90 if we exclude architecture (now at University of Colorado Denver) so this is an exciting time with opportunities for reinventing the education we offer our students and for providing opportunities for fresh research, scholarship and creative work. Of course, it will take at least a year before concrete proposals can be brought to the Board of Regents for approval.
I am proposing that we create both a college or school devoted to the study of the sustainable environment and a college or school that will focus on media, communication and information. We have engaged in lengthy formal conversations about these possible new colleges, and our informal conversations have gone on even longer. Now is the time to act to make it clear that the CU-Boulder will lead the way forward in two of the most important arenas of higher education and research, areas that will enable us to contribute to solving major problems facing our state, the nation and the world.
NEWS SOURCE: University of Colorado
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These realities have made a mockery of the 20-plus years of international efforts to wean the world off oil, coal, and natural gas. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying; when it comes to climate-change mitigation, a shift to carbon-free energy remains the Platonic ideal. Yet it is past time to acknowledge that on any given day, “Drill, baby, drill!” is in fact a highly effective strategy for continuing to deliver the many benefits of cheap energy.
As a result, it’s also past time to explore more seriously a parallel path to reducing greenhouse gases—one focused not on moving off fossil fuels, but on capturing the carbon that these fuels emit.
Carbon capture is not a new idea; technologies that can start us down this path are proven and available. They are also expensive—at least for now. Yet the political and social hurdles to are far lower than those to abandoning fossil fuels, and demonstrable progress is far more certain, provided we make the right investments.
We already know that carbon can be removed immediately at its principal emissions sources: coal- and gas-fired power plants. Various chemical processes, some of which are already widely adopted for industrial applications (such as producing hydrogen and ammonia), can remove up to 90 percent of power-plant emissions, although they have yet to be deployed on a large scale. And while capturing carbon from coal plants is estimated to raise the cost of generating electricity by between 30 and 80 percent, costs can be reduced by recycling the captured carbon dioxide for commercial purposes, such as pumping it into oil fields to recover more oil, a technique in use since the 1970s. Continued innovation will lower costs further. Substantial government investment is focused on this goal—since 2008, the U.S. government alone has spent nearly $6 billion—but we’d do well to invest more.
NEWS SOURCE: The Atlantic
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For two-time World Championship skier Chris Davenport, it's more than just a hobby -- it’s a lifestyle. “You've got gravity pushing you down the hill,” he said. “The snow is sort of coming up over your body silently. The air is cold, it's blue sky, and these crystals are sort of glistening in the air. It's almost an out-of-body experience.”
Skiing is Davenport's job. Though no longer a competitive skier, he still skis 200 days a year, stars in ski films and guides alpine ski treks to Mount Everest and other high mountain peaks. But lately, he's seen his snowy terrain disappearing. “You don't know if you're going to have good snow,” he said. “You don't know if it's going to come early or late, or if the spring is going to become warm, or the season is going to end prematurely. We just don't have that dependability anymore.”
Mark Williams, a snow hydrologist at the University of Colorado, has been studying the effects of climate change on future snowpack. His forecasts showed that snowlines -- elevations below which snow won’t develop -- will move up more than 2,400 feet from the base of Aspen Mountain. His team has also predicted that if carbon emissions stay the same, average temperatures will climb by nearly 4 degrees Fahrenheit at Aspen by 2030 and 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. “We knew that our work showed that snowmelt is going to start earlier, and that we're going to start to lose some of that late season snow,” Williams said. “But it didn't look like it was going to really be a problem until 30 or 40 years in the future.”
NEWS SOURCE: PBS Newshour
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