Air Pollution Now Melting Snowpack Quicker, Study Shows

snow research“The important thing is the change in timing of available water,” explained William Gustafson, an atmospheric scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and one of the study’s primary authors. In essence, there will be plenty of water in the early spring, when water availability is never a problem. But come late summer, rivers are losing their water much earlier than before.

But faster runoff also means less water for farming and residential use, less potential for hydroelectric energy, shorter rafting and skiing seasons and less-than stellar fishing conditions. For Rocky Mountain states like Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, the economic impact on the recreation industry alone, is reason alone to take this study’s findings seriously.

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But addressing the problem with real solutions is a political nightmare. Water politics in the West is already tenuous, add to the situation drivers that begin across state and international borders, and you are left with what seems like a virtually untangleable knot. You see, it just so happens that the changes needed in our infrastructure to clean up our automobiles, our factories, and our energy supply to mitigate the effects of rising amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, are the very same kinds of changes we need to reduce the amount of particulate emissions in the air that turns that snow black and melts it so hastily.

Image: 1. CC licensed by flickr user bethography; 2. National Park Service

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One Comment

  1. No mention of HAARP, chemtrail pollution, and the fact that industry has left our country and less fossil fuel burning cars operating. This article is propoganda designed to divert attention towards an acceptance to Obama administration’s desire to implement a carbon tax. What about taxing chemtrails containing barium and aluminum??

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