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The Return Of Wolves Improved Life For Every Animal In Yellowstone

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The Return Of Wolves Improved Life For Every Animal In Yellowstone

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In January, 1995, a truck carrying eight grey wolves drove into Yellowstone. That little family, which came from Jasper National Park in Alberta, was a sign of evolving views about what exactly made an ecosystem healthy. See, back in the late 1800s, the U.S. government sent geologist Ferdinand Hayden on an expedition into the area that would become the park. But back then, westerners had a distinctly unsympathetic view towards wolves. So the expedition did some pretty substantial damage to the wolf population, and as the years went by, the wolf population only dwindled more and more. By 1920, Yellowstone had no more wolves left, and the people responsible rejoiced. Finally, the elk and the other grazers could flourish! That was the plan, anyway.

And actually, that is what happened-for a little while, at least. Without wolves to keep them in check, the elk population exploded. Unfortunately, there are only so many elk the park can maintain. They decimated the bark and leaves of aspen and willow trees, leaving the poor ungulates to rely on young shrubs and sprouts instead, thereby cutting down those trees before they could reach full size. Without those trees, the beavers suffered, and their population began to fall as well. Without the beavers, the landscape itself transformed as the lack of dams changed the shape of the rivers. Furthermore, without the leftovers that the wolves left behind, scavengers such as eagles, coyotes, and wolverines languished as well. And on top of it all, the elk started to suffer. After all, an unhealthy ecosystem isn't kind to any of its members.

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The Return Of Wolves Improved Life For Every Animal In ...

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Does it seem strange that the best thing to ever happen to the elks at Yellowstone was a pack of hungry wolves? It's true, though, and the health of the elks-and the entire animal population, for that matter-is only a small part of the picture.

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Did Climate Change Intensify Harvey's Catastrophic Effects?

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Did Climate Change Intensify Harvey's Catastrophic Effects?

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Residential neighborhoods in Houston sit in floodwater in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Harvey.

Credit: Marcus Yam/LA Times/Getty

Astonishing, unprecedented, catastrophic: Experts are running out of adjectives to describe the devastation Tropical Storm Harvey has unleashed as it has relentlessly dumped more than 40 inches (102 centimeters) of rain on the Houston area, setting an all-time record for a tropical system in the contiguous U.S.

Harvey has been exceptional in a number of ways since it quickly spun up from a bedraggled collection of storms in the Gulf of Mexico before slamming into the coast of Texas as a Category 4 hurricane - the first major hurricane to strike the U.S. since 2005 and the first hurricane to hit Texas since 2008. But nothing compares to the epic amounts of rain that have left even experienced meteorologists and emergency workers astounded. [ In Photos: Hurricane Harvey Takes Aim at Texas]

A number of factors contributed to the historic nature of this storm - most likely including climate change, experts say. But breaking down what role global warming plays in any individual storm is still a difficult question that doesn't yield easy answers.

The clearest link is likely with extreme rainfall, several scientists said, as heavy precipitation events have been on the rise in recent decades and several have been shown to be more likely because of climate change. But even there, the peculiar weather setup of Harvey was the biggest driver, the scientists said.

"It's important to say that this event - or something close to it - could have happened without climate change," Adam Sobel, who directs Columbia University's Initiative on Extreme Weather and Climate, told Live Science. But climate change could have played a role, even if only a minor one, experts said, and the science is constantly improving to detect that influence.

Harvey traversed the Caribbean as a tropical storm early last week, but shearing winds tore it apart. It was reborn from those remnants as they emerged back into the Gulf of Mexico and encountered favorable wind conditions and a pool of warm water, Jim Kossin, an atmospheric research scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), told Live Science. "The environment most definitely was conducive."

It so conducive, in fact, that an index used to forecast the potential for storms to rapidly spin up was at an unusually high level for the Atlantic basin, Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane expert at Colorado State University, said. [ A History of Destruction: 8 Great Hurricanes]

Harvey fairly quickly went from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 130 mph (209 km/h). (After landfall, it slowly weakened into a tropical storm again.)

NASA's GPM satellite has been monitoring rainfall accumulation along Harvey's track, as it moved through the Gulf of Mexico and stalled over Texas.

Credit: NASA/JAXA/Hal Pierce

Over the last decade, research into the potential impacts of climate change on hurricanes was spurred by Katrina, and scientists have determined that warming, particularly of the oceans, is likely to lead to more of the most intense hurricanes, even if there are fewer storms overall.

But there isn't clear evidence that such a shift is already happening, in part because researchers detect more storms now than they did before the advent of satellites and the ways they measure hurricane intensity have changed, said Gabriel Vecchi, a Princeton University climate scientist. Any trend toward more-intense storms may also be too small to stand out against the big year-to-year swings in hurricane activity he said.

"Even though we expect that the intensity of storms should be fueled by global warming, it's really tough to say that that's already happening," Vecchi told Live Science.

How warming might affect the rapid intensification of storms is a little trickier to answer, as there are still aspects of the process that scientists don't fully understand, Klotzbach said. Ocean warming could tilt the odds in favor of more rapid intensification in the future, because warm oceans provide the fuel for that process, Kossin said. Warming is also increasing the difference in temperature between different layers of the atmosphere, which is raising the bar on the intensity any particular storm can achieve, he said, and this could favor more-rapid intensification.

The strongest link between Harvey and climate change, though, is likely seen in its astronomical rainfall, several scientists said. Over the five days from Aug. 24 to Aug. 29, Houston more than doubled its rainfall total for the year to date, according to rain data from Houston's William P. Hobby Airport. And Harvey broke the all-time record for total rainfall from a tropical system in the contiguous U.S., dropping 49.2 inches (125 cm) at Mary's Creek at Winding Road in southeast Houston, according to the National Weather Service. (The previous was record was 48 inches, or 123 cm.)

The record for total rainfall from a tropical system has been BROKEN! Mary's Creek at Winding Road recorded 49.20", previous record is 48". pic.twitter.com/yCjuUOR8p3
- NWS Houston (@NWSHouston) August 29, 2017

One of the clearest outcomes of global warming is that the amount of moisture in the atmosphere increases as temperatures rise, meaning more fuel for rainstorms. [ Hurricanes from Above: Images of Nature's Biggest Storms]

The main reason Harvey has been racking up rainfall records day after day, though, is that it just hasn't moved much since making landfall. Its average speed has been a plodding 3 mph (4.8 km/h), Klotzbach noted on Twitter. High-pressure systems to the east and west of Harvey have kept the storm blocked in, and so rain bands have been dumping over the same area over and over again.

"If storms don't move, they cause a lot of damage," Klotzbach said.

And it's not clear whether this kind of stalled-out storm situation would be more or less common with warming, Vecchi and others said. But because of that added moisture boost from warming, when such a stalling does happen, the rains will be higher, even if only by a relatively small amount.

"And given the enormous cost of this storm in human life and property and everything else, the extra costs due to that amplification may be significant, even if it's a small fraction of the total," Sobel said.

To say anything specific about how and whether climate change affected Harvey, "we definitely would want to do a formal detection and attribution study," Kossin said.

Such studies use climate models and observational records to look for the fingerprints of climate change on extreme weather and have been done for dozens of events, ranging from heat waves to snowstorms.

Doing such a study for a hurricane is much more difficult than for a heat wave, though, because hurricanes are far more complex. An attribution study would require high-resolution models that are currently too expensive and time-consuming to run. But Vecchi said he is optimistic that such tools could be in place in a decade.

Kossin, who co-edits an annual attribution edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, said he hopes that research groups will look at Harvey for next year's edition.

Any such study is likely to focus on the storm's rainfall, though even then, the picture is somewhat complex, because climate change may change air patterns that govern when, where and how weather forms, not just the moisture available for a storm, Friederike Otto, a University of Oxford climate scientist involved in attribution work, wrote at Climate Home. And those changing air patterns could actually make heavy rains less likely, she said.

But an attribution study of last year's torrential rains in central Louisiana found a clear climate change signal, so "I would suspect that if somebody did a formal attribution study [of Harvey], that's where I would expect to see a human fingerprint, is the rainfall," Vecchi said.

Sarah Puschmann contributed reporting.

Original article on Live Science.

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Did Climate Change Intensify Harvey's Catastrophic Effects?

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Astonishing, unprecedented, catastrophic: Experts are running out of adjectives to describe the devastation Tropical Storm Harvey has unleashed as it has relentlessly dumped more than 40 inches (102 centimeters) of rain on the Houston area, setting an all-time record for a tropical system in the contiguous U.S.

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We Still Don't Know What Causes The Glowing Milky Sea Effect

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We Still Don't Know What Causes The Glowing Milky Sea Effect

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In 2005, Naval Research Laboratory scientist Steven Miller led the team that produced the first ever images of the glowing area. They found that it stretched an incredible 5,780 square miles-roughly equivalent to the land mass of Connecticut. So what causes the glow? "The circumstances under which milky seas form is almost entirely unknown," LiveScience quoted Miller as saying. "Even the source for the light emission is under debate."

The leading theory, however, is bacterial: specifically, it could be caused by a swarm of bioluminescent bacteria, which produce a continuous natural glow. Though it would have to be a very large bacterial colony, it is possible if there's enough food for them to eat-perhaps an algae bloom or some other mass of organic material. The fact that we still don't know just goes to show how little we know about the ocean. Maybe those sea monsters aren't so farfetched after all.

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We Still Don't Know What Causes The Glowing Milky Sea ...

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Medieval maps showcased sea monsters that were regarded as legitimate hazards of oceanic voyaging, but their existence has been long-since debunked. But one mystery of the sea has yet to be fully explained: the glowing ocean water known as the milky sea effect. This eery phenomenon can be so large and luminous, it's visible from space.

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Designed by the Italian firm Stefano Boeri Architetti (SBA), the plans for the finished forest city are a sight to behold. It's got much the same shape as any other city, though some of the low, ziggurat-like buildings almost evoke a natural hill or mound. But what really catches your eye is the plant life. Every inch of this place, from the apartment buildings to the hospitals to the public schools, is covered in green. Lush woodlands cover every flat roof, and other plants take over the vertical space by hanging over the many balconies.

The plants help diminish the city's pollution footprint, but they're only the most visible part of a holistically eco-friendly design. Geothermal and solar energy will help the city regulate its temperature, and transit will be covered by an electric rail. When complete, the 40,000 trees of Liuzhou Forest City will absorb up to 10,000 tons of CO2 and 57 tons of industrial grime, and produce approximately 900 tons of oxygen.

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China's Plans For A Modern Forest City Could Shelter ...

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Imagine a living forest transformed, unharmed, into a working city. This isn't an elven kingdom from the Lord of the Rings or the forest moon of Endor. It's a real place - or at least it's going to be. The Chinese government has broken ground on a, well, groundbreaking plan for a city that more than offsets its own carbon output.

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Arctic Global seed vault to prepare for global catastrophe. 

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Arctic Global seed vault to prepare for global catastrophe. 

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The purpose of this vault range from end of the the world contingency planning to preserving precious sources of food and is known as "the Noah's Ark of plant diversity" and "The world's most important room". The idea of the vault is to have backups for essential crops and plants in the case of a global catastrophe.
In Addition to the preservation of crops and plant life, there is genetic researching for the examination of crops such as barley and rice and identifying their key genetic aspects. These can then be manipulated and used to produce more effective and reliable sources of food.
The Svalbard seed vault contains more than 900,000 samples from all over the world. The role of the vault goes beyond the differences and disputes among our fractured world and is located near the North Pole. It has already demonstrated its usefulness when the Aleppo seed bank was shut down and the Svalbard vault provided replenishment.The global seed vault can contain more than 4 million different crops, and up to 2.5 billion seeds.

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Right now, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault contains more than 900,000 samples, donated from every country in the world. We're all in this together, after all. In the video below, you'll see seeds from Russia and seeds from the Ukraine stored right next to each other, despite how those countries may feel about each other. Even the North Korean government has let down their isolationist tendencies to let their valuable seeds be stored in the global garden shop.

Maybe that's because Svalbard is so far away from the conflicts of the world. The archipelago is technically a part of Norway, but it's actually much closer to the North Pole. Besides the neutrality of distance, the far-flung location keeps the seeds secure in case of disaster. Even if the freezers fail, the islands are cold enough to keep the seeds from spoiling.

That's a good thing, because the vault has already had to be opened up to secure plant biodiversity for future generations. When the seed bank in Aleppo was forced to shutter its doors in the face of war, it relied on the Svalbard Seed Vault to replenish its stores in its new location. You can see the blank space in the vault's stores that used to contain the newly relocated seeds. But even that blank space is a template for something inspiring - a future where humanity can work together for the betterment of all.

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We've always been fascinated by the Svalbard Seed Vault. It's got everything: doomsday contingencies, priceless treasures, and a spooky vault located deep beneath the frozen tundra. But we never knew what it actually looked like inside.

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Will melting permafrost release Global 'Methane Bomb' ?

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Will melting permafrost release Global 'Methane Bomb' ?

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Tons upon tons of carbon are locked up in the permafrost in places like Svalbard (shown here)

Credit: Tatiana Smelova/Shutterstock

Locked into the chilly soil of the Northern Hemisphere's high latitudes are vast stockpiles of carbon compounds.

An estimated 1,400 billion tons of carbon is believed to be resting in the Arctic permafrost - decades worth of today's human-generated greenhouse emissions. If it stays frozen, it goes nowhere.

But if it thaws, it can start to decompose as bacteria start to munch on it. And that could unlock those compounds, adding them to an atmosphere already warming up due to heat-trapping emissions like carbon dioxide or methane, which punches above its weight as a greenhouse gas.

A swift, massive release of methane is one of the nightmare scenarios of climate change: A feedback loop that accelerates warming, bringing on consequences like rising sea levels and changes to farmland before people or other species can adapt. But don't panic: Scientists who have studied the soil of the far North say while that "methane bomb" scenario is possible, it's unlikely - at least for now.

"The bomb is maybe there, but it will not explode anytime soon," said Vladimir Romanovsky, a geophysicist who studies permafrost at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

RELATED: A Warming Arctic Could Make Rare Polar Bear Attacks More Common

Methane is the second most-common greenhouse gas, making up about 15 percent of global emissions. It lingers in the atmosphere a far shorter time than carbon dioxide, but packs more than 80 times the heat-trapping potential during that lifespan.

The Arctic is already warming at roughly double the rate of the rest of the globe. A nearly 40-year record of data from the region "shows clearly and no doubt that permafrost is increasing in temperature, and this increase is very significant," Romanovsky said. That increase is sharpest on Alaska's North Slope, where average temperatures a meter (2.35 feet) below ground have gone up 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit). At 20 meters down, temperatures have still risen about 3 degrees Celsius, he said.

That leaves the near-surface temperatures about 3°C below freezing. And if it crosses that threshold - which might happen by the middle of the century - the thawing and decomposition of organic matter will result in the release of greenhouse gases, he said. That is likely to include methane, particularly in wetter areas, "but the amount of it is still small compared to CO2," Romanovsky said.

"It probably shouldn't happen within the next few decades. But the farther you go into the future, the probability increases," he said.

Methane is already seeping out from underground in some spots. Romanovsky's colleagues have documented methane bubbles frozen into the ice atop lakes and made videos of themselves setting methane plumes aflame. Eruptions of methane released from thawing underground ice are suspected in the emergence of craters across Siberia's Yamal Peninsula, home to a major Russian natural gas operation.

The chances of a widespread release of carbon compounds from the tundra might be offset by other effects of climate change, such as increased plant growth in the warming region. But it's not certain that will happen consistently enough to make a big difference, Romanovsky said.

The methane bomb scenario got a new boost into the public eye after being featured in a hotly debated New York magazine article on climate change, which argued that without sharp cuts in planet-warming carbon emissions, parts of the Earth "will likely become close to uninhabitable" by the end of this century. A methane feedback was only one float in the parade of horribles outlined in the article, which has come under fire from several prominent climate scientists as being too alarmist.

A 2014 study led by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado estimated that unless humans curb their emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouses gases, a widespread release of carbon trapped in permafrost around the globe could increase the resulting warming by about 8 percent - adding slightly over a third of a degree to a 4-5 degrees Celsius increase by 2100. If emissions are reined to the point that warming can be held down close to the 2 degrees Celsius goal of the Paris climate accord, that increase might be around a tenth of a degree.

However, the study adds that the bulk of the resulting emissions are likely to occur after 2100 - which could push the planet beyond the Paris target. And other studies have shown that more temperate soils can also give up more greenhouse emissions when warmed.

But how much more? That question may yield some encouraging news.

RELATED: Climate Change Is Projected to Worsen Inequality in the United States

Joel Kostka, a microbiologist at Georgia Tech, is part of a team from several universities that has set up an experiment station in northern Minnesota to study just that question. The not-quite-frozen peat bogs found in those regions are also huge carbon sinks, so Kostka and his colleagues have tried to simulate what happens to that peat when it's warmed to various temperatures. The results to date suggest the soil may not give up its carbon so easily.

"The predominance of our data shows most of that methane is coming from the surface soils," Kostka said. That's "relatively recent" carbon, "not the ancient carbon that we are more concerned about." That's held up since the team published its first round of findings in December, he said.

"We still think we're not seeing evidence of that deep, ancient carbon being released as CO2 or methane," he said.

The far North's carbon stores also extend into the ocean, on continental shelves that were above water during the last ice age and in the deep ocean floor, and scientists have been watching closely for any signs that warming is freeing methane that's currently trapped in ice crystals known as hydrates.

But Carolyn Ruppel, a research geophysicist at the US Geological Survey, said methane that escapes the deep Arctic Ocean isn't likely to reach the surface. Instead, it gets dissolved into the water and eaten by subsea microbes. The catch is, the byproducts of that digestion include carbon dioxide, which makes the oceans more acidic.

And so far on land, it's not clear whether methane or carbon dioxide would become a bigger source of emissions under future warming scenarios, said Ruppel, who leads the USGS gas hydrates research project. The world has a bigger problem in the emissions that humans pump out every day, she said.

"The bottom line is in reality, the anthropogenic CO2 emissions are far, far more important in the atmosphere than methane, even though the methane is a very potent greenhouse gas," she said.

Originally published on Seeker.

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Will Melting Permafrost Release Global 'Methane Bomb'?

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Locked into the chilly soil of the Northern Hemisphere's high latitudes are vast stockpiles of carbon compounds. An estimated 1,400 billion tons of carbon is believed to be resting in the Arctic permafrost - decades worth of today's human-generated greenhouse emissions. If it stays frozen, it goes nowhere.

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Due to the increasing difficulty to deny Climate Change and its effects, particularly in light of the recent chain of global catastrophes, scientists are exploring ways to re-engineer the planet to counter the damage that has already been done.
A few ideas have been proposed to reverse or at least mitigate the effects of global warming. Researchers at a Swiss institute has proposed to seed the upper atmosphere with desert dust to reduce heat trapping cirrus clouds and thus allow more heat to be radiated back into space. Models have shown that this method, if done correctly, could reduce global temperatures by 0.5 degrees Celsius but this is a delicate procedure with proportion being key and any miscalculations could produce more of the very clouds that they are attempting to reduce.
Another geoengineering method is stratospheric aerosol modification (SAM). SAM involves injecting sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere to increase the reflectivity of Earth's atmosphere. Models indicate that this could reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth's surface but the technology is in its early stages. This method could also have many side effects which could set off chain reactions in the delicate and complicated systems of Earth. The reduced sunlight would mean an overall slowdown of the hydrological cycle and cause droughts. Although these methods may work in models and in theory, the costs and reality can and will be completely different, all the while not addressing the core issue of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

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Credit: Narith Thongphasuk/Shutterstock

With the world facing increased warming, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, intense weather events and other global disasters, scientists are exploring ways to re-engineer the planet to counter the effects of global warming.

Earth's surface has warmed, on average over land and sea, 1.53 degreesFahrenheit (0.85 degrees Celsius) since 1880, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international organization created by the United Nations to evaluate the state of climate change science. [ Changing Earth: 7 Ideas to Geoengineer Our Planet]

In the most recent issue of the journal Science, published online Thursday (July 20), two researchers provided perspective on two geoengineering methods that could reduce the so-called greenhouse effect, under which gases and clouds in Earth's atmosphere trap the sun's heat. Both schemes could contribute to a cooler climate, but they are not without risks. And as both researchers made clear, neither idea addresses the rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere that is primarily to blamefor global warming and higher levels of oceanic acid. This acidity is killing the coral reefs that shelter marine life and support the fish that humans eat.

Ulrike Lohmann and Blaž Gasparini, both researchers at the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Scienceat ETH Zurich inSwitzerland, proposed a counterintuitive plan: Seed the upper atmosphere with tiny particles of desert dust to reduce cirrus clouds. These are the wispy, nearly invisible clouds that form at high altitudes. Unlike fat, billowy clouds that reflect sunlight, these clouds trap heat energy radiating up from Earth out into space.

"If cirrus clouds behave like a blanket around the Earth, you're trying to get rid of that blanket," Lohmann, a professor of experimental atmospheric physics at ETH Zurich, told Live Science.

Seeding the atmosphere with dust would paradoxically thin out cirrus clouds, Lohman said. Under normal circumstances, the atmosphere at altitudes of about 16,000 to 40,000 feet (4,800 to 12,200 meters) is full of tiny particles. Some are solid particles like mineral dust, and some are liquid aerosols, such assulfuric acid. The liquid aerosols freeze instantly and create ice crystals that form long-lasting cirrus clouds.

Cirrus thinning changes this dynamic, Lohman said. The idea, Lohmann said, is to inject solid particles, like desert dust, into the atmosphere at spots slightly lower than where cirrus clouds would naturally form. The quantity of dust introduced would be far less than the number of particles that exist higher up. This part is key, because fewer particles will attract more water vapor, creating larger crystals. As the ice crystals grow to larger and heavier, they would and fall as precipitation, and depending on the conditions would evaporate before reaching the ground.

"You remove the water vapor, you remove the humidity and you prevent the normal cirrus cloud formation," Lohmann said. [ 8 Ways Global Warming is Already Changing the World]

Ideally, the method would be applied to locations most susceptible to cirrus cloud formation, Lohmann said - geographical latitudes above 60 degrees, including the Arctic, where temperature increases from CO2 are the greatest.

The researchers' computer models have shown that if done correctly, cirrus thinning could reduce global temperatures by 0.9 degrees F (0.5 degrees C), Lohmann said. But if done incorrectly, the activity could produce cirrus clouds where none existed before, contributing to the very problem it's meant to solve, she added.

The risk of doing more harm than good is a concern, said Ulrike Niemeier, a climate scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, and her colleague Simone Tilmes, a project scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Niemeier and Tilmes published a separate commentary in this week's issue of the journal Science that discusses a geoengineering method called stratospheric aerosol modification (SAM).

SAM involves injecting sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere to increase the reflectivity of Earth's atmosphere. Computer models have shown that SAM could reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the planet's surface. The effect would resemble that of ash clouds that linger after volcanic eruptions, which have been shown to lower global temperatures, the researchers wrote.

But the science behind SAM is in its very early stages, and the technologies to deploy it are not developed, the researchers added.

"It was our intention to say that [geoengineering] is not something that we should have in the back of our minds as the main solution," Niemeier told Live Science.

Niemeier and Tilmes wrote that different computer models consistently identify side effects to SAM. For example, reducing incoming solar radiation also reduces evaporation, which in turn reduces precipitation, and that can slow the hydrological cycle, particularly in the tropics, the authors wrote. Less rainfall could increase droughts that are already devastating parts of the world.

Although computer models tend to agree that it's best to inject the aerosols into the stratosphere above the tropics or subtropics, and that the aerosols would disperse globally, the models differ on the extent of injection required for a given level of cooling, the authors wrote.

"Most current Earth-system models do not adequately capture important interactions, such as the coupling between stratospheric aerosols, chemistry, radiation and climate. They cannot, therefore, simulate the full impact of the interventions," Niemeier and Tilmes wrote.

Even if scientists could figure out a precise method, the economics are mind-boggling. Using SAM to bring down global temperatures just 2 degrees F (1 degree C), to preindustrial levels, would require injection amounts equivalent to one volcanic eruption per year the size of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo blast in the Philippines - the largest volcanic eruption in the last 100 years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The cost of dispersing that much content artificially would cost $20 billionper year and require 6,700 aircraft flights per day over 160 years, the researchers wrote.

No single method can solve the climate change problem as a whole, either, they said.

"Any geoengineering method we know of can only offset part of the global warming that we have," Lohmann said.

And no method designed to cool the planet deals with the gases in the atmosphere that are the sources of the problem and are contributing to increasing levels of acid in the oceans, the researchers said.

"It doesn't get at the heart of the problem," Lohmann said. "The ocean acidification is ongoing."

If society decides to undertake any geoengineering method, she said, this action should be accompanied by large efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Niemeier said emission reductions should be the primary focus. "We are quite critical about [geoengineering], and we want people to be aware it would be a difficult."

Original article on Live Science.

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Cool the Planet? Geoengineering Is Easier Said Than Done

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With the world facing increased warming, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, intense weather events and other global disasters, scientists are exploring ways to re-engineer the planet to counter the effects of global warming.

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Gobi Desert Dust Helps Sustain California's Sierra Nevada

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Gobi Desert Dust Helps Sustain California's Sierra Nevada

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The Sierra Nevada is a beautiful mountain range with stunning landscapes. Nitrogen, Phosphorus and carbon are essential for an ecosystem to thrive and this particular system was thriving with a serious lack of phosphorus therefore scientists did research and found that dust from as far away as the Gobi Desert in Central Asia. Dust migration therefore plays a key role in the development and in sustaining this Californian ecosystem. "This research reveals that the transport of dust in the atmosphere is important for the ecological health of many parts of our planet".
This finding is important in our understanding of how the Earth has a delicate and very complex system which we have yet to discover fully. Scientists still have hundreds of questions about certain natural phenomenon and occurrences and how different parts of this system are linked to each other. The question raised after such a finding is it that if we don't yet fully understand the complexity of Earth as a system and taking into account the numerous ways we are damaging it, we might not be able to see the signs of something going amiss in the system simply due to the fact that we are not even aware of it, let alone protect and sustain it. We don't yet know the relations and importance certain factors have on us and the planet therefore mankind should tread careful not to damage or disrupt something which may have a significant impact in the long term.

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Sequoia trees seen along the Trail of the 100 Giants in the Sequoia National Monument in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains.

Credit: David McNew/Getty Images

After the conservationist John Muir devotedly hiked the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the late 19th century, he penned some of the greatest American nature writing ever put to paper and launched the Sierra Club, which remains one of the most influential members of the nation's conservation movement.

Thanks to his efforts and those of generations that followed, the wild beauty of Muir's beloved Sierra Nevada and its giant sequoias continues to thrive, albeit with a much greater amount of stress due to human-caused climate change. But new research suggests an unlikely ally in the preservation of Muir's iconic muse.

Credit, it seems, must be given to dust.

In a paper published today in the journal Nature Communications, a team of researchers found that dust provides a much greater amount of nutrients to vegetation in the Sierra Nevada than previously thought. The dust comes from as far away as the Gobi Desert in Central Asia and as nearby as California's Central Valley.

Phosphorus, along with nitrogen and carbon, is crucial to the survival of life on Earth. It is generally supplied to plants as bedrock is broken down into soil over the slow machinations of geologic time. Researchers have long considered the granite formations of the Sierra Nevada to be limited in phosphorus.

"In recent years it has been a bit of mystery how all these big trees have been sustained in this ecosystem without a lot of phosphorus in the bedrock," Emma Aronson, an assistant professor of plant pathology and microbiology at UC Riverside, said in a statement. "This work begins to unravel that mystery and show that dust may be shaping this iconic California ecosystem."

RELATED: Extreme Climate Change Millions of Years Ago Caused Mammals to Shrink

Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of drought around the world, which will likely mean more dust moving around in the atmosphere. Understanding the role of dust migration in providing nutrients to plants will help researchers anticipate the effects of global warming.

The team, which included researchers from University of California campuses in Riverside and Merced, collected dust samples from four locations in the Sierra Nevada mountains, ranging in elevation from 1,300 to 8,800 feet.

Nicholas Dove, a UC Merced graduate student, was responsible for collecting the dust.

"Harvesting dust for scientific purposes is surprisingly rudimentary," he said in a statement. "We use many household supplies: Wooden posts hold up bundt pans filled with marbles, and the dust settles in the marble matrix. We collect this dust by 'washing' the marbles with sterile water. The water is filtered and, voila, you have your dust."

The pans were fixed atop 6-foot-high poles in order to avoid dust contamination from the researchers' boots.

The scientists identified the geographic origin of the dust samples by examining their isotopes.

They found that dust from Asia accounted for an average of 20 percent of the dust at the lowest elevation and 45 percent of the total amount at the highest elevation. The greater amount of Asian dust in the higher locations, the researchers said, is because dust travels high in the atmosphere and only falls to the ground when it comes into contact with an object such as a mountain.

Dust from the Central Valley was greater at lower elevations, which was expected. But the team found more Central Valley dust at higher elevations later in the dry season, which is significant because their study took place during the peak of what is likely the worst drought to hit California in a millennium.

"Considering we took our measurements in 2014, in the middle of the drought, this makes us think that the drought is a factor here," Aronson said.

Funding for the study was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

"This research reveals that the transport of dust in the atmosphere is important for the ecological health of many parts of our planet," said Richard Yuretich, program director for the NSF's Critical Zone Observatory Network. "Complex cycles and feedbacks regulate conditions at the surface of the Earth. This study adds a significant piece to our knowledge of how the Earth works and what we can do to keep it functioning properly."

WATCH: Using Drones to Predict the Future of Climate Change

Originally published on Seeker.

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Gobi Desert Dust Helps Sustain California's Sierra Nevada

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After the conservationist John Muir devotedly hiked the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the late 19th century, he penned some of the greatest American nature writing ever put to paper and launched the Sierra Club, which remains one of the most influential members of the nation's conservation movement.

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Earth has under-gone 5 major ice ages and the latest one brought about the wolly mammoths and the expansion of glaciers. Ice Ages can last hundreds of millions of years. Ice ages account for 25% of Earth's past billion years. According to scientists we should be in an ice age currently but due to factors related to the earth's orbit and humans filling up the atmosphere with carbon dioxide we won't enter one for at least 100,000 years. there is a theory that changes in the orbit and the related cycles have something to do with the glacial (ice age) cycles. It has been said that although these orbital cycles and changes attribute to the ice age cycles, they may not have any effect if the earth has too much carbon dioxide and is therefore too warm.
This highlights a huge issue brought about by us humans. The natural cycles of the Earth which stayed relatively consistent for billions for billions of years are now being altered by a species which has been on the planet for fraction of a fraction in the timeline of Earth. The fact that we are capable of such destruction is concerning and raises the question that will the earth be able to return to its natural state and carry out its cycles. There have always been fluctuations in the natural system in terms of carbon dioxide and heat, for example it was warmer during the dinosaur age but that was due to natural causes and the carbon levels reverted over millions of years. The difference this time is that humans have done this all by themselves and in such a short period of time which is a first in history.

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The last ice age led to the rise of the woolly mammoth and the vast expansion of glaciers. But it's just one of many that have chilled Earth throughout the planet's 4.5-billion-year history.

So, how often do ice ages happen, and when is the next freeze expected to begin?

The answer to the first question depends on whether you're talking about big ice ages or the little ice ages that happen within those larger periods. Earth has undergone five big ice ages, some of which lasted for hundreds of millions of years. In fact, Earth is in a big ice age now, which explains why the planet has polar ice caps. [ Photo Gallery: Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier Cracks]

Big ice ages account for about 25 percent of Earth's past billion years, said Michael Sandstrom, a doctoral student in paleoclimate at Columbia University in New York City.

The five major ice ages in the paleo record include the Huronian glaciation (2.4 billion to 2.1 billion years ago), the Cryogenian glaciation (720 million to 635 million years ago), the Andean-Saharan glaciation (450 million to 420 million years ago), the Late Paleozoic ice age (335 million to 260 million years ago) and the Quaternary glaciation (2.7 million years ago to present).

These large ice ages can have smaller ice ages (called glacials) and warmer periods (called interglacials) within them. During the beginning of the Quaternary glaciation, from about 2.7 million to 1 million years ago, these cold glacial periods occurred every 41,000 years. However, during the last 800,000 years, huge glacial sheets have appeared less frequently - about every 100,000 years, Sandstrom said.

This is how the 100,000-year cycle works: Ice sheets grow for about 90,000 years and then take about 10,000 years to collapse during warmer periods. Then, the process repeats itself.

Given that the last ice age ended about 11,700 years ago, isn't it time for Earth to get icy again?

"We should be heading into another ice age right now," Sandstrom told Live Science. But two factors related to Earth's orbit that influence the formation of glacials and interglacials are off. "That, coupled with the fact that we pump so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere [means] we're probably not going to enter a glacial for at least 100,000 years," he said.

A hypothesis put forth by the Serbian astronomer Milutin Milankovitch (also spelled Milanković) explains why Earth cycles in and out of glacials and interglacials.

As the planet circles the sun, three factors affect how much sunlight it gets: its tilt (which ranges from 24.5 degrees to 22.1 degrees on a 41,000-year cycle); its eccentricity (the changing shape of its orbit around the sun, which ranges from a near-circle to an oval-like shape); and its wobble (one full wobble, which looks like a slowly spinning top, happens every 19,000 to 23,000 years), according to Milankovitch.

In 1976, a landmark paper in the journal Science provided evidence that these three orbital parameters explained the planet's glacial cycles, Sandstrom said.

"Milankovitch's theory is that the orbital cycles have been predictable and very consistent throughout time," Sandstrom said. "If you are in an ice age, then you'll have more or less ice depending on these orbital cycles. But if the Earth is too warm, they basically won't do anything, at least in terms of growing ice." [ Doomsday: 9 Real Ways Earth Could End]

One thing that can warm Earth is a gas such as carbon dioxide. Over the past 800,000 years, carbon dioxide levels have fluctuated between about 170 parts per million and 280 ppm (meaning that out of 1 million air molecules, 280 of them are carbon dioxide molecules). That's a difference of only about 100 ppm between glacials and interglacials, Sandstrom said.

But carbon dioxide levels are much higher today when compared with these past fluctuations. In May 2016, Antarctica carbon dioxide levels hit the high level of 400 ppm, according to Climate Central.

Earth has been warm before. For instance, it was much warmer during the dinosaur age. "[But] the scary thing is how much carbon dioxide we've put in [the atmosphere] in such a short period of time," Sandstrom said.

The warming effects of that carbon dioxide will have big consequences, he said, because even a small increase in Earth's average temperature can lead to drastic changes, he said. For instance, Earth was only about 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) colder, on average, during the last ice age than it is today, Sandstrom said.

If global warming causes both Greenland's and Antarctica's ice sheets to melt, the oceans will rise about 196 feet (60 meters) higher than they are now, Sandstrom said.

The factors that caused the long ice ages, such as the Quaternary glaciation, are less well-understood than those that led to glacials, Sandstrom noted. But one idea is that a massive drop in carbon dioxide levels can lead to lower temperatures, he said.

For instance, according to the uplift-weathering hypothesis, as plate tectonics pushed up mountain ranges, new rock became exposed. This unprotected rock was easily weathered and broken apart, and would fall into the oceans, taking carbon dioxide with it.

These rocks provided critical components that marine organisms used to build their calcium-carbonate shells. Over time, both the rocks and the shells took carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which, along with other forces, helped lower carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, Sandstrom said.

Original article on Live Science.

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The last ice age led to the rise of the woolly mammoth and the vast expansion of glaciers. But it's just one of many that have chilled Earth throughout the planet's 4.5-billion-year history. So, how often do ice ages happen, and when is the next freeze expected to begin?

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The Whanganui River in New Zealand and the Ganga & Yamuna Rivers in India have become legal persons. In New Zealand the river is sacred to the Māori people and this change is the result of negotiations from the treaty o f Waitangi. In India, the two rivers are considered to the Hindu religion and the act was done in response to concerns about pollution. There is a difference between a 'legal person' and human being so therefore they do not have human rights but instead acquire legal rights. The concept is similar to business where companies are considered legal entities separate from the owners. This act grants the river the ability to sue and be sued, in other words they can go to court to protect its rights.
This is a bizarre solution to an issue but it can be argued that it may be necessary to take drastic and somewhat dramatic action not only to protect nature but also send a message. This action shows a lot about us as humans. We are only concerned about ourselves and disregard, neglect and even harm natural resources such as Rivers so in order for them to be protected they need to be seen as more 'human' and hence the movement. By doing this the people send a message that there are still people who are concerned about the environment and are willing to go to such lengths in order to protect nature. The fact that there is religious motive behind it and the fact that people have been worshiping rivers for hundred of years shows that they indeed hold value and it differs from religious to economic value.

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The Whanganui River in New Zealand is now a legal person and can sue over issues like pollution.

Credit: RnDmS/Shutterstock

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

In the space of a week, the world has gained three notable new legal persons: the Whanganui River in New Zealand, and the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers in India.

In New Zealand, the government passed legislation that recognised the Whanganui River catchment as a legal person. This significant legal reform emerged from the longstanding Treaty of Waitangi negotiations and is a way of formally acknowledging the special relationship local Māori have with the river.

In India, the Uttarakhand high court ruled that the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers have the same legal rights as a person, in response to the urgent need to reduce pollution in two rivers considered sacred in the Hindu religion.

Legal rights are not the same as human rights, and so a "legal person" does not necessarily have to be a human being. Take corporations, for example, which are also treated in law as "legal persons", as a way to endow companies with particular legal rights, and to treat the company as legally distinct from its managers and shareholders.

Giving nature legal rights means the law can see "nature" as a legal person, thus creating rights that can then be enforced. Legal rights focus on the idea of legal standing (often described as the ability to sue and be sued), which enables "nature" to go to court to protect its rights. Legal personhood also includes the right to enter and enforce contracts, and the ability to hold property.

There is still a big question about whether these types of legal rights are relevant or appropriate for nature at all. But what is clear from the experience of applying this concept to other non-human entities is that these legal rights don't mean much if they can't be enforced.

What does it take to enforce the legal personhood of a river or other natural entity? First, there needs to be a person appointed to act on its behalf.

Second, for a right to be enforceable, both the "guardians" and users of the resource must recognise their joint rights, duties, and responsibilities. To possess a right implies that someone else has a commensurate duty to observe this right.

Third, if a case requires adjudication by the courts, then it takes time, money, and expertise to run a successful legal case. Enforcing legal rights for nature therefore requires not only legal standing, but also adequate funding and access to legal expertise.

And finally, any actor seeking to enforce these rights will need some form of legislative independence from state and national governments, as well as sufficient real-world power to take action, particularly if such action is politically controversial.

Both New Zealand and India face considerable challenges in ensuring that the new legal rights granted to the rivers are successfully enforced. At present, New Zealand seems significantly better prepared than India to meet these challenges.

In New Zealand, the new system for managing the river will slot into existing systems of government, whereas India will need to set up completely new organisations in a matter of weeks.

Granting legal rights to New Zealand's Whanganui River catchment (Te Awa Tupua) has taken eight years of careful negotiation. The new legislation, introduced at the national level, transfers ownership of the riverbed from the Crown to Te Awa Tupua, and assigns a guardian the responsibility of representing Te Awa Tupua's interests.

The guardian will consist of two people: one appointed by the Whanganui Iwi (local Māori people), and the other by the New Zealand government. Substantial funds have been set aside to maintain the health of the Whanganui River, and to establish the legal framework that will be administered by the guardian, with support from independent advisory groups.

In contrast, almost overnight, the High Court in India has ruled that the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers will be treated as minors under the law, and will be represented by three people - the director general of Namami Gange project, the Uttarakhand chief secretary, and the advocate general - who will act as guardians for the river. The court has requested that within eight weeks, new boards should be established to oversee the cleaning and maintenance of the rivers. Few further details of the proposed institutional framework are available.

In both cases, there are still big questions about the roles and responsibilities of the rivers' guardians.

How will they decide which rights to enforce, and when? Who can hold them to account for those decisions and who has oversight? Even in the case of the Whanganui River, there remain biting questions about water rights and enforcement. For instance, despite (or perhaps because of) longstanding concerns about levels of water extraction by the Tongariro Power Scheme, the legislation specifically avoids creating or transferring proprietary interests in water.

Ultimately, both of these examples show that conferring legal rights to nature is just the beginning of a longer legal process, rather than the end. Although legal rights can be created overnight, it takes time and money to set up the legal and organisational frameworks that will ensure these rights are worth more than the paper they're printed on.

Erin O'Donnell, Senior Fellow, Centre for Resources, Energy and Environment Law, University of Melbourne and Julia Talbot-Jones, PhD candidate, Environmental/Institutional Economics, Australian National University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights . In the space of a week, the world has gained three notable new legal persons: the Whanganui River in New Zealand, and the Ganga and Yamuna Rivers in India.

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Mr. Trash Wheel - The Eco-Friendly Plastic-Picking Device Cleaning Up Harbors

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Mr. Trash Wheel - The Eco-Friendly Plastic-Picking Device Cleaning Up Harbors

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Mr. trash Wheel has been cleaning Baltimore's inner harbour since 2014 and has managed to remove over a million pound of trash. The device uses solar energy to for power and the current of the Jones falls river to turn the waterwheel which powers the conveyer belt. The trash is collected and the conveyer belt drops it into an on board bin. The purpose to animate this trash collector was to increase interest in water pollution and the issues faced by the rivers all over the world.
This type of creative solution shows that the protection and conservation of our resources doesn't all have to be done by dull and boring government agencies and organisations. This shows the community that the power to make a difference can be in the hand of the regular person and can be done with a splash of creativity to get more people involved. Similar projects can be done by locals and schools of communities around the world with rivers and other resources which may be otherwise neglected.

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Mr. Trash Wheel is adorable, and incredibly effective. Since it hit the waters of Baltimore's Inner Harbor (where it can clear debris before it enters the Chesapeake Bay) in May 2014, Mr. Trash Wheel has scooped up over a million pounds of trash. This googly gadget is not messing around! The wheel was born after creator John Kellett took a crack at creating a pilot device in 2008 that cleaned waste from the harbor. After revising the original model, and getting support from the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, Mr. Trash Wheel as we know it (him?) was born.

According to National Geographic, "the contraption works by drawing power from solar panels and the current of Jones Falls River to turn a waterwheel, which in turn powers a conveyer belt. Containment booms direct the trash towards the conveyer belt, which then drops the debris into a waiting Dumpster. That bin sits on its own platform and can be floated out when it's time to change it."
Related: The Environmental Crisis of Plastic Polluting The Oceans
But okay, we need to talk about those eyes. They weren't part of the original design, but they've helped create a small Mr. Trash Wheel fandom for those who can't resist a good anthropomorphized water wheel (check out the Twitter account). In turn, the new-literal-face of Mr. Trash Wheel has brought interest to the issue of water pollution.
Related: ByFusion Turns Pollution Into Eco-Friendly Construction

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Mr. Trash Wheel Is The Eco-Friendly Plastic-Picking Device Cleaning Up Harbors

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There's nothing cute about plucking plastic garbage out of Baltimore harbor waters. Not until you've met Mr. Trash Wheel, anyway. Thanks to this floating trash wheel with giant googly eyes, Baltimore's Inner Harbor is cleaner than it's been in years.

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Material Turns Solar, Heat, And Kinetic Energy Into Electricity—At The Same Time

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Material Turns Solar, Heat, And Kinetic Energy Into Electricity—At The Same Time

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Perovskite is a material which can turn sunlight, heat and movement into electricity, at the same time. These solar cells were invented in 2009 and they are a cheaper and more efficient substitute to silicon solar cells. They have very high potential and are rapidly evolving , a result of which is this new type of perovskite (KBNNO). The technology is still being developed and there is potential for it to be go-to power source for small gadgets used everyday.
Researchers see this to be the future of smart cities and homes. Everyday little gadgets and sensors which we don' t pay much attention to collectively use a fair amount of energy and this material could be the solution to reduce inefficiencies in our everyday lives and pave the way to smart devices, homes and cities.

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Perovskite solar cells were invented in 2009, and since then have been seen as the next big thing in renewable energy-they're cheaper and more efficient than silicon solar cells, and that efficiency is increasing every year. As ScienceAlert reports, "Perovskite solar cells have proven to be cheaper and more efficient than traditional silicon solar cells, and their efficiency levels have increased from 3.8 percent in 2009 to 22.1 percent in 2016, making them the fastest-advancing solar technology to date."
Related: Limpet Teeth Are The Strongest Natural Material
Researchers from the University of Oulu in Finland have now done perovskite solar cells one-make that two better. In a study published in journal Applied Physics Letters in February 2017, the researchers state that a type of perovskite called KBNNO converts solar, heat, and kinetic energy into electricity all at once. What's more, it can do it all at room temperature, making it a practical energy solution. This is the first type of perovskite mineral that's been able to do that. Impressive!
Related: Vanadium Dioxide Defies Our Understanding Of Physics In Very Useful Ways

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This Stuff Turns Solar, Heat, And Kinetic Energy Into Electricity-At The Same Time

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Scientists have discovered a material that might be science's biggest overachiever. This material, which is a type of a mineral called perovskite, can turn sunlight, heat, and movement into electricity-all at the same time. What a show-off. Related: Electrons Flow Through A Copper Wire Slower Than A Snail's Pace

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Electric Driverless Taxis Are In The Future

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Electric Driverless Taxis Are In The Future

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Autonomous vehicles can cut down greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles by 90% in addition to the numerous other advantages. Traffic is the result of essentially human error and response time and therefore if humans were eliminated from the equation and computers were allowed control of our cars then everyone could have stress-free and much more efficient commute. The electric car aspect allows elimination of greenhouse gas emission and the taxi aspect reduces overall vehicle usage. The idea is vehicles existing as a service and dispatched according to need rather than being a personal status symbol and existing per household. This means a slight shift in car usage and it is calculated that only 5% of vehicle sales in 2030 would need to shift to autonomous taxis, this would save around 7 million barrels of oil per year and reduce emission significantly.
this concept would certainly require some effort and sacrifice of what we are currently used to. The idea doesn't imply that everyone sell their cars for the greater good and uses taxis, but instead it means some compromise is made by assessing our individual needs and then determining the best choice. The cost-effective taxis can be slowly introduced into a community and the community would eventually get used to it and it may even become considered a necessity in the future.

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Okay, so the experts also estimate that an all-electric driverless car would cost $150,000 up front (though another study suggests that autonomy will only add $5,000 to a car's sticker price by 2030). But here's the thing: privately owned cars are only driven 12,000 miles per year on average. Taxis, on the other hand, cover 40,000-70,000 miles per year. Factor in the lower per-mile cost of fuel, and an electric autonomous taxi ends up being way more cost-effective than a private hybrid or gas car.
Related: The Hyperloop Is The Theoretical Transit System That Could Slash Your Commute
So would everyone have to get rid of their personal cars? Not even. According to the press release, the scientists calculated that "if five percent of 2030 vehicle sales (about 800,000 vehicles) were shifted to autonomous taxis, it would save about 7 million barrels of oil per year and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by between 2.1 and 2.4 million metric tons of CO2 per year, equal to the emissions savings from more than 1,000 two-megawatt wind turbines." More and more, it's looking like the future of driving is autonomous, and that's good news for everyone.
Is there something you're curious about? Send us a note or email us at editors (at) curiosity.com. And follow Curiosity on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

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Electric Driverless Taxis Are In The Future, And ...

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It's fun to imagine a future full of driverless cars, where your morning commute could be spent reading a book instead of fighting traffic. But the benefits to autonomous vehicles go far beyond personal comfort. Experts say they'll make big changes to road safety and city designs, to name just two.

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Tiny, Wind-Powered Pumps Could Help Replenish Arctic Ice

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Tiny, Wind-Powered Pumps Could Help Replenish Arctic Ice

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Scientists plan to pump cold seawater from below the ice on top of it in winter and this water would then freeze onto the ice. This bizarre idea is in response to the fact that more ice is melting in the summer than the ice that is made in winter and thus the ice is depleting from the Arctic. The plan put forward is that since the water below the thick ice floating on the surface prevents freezing of the ice below it, tiny wind-powered pumps could be used to pull seawater up to the surface where the minus 40 degrees Celsius air would be able to freeze more ice in the winters. There are limitations to this, such as the salt preventing the water to freeze and the actual production and scaling of the currently non-existent pumps.
It is estimated that the Arctic will be completely ice-free during summer by the 2030s. This would lead to a positive feedback loop, sending the planet into rapid warming. The Albedo from the ice caps would be reduced to a dangerous point and the effects would lead to intense warming of Earth. At this point it is believed that any effort to naturally encourage prevention of the ice retreating is pointless so therefore artificial methods may need to be a put into place.

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The sun sets on the Arctic Ocean.

Credit: NASA

As climate change intensifies the melting of sea ice in the Arctic, thousands of tiny, wind-powered pumps could make Earth's northern cap freeze, scientists propose.

The plan, which is not intended to replace other carbon mitigation strategies, would involve pumping cold seawater from below the ice on top of it during the winter months, making it easier for that water to freeze into ice, the scientists said.

However, not everyone is convinced the method would work; one researcher questions both the scale required to make a dent in Arctic warming and even the simple physics behind it. [ Cloud Shields and Cow Pills: The Craziest Climate Fixes]

Climate change is dramatically reshaping the Arctic. Historically, more ice froze in the winter than melted in the summer. However, "as the climate warms, we are starting to melt more ice in the summer than we remake in the winter, which means ice is starting to be depleted from the Arctic," said study co-author Hilairy Hartnett, an oceanographer at Arizona State University.

That means that the vast expanse of summer sea ice has shrunk dramatically, and studies now suggest that the Arctic will be completely ice-free during summer by the 2030s.

An ice-free Arctic would not only contribute to rising sea levels but could also exacerbate a positive feedback loop leading to intense planetary warming. That's because pale sea ice reflects sunlight back out into space, thereby cooling the climate. With all that sea ice gone, the dark waters of the ice-free Arctic would absorb all that sunlight, warming the planet further, Hartnett said. [ 10 Things to Know About Sea Ice]

While slashing carbon emissions is necessary, most researchers now believe that it won't be enough to halt the retreat of sea ice, Hartnett said. Instead, scientists are now considering whether artificial means could stave off the disappearance of sea ice.

"Helping to preserve ice in the Arctic is going to buy us time," Hartnett told Live Science.

Toward that end, Hartnett and her colleagues came up with a very basic idea: help the Arctic make more ice in the winter, when the temperatures will be cool enough, even under most climate change scenarios, to freeze water.

Ice is a good insulator, meaning that thick hunks of frozen water floating on top of the sea prevent the freezing of seawater below them. However, the air temperature during the Arctic winter is still bone-chilling - at minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 40 degrees Celsius). That means that if the water were not insulated from the cold by thick chunks of ice, it would freeze easily.

So, the team reasoned, what if the seawater below the ice could be brought up to the surface somehow? The idea would be to use tiny, wind-powered pumps to pull seawater from between 6 and 9 feet (1.8 and 2.7 meters) below the sea ice up to the surface, where it could freeze, the researchers proposed in the study, which was published online Jan. 24, in the journal Earth's Future.

The new scheme has several potential drawbacks.

For one, based on the team's calculations, a single pump could freeze an additional 3.3 feet (1 m) of ice on top of existing sea ice for an area of about 0.04 square miles (0.1 square kilometers), Hartnett said.

"If you wanted to do the entire Arctic ice shelf, you would need tens of thousands" of pumps, Hartnett said. "But you could imagine working at the edges of the current Arctic ice."

Another problem is that these pumps don't exist yet, though it would be possible to build them with off-the-shelf parts, Hartnett said.

But even if the pumps could be built, not everyone is convinced they'd solve the problem.

"Think about this: What happens when you scatter salt on an icy sidewalk?" said Elizabeth Hunke, a fluid-dynamics researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who was not involved in the study. (Answer: The ice melts.)

Seawater is salty, but because salt migrates away from the surface of the ice as water freezes, sea ice is relatively pure (and melted, older sea ice can even be used as a freshwater source), Hunke said. So the proposed method, which would coat the top of sea ice with salty seawater, might not freeze the top layer of ice as expected, Hunke said.

"The model that the authors use is extremely simple and does not take into account how the salt in seawater would affect the sea ice it's put onto, nor other critical sea-ice processes, such as meltwater drainage and flushing when the ice becomes porous, and so their conclusions might not hold," Hunke told Live Science in an email.

Beyond that, it's just not clear whether the method could be scaled up, given the harsh Arctic environment, Hunke said.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Tiny, Wind-Powered Pumps Could Help Replenish Arctic Ice

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As climate change intensifies the melting of sea ice in the Arctic, thousands of tiny, wind-powered pumps could make Earth's northern cap freeze, scientists propose. The plan, which is not intended to replace other carbon mitigation strategies, would involve pumping cold seawater from below the ice on top of it during the winter months, making it easier for that water to freeze into ice, the scientists said.

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Geothermal energy uses the heat from the earth's surface to generate electricity, this source of energy is renewable.Conventionally steam produced from the geysers is used to turn turbines to produce electricity but in the case of volcanic geothermal energy, there is potential for much higher energy. Volcanoes allow water to reach a super-critical state which can only be achieved in very distinctive conditions, this super-critical water carries more energy than normal steam and the output is 10 times greater than traditional geothermal sources. Researchers are looking into it as an alternative and more sustainable geothermal source of energy and Iceland already generates 25% of its electricity by harnessing the earth's energy. Globally however, only 6 to 7% of geothermal potential energy is being used.
The issue with most renewable sources of energy is that they are just not developed to the point to be able to replace the fossil fuels we are heavily reliant on. This article shows that there is still so much untapped potential on earth that can be used to fulfill the needs of the rapidly growing population. Volcanoes have very high potential and could boost the reliability of geothermal energy as an energy source and push the research and development of geothermal energy forward by creating interest.

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Volcanic landscape on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland.

Credit: Reykjanes Peninsula image via Shutterstock

It's not every day that scientists can study a volcano up close, but researchers investigating the feasibility of volcano-powered electricity successfully drilled into the core of one in Iceland.

Scientists studied the volcanic system at Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland, which has been dormant for more than 700 years, according to a hazard assessment by Verkis Consulting Engineers for Invest in Inceland.

The depths of Reykjanes' geothermal field - an area with high heat flow - had never been explored, researchers with the Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) said in a statement. Beginning in August 2016, the IDDP spent 168 days drilling into the volcanic belly of Reykjanes. This well was completed on Jan. 25, reaching a record-breaking depth of nearly 3 miles (4.8 kilometers). [ The 11 Biggest Volcanic Eruptions in History]

At this depth, the hole does not enter the magma chamber but does penetrate the rock surrounding it, which the researchers measured to be about 800 degrees Fahrenheit (427 degrees Celsius).

Geothermal energy uses the heat trapped beneath the Earth's surface to generate electricity. Conventional geothermal energy utilizes steam from natural sources such as geysers, or by drawing water from the hot, high-pressue depths of the Earth. The hot vapors are then used to drive electric turbines.

In the case of volcanic geothermal energy, the heat comes from "supercritical water." The researchers explained that energy from so-called supercritical water is much higher than conventional geothermal steam. When molten rock and water meet, the extreme heat and pressure bring water to a "supercritical" state, where it is neither liquid nor gas. In this form, the water can carry more energy than normal steam, which could create up to 10 timesthe power output of other geothermal sources.

Research will continue through 2018 to explore how the volcano's thermal energy could be used, including as a form of alternative energy, according to IDDP scientists.

"If deep supercritical wells, here and elsewhere in the world, can produce more power than conventional geothermal wells, fewer wells would be needed to produce the same power output, leading to less environmental impact and improved economics," IDDP researchers said in the statement.

Geothermal energy is a major source of energy in Iceland, with about 25 percent of the country's electricity generated from tapping the Earth's heat, according to the National Energy Authority of Iceland. About 90 percent of Icelandic households are heated with geothermal energy.

In its 2016 power production report, the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA) found that only 6 to 7 percent of global geothermal power potential has been tapped. However, production is on the rise and the GEA predicts global geothermal energy production will more than double by 2030.

Original article on Live Science.

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Magma Power: Scientists Drill into Volcano to Harness its Energy

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It's not every day that scientists can study a volcano up close, but researchers investigating the feasibility of volcano-powered electricity successfully drilled into the core of one in Iceland. Scientists studied the volcanic system at Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland, which has been dormant for more than 700 years, according to a hazard assessment by Verkis Consulting Engineers for Invest in Inceland.

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Climate change can cause more Air pollution

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Climate change can cause more Air pollution

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Climate change, along with other factors, is attributed to air pollution as the particles trap in heat from insolation. research has shown that this relationship may work both ways and that climate change may in return increase air pollution levels. pollution such as smog which contains ozone particles is higher at higher temperatures. Everything is connected, the higher temperature dries out the soil which makes forest fires more likely, contributing to more air pollution. These type of pollutants have negative effects on health and exposure to them increases chances of heart and lung cancer and thus it has a similar effect to smoking.
The environmental protection agency and other associations have and still are working to mitigate the effects and reduce the impact on human health but the positive feedback loop allows the two factors to feed off each other and thus is much more complicated and difficult to solve. Solutions aren't however non-existent and steps can be taken individually in addition to mass effort from organisations and governments. The usage of fossil fuels can be reduced by governments and large corporations actually allowing development and research into alternative energy and make the choice easier for the population. People in industries related to the issue can also make a difference such as agriculture adapting more sustainable practices to prevent forest fires.

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An undated photo of smog over the city of Tokyo.

Credit: Doctor Jools, Shutterstock

ATLANTA - Air pollution is one human-made factor that is trapping sunlight and causing climate change, but the relationship also goes the other way: Climate change stands to increase levels of air pollution, experts say.

Although climate change is multifaceted, and won't bring warmer temperatures to all parts of the globe, the average global temperatures will rise.

Research shows that "a warming climate will lead to more severe air pollution," and that this holds true even if the only factor that changes is temperature, said Patrick Kinney, a professor of urban health and sustainability at the Boston University School of Public Health. Kinney's research group has looked into how temperature and air pollution are related. [ 5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Your Health]

They've found that " air pollution and climate change are really intimately connected in both directions," Kinney said.

"While we've been damaging the Earth's climate system ... we've also been damaging our own health in the process," Kinney said, speaking here today (Feb. 16) at the Climate & Health Meeting, a gathering of experts from public health organizations, universities and advocacy groups that focused on the health impacts of climate change.

"It's a sword that cuts with two very deadly edges, both for climate and for health," Kinney said.

For example, higher temperatures, in particular, will increase smog pollution, Kinney said, in part because smog contains ozone particles, which form faster at higher temperatures.

But air pollution doesn't come only from the obvious human sources, such as cars and factories. Other sources, such as burning forests, also contribute to air pollution, and these factors are also related to climate change, Kinney said. Higher temperatures draw moisture out of the soil and into the air; this dries out the soil and, in turn, dries out the vegetation, making it more vulnerable to wildfires, he explained.

The smoke from wildfires remains in the air for a long time and can travel long distances, Kinney said. This type of air pollution kills nearly half a million people prematurely every year, worldwide, he said.

Whether it's the burning of wood or the burning of coal, researchers say the pollutants that are released into the air have similar health effects, Kinney noted.

And the negative health effects of air pollution go beyond a scratchy throat or a nagging cough.

Major health consequences of exposure to air pollution include an increased risk for heart disease and lung cancer, Kinney told Live Science. Air pollution is composed of tiny particles that "act very similarly to cigarette smoke," he said. "We know a lot about how cigarette smoke can cause [health] problems; air pollution is doing the same thing," he added. [ 8 Ways Global Warming is Already Changing the World]

The links between air pollution and both heart disease and lung cancer may not be obvious to many people because these conditions develop over many years, Kinney said. These links are "more pernicious," he said, adding that the evidence for them has "emerged through careful studies of large populations of people."

The finding that climate change can play a role in increasing air pollution means that air pollution will be "more difficult to control in the future than we thought," Kinney said.

"The fact that we do have clean air [today] is because of the great work that the Environmental Protection Agency has been doing for the last 40 years," Kinney added.

Kinney also discussed the link between climate change and pollen allergies. "Pollen is very climate sensitive," he said.

But the link isn't simply that a warmer climate means a longer pollen season. In addition to the longer season, increased levels of carbon dioxide in the air cause plants to produce more pollen, Kinney said.

Originally published on Live Science.

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Here's How Climate Change Can Cause More Air Pollution (All By Itself)

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ATLANTA - Air pollution is one human-made factor that is trapping sunlight and causing climate change, but the relationship also goes the other way: Climate change stands to increase levels of air pollution, experts say. Although climate change is multifaceted, and won't bring warmer temperatures to all parts of the globe, the average global temperatures will rise.

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Of all the species that have ever existed on earth 99% are now extinct but thankfully most of it is due to time and natural occurrences. Currently between a few dozen to more than a hundred species go extinct every day and at the curent rate it would take a few tens of thousands of years to wipe out the same number of species as the third great mass extinction. This was the largest mass extinction and it wiped out 96% of life on Earth and the latest mass extinction was the one that wiped out the dinosaurs which was the infamous meteorite.The current rate of extinction is 100 to 1000 times to what it would be naturally after the introduction of Human beings to the planet. Many believe that we are currently in the middle of the next extinction which is being caused by rising CO2 levels, habitat destruction, invasive species, pollution and over harvesting which all come back to us Humans.
The issue is a geological process which has happened many times before but this time it is happening at a much faster rate. The solutions to this issue would be too look at the individual causes and tackling them one by one to ensure that there is minimum human impact on this otherwise natural process. These steps don't have to be global initiatives taken up by all the countries of the world but can be small steps taken by individual communities to ensure that they themselves are doing the best they can. An example of a community coming together is in South Africa where a group called the Black Mambas, all-female group, are in the fight against poaching of endangered wild-life in the region such as the Rhino by patrolling and protecting natural parks and reserves.

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Paleontologists are routinely finding fossils of new species that have never been discovered, not to mention the living species we're discovering every year. So if we don't know every species that has ever existed, how can scientists say how many are extinct? It's a numbers game. Scientists know that plants and animals only fossilize under special conditions: usually in sedimentary rock, and almost exclusively if the species has hard features like bone, shell, or teeth. They also know that a lot of fossils have been lost to tectonic activity, and many more still are just impossible for us to access. By combining their knowledge of these limits, how much rock is out there, and how many species we've already discovered, they can intelligently say that our list of known species is only a miniscule fraction of those that actually lived. That's why they say that the vast, vast majority of life that has existed is now extinct.

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99 Percent Of The Earth's Species Are Extinct-But That's Not The Worst Of It

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Paleontologists are routinely finding fossils of new species that have never been discovered, not to mention the living species we're discovering every year. So if we don't know every species that has ever existed, how can scientists say how many are extinct? It's a numbers game.

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Earth is rapidly losing its farmable land

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Earth is rapidly losing its farmable land

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Nearly 33% of the world's arable land has disappeared in the last four decades due to pollution and erosion. The combination of an increase in the human population, urbanisation and climate change have all contributed to a decrease in the efficiency and effectiveness on  the agricultural capacity of the Earth. As the population of the Earth is rapidly increasing so is the need for intensive farming to keep up with the demand which is highly unsustainable. The lack of knowledge and use of practical and sustainable agricultural methods has led to soil degradation, the decrease in the quality of soil.

Possible solutions include vertical farm, these are farms that are grown in building taking advantage of the limited amount of space available of cities and producing crops with efficient methods through technology to maximise productivity. This method would be excellent because it is actually taking advantage of one of the main problems which is urbanisation and turning it into a solution and allowing for development to take place without restrictions or concern over farmland however this method becoming popular and more common would take some time. Other solutions include 'no till' agriculture, the way of growing crops from year to year without disturbing the soil through tillage. Maintaining a balance between crops and the microbes in the soil as well as using human waste as fertililser are all viable solutions that if used collectively would be quite effective.

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In 2015, intensive farming is rapidly becoming unsustainable. Nearly 33% of the world's arable land has disappeared in the last four decades due to pollution and erosion, the latter of which often results from deep ploughing. Scientists from the University of Sheffield's Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures warn that our available soil can't support our rate of population growth. They recommend a multipronged approach to a more sustainable farming model, one that includes "no-till" agriculture, maintaining symbiosis between crops and soil microbes, and even making fertilizer out of human sewage.

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Earth Is Rapidly Losing Its Farmable Land

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In 2015, intensive farming is rapidly becoming unsustainable. Nearly 33% of the world's arable land has disappeared in the last four decades due to pollution and erosion, the latter of which often results from deep ploughing. Scientists from the University of Sheffield's Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures warn that our available soil can't support our rate of population growth.

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Humans are very wasteful creatures and we take the resources we have for granted. Earthships are a step in the right direction for us to live more sustainbly and reducing the amount of waste we produce. These homes are not connected to the grid nor the water systems making them completely self-sustaining as they can even produce their own food in addition to electricity and water. With the use of recycled material for the construction and taking advantage of natrual convection as a natural Air conditioning this home helps to greatly reduce the negative impact of human activity on Earth and the environment.

At the moment this type of home is only owned by people who really care about the environment enough to take action and mold their entire lifestyle in order to live sustainably. The concept is excellent as it promotes self-sustained living. This type of lifestyle would not only be beneficial to the environment but also to the people living within as it would cut the costs of running a house to half if not more. Previously humans used to live much in a much more self-sustaining manner , for example on farms but that came with its own restrictions such as lack of amenities. Technology can  however provide people will most of their needs but still allow for sustainable living by smartly reducing the amount of waste produced and allow for a healthier lifestyle.

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Imagine for a minute being whisked away to a land of no electric bills, no water bills, no heat bills. Now imagine that place doesn't require living in a grass hut in the middle of the rainforest. (But hey, that works too.) The most futuristic way to get away from your utility bills and live as D.I.Y. as possible is inside an Earthship. These self-sustaining homes aren't hooked up to the power grid or water systems, but instead function entirely on their own to produce electricity, water, and even food. They harvest energy from the sun or wind, and keep their interiors cool via natural convection. The Earthship's walls, which are typically made from tires or other dense materials, help to keep the temperature comfortable at all times. And huts they ain't-some come in the form of awe-inspiring, eco-friendly Earth castles.
Related: Amazing Sustainable Buildings

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Earthships Are Self-Sustaining Homes Built For Living Off The Grid

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Imagine for a minute being whisked away to a land of no electric bills, no water bills, no heat bills. Now imagine that place doesn't require living in a grass hut in the middle of the rainforest. (But hey, that works too.) The most futuristic way to get away from your utility bills and live as D.I.Y.

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The largest coal power plant in the U.S is closing down which is good news because it is one of the biggest climate polluters in the country. The Navajo power plant in Arizona may be closing down due to the rising costs of generating electricity using coals. The reserve is coal is said to be the first to run out out of the fossil fuels used currently in Earth. The low prices of natural gas is luring these companies to abandon coal and move to the much more abundant and plentiful resource in comparison - Natural Gas. In the U.S the top 7 largest contributors to carbon pollution are all coal-fired power stations with the Navajo station being the 7th. Natural gas pollutes the atmosphere with half as much carbon dioxide compared to Coal. President Trump heavily supports the Coal industry and plans to "bring back coal" by removing legislation hindering the coal industry.
In my opinion this is a good step in reducing fossil fuel use and it is certainly good news for those directly affected by the pollution caused by the plant. Since companies all over the U.S have stopped going towards coal and are instead switching to Natural gas which is less polluting perhaps this would also encourage some to look at alternative sources of energy that are sustainable. Corporations and Politicians that have immense control over what happens do indeed hinder the research effort put into alternative energy sources due to personal agendas fueled by profit. But this can be changed if people are not just made aware but start to take action to support other renewable sources of energy making them more efficient, reliable and attainable at a cheap and reasonable price.

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The largest coal-fired power plant in the West - one of the biggest climate polluters in the nation - could close later this year, a major symbolic blow to the future of coal as the backbone of America's electric power grid.

The owners of Arizona's Navajo Generating Station northeast of the Grand Canyon announced in early January that low natural gas prices and the rising costs of generating electricity using coal make it too expensive to operate the plant. A decision on the plant's fate is expected this spring.Coal-fired power plants, once the workhorse of the nation's electricity grid, are the biggest individual climate polluters in the country, and they're falling victim to coal's biggest competitor - plentiful, cheap natural gas flooding the country because of fracking.

It's a trend all across the nation, even as President Trump tries to begin to make good on his campaign promise to revitalize America's declining coal fields while dismissing the threat they pose to the climate.

The Navajo plant may soon be the West's largest victim of the move toward natural gas. It is America's seventh-largest single source of the carbon dioxide emissions driving climate change. Its closure would relieve Arizona of a source of pollution long targeted by federal regulators for contributing to regional haze and poor air quality over the Grand Canyon.

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The six other largest carbon polluters are coal-fired power plants scattered around the country, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"The owners' decision to consider its future is based on the changing economics of energy - primarily the low cost of natural gas and other resources," said Scott Harelson, spokesman for the Salt River Project, Arizona's primary electric power company and one of the plant's owners. "Coal plants across the West face a variety of issues that their respective owners must face with respect to their ongoing operations that could lead to additional closings."

Compared to coal, natural gas pollutes the atmosphere with about half as much carbon dioxide when it is used to generate electricity. Beginning in the middle of the last decade, the fracking boom flooded the U.S. with cheap natural gas, driving prices down to 18-year lows in 2016.

Federal mercury pollution regulations are also a factor in coal plant closures because energy companies were required to install special "scrubbers" on their coal-fired power plants costing hundreds of millions of dollars each.

"Nobody in this country is building new coal plants because they're too expensive," said Jeremy Richardson, an energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "As you look into the future, it's cheaper to either shift to an existing natural gas plant where the capacity is available or even in some cases switch to renewable energy."

These changing energy economics have felled a flurry of coal-fired power plants across the U.S. since the fracking boom took hold more than a decade ago. Major electric utilities across the country operated 353 coal-fired power plants of various sizes in 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Over the next decade, 97 of those shut down.

At the same time, electricity generated using coal declined by 32 percent nationwide, while power generation from natural gas skyrocketed 159 percent. Coal and natural gas each generate about 33 percent of America's electric power, with wind and solar trailing far behind at about 7 percent. In 2016, natural gas surpassed coal as the primary source of electricity for the first time in U.S. history.

Renewables, such as wind and solar, have been exploding in growth over the past decade, too, but they're still just a tiny player. In 2015, less than 2 percent of electricity in the U.S. came from wind and solar.

The changing economics of electricity and the rise of natural gas are occurring regardless of any climate policy, such as the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, which was meant cut down on the carbon pollution from most coal-fired power plants. Trump, who has promoted both fracking and coal, has scoffed at the idea of greenhouse gas controls because he and many of his cabinet nominees deny the existence of climate change and have vowed to kill the plan.

The nation's largest electric power companies are responding differently to these changing economics.

We Energy, an electric power company in Wisconsin, announced in January that it will be shutting down one of its largest coal-fired power plants for six months each year during the spring and fall when demand for electricity and natural gas prices are both low.

"Low natural gas prices allow natural gas plants to generate power at lower costs than most coal plants during those months," said We Energy spokesman Brian Manthey. "Lower natural gas prices and environmental regulations have led to the addition of more natural gas-fueled power generation throughout the country. In fact, we recently converted our downtown Milwaukee Valley Power Plant from coal to natural gas."

The Tennessee Valley Authority, which is one of the largest electric power providers in the South, has closed three coal-fired power plants since 2011 mainly because of Environmental Protection Agency air pollution regulations, not cheap natural gas. Two more and part of another are expected to shut down through 2018, leaving TVA with six.

"Few of these closures are related to coal and gas prices," TVA spokesman Scott Brooks said. "It all relates back to an agreement we reached with EPA in 2011 to evaluate all our coal units that weren't fitted with environmental controls. Gas prices are attractive, but our strategy is toward a diverse portfolio so that we don't rely on one generation source too heavily."

Duke Energy, the nation's largest electric utility, shut down 12 coal-fired power plants over the past five years, with another in Asheville, N.C., scheduled to close in 2020. Duke spent more than $9 billion to modernize 40 others across the South and Midwest to help them comply with environmental regulations, spokesman Jeff Brooks said.

State-level climate policies are having an effect, too, and are likely to be factors in any decision to shutter the Navajo plant, said Colleen Regan, head of North America power and environmental markets for Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

For example, California's cap-and-trade program prompted Los Angeles' city electric utility to sell its stake in the Navajo plant, Regan said. The program - the nation's first - caps the amount of climate pollution the state can release and issues pollution permits called allowances to utilities and companies. Allowances are auctioned and traded among polluters.

A Nevada electric company's plan to cut its carbon pollution also led it to cut ties to Navajo by 2019, Regan said.

"These climate-motivated deals have put an increasingly large onus on Salt River Project," she said, adding that these factors and cheap natural gas are helping to put coal-fired power plants such as Navajo out of business.

"This story is playing out across most of the country," Regan said.

Though the federal government and independent analysts are projecting a small boost in the use of coal for electricity over the next several years, the long-term outlook for coal is dim.

"In the near term, there is a chance coal may rebound as gas finds new markets, pushing gas prices up slightly," Regan said. "But even looking out to 2020, 2025, I don't see much of a comeback, irrespective of the Clean Power Plan."

That's true even if Trump administration policy heavily supports both fracking and coal because when it comes to generating electricity, natural gas and coal compete with each other.

"Anything that boosts domestic natural gas production will directly, negatively impact coal-fired power plants by reducing their margins as gas prices depress wholesale power prices," Regan said.

One of Trump's biggest campaign promises to voters in coal-producing Appalachian states such as West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky was that he'd " bring back coal" by killing off the Clean Power Plan and other regulations seen as detrimental to the coal industry. But those same states also depend heavily on natural gas production.

"It's going to be difficult for Trump to be both pro-natural gas and pro-coal at the same time, unless he intends to directly subsidize coal plants or find other markets for U.S. coal," Regan said.

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Originally published on Climate Central.

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The largest coal-fired power plant in the West - one of the biggest climate polluters in the nation - could close later this year, a major symbolic blow to the future of coal as the backbone of America's electric power grid.