Great Smokies Studying Emissions

December 11, 2006

    Rocky Mountain states are entering the winter season with scant snowfall. The Mid-Atlantic States recently have endured unseasonable warm weather. In Europe, fruit trees are blooming. In the great white north, new projections predict Arctic ice melting faster than previously expected.
    Climate change? Global warming? You choose the term you're most comfortable with, but it really doesn't matter. We're going through a change. How much responsibility can be heaped at the feet of humans is certainly debatable. At Great Smoky Mountains National Park, though, officials are trying to determine how much their park might be contributing to the problem.
    By late next month Great Smoky officials expect to have in hand data that pinpoint how visitation to their park contributes to global warming. Specifically, the study is intended to quantify how motor vehicle traffic, electricity consumption, even campfires, contribute to global warming via greenhouse gas emissions.
    "As an environmental leader, it's very important to develop outreach both to the visitors as well as to our communities, municipalities and businesses outside the park," Nancy Gray says in a story relayed by The Associated Press. "We need to understand ways of being better stewards and reducing greenhouse gases, because we can't do it alone."

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