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but that doesn't sound like good news to me and there's more to this scary scene.

The say that in the 1930's, "The Dust Bowl," storms of that period of time produced huge swirling masses of dust, just like those Texas, "Dirt Devils," but the dust from the Dust Bowl covered much of the western United States. Duce says that in the last thirty years, the result of human activity have been roughly the equivalent of a dust bowl itself, with huge amounts of land being cleared for construction to provide for the drastically increased population. All of this stirring up dust has changed the fact of the Earth. He goes on to ask, "With all of this dust reaching the ocean, could we fertilize parts of the ocean with iron to increase productivity?" The answer appears to be no. It would not be such a great idea to fertilize the ocean, apparently. Duce says we just don't understand enough about these types of growth cycles yet. The study says that dust storm frequency in some areas of the Earth have increased, such as in China, North Africa and the United States, along with maybe even Australia. These might just be related to climate variability or land use change caused by too much human activity.

Robert Duce says in his study that the dust supply from the North African deserts directly affects tropical areas of the Atlantic and sometimes even the Pacific oceans. He also says that typical dust particles contain only about 3.5 percent of iron, but this amount is very significant considering the enormous amounts of dust that's swept up into the air and deposited into the sea every year, which in fact, is roughly one billion tons.

To the question of what is important to consider about the long range effects of all this dust, Duce explained, "So there are some very big questions to be asked. If global warming is occurring as widely believed, what effect does this dust and its iron have on global warming? Would increasing the amounts of atmospheric dust cause the climate to cool because the dust would scatter more of the sun's energy back into space? How does this iron-dust specifically affect marine productivity, and could changes in this productivity affect climate by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to fuel the growth of marine plants?"
"We clearly need more research on this problem," Duce adds. "This does not affect just one part of the Earth it affects the entire Earth systems land, atmosphere and ocean. If this dust is changing significant atmospheric and marine life processes, we need to know about it. We definitely need a better understanding of the iron-dust cycle to find out what the long-range impacts could be for all of us."

TO CONCLUDE:

All these scientific studies have taught us a lot about dust and what it does to us, so let's hope and pray someday they figure out how to decrease at least the space dust to keep it at bay. Although I can't even figure out how to keep dust out of my house, hopefully scientists can figure out how to remove the space dust demise that affects all our lives.

For the source of more than just dust, go to this site for more information on space dust and how it relates to and creates Earth issues:

http://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Space_dust

Learn more about this author, Vicki Phipps.
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