Mike Marcus

What We Knew, When We Knew It, and What We Did

Introduction: Scope of the Series and Purpose of This Article 

The first article in this series of three provides a very brief review and summary from John Vaillant’s book Fire Weather, a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist.[1] Vaillant, a Canadian journalist, documents the evolving history of our knowledge linking emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), to climate warming and climate change. We summarized the scientific research that Vaillant presents in chapter 19, its resulting findings, and conclusions.[2]

This second article describes how the United States has reacted to that science, from teaching it to turning its back. The third article will address the morality and ethics of continued greenhouse gas emissions and New Mexico’s responses to increasing aridification.

Fire Weather also is the anchor for this second of three articles. Vailant’s book describes how popular publications reported on the science of climate change and how the politics and fossil fuel industries positions shifted. Popular publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Life, American Scientist, and others in the 1950s began to report the linkage between fossil fuel emissions and climate. Stories addressed Guy Callendar’s 1938 publication, The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Climate, and Gilbert Plass’ use of infrared spectroscopy to first challenge and then to reconfirm in 1958 that the Earth’s long-wave, infrared radiation of heat to space is retained by atmospheric water vapor and industrial CO2 emissions. This work was further developed in other researchers’ publications.

Early Political Support for Climate Science: The International Geophysical Year (1956–1958)

Fire Weather describes that Roger Revelle, the director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, testified before the Republican-dominated U.S. House Committee on Appropriations in March 1956 and again in May 1957 regarding research findings and funding needs required for each year’s upcoming work under the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The work sought data about “anything remotely measurable – from the most ancient glacial ice to the most ephemeral atmospheric gases.”

Vaillant quotes part of Revelle’s 1956 statement, “Human beings during the next few decades may, almost in spite of themselves, be doing something that will have a major effect on the climate of the earth … I refer to the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas by our worldwide civilization, which adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere … we are carrying out a tremendous geophysical experiment … If all of this carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere, it will certainly affect the climate of the earth and this may be a very large effect.” Vaillant describes in considerable detail the committee discussions that occurred each year between Revelle and both conservative and liberal committee members. Congress provided the funding requested annually for both year’s work. Vaillant’s discussion concludes that in the time since those hearings, “annual CO2 emissions have increased fivefold from their already-climate-altering 1950s levels.”

Growing Public and Political Recognition of Climate Risk (1950s–Early 1960s)

Vaillant reports in chapter 20 that general and widespread recognition of the growing threats from greenhouse gas emissions and climate warming, both public and political, started during the 1950s. For example, in the early 1960s a series of films was shown in schools to educate children on how CO2 buildup in the atmosphere was causing climate warming. Frank Capra produced the films. Bell Telephone (AT&T) funded them.

Vaillant tells a story suggesting that Edward Teller, known as the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” may also have started the awareness of powerful oilmen and their supporters that the link between their products and global warming would threaten their business and investor earnings. Teller, speaking at a 1959 American Petroleum Institute (API) sponsored symposium, raised his concern regarding the continuing atmospheric release of CO2 and its interaction with solar radiation to cause atmospheric warming. He stated, “a temperature rise corresponding to a ten percent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt ice caps and submerge New York. All the coastal cities will be covered … I think that this … is more serious than most people tend to believe.” Vaillant suggests this statement likely caused many of the 300 participants to begin to see climate science as a challenge to their profitability.

Industry Confirmation of Climate Risk and Internal Assessment (1965–Early 1980s)

A 1965 report from President Johnson’s scientific advisory committee showed the Keeling Curve (as described near the end of the first article) to be steepening. Vaillant quotes that report: “By the year 2000 the increase in atmospheric CO2 … will almost certainly cause significant changes in the temperature and other properties of the atmosphere.”

Vaillant suggests that report caused the fossil-fuel industry to begin assessing such potential effects independently. This led the president of Bituminous Coal Research to release a 1965 report stating, “There is evidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing rapidly as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels. … Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar ice caps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London.”

In 1966 the American Petroleum Institute contracted with the Stanford Research Institute for a scientific study of this relationship. That study concluded, “Significant temperature changes are almost certainly to occur by the year 2000” and that the industry must prioritize management of their emissions. Vaillant says the fossil-fuels industry response was to prioritize corporate and stockholder profits.

Vaillant reports that in 1979 Switzerland hosted the first World Climate Conference to “foresee and prevent potential man-made changes in climate that may be adverse to the well-being of humanity.” Leading to that conference, the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon, and most other major oil companies had established a collaborative and objective research team, which included federal scientists, called the CO2 and Climate Task Force. Hundreds of significant research publications resulted on essentially all aspects of the identified relationships and their potential effects.

These findings caused the New York Times to publish in all capital letters, “STUDY FINDS WARMING TREND THAT COULD RAISE SEA LEVELS.” A graph released by Exxon in 1982 showed that the adverse atmospheric warming effects from climate change would become obvious in the 1990s. Vaillant notes that, in fact, climate warming had started to produce noticeable material damages sufficient to cause major insurance companies to start attending global-warming meetings in the early 1980s.

Industry Reversal and the Rise of Organized Climate Science Denial (Mid-1980s–1990s)

In 1984, as scientific research and scientific consensus on the CO2 emissions effects mounted, Vaillant says the American Petroleum Institute and major fossil-fuel industry companies started to consider a need to re-evaluate and turn back their position on CO2 driving climate warming. The American Petroleum Institute, Exxon, and the other major oil companies disbanded their collaborative CO2-climate research group. This was in the days of Ronald Reagan, James Watt, and the Moral Majority, who Vaillant states were suspicious of science in general.

Vaillant’s story continues with NASA’s James Hansen presenting his 1988 testimony to Congress. Hansen plainly stated that climate change poses a clear and present danger to the planet and humanity. His conclusions were based on a hundred years of study and hundreds of recent publications. Subsequently, the term “global warming” appeared for the first time in a New York Times headline. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created to coordinate international research and conclusions.

In this context, the American Association of Manufacturers, the API, Exxon, and other fossil fuel industry giants founded the deceptively named Global Climate Coalition (GCC) in 1988 to lobby against controls on behalf of fossil fuel producers and major users. Their loud public work sought to cast doubt on climate science and discredit James Hansen and other climate scientists as alarmists. Conservative attitudes about emissions-driven climate change turned had decidedly negative by the early 1990s.

International Climate Governance With Growing Industry Influence (2015–2023)

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) convened Paris, France, to negotiate the 2015 Paris Agreement.[3] It covers climate change mitigation, adaptation, and finance. The United States signed it on Earth Day, 2016. This treaty adopts a long-term goal to keep the rise in global surface temperature “well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”

Vaillant reported the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24) held during 2018 in Katowice, Poland, included nearly 1,800 fossil fuel industrial lobbyists, who worked against global interests, including efforts to secure financial support to low-income nations in efforts to transition to clean energy.[4] Five years later, Dubai hosted COP28, attended by 2,456 fossil fuels folks.[5]

U.S. Political Withdrawal from Climate Agreements and Institutions (2017–2026)

On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, but honored the three-year notice requirement. President Biden reinstated the United States’ participation in 2021. President Trump on January 20, 2025, cancelled the United States’ participation without advance notice.

In a January 6, 2026, social media post, the White House informed the nation that the President was ending the United States’ participation in the United Nations’ bedrock climate change mitigation treaty signed 34 years ago by all the countries of the earth. The United States is the first to renounce this world-wide agreement.

The president also took the United States out of the International Panel on Climate Change and is closing down federal climate science research facilities and funding and information.

Conclusion: From History to Responsibility

This article traces a clear historical record: climate warming science development of clear conclusions and warnings identified early, confirmed repeatedly, publicly communicated, and understood by political leaders and the fossil-fuel industry decades before organized opposition and denial took hold. The resulting delay has shaped today’s climate risks, governance failures, and policy conflicts—across the world and where we live.

The third and final article in this series turns from history to consequences and responsibility. It will examine how climate warming is reducing New Mexico’s water resources and how climate-induced renewable water supply reductions will constrain future water uses in our arid state. It will also address the moral and ethical dimensions of greenhouse gas emissions—who is put at risk and how the burdens will fall on bears on communities and future generations of New Mexicans.

Finally, this concluding article will outline a path forward for New Mexico and New Mexicans: one grounded in science, water realities, institutional accountability, and informed public choice. The purpose is to apply this information to decisions our elected leaders must make about water, energy, and stewardship in a warming climate.

End Notes

[1] Vaillant, John. 2023.  Fire Weather. Alfred A. Knopf. 414 pp.

[2] Mike Marcus, 2025, https://nmwateradvocates.org/how-climate-science-works-and-how-it-is-distorted/

[3] The Paris Agreement. 2015. https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/paris-agreement

[4] Katowice Climate Change Conference, 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24). 2018. https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/11/1026851

[5] https://time.com/6342799/fossil-fuel-lobbyists-cop28/

 

Understanding the Scientific Method and the Reality of Climate Change

A previous article described how our warming climate, also called “climate change,” is affecting New Mexico’s and other global water supplies.[1]  Yet, some claim that climate change is not really happening, that it is a liberal hoax. However, most of those in the scientific and environmental communities say these global climate changes are indeed real and increasingly threatening life around our planet. What is the truth?

Here, it is important to understand that scientists using statistical methods can readily conclude that certain relationships are false, but statistical methods cannot prove that an alternative relationship is true with complete certainty. Instead, scientists assess important conditions that might cause or contribute to a suspected relationship, including using models addressing the possible cause-and-effect relationships (essentially, evaluating alternative assumptions).

By rigorously evaluating these different variables, scientists strive to determine whether a suspected link is truly causal or merely coincidental. This careful, evidence-based approach allows researchers to refine their understanding and minimize uncertainty in their conclusions. Even so, the remaining margin of doubt—often a mere 1% to 5%—is sometimes exploited by those seeking to undermine established scientific findings. Ultimately, the strength of the scientific method lies in its ability to recognize complexity, test alternatives, and continually improve our grasp of reality.

Also, when appropriate for the relationship in question, they assess any change in patterns of multiple health or environmental indicators. All of this leads to a “weight-of-evidence” conclusion that the stated link between cause and effect is real.  In this example, climate warming and change are happening and are caused by emissions.

The typical 1% to 5% gap in absolute certainty that a relationship is real is routinely used by a small number of well-paid, industrial and politically sponsored “experts” to oppose strong scientific conclusions, such as tobacco smoking causes cancer, and emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and greenhouse gases cause climate warming and climate change. Then, too, there are those who just invent their own “facts,” independent of truth. Who should we believe? What does the research tell us?

To better understand the controls needed to limit and reverse climate warming, it is helpful to look at how scientific understanding of the interaction between CO₂ and solar heating in the atmosphere has developed. The following summary intends to help guide readers to meaningful answers about why our climate is warming. Indeed, the scientific understanding about climate warming and climate change has been assessed through environmental monitoring and modeling that has been conducted internationally for more than a century by hundreds, even thousands, of objective scientists.

 

When considering this summary, it is important to understand that “weather” refers to the temporary, short-term atmospheric events occurring around us. In contrast, “climate” reflects the longer-term atmospheric patterns that persist over seasons, years, or decades. ^[2] A drought is therefore considered a climatic phenomenon rather than a weather event, while desertification represents a more permanent shift in climate conditions, as our previous article described.

How long has it been known that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions warm our atmosphere?

Much of the scientific research history is laid out in the book Fire Weather by John Vaillant.[3] The first portion of his book describes the personal experiences of many individuals involved in fighting and being impacted by the wildland-urban interface fire that started May 2016 in the climate-dried forest five miles outside of Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.  That fire grew into a greater than 1000^oF firestorm that consumed much of Fort McMurray and its surrounding communities. The fire he describes is somewhat similar in scale and scope to the extreme fires impacting New Mexico, Southern California, and other western states during 2023-2025.

Six Scientific Milestones

1. Horace Bénédict de Saussure (1774)
   Demonstrates solar heat trapping with glass-covered “hot box.”

2. Eunice Newton Foote (1856)
   Shows CO₂ heats faster and retains heat longer than air.

3. John Tyndall (1859)
   Proves certain gases absorb infrared heat radiation.

4. Svante Arrhenius (1896)
   Calculates global warming from increased atmospheric CO₂.

5. John Henry Poynting (1907)
   Introduces the term “greenhouse effect” for atmospheric heat trapping.

6. Charles David Keeling (1958)
   Begins continuous CO₂ measurements revealing seasonal cycle and rise.

Then, Fire Weather’s chapter 19 starts Vaillant’s historical overview of the scientific understanding of how greenhouse gas emissions, particularly CO₂, drive climate warming and climate change. The list below briefly summarizes his extensive overview of that history.  The chronological narrative outlines how we now know that elevated atmospheric CO₂ concentrations interact to produce climate warming that is progressively changing our planet’s atmospheric circulation and other climatic patterns.

• July 16, 1774 [4] – Horace Bénédict de Saussure, a natural philosopher from Geneva, built an insulated wooden box, closed at the top with layers of glass and a thermometer placed on its bottom. He carried the box to a peak on the Italian side of Mont Blanc where he exposed it to sunlight. At that elevation of about 9,000 feet the air was 43°F. After an hour’s exposure to the sun, the temperature in his box had risen to 190°F. From this and his similar findings at other elevations, he concluded that little heat is actually absorbed by the atmosphere from the incoming sun’s rays. Instead, the sun’s heat is absorbed by Earth’s surface and then re-emitted, heating the atmosphere from the bottom up.His findings became known as “the Saussure hot house theory.”
• August 23, 1856 – Earlier in 1856, Eunice Newton Foote filled one sealed gas cylinder with “ordinary air” from the room and a second with “carbonic acid gas” (that is CO₂). Thermometers were inserted into both bottles. Inside the room both bottles were the same temperature. Then she exposed both bottles to sunlight outside. The air in the CO₂-filled bottle heated twice as fast. Returning the bottles inside, the air in the CO₂ filled bottle stayed warmer longer. On that date, a male colleague presented her results to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science with her concluding “glimpse into the future” that, “An atmosphere of that gas [CO₂] would give our earth a higher temperature.”
• 1859 – In the earliest steps that led to increased CO₂ in the atmosphere, “Colonel” Edwin Drake drilled his first oil well in Pennsylvania. Etienne Lenoir built a prototype of a commercially viable internal combustion engine. The Irish physicist John Tyndall presented to a meeting of the Royal Institution his confirmation that others had made over the previous century proving that concentration of “certain gases in our air” had the potential to trap solar energy and alter the Earth’s climate. Essentially, he described the greenhouse effect, yet to be named.
• 1896 – Henry Ford built his first car that year. Also, the Nobel Prize winning Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius published his research on atmospheric warming and cooling due to changes in CO₂ in the atmosphere. His detailed calculations, which were developed using earlier conclusions made by the geologist Arvid Högbom that industrial coal burning was warming the climate, indicated that a 50% increase in atmospheric CO₂ from the 1890s levels would warm the Earth by 6 degrees Fahrenheit.
• 1901 – The meteorologist Nils Ekholm wrote that CO₂ in, “The atmosphere may act like the glass of a green-house … letting through the light rays of the sun relatively easily, and absorbing a great part of dark rays [heat] emitted from the ground … [potentially raising] the mean temperature of the earth’s surface.”
• 1907 – The British physicist John Poynting, responding in an article to an earlier one written by the Boston-based travel writer and citizen scientist Percival Lovell, coined the concept term, “the ‘greenhouse effect’ of the atmosphere.”
• 1908 – In a significant step increasing the rate of atmospheric CO₂ emissions, Henry Ford introduced his popular and widely purchased Model T. In the same year, Svante Arrhenius published the English edition of his “World in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe.” In it he wrote, “The enormous combustion of coal by our industrial establishments suffices to increase the percentages of carbon dioxide in the air to a perceptible degree.”
• 1938 – The Canadian born and British raised steam engineer and amateur meteorologist Guy Callendar published, “The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Climate” in a respected British meteorological journal. It was based on his hand analyses and plots of hundreds of years of temperature records from 200 weather stations around the globe. He concluded, in part, “Few … familiar with the natural heat exchanges of the atmosphere … [that cause] our climates and weather, would be prepared to admit that the activities of man could have any influence upon phenomena at so vast of scale. In the following paper I hope to show that such influence is not only possible, but is actually occurring at the present time.” His analysis of thousands of weather records showed that the mean global temperature had risen by 0.9^oF from 1890 to 1935.
• 1956 – Canadian geophysicist Gilbert Plass used infrared spectroscopy to first challenge and subsequently reconfirm that long-wave, infrared solar heat is retained by water vapor and industrially emitted CO₂ in the atmosphere. In his 1956 publication, Carbon Dioxide and Climate, Plass wrote, “virtually all known glaciers in both hemispheres have been retreating… There can be no doubt that this will become an increasingly serious problem as the level of industrial activity increases.” He emphasized that as the combustion of coal reserves continued to drive up atmospheric CO₂concentrations, average global temperatures have the potential to increase “into uncharted territory.”
• 1958 – Mass spectrometer research starting in 1958, by the Scripps/Caltech geochemist Charles Keeling detected that atmospheric CO₂ concentrations fell during the spring and summer months as plant photosynthesis increased. These CO₂ concentrations then rose during the fall and winter months as plants became dormant. Keeling also found that the increasing annual trends for both atmospheric temperatures and CO₂ concentrations matched (now called the Keeling Curve). Notably, his assessment of CO₂ in ancient air from deep glacier ice indicated that the pre-industrial baseline atmospheric CO₂ was approximately 280 parts per million (ppm), which started increasing in 1750 with coal-burning industrial development. By 1960, CO₂ had increased to 315 ppm. In 2023 it had increased to 427 ppm (0.0427%), which is equivalent to 3,300 billion metric tons of CO₂[5].

The Keeling Curve, Monthly CO2 Atmospheric Concentrations, NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

Vaillant emphasizes that Callendar was the first to document and chart how the Petrocene Age, as it is now sometimes called, was affecting climate. Vaillant also added that, while the term ‘Anthropocene’[6] had not been invented in Callendar’s time, he likely would have used it to characterize the period where humans have the dominating influence in affecting life on our planet. In our next article we continue the brief summary of Vaillant’s book’s description of how the political and popular perceptions of climate change and global warming have themselves changed.

Another Effect of CO₂ Emissions:  Water Acidification

As CO₂ dissolves in water, including our oceans, it makes the water more acidic. Specifically, dissolving CO₂ in water forms carbonic acid and in distilled water the resulting pH is 5.65. Water that is neither acidic nor basic has a pH of 7.0; a pH level of 5.65 means that the water is 22 times more acidic than the acid/base neutral condition. Fortunately, most of the Earth’s water has natural buffering, meaning it tends to resist increases in acid formation due to various minerals it has dissolved, particularly limestone.

Today, the changes in pH coupled with warming of water are causing the bleaching and death of major coral reefs, including the loss of their associated ecological communities of fish and other life forms.  Concurrent changes are also occurring with other fish communities, whale populations, and many other populations of other species throughout our oceans. This CO₂-driven ocean acidification is compounded by ongoing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions, which form sulfuric and nitric acids when fossil fuels-especially sulfurous coal and petroleum-are burned.

End Notes

^[1] Marcus, M. 2025. New Mexico Drought, Aridification & Desertification. https://nmwateradvocates.org/new-mexicos-water-crisis-drought-aridification-desertification/

^[2] The American Meteorological Society defines weather as the state of the atmosphere at a particular time and place, and climate as the statistical summary of weather over extended periods, typically decades. It defines drought as a “period of abnormally dry weather sufficiently long to cause a serious hydrologic imbalance,” placing it within the category of climate anomalies, not weather. Desertification and aridification describe long-term shifts toward drier conditions that persist on human time scales.

^[3] Vaillant, John. 2024.  Fire Weather. Alfred A. Knopf. 414 pp.

^[4] Wesson, Rob. 2022. De Saussure and the Heliothermometer.  https://www.robwesson.com/adventures/de-saussure-and-the-heliothermometer.

^[5] Carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere

^[6] Anthropocene — A proposed geological epoch characterized by the significant global impact of human activities on Earth’s climate, ecosystems, and geologic processes. The term is used to describe the period during which human-driven forces—such as industrialization, fossil-fuel combustion, land-use change, large-scale agriculture, resource extraction, and widespread pollution—have altered atmospheric composition, accelerated species extinction, transformed landscapes, and reshaped the functioning of Earth’s natural systems.

Why is the Upper Rio Grande Green?

Visitors this past summer to the Río Grande del Norte National Monument observed that the river’s water, even upstream from its confluence with the Red River, appeared greenish. Why was that? As suggested in the above title, low river flows and high water temperatures, a result of climate warming as we described in a recent article, are part of the cause stimulating the greenish appearing algal growth in the river.

Fresh Water Algae

Some background first, freshwater algae have two main growth forms. Longer multi-celled strands of filamentous algae are most commonly found along shores and attached to rocks on the bottoms of slower flowing streams and rivers. Also, there are single celled algae, most species of which grow suspended in the water column. These are called phytoplankton.

Some of these single celled algae species also form small clumps of cells in the water column. In more extreme cases, clumps of some species can become obvious to the unaided eye; some can even appear looking like someone had dumped grass clippings into the water, as a public member once reported as having happen for a high mountain Montana reservoir where I was assessing its water quality.

Other forms of single cell algae also grow in clumps attached to rocks and other substrates, particularly along the stream bottoms. These are called periphyton and are a critical food source for larval insects, other invertebrates, and small fish, such as the endangered Rio Grande Silvery Minnow.

The taxonomic groupings of many algae classes are based on color. Green and blue-green algae being the two most common forms found in fresh waters.(Blue-green algae now are more technically and often called cyanobacteria, due to having internal cellular structures more like bacteria than algae, but they still produce energy through photosynthesis, like algae, and can fix elemental nitrogen into biologically useful compounds.) Strands of filamentous algae along shores and attached to the stream bottoms are most commonly green algae.

As the title above suggests, the greenish color of the river results from its low flow conditions and warm water temperatures, in part, with both tending to stimulate growth conditions for plankton that add their color to the water. Slow flowing or standing water is necessary for abundant planktonic algae to grow; higher flows with turbulence mixing tend to inhibit the growth of these algal forms.

Nutrients and Sources

The other likely cause of greenish appearing water and abundant plankton growth is commonly due to excess nutrients in the river. The nutrients of particular concern here are primarily nitrogen and phosphorus, which can occur in excess in the runoff from upstream agricultural fields and potentially from their residual concentrations in treated wastewater discharges and septic tank seepage to the river.

Of particular interest for the upper Rio Grande, drainage waters from volcanic geologies, prominent along the upper Rio Grande watershed, can include relatively high dissolved phosphorus concentrations. Such water chemistries can tend to favor growths of those blue-green algae species that can fix elemental nitrogen to stimulate their growth and population numbers. Without most detailed analysis of the river’s water chemistry, this can help to explain why the upper Rio Grande has appeared greenish, even blue-greenish this past summer.

Toxicity?

Here it is important to emphasize that not all types of blue-green algae produce toxins and those that can, do so mostly when water conditions are such for this to occur, which can include elevated water temperatures and nutrient chemistries. As such, this past summer the Bureau of Land Management was appropriate to issue caution regarding the potential for toxicants accompanying the their reports of blue-green blooms in the upper Rio Grande. Fortunately, it appears that no adverse toxic effects to individuals or pets seem to have occurred. That caution likely should continue into the future summers as recurring cyanobacteria blooms are likely to occur as climate warming continues and perhaps intensifies.

Additional Information

Bureau of Land Management. 2025. BLM field office notifies public about algae blooms in the Rio Grande. https://www.blm.gov/announcement/blm-field-office-notifies-public-about-algae-blooms-rio-grande

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2024. How People and Animals Get Sick From Harmful Algal Blooms. https://www.cdc.gov/harmful-algal-blooms/causes/index.html

NMPBS. 2019, Our Land: New Mexico’s Environment Past, Present, and Future–Toxic Blue-Green Algae Blooms in New Mexico Lakes. https://www.pbs.org/video/toxic-blue-green-algae-blooms-in-new-mexico-lakes-7hwkl2/

Marcus, M. 2025. New Mexico Drought, Aridification & Desertification.  https://nmwateradvocates.org/new-mexicos-water-crisis-drought-aridification-desertification/

Taos News. 2025. BLM investigates algae blooms in Rio Grande. https://www.taosnews.com/news/environment/blm-investigates-algae-blooms-in-rio-grande/article_d28ad8fb-676a-5d45-b875-96bc69e34702.html