DO YOU EVER THINK ABOUT where your recycling goes after you place it in the bin? Do you ever contemplate the ever-increasing mounds of trash in the landfills and wonder how it is affecting climate change? Well, John Armstrong, of Salida, thinks about these things all the time. He has been re-imagining a state-of-the-art recycling …
ARE YOU BIG FOOT THRASHING through the wilds or are you Tiny Tim tiptoeing through the tulips? Any number of carbon footprint scoring mechanisms can be found on the internet. With a simple search you will be inundated — government agencies, conservation groups and energy/utility companies offer calculators. Some are simple and some are complex. …
A NUMBER OF “wildfire risk reduction” projects are proposed or already underway across tens of millions of acres of national forests in the western U.S., including Pike and San Isabel and 3.5 million acres of the Front Range in Colorado.1 The 2021 Infrastructure bill allocated over $3 billion — with Colorado’s U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, …
By Sue Snively I stare in wonder at the local post office parking lot as I leash my little papillon dog to pick up my mail. The parking lot is full of SUVs and pickups, most with a dog inside waiting patiently for his “significant other” to emerge from those hallowed halls and drive him home …
By George Sibley
The onset of the wildfire season puts our forests back on the front page, but the wildfires are really just a visible symptom of larger troubles among the trees – troubles that track those “natural disasters” right back to us humans and some naive cultural choices.
By Mike Rosso
I just got off the phone with an old friend on the east coast. I told him about how dry it’s been here and he informed me about how much rain they’ve been getting. Apparently all of our June moisture found its way to New Jersey, leaving us high and dry – literally.
By Mike Rosso
Over the years, many members of my family have, little by little, settled in Sonoma County, California. That includes my parents, siblings, niece and a few cousins.
Lynn E. Wickersham, Editor
Colorado Bird Atlas Partnership
Reviewed by Forrest Whitman
The second edition of the Colorado Breeding Bird Atlas is out and it is stunning. This is the bible for birders, but also a lovely book in and of itself. The illustrations by Radeaux are almost worth the price of the book. The effort by hundreds of volunteers to compile the atlas is impressive also. Lynn Wickersham and Catherine P. Ortega of Fort Lewis College deserve kudos as do Jason Beason and Tony Leukering of the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory for managing this massive project. Each geographical block has been studied by an army of dedicated birders. The climate and water maps are well worth a ponder too.
By George Sibley
Over here on the west slope of Central Colorado, we continue to be concerned about the evidence indicating the probability of a changing climate, despite official assurances from above that there is no such thing, or if there is, it is nothing to be concerned about.
By Jim Costello
Beautiful Venus, striking and bright in the western evening sky, brought wonder and awe to human imaginations before the concept of a planet existed. Today, knowing what we do about Venus, those thoughts are stretched even further with critically important questions for Earth and life itself.
When Venus is close to Earth, passing on an inside lane around the sun, it is by far the brightest star-like object in the sky. Then she follows the setting sun, first getting farther from the sun as days pass, and then getting closer to the sun. Finally, Venus disappears for a few days only to reappear and lead the sun in the eastern morning sky.
By Tyler Grimes
With any article on climate change, it’s tempting to try to grab the reader’s attention with horrifying statistics or stories of natural disasters or the severity of drought, but this is an issue where facts speak loudest:
• The global temperature has increased by 1.4 degrees Celsius over the last century. (EPA)
• 2000 to 2010 was the warmest decade on record. (EPA)
• August was the 342nd consecutive month with above average global temperatures. (climate.gov)
John Mattingly
In 2008, George Mason University conducted a thorough, fine-grained survey of U.S. citizens to learn how much people actually knew about climate change. One of the more curious findings was that, when asked whom they believed to be the most reliable source of information about climate change, 66% of those responding gave the name of a television weather person. Al Gore barely got more votes than those who said there was no one they trusted on the topic.
by Joe Stone
Colorado’s temperatures will rise over 4°F by the year 2050. Mountain snowpack will melt earlier, and stream flows in the Colorado River Basin will diminish by five to 20 percent. These numbers, highlighted in October, 2008 at the Governor’s Conference on Managing Drought and Climate Risk, are documented in a report titled Climate Change in Colorado. Published by Western Water Assessment,* the report identifies several issues that will challenge Colorado’s ability to meet water demands as temperatures increase.