Fires, Floods, Snow extremes
Breaking news about Wild Land Fires & Floods and snow storms in the Boulder, Colorado area.
And the 2012 Rubber Dodo Award goes to…Climate-change Denying Senator James Inhofe
Oct 26th
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TUCSON, Ariz.— Senator James Inhofe, one of Congress’ staunchest deniers of climate change and stalwart human obstacle to federal action on this unprecedented global crisis, is the lucky recipient of the Center for Biological Diversity’s 2012 Rubber Dodo Award, which is given annually to those who have done the most to drive endangered species extinct. Previous winners include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (2011), former BP CEO Tony Hayward (2010), massive land speculator Michael Winer (2009), Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (2008) and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne (2007). When it comes to denying the climate crisis — the single-greatest threat now facing life on Earth — James Inhofe has few peers. The Oklahoma Republican is the ringleader of anti-science climate-deniers in Congress and a driving force behind the tragic lack of U.S. action to tackle this complex problem. 2012 saw the publication, to resoundingly little critical acclaim, of Sen. Inhofe’s book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, by WND Press, an entity also known for its “birther” campaign against President Barack Obama.
“As climate change ravages the world, Senator Inhofe insists that we deny the reality unfolding in front of us and choose instead to blunder headlong into chaos,” said Kierán Suckling, the Center’s executive director. “Senator Inhofe gets the 2012 Rubber Dodo Award for being at the vanguard of the retrograde climate-denier movement.” This year is on track to become the warmest on record; some 40,000 temperature records have been broken in the United States in 2012 alone, while Arctic sea ice has melted to a record low. The year has also seen record droughts, crop failures, massive wildfires, floods and other unmistakable signals that manmade global warming is tightening its grip, threatening people and wildlife around the globe. “Senator Inhofe’s pet theory that climate change is an elaborate hoax would be hilarious, if only he weren’t an elected representative of the American people,” Suckling said. “If he were, say, a performance artist, it’d be really funny. But sadly he has the power to affect U.S. climate policy. The United States has a chance — and a duty — to take significant steps to slow the climate crisis, and a brief window of time before it’s too late for us to do so. Deniers like Inhofe, in positions of leadership, are dooming future generations of people to a far more difficult world.”
More than 15,000 people cast their votes in this year’s Rubber Dodo contest. Other official nominees were Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, who put a rider on a must-pass bill that stripped Endangered Species Act protection from wolves, and Shell Oil, a company bound and determined to pursue dangerous oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean. Background on the Dodo Its trusting nature led to its rapid extinction. By 1681 the dodo was extinct, having been hunted and outcompeted by humans, dogs, cats, rats, macaques and pigs. Humans logged its forest cover while pigs uprooted and ate much of the understory vegetation. The origin of the name dodo is unclear. It likely came from the Dutch word dodoor, meaning “sluggard,” the Portuguese word doudo, meaning “fool” or “crazy,” or the Dutch word dodaars meaning “plump-arse” (that nation’s name for the little grebe). The dodo’s reputation as a foolish, ungainly bird derives in part from its friendly naiveté and the very plump captives that were taken on tour across Europe. The animal’s reputation was cemented with the 1865 publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Based on skeleton reconstructions and the discovery of early drawings, scientists now believe that the dodo was a much sleeker animal than commonly portrayed. The rotund European exhibitions were accidentally produced by overfeeding captive birds. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 450,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. |
Here comes the snow City of Boulder warning
Oct 24th
City prepares for snowfall and reminds people to remove snow from sidewalks
Current weather forecasts indicate that an incoming storm may produce accumulated snow in Boulder beginning the night of Wednesday, Oct. 24, and continuing through Thursday, Oct. 25. The City of Boulder is preparing snow response crews in advance. Community members are asked to be mindful of the conditions, to prepare their vehicles as appropriate and to plan for extended commute times.
OK, it’s not that deep yet, but we likey. 🙂
Snow Removal on City Streets
The city’s Public Works Department has snow crews on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond to changing weather conditions. During snowstorms, 16 plow trucks are active on Boulder’s streets. Six of the trucks distribute a liquid deicer, four spreader trucks distribute traction materials, and six trucks can distribute either material. Fifteen of the plow trucks drive predetermined routes while one “floater” truck responds to problem areas.
During the snowstorm, the city may spot-treat bridges and overpasses as needed to help reduce the buildup of ice and snow. Depending on the weather conditions, a liquid deicer may also be applied to streets and multi-use paths to continue melting the snowpack throughout the snowstorm. Spreader trucks will dispense a crystallized deicer for traction, where appropriate.
consistent with other Front Range communities, the city does not plow all residential streets since Boulder’s sunny climate typically melts most snow within a day or two and because residential plowing would increase costs by an estimated 200 percent. Plowing residential streets would also block driveways and cars parked on the streets. However, problem areas like particularly icy slopes, blocked storm drains or impassable sidewalks can be reported to the city for response. To report roadway or path problems, call the Street and Bikeway Maintenance Hotline at 303-413-7177.
Sidewalk Snow Removal
The Boulder Police Department is responsible for enforcing the city’s sidewalk snow removal ordinance. Property owners, tenants and landlords must clear their sidewalks within 24 hours after snow stops falling. Official snowfall reports are available on the National Weather Service website. Failure to remove snow from sidewalks before the 24-hour deadline may result in a summons and/or an abatement process. Abatement includes the use of a private snow removal contractor to clear the sidewalk. The property owner will be charged a $50 administrative fee, along with the contractor’s fee for removing the snow. To report a sidewalk snow violation, call Code Enforcement at 303-441-3333. Snow should be shoveled onto landscaping, not into the streets. Pushing snow into the streets creates hazards for bike commuters and pedestrians, and gutters clogged with snow may cause ice to form on the sidewalks.
The ICEBUSTERS program pairs residents who are physically unable to clear snow from their sidewalks with someone who can do the work for them. Seasonal and substitute volunteers are needed for this community program. To volunteer or learn more, please call 303-443-1933.
For more information about the city’s snow removal or for winter driving tips, visit www.bouldercolorado.gov/publicworksand click on “Winter Tips” on the left menu.
For code enforcement information, call 303-441-3333 or visit the Boulder Police Department’s website at www.boulder-police.com.
CU-Boulder wins $1.4 million NSF award for climate change, water sustainability study
Oct 10th
The University of Colorado at Boulder has been awarded $1.4 million for a new study on how changes in land use, forest management and climate may affect trans-basin water diversions in Colorado and other semi-arid regions in the western United States.
The grant, part of the National Science Foundation-U.S. Department of Agriculture Water Sustainability Climate Program, was awarded to Assistant Professor Noah Molotch of the geography department. Molotch and his team will be identifying thresholds, or “tipping points,” of change in land use, forest management and climate that may compromise the sustainability of the policies and procedures that dictate the timing and quality of water diverted from Colorado’s West Slope to the Front Range.
Molotch said that in Colorado and semi-arid regions around the world, trans-basin water diversions that redirect water from areas of surplus to areas of demand are based on policy agreements and infrastructure operations made under climatic and land use conditions that may differ considerably from conditions in the near future. Measurements over the past 50 years, for example, suggest a broad-scale reduction in snowpack water storage in the western U.S. because of regional warming temperatures, a trend due in part to a shift from snowfall to rainfall, he said.
The Colorado Big Thompson Project depends upon a dwindling supply of Western Slope snowpack.
In addition, land-cover changes associated with population growth, fire suppression and mountain pine beetle outbreaks have altered the hydrology of mid-mountain ecosystems in the West, said Molotch, who also is a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. CU is teaming up with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder on the NSF-funded project.
The NSF award comes on the heels of a May 2012 agreement between water managers in Summit and Grand counties on Colorado’s West Slope and in the Denver area on how best to share water from the Colorado River basin. “This is a great example of communities that historically battled for water resources coming to the table in a good faith effort to find solutions to water allocation issues,” said Molotch. “These groups have no pretenses about the potential impacts of climate change and realize we can’t afford to bury our heads in the sand on this issue.”
Collaborators on the project include Patrick Bourgeron and Mark Williams, fellows at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, and David Gochis, Kathleen Miller and David Yates of NCAR.
A study led by Molotch published Sept. 10 in Nature Geoscience tied forest “greenness” in the western United States to fluctuating year-to-year snowpack. The study indicated mid-elevation mountain ecosystems — where people increasing are building second homes and participating in a myriad of outdoor recreational activities — are most sensitive to rising temperatures and changes in precipitation and snowmelt.
“We found that mid-elevation forests show a dramatic sensitivity to snow that fell the previous winter in terms of accumulation and subsequent melt,” said Molotch, also a fellow at INSTAAR. “If snowpack declines, forests become more stressed, which can lead to ecological changes that include alterations in the distribution and abundance of plant and animal species as well as vulnerability to perturbations like fire and beetle kill.”
Colorado snowpack was at an all time low this past winter
As part of the new award, Molotch and his team will evaluate regional climate models in the mountain West developed at NCAR in an attempt to make temperature, precipitation and snowpack projections “more robust,” Molotch said. While the efficiency of water in trans-basin diversion projects in the western U.S. has in the past been enhanced by the natural storage of moisture in mountain snowpack that allowed for a slow, steady delivery of water into the system, warming temperatures are already causing this beneficial “drip effect” to be greatly reduced, he said.
If the winter temperatures are hovering around 15 degrees Fahrenheit and the climate warms by a few degrees, for example, there will be negligible impact on snowpack, Molotch said. But if temperatures hover near freezing, slight temperature increases can trigger earlier snowmelt, and precipitation that used to be in the form of snow turns to rain, significantly affecting trans-basin water diversion activities.
“One of the most interesting aspects of this project to me is the changes we are seeing in the ‘wildland-urban interface,’ particularly in Colorado,” he said. “There is some irony that Front Range people who have built second homes in Summit County, for example, may actually start to have an effect on the water they have relied on to be piped through the Continental Divide to the Denver area.”
Burned forests can cause early runoff
In addition to providing land and water resource decision makers with projections on how future water supply and demand will change in the future, the NSF-funded project will provide a unique educational experience for graduate students, Molotch said.
“We have climate change, snowpack, changes in land use, all feeding into the pipeline that is bringing water to Colorado’s Front Range,” he said. “As the two main stressors, climate change and land use increase, there is the possibility of pushing the systems into an unsustainable state.”
