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Boulder County sustainable ag group to get lit review
Sep 15th
Sustainable Agriculture Literature Review findings to be presented Sept. 22
Boulder County, Colo. – The findings of a Sustainable Agriculture Literature Review will be presented to Boulder County’s Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee and Food and Agriculture Policy Council at a public meeting on Sept. 22.
Who: Hunter Lovins and Nick Sterling of Natural Capitalism Solutions will present
What: The presentation will precede the regularly scheduled POSAC meeting
When: Thursday, Sept. 22, 5:30 p.m.
Where: Commissioners’ Hearing Room, Boulder County Courthouse, third floor, 1325 Pearl St., Boulder
The Sustainable Agriculture Literature Review is available at www.BoulderCountyOpenSpace.org/croplandpolicy.
Longmont-based Natural Capitalism Solutions’ report examines sustainable agriculture practices related to energy, water use, climate, soil health, pest management, biodiversity, labor, human health and the local economy. It also studies primarily peer-reviewed research, and identifies data gaps and areas where further research is needed.
The Sustainable Agriculture Literature Review will support and inform the work of the Cropland Policy Advisory Group and Parks and Open Space staff in their work to create a Cropland Policy for Boulder County open space lands.
Cropland Policy
The effort to develop a management policy for county-owned croplands began in 2010 with public outreach, including farm tours, an open house, a Sustainable Agriculture Forum and a Farm and Ranch Panel Discussion.
In 2011, the Board of County Commissioners convened the Cropland Policy Advisory Group to advise Boulder County staff in developing the policy. The members of the CPAG are developing recommendations for the Cropland Policy through discussion and proposed policy statements.
The CPAG policy recommendations will be finalized in early October, and will go through a public hearing process in October and November with another open house, hearings before the Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee and Food and Agriculture Policy Council in November and December. The Board of County Commissioners will make the final policy decisions.
Boulder gets $$$ boost for green machines
Sep 15th
City of Boulder part of coalition receiving $500,000 grant from U.S. Department of Energy to advance electric vehicles and charging locations
The City of Boulder is part of the Colorado Clean Cities Coalition that was awarded $500,000 in grant funds under the Clean Cities Community Readiness and Planning for Plug-in Electric Vehicles and Charging Infrastructure Funding Opportunity. The grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Sept. 8, 2011.
The grant funds will be shared by multiple public and private agencies to help fund Project FEVER (Funding Electric Vehicle Expansion in the Rockies), a year-long endeavor that will overcome barriers that are impeding penetration of electric vehicles in the marketplace. FEVER is a statewide plan that will target five core areas to prepare Colorado for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure: regulatory; permitting; planning; policy; and marketing, education and outreach.
In Boulder, the grant will provide funds to:
Help establish guidelines to determine the best locations for electric vehicle (EV) charging stations;
Standardize permitting operations; and,
Create a plan for linking Boulder to other communities in a statewide EV charging network.
“By developing the next generation of automotive engineers and preparing communities for plug-in electric vehicles, these projects will help reduce our nation’s dependence on oil imports, create jobs, and help America capture the growing global market for advance vehicles,” said U.S. DOE Secretary Steven Chu.
Sixty partners have come together to support this project, and include the City of Boulder, the Colorado Governor’s Energy Office, the Colorado Department of Transportation, Xcel Energy, the Regional Air Quality Council, the City and County of Denver and several other private and public partners.
Sponsored by DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Program and administered by the American Lung Association in Colorado, the Denver Metro Clean Cities Coalition is a government-industry partnership designed to reduce petroleum consumption in the transportation sector.
For more information, contact Joe Castro, City of Boulder Facilities and Fleet manager, at castroj@bouldercolorado.gov or 303-441-3163.
Boulder CU: Arctic sea ice all-time low
Sep 15th
ARCTIC SEA ICE REACHES MINIMUM 2011 EXTENT,
THE SECOND LOWEST IN THE SATELLITE RECORD
THE SECOND LOWEST IN THE SATELLITE RECORD
The blanket of sea ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean appears to have reached its lowest extent for 2011, the second lowest recorded since satellites began measuring it in 1979,
The Arctic sea ice extent fell to 1.67 million square miles, or 4.33 million square kilometers on Sept. 9, 2011.
While this year’s September minimum extent was greater than the all-time low in 2007, it remains significantly below the long-term average and well outside the range of natural climate variability, according to scientists involved in the analysis. Most scientists believe the shrinking Arctic sea ice is tied to warming temperatures caused by an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases pumped into Earth’s atmosphere.
“Every summer that we see a very low ice extent in September sets us up for a similar situation the following year,” said NSIDC Director Mark Serreze, also a professor in CU-Boulder’s geography department. “The Arctic sea ice cover is so thin now compared to 30 years ago that it just can’t take a hit anymore. This overall pattern of thinning ice in the Arctic in recent decades is really starting to catch up with us.”
Serreze said that in 2007, the year of record low Arctic sea ice, there was a “nearly perfect” set-up of specific weather conditions. Winds pushed in more warm air over the Arctic than usual, helping to melt sea ice, and winds also pushed the floating ice chunks together into a smaller area. “It is interesting that this year, the second lowest sea ice extent ever recorded, that we didn’t see that kind of weather pattern at all,” he said.
The last five years have been the five lowest Arctic sea ice extents recorded since satellite measurements began in 1979, said CU-Boulder’s Walt Meier, an NSIDC scientist. “The primary driver of these low sea ice conditions is rising temperatures in the Arctic, and we definitely are heading in the direction of ice-free summers,” he said. “Our best estimates now indicate that may occur by about 2030 or 2040.”
There still is a chance the sea ice extent could fall slightly due to changing winds or late season melt, said Meier. During the first week of October, CU-Boulder’s NSIDC will issue a full analysis of the 2011 results and a comparison to previous years.
NSIDC is part of CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences — a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration headquartered on the CU campus — and is funded primarily by NASA.
NSIDC’s sea ice data come from the Special Sensor Microwave Imager/Sounder sensor on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program F17 satellite using methods developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
