Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- And Now, Back to Your Local News…Since the weather’s getting better, I’m sure we’re all totally jonesing to get onto the trails, but in general, they’re a mess. It’s a bummer to see nice singletracks get trashed and widened, so like all of you, I’m grinding my teeth in annoyance while I try to be patient. The good news is that you [...] […]
- Downieville, Take ThreeOkay, well, things went pretty haywire in race promotion after the registration debacle. The organizer received so many hateful emails and comments about the mishap that it made him wonder if he should even bother putting the race on. I can’t blame him, really. In his shoes I might do the same thing. It sounds [...] […]
- And Now, Back to Your Local News…
- Edgy Veggie
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Boulder Tech kids are turning a gas guzzler into an electric vehicle
Josh Reid, left, Andrew Gibson and Melvin Gamill, all of the collision repair class at Boulder Valley s Technical Education Center, do body work on the Nissan pickup truck that they are working to turn into an electric vehicle. ( CLIFF GRASSMICK )
Students at Boulder Tech — a vocational school in Boulder Valley — are turning the empty hull of a Nissan pickup truck into an all electric vehicle.
For Dave Pence — an instructor at Boulder Valley’s Career and Technical Education Center — green inspiration came in the form of a 1998 Nissan Frontier pickup truck.
He found the truck, which had no motor but a decent body, on Craigslist for $150 and saw it as an opportunity for his students to do something the school has never done before — turn an old gas guzzler into an all-electric vehicle.
“When I saw the truck, I thought about Boulder Tech, and I thought we could infuse a little imagination into the program,” Pence said.
Read more about it at DailyCamera.com.
What’s a Kachingle?
Hi!
You may have noticed (or not) two slight changes to our site lately.
To the left, you’re seeing a tip jar. To your right, you’re seeing the word Kachingle. I’ll get to both of those in a moment. Read more
Green Drinks Boulder: February at Bacaro
Last night was one of my favorite Green Drinks Boulder events yet. Even though it was pretty chilly out, it was the easiest for me to get to, as it was just across the street from the ol’ office.
The crew at Green Drinks Boulder in Feb. 2010 at Bacaro
Opponents of Gross Reservoir expansion want Denver to conserve more water
The Gross Reservoir dam | Denver Water
Opposition to Denver’s plan to nearly triple Gross Reservoir in southwest Boulder County seems to be heating up.
To slake the thirst of its growing number of customers, Denver Water wants to raise Gross Reservoir’s dam by 125 feet, which would add 72,000 acre-feet of capacity to the reservoir’s existing 41,000 acre-feet of storage.
But for the bigger reservoir to be useful, it has to be filled with water. And that water would come from the already depleted (and, some would argue, over-appropriated) Colorado River watershed. Read more
Green career panel at CU in two hours
Sorry we didn’t get this posted earlier, folks, but here’s some notice in case you’ve got the evening free –
CU’s Career Services will host a green career panel at 5 p.m. Tuesday in Eaton Humanities, Room 1B50, to help students interested in joining the industry find their edge and break into the growing market. Panelists include speakers from the Colorado Department of Transportation, the Boulder Green Building Guild and the Governor's Energy Office.
Colorado's renewable energy and energy efficiency industries created more than 91,000 in-state jobs in 2007 and generated $10.2 billion in annual revenue with the potential for the industries to grow sixfold by 2030, according to the American Solar Energy Society.
Read more at the Colorado Daily.
As for us, we’ll be at Bacaro for Green Drinks Boulder tonight. See you there!
CU prof not impressed with media coverage of climate change
Maxwell Boykoff, courtesy of CIRES.
Turns out, the way that the mass media report on climate change has exaggerated the debate between scientists who argue that global warming is a real and urgent problem and the skeptics.
That’s according to a scientist at the University of Colorado, Maxwell Boykoff, whose research over the last couple of years has ranged from the perils of celebrity involvement in climate change to the way newspapers have reported on environmental issues.
In the course of his research, Boykoff has followed climate change coverage in 50 newspapers across 20 countries and six continents. His latest research shows that the media often give too much ink to climate change deniers, amplifying conflict and drama (and other things that tend to sell papers).
He says that the media are also guilty of lumping all skeptics together, no matter whether they’re fellow scientists (with, likely, a more credible concern) or politicians and others who have never studied the climate.
“This has been detrimental both in terms of dismissing legitimate critiques of climate science or policy, as well as amplifying extreme and tenuous claims,” he said.
Read more about Boykoff’s research at DailyCamera.com.
NREL to study the environmental impacts of large solar farms
National Renewable Energy Laboratory senior biologist Brenda Beatty is supervising revegetation and wildlife studies at the new solar array field at NREL's National Wind Technology Center. (Courtesy of NREL)
As renewable energy technology gains momentum as a viable replacement for burning fossil fuels (thanks largely to environmentalists concerned about the toxins and the carbon dioxide spewed by coal plants), opposition is also starting to grow — from other environmentalists.
In order to replace a utility-scale coal plant, renewable energy projects may also have to be, well, utility scale. And for solar plants, that may mean covering thousands of acres of land with mirrors or PV panels. This has some environmentalists concerned about how those panels will affect local ecosytems.
Now, biologists from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have begun a three-year study to look at how the land under solar panel arrays — which is typically graded, stripping the earth of its native vegetation — can be restored. Read more
Army considering blowing up chemical weapons in Pueblo
Another reason to set deadlines you can meet — if you don’t, apparently you put yourself at risk of having to explode vicious chemical weapons in Pueblo, Colorado.
They’re sitting there in the Pueblo Chemical Depot, “creating a safer tomorrow:” Read more
Is the frozen dead guy in Nederland contributing to global warming?
Bo Shaffer pours dry ice on the frozen body of "Grandpa" Bredo Morstoel in Nederland in 2006. Grandpa Bredo died in 1989, in Norway.
In the last several years, the city and county of Boulder have been working to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But it’s possible they’ve forgotten one significant source of carbon: the frozen dead guy who’s kept in a Tuff Shed in Nederland. Read more
Save gas and money by taking care of your car
I just asked our Facebook fans if they were missing bike-all-the-time-weather as much as I was. It’s pretty sleepy over there today (where are you guys?)!
Still, this story on taking care of your car so it’ll take care of your pocketbook seemed timely, since we’re stuck with four wheels for now:
A properly tuned car can improve its gas mileage by an average of 4 percent. Some fixes, like replacing a faulty oxygen sensor, can earn you as much as a 40 percent improvement in miles per gallon, according to the DOE’s Web site fueleconomy.gov.
Maybe the easiest way to ensure your car is getting the most miles out of the fuel put into it is to keep your tires inflated on the high side of manufacturer recommendations.
Also nice:
“Nothing’s as effective as driving less,” Hathaway said
