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
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.
“Climate Refugees” shows human face of climate change
“Climate Refugees” investigates the migration people are forced to make in the wake of floods, mudslides, droughts, sea level rise and other climate related disasters.
Governor Bill Ritter and the film’s director, Michael Nash, introduced the film to a full audience that included Alec Baldwin on Sunday afternoon at the Boulder International Film Festival.
“This film says that we need to stop the debate about climate change and puts a human element to the issue,” Ritter said. “The face of climate change is the climate refugee.” Read more
What do you call Glacier National Park if the glaciers melt by 2020?
Not too long ago, we posted about how climate change is specifically affecting the West, according to “How The West Was Warmed.” Now the Colorado Independent reports on one yardstick: According to a study, Glacier National Park may be glacierless in a decade.
the U.S. Geological Society is reporting that Montana’s Glacier National Park will be glacier-less in a decade. Scientists had previously estimated that the park’s signature glacier-grade ice fields would last until 2030.
“There are only about 26 glaciers left now. There were 150 in the late 1800s,” he said.
So. Any ideas for a new name for the park? I’d guess they’d want something by 2017 or 2018 — don’t know how long it takes to order signage and new brochures.
A little more information:
“To be clear, the predicted absence of glaciers in the park after 2020 doesn’t mean everything will be dry. There will still be ice and ‘permanent’ snowfields. However, the size will be below the threshold of a glacier. Mountain glaciers are defined by a minimum size and physical properties, especially movement and replenishment.”
Bam. WELCOME TO “PERMANENT” SNOWFIELD NATIONAL PARK. “It’s ‘majestic!’” Who’s with me?
Climate change is old news to Boulder scientists (they called that four decades ago)
In the early 70s — when the media rarely addressed the far-out notion of climate change (or if they did, they put quotes around phrases like “the greenhouse effect”) — scientists at Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research were beginning to realize that people (insignificant though they generally seemed) might be able to impact the global climate.
NCAR's Mesa Lab in south Boulder.
A 1972 article in the Daily Camera “NCAR, Others Will Study Man’s Effects on Shaky Equilibrium of Earth Climate” appears to be one of the first in the Boulder newspaper to tackle the idea that humans might be able to drive the world to some sort of climatic tipping point.
NCAR scientist William Kellogg said this in the article:
There are obviously stabilizing factors that are strong enough to keep our global climate within reasonably narrow bounds, permitting ice ages to come and go, but damping out any large fluctuations.
But, now, man has entered the scene, and we must ask whether he can reach any of the lever points on this gigantic environmental mechanism and influence it. If there are any lever points that he can reach, history has shown that he will probably be tempted to tamper with them.
The article didn’t talk much about greenhouse gases, other than to mention a growing “carbon dioxide blanket” that had the potential to warm the Earth. Read more
Climate change: what’s your neighborhood doing?
So, remember Copenhagen: The Event? If you do, swell, but for a lot of folks, it’s just fading quickly in the rearview.
I can see my house from here. | flickr user johnlegear
The Sierra Club has a takeway that applies to us here at BGB, which is that climate change calls for community change (because climate change news is all local):
If we learned anything in Copenhagen, it’s that we can’t wait for governments to hammer out a solution to global warming. Bottom-up, community-based approaches seem just as likely to save the day. Which is why hundreds of cities and towns are signing on to the Cool Community campaign launched by David Gershon, founder and CEO of the Empowerment Institute [BGB note: CAUTION: insanely ugly Web site ahead]. “Approximately 50 percent of America’s carbon footprint is residential,” he explains. Reducing the carbon output of regular Americans could make a big difference, or at least buy us some extra time.
Gershon’s laying out a big part of his plan/book at the Huffington Post right now, and you can take part in a free two-hour training on March 11 by registering on the Cool Community Tele-Training site. The way it’s described is a little scary, but you can read an overview on the site and there’s also the always-clickable carbon footprint calculator.
Of course it’s entirely possible that you don’t need such training — or that you’ve got better training here in Boulder. We’d love to know about how you’re drastically reducing your own footprint (or how you’ve done it over the last five years). Tell us in the comments!
How the West was warmed: local authors talk climate change in the Rockies
This book of essays, many by Colorado authors, explores how climate change is affecting the Rockies.
Driven by the desire to localize the issue of climate change, a former editor of High Country News compiled a book of essays by locals illustrating what a warmer climate means for Colorado.
On Monday evening at the Boulder Bookstore on Pearl Street, nine of the contributors of the book read parts of their essays from, “How the West Was Warmed: Responding to Climate Change in the Rockies,” published in November and edited by Beth Conover.
“I had an opportunity to convene views and speak to the locality and diversity of climate change in Colorado,” said Conover, who also worked as an environmental policy advisor from 2004 to 2007 for Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and helped develop the largest urban sustainability program, Greenprint Denver.
Mayor Hickenlooper provides the foreword to a book filled with essays about trash scavenging, recycling, pine beetles, water scarcity, eco-tourism, hitchhiking, renewable energy and Iraq veterans working to train fellow veterans in green jobs.
A former environment and science reporter at The Boulder Daily Camera, Todd Neff, wrote the essay “Getting the Fever,” which examines the driving effect fear can have on making changes to lessen impacts on the environment. Read more
A message for skiers and boarders: global warming = less powder
Maybe the message that global warming will cause large-scale displacement of people in Bangladesh doesn’t really resonate with you.
Perhaps the fact that coral atolls in the Pacific — whole countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu — are predicted to be completely consumed by sea level rise doesn’t really concern you.
But maybe this little fact about global warming will hit home with you: climate change = less power, a shorter ski season and fewer resorts.
That’ the hope of a Boulder-based group called Protect Our Winters, or POW, that’s hoping to motivate the winter sports community to do something about global warming.
Check out the video above to get a feel for their message, visit the group’s Web site, or read more about Protect Our Winter’s efforts at DailyCamera.com.
Confused by climate change? CU prof offers free course
With the United Nations climate change conference under way this month in Copenhagen, many journalists face the challenge of covering an extremely complex issue. To help journalists — and anyone else who is curious — understand climate change, Tom Yulsman, an associate professor at the University of Colorado’s School of Journalism & Mass Communication, has created a free, four-hour, online course titled “Covering Climate Change.”
CU journalism professor Tom Yulsman has created a free online course called covering climate change.
In today’s Daily Camera, James Collector asked Yulsman five questions about the science of climate change and how journalists are covering it:
1. What exactly is the climate change debate?
There is no one debate. Reporters fall into this trap, and readers fall into this trap of accepting that there is just one debate. There’s science, and there’s policy. Within science, there are dozens of debates about the various risks that we can expect over the future. There’s not terribly much debate on the big question whether humans are causing climate change. There’s pretty robust agreement on that. Within policy, there are all sorts of debates. There are even debates about how should science inform policy-making decisions.
Read the rest of the interview at DailyCamera.com, or read Yulsman’s blog at CEJournal.net.
CU students screen short flicks on climate change
From left, Carson McDonough, Patrick McGlynn and Matthew McAllister produced films as part of their "climate change and video production" class at the University of Colorado | DailyCamera.com
Students from the University of Colorado who participated in a class on film and climate change will screen their own global warming flicks tonight on campus.
Matthew McAllister flips off the lights when he leaves his dorm room. He refills his water bottle instead of buying plastic ones, and he rations himself one paper towel when he dries his hands.
But a single flight to Washington, D.C., that he took this semester for a political science course canceled out his efforts, the University of Colorado student says.
He calculates that he would need to recycle 708 aluminum cans to offset his portion of the carbon dioxide emitted by the plane.
“While I would like to think these small, conscious efforts make a difference, the truth is I know they don’t,” McAllister says.
For a course on film and climate change, McAllister produced a short video about the challenges he has with his carbon footprint, as well as environmental equality. (His portion of CO2 for the plane trip was about the same amount that an average person in Tanzania uses all year).
Read the full story at DailyCamera.com.
Rocky Mountain National Park is one of 25 most at risk from climate change
Lion Lake No. 1 in Rocky Mountain National Park’s Wild Basin, with Mount Alice and Chiefs Head Peak standing tall in the distance. Photo by Broomfield Enterprise.
In the future, there may be fewer snow-capped peaks to gaze at in Rocky Mountain National Park.
The meadows on the west side of the park may change as the climate warms and dries, making them less hospitable to moose and pine martens, and aspens across the park may disappear along with the plants that call the tundra home.
These are the dire predictions of a report released yesterday by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which called climate change “the greatest threat ever” to national parks.
The report, called National Parks in Peril, listed the 25 parks most at risk of climate change and included two in Colorado: RMNP and Mesa Verde.
From the report’s Colorado fact sheet:
Mesa Verde is vulnerable to a loss of water, more downpours and floods, a loss of plant communities, a loss of wildlife, and a loss of cultural resources. Rocky Mountain is vulnerable to a loss of ice and snow, a loss of water, more downpours and floods, a loss of plant communities, a loss of wildlife, more crowding, a loss of fishing, and more air pollution. Other parks in Colorado, including Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, and Dinosaur National Monument, face similar vulnerabilities. Read more
