Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- Ashland Super DSuper D is the raddest thing to hit mountain bike racing since the Tioga disc wheel. A race that’s mostly downhill is, let’s face it, the frosted donut of bike racing. It’s a treat that should be savored. The anticipation of racing one is like standing at the counter, trying to zero in on which [...] […]
- Happy Birthday, bicycleEveryone’s bike has a birthday, but it may be a funny quirk of being a Maverick owner that I sort of celebrate mine. That may be simply because I happen to KNOW my bike’s birthday. Every Maverick comes with its own name, rather than a serial number, and the date it was built. Mine, called Basilisk, [...] […]
- Ashland Super D
- Edgy Veggie
Longmont solar company awarded $400 million federal loan guarantee
An employee works on equipment at Abound Solar's Longmont production facility. Courtesy photo | Abound Solar
President Barack Obama has recently announced a federal loan guarantee to Abound Solar, a Loveland-based company that has a manufacturing facility in Longmont.
The company, which employs 360 people in Colorado and manufactures thin film solar panels, will nearly double its employee base in the state, Abound Solar spokesman Mark Chen said.
He said it’s not yet clear exactly how the new jobs will break down between Abound Solar’s Longmont production facility, its headquarters in Loveland and its research lab in Fort Collins.
But he said Longmont would most likely be the biggest beneficiary since the bulk of production is done in the city. The company will be able to add two production lines to the one it already has in Longmont as a result of the loan guarantee, Chen said.
The White House said the project marks the first time this new manufacturing technology for Cadmium-Telluride panels will be deployed commercially anywhere in the world.
It will produce photovoltaic panels using an innovative process in which thin films of Cadmium-Telluride are deposited onto the glass panels, according to the White House. The technology reduces overall product costs.
Abound Solar is a member of PV Cycle, an organization dedicated to creating “truly sustainable energy solutions that take into consideration the environmental impacts of all stages of the product life cycle, from raw material sourcing through end-of-life collection and recycling.”
Learn more about the Abound Solar expansion in Longmont and the federal loan guarantee at the Camera.
-Hannah Gentry
Oil spills in Colorado, too (thousands of times)
A drilling rig tower in Garfield County, which ranked second in the number of spills reported to the state | Denver Post
While it pales in comparison to the environmental devastation caused by the BP oil spill in the Gulf, oil is spilling in Colorado, too.
The Colorado spill is really spills — thousands of them that have spilled millions of gallons over the last 2.5 years.
From a story in this week’s Denver Post:
Oil and gas companies have reported almost 1,000 spills to Colorado regulators over the past 2 1/2 years, totaling 5.2 million gallons of drilling liquids and oil.
They ranged from small oil leaks from half-closed valves to thousands of barrels of tainted water that escaped from pits.
It’s far from the volume of oil now shooting into the Gulf of Mexico, but a Denver Post analysis of state spill reports shows that even far from offshore, drilling for oil can regularly create unintended messes.
Read the full story at DenverPost.com.
In the bighorn vs. mountain goat war, bighorns are losing
Bighorn sheep herd seen at the inaugural Georgetown Bighorn Sheep Festival, held Sat. Nov. 11, 2006 | Denver Post
Colorado’s native bighorn sheep population is declining (down about 10 percent from 2001 to 2009), and biologists are scrambling to find a way to bolster the breed.
The problems, according to an article in the Denver Post, include construction, disease, traffic, other live stock — and mountain goats, a nonnative species that was originally reintroduced outside of Salida.
Read more about the struggles facing bighorn sheep at DenverPost.com.
Shady roof? No roof? North-facing roof? No problem.
Bobby Kenney, of Simple Solar, hauls a solar panel up a ladder to install on the roof of the Boulder Friends meeting house in Boulder on Monday | Paul Aiken
The world of solar is about to open up to a whole new group of Coloradans thanks to a bill that is on the way to the governor’s desk to be signed.
People with shady roofs, renters, condo owners and even folks with too-small roofs (or even no roofs, like farmers who want to offset their irrigation pumps) will soon be able to buy a share of solar panels that are installed in nearby “community solar gardens.”
People who buy into the gardens will get all the same benefits as people who slapped the PV panels directly on their roofs, which means they can get rebates and incentive payments as well as have the electricity produced by the solar panels credited directly to their energy bill.
Solar gardens could be sprouting as soon as next fall, according to the bill sponsor, Claire Levy, a Boulder Democrat.
Learn more at DailyCamera.com.
Beetle-kill wood from Colorado is hard to come by
Boulder-based Berlin Flooring recently replaced flooring at the Chautauqua Ranger Cottage with Colorado beetle-kill pine wood. Other groups have had a hard time finding contractors who use local beetle-kill pine wood. (Nicholas Duckworth )
More than 40,000 acres of forest in Boulder County have been devastated by pine beetles — and more than 1.5 million acres across the state.
That’s a lot of dead trees. And, it seems, a lot of people are interested in using wood from beetle-kill trees for flooring, furniture and paneling. But as it turns out, it’s easier (and cheaper) to get beetle-kill wood — which has a pleasant blue stain — from other Western states with larger existing lumber industries than from Colorado.
Compared to Canada and other states with more established lumber industries, Colorado has smaller mills, fewer logging arterial roads and skinnier diameter trees. Canada beats the market in price and quantity for many reasons, including subsidy programs, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports.
The end result for Colorado is a smaller variety of finished beetle-kill wood products, higher prices and fewer finishing capabilities — like kiln-dried as opposed to air-dried. Many contractors demand kiln-dried beetle-kill wood for its resiliency. Read more
Camelscaping: Rent camels, fight off invasive species
Ah, yes, the high plains camel. Majestic, really, with his untroubled stare and his precarious and stupefying perch atop Delicate Arch; the original inspiration for the mountain biker’s friend, the Camelbak, the high plains camel himself is quite a cyclist.
HEY, GUYS! | flickr user tarksiala
OK, so camels seem pretty out of place here. But that’s the idea: Read more
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
Rocky Mountain aspens could disappear by 2090
Colorado aspens in full fall colors | Photo by Mark Leffingwell
Foresters are still puzzling over why aspens in the Rocky Mountains are dying, a phenomenon that scientists are calling “sudden aspen decline,” or SAD.
But whatever the reason — many are blaming the added stresses of climate change — the situation doesn’t look good.
In Colorado, the number of acres with sick aspens — which drop their leaves, are ravaged by insects and can’t reproduce — has quadrupled between 2006 and 2008 to more than 850 acres, according to an article published by Reuters.
“What we think will happen is that aspen will disappear in some areas and there will not be anything we can do about it,” said SAD expert Wayne Shepperd of Colorado State University.
A study by scientists with the federal Rocky Mountain Research Station in Moscow, Idaho presented just such a scenario. It predicted the near total disappearance of aspen in the Rocky Mountain region by 2090.
The research, to be published in Forest Ecology and Management, links ailing aspen to global climate change and concludes that up to 41 percent of Western forests would be unable to support aspen by 2030. That figure would rise to 75 percent by 2060 and as much as 94 percent in 2090.
Read the full story at www.reuters.com, check out information from the U.S. Forest Service about sudden aspen decline, or learn about what Boulder County is doing to preserve aspen stands after the jump. Read more
Boulder’s haze caused by California’s fires
This map provided by the National Weather Service shows the smoke drifting into Colorado at 9 a.m. on Tuesday. The arrows were added by local meteorologist Matt Kelsch.
The hazy skies smudging views of the Flatirons in Boulder are the result of wildfires burning to the West, including the massive fire in Southern California that has charred 122,000 acres.
“It’s the California fires, but also fires in Utah and Colorado,” said local meteorologist Matt Kelsch. “It’s all kind of mixed together in the plume of smoke.”
The winds above the mountains are coming directly from the West, said Kelsch, carrying the smoke thousands of miles.
“How long the smoke is around depends on how long the winds continue,” Kelsch said. “A rainstorm would wash it out, but right now, there’s just a very small chance of rain. We’re probably going to see these smoky conditions for awhile.”
Rocky Mountain National Park gets blitzed
About a hundred people showed up Wednesday to collect water samples from streams, rivers and lakes scattered throughout Rocky Mountain National Park for the second annual WaterBlitz.
When the samples are tested, scientists at the University of Colorado hope to learn how beetle-killed trees and global warming might be affecting the park.
Read more about the WaterBlitz at DailyCamera.com or check out the video above.
