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.

As most Boulderites — and anyone who’s ever headed up the hill to Frozen Dead Guy Days — probably knows, the body of “Grandpa” Bredo Morstoel, a Norwegian who died of a heart condition in 1989, has been kept at the International Cryonics Institute and Center for Life Extension, or ICICLE (aka the Tuff Shed), since the mid 1990s. (Before that, he was briefly put in a deep freeze at a cryonics joint in Oakland.)

Grandpa Bredo is being kept on ice at the behest of his family, who apparently believe that, at some point in the future, medical technology will advance to the point that Grandpa can be rewarmed, and therefore, “reanimated.”

But until he is, a Boulder County man who was hired by the family, Bo Shaffer, drives up to the Tuff Shed once a month with 1,600 pounds of dry ice in his truck to keep Grandpa cold.

A story in today’s Daily Camera advancing this year’s Frozen Dead Guy Days noted the 1,600 pounds number, and one astute commenter (Moran_Bunrift) wrote this at the end of the article:

1600 pounds of dry ice per *month* for 15 years….. Ya know what “dry ice” is kiddies? Frozen carbon dioxide.

This guy has left a 270,000+ pound carbon footprint since he DIED, boys and girls. And there’s no end in sight.

Ironic, isn’t it?

So should Boulder County be ringing the environmental alarm on Grandpa Bredo? Well, it’s true, dry ice is essentially carbon dioxide in its solid form. And 1600 pounds of dry ice is about the same amount of carbon dioxide that the average car emits into the atmosphere when it’s driven for 2,726 miles.

But here’s the thing, the carbon dioxide gas that is turned into carbon dioxide solids (i.e. dry ice) probably already existed in the atmosphere. In most cases, the carbon dioxide that’s used is a byproduct of another process, such as producing ammonia from nitrogen and natural gas, or large-scale fermentation. So, if the carbon dioxide didn’t become dry ice (that ultimately ended up melting in Grandpa Bredo’s sarcophagus), it would have just been floating around in the atmosphere anyway.

That doesn’t mean, however, that there’s no added carbon footprint associated with keeping a frozen dead guy in Ned. First of all, it takes energy to turn carbon dioxide gas into dry ice (first it’s compressed to a liquid, and then its allowed to expand, turning the liquid into the solid that we know as dry ice). And secondly, Bo Shaffer puts some serious miles on his truck bringing the dry ice up from Denver every month.

So, from a global perspective, we at BigGreenBoulder aren’t convinced thatGrandpa Bredo will push global warming to the tipping point. But we want to know what you think. Leave us a note in the comments section below!

Workers apply insulation to a wall in a Boulder home | DailyCamera.com

Realizing that that it would be nearly impossible for Boulder to meet its greenhouse gas reduction goals without forcing landlords to make energy-efficiency upgrades to rental properties, the city is considering the best way to create such a mandate.

And Boulder is looking to other cities and towns for useful examples. Some are the usual suspects (Berkeley and Burlington), but others are not so often on the same wavelength as Boulder, including Houston and Palm Desert.

The ultimate goal is to force the upgrades — but to simultaneously create a program that would make it easy and cheap for landlords to comply.

From the Daily Camera:

Boulder is seeking a unique way of mending the debate between landlords and tenants on energy-efficiency — a single program for homeowners to meet proposed new standards.

The new energy-efficiency recommendations for rental housing have caused an uproar in Boulder, but there’s a second, private-sector arm to the city’s greenhouse gas reduction effort in residential spaces that has received less attention, and will ultimately help property owners meet whatever new standards come to pass.

Although the necessary upgrades will vary from property to property, in many cases they will place a costly and time-consuming burden on landlords. For example, a new furnace can cost several thousands dollars, while water heaters range from about $500 to $3,000.

The heart of the problem is not new: in rental housing, with tenants often paying the energy bills, landlords have no incentive to make efficiency upgrades. But most renters do not stay long enough to justify the expense of paying for the upgrades themselves.

Read the full story at DailyCamera.com or learn more about Boulder’s plans at the city’s Web site, www.bouldercolorado.gov/smartregs.

So in Boulder — where 57 percent of all housing is rental housing — the city is considering a set of rules that would mandate upgrades.

Without such rules, advocates argue, there’s no way Boulder will ever meet its goal of complying with the Kyoto Protocol. But landlords are not psyched.

From the Daily Camera:

The proposed rules would tie the upgrade requirements to the existing rental-license renewal process, which happens every four years. Landlords would have to show that they’ve made necessary upgrades — or possibly that they’ve purchased carbon offsets to buy them more time to make the upgrades — before their licenses would be renewed.

The maximum necessary investment per rental unit would also likely be capped, possibly based on the value of the property.

Landlords across the city are “very frustrated,” said Sheila Horton, executive director of the Boulder Area Rental Housing Association.

“It is potentially a very expensive program that could have no results whatsoever,” she said. “They’re talking about a potential cost of $1,000 per unit for multi-unit dwellings.”

Horton said that ultimately the amount of energy used is determined by the tenant’s actions.

“You could insulate until you’re green, but if someone leaves the windows open in the winter it really doesn’t matter,” she said.

Read the full story at DailyCamera.com, or read more about SmartRegs on the city’s Web site.

The conference kicks off Dec. 7.

Tomorrow night, Boulder’s city council is expected to pass a resolution expressing general support for the goals of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, also called COP15.

The city if Boulder is sending a delegation to Copenhagen to advocate on behalf of local governments and to talk about Boulder’s efforts to cut its own greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmentalists hope that world leaders will come to an agreement about how to tackle global carbon emissions at the conference, ultimately signing an accord that would pick up where the Kyoto Protocol left off.

The United States did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, which would have obligated us the reduce our carbon emission by 7 percent below 1990 levels. But in 2002, the city of Boulder decided to try and meet the target on its own.

Aside from the Boulder delegation, scientists from the University of Colorado and other locals are headed to Copenhagen as well. If you’re going, BigGreenBoulder wants to know about it. E-mail Laura Snider at laura@biggreenboulder.com.

Kyle Orton, the best NFL quarterback, according to a study.

We don’t blame you for coming to that conclusion, since a few sites, to which I am hesitant to link, have blared that as an attention-getting headline. And why not? What a great headline! DENVER BIGGEST POLLUTER IN THE WORLD!

Got your attention, right? You’re thinking, but surely there must be another city that pollutes more. Well, not according to science, say these blogs. Yes, they even link to a scientific study!

I wasn’t going to freak out about this until it was brought to my attention that it had spread to several sources — including some that you’d be likely to trust on this sort of thing. The first place that I saw it was on TheDailyGreen, which I usually like. Then I was sent links to similarly misleading stories/posts/releases on ScienceDaily and Huffington Post Denver (whose post is the least misleading of the three, but still a bit unclear; bonus points to the author, though, for simply making the point that regardless of Denver’s spot on the apocryphal list, there’s work to be done).

It should be mentioned somewhere — anywhere — in those stories that Denver is the most polluting city, by the study’s specific measurements, out of ten cities studied, chosen not because they would rank among the world’s highest polluters but because they would provide insight into the ways that urban greenhouse gas emissions work.

The ten cities studied did not include another major U.S. transportation hub in a wintry climate, Chicago, nor did it include, say, Beijing.

So to say that Denver is the top polluting city would be like having a headline that said Kyle Orton is the best NFL quarterback, then writing a post about how it is clear that he is better than other quarterbacks like Chris Simms and Tom Brandstater, then linking, at the bottom, to a study in which it is revealed that only three quarterbacks were studied, notably leaving out Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. Also, the quarterback study was initiated to determine what makes a quarterback different from a punter.

To restate: the aim of the study was not to identify the most polluting city in the world, but to explore the contributing factors to urban environmental impact. Quoting from the study: “The objective of this work, to understand how and why urban GHG emissions differ, has partially been assisted by the activities of municipal governments.”

I’m not saying Denver is perfect — far from it — I’m just saying that maybe we should all be a little more accurate in the way that we interpret and disseminate data.

Also I’m saying I got a little worked up over this.

If you’re curious as to the factors that put Denver at the top of this list, two discussed are climate and its role as a hub:

A lot of people at DIA.

This study of ten global cities has shown how the metabolism and GHG emissions of a city are strongly dependent upon its location. Climate, in particular heating degree days, is currently an important determinant of the amount of energy required to heat urban buildings (although this could change with tighter building envelopes). Moreover, the location of a city often determines its status as a gateway, thereby explaining emissions arising from airplanes and shipping.

This means, happily, that two of the primary factors have immediately actionable solutions: weatherize, use less climate control and travel by air less frequently.

And, might I add, you look great in that sweater. You know the one I mean. That one you wear instead of turning the thermostat up. Yeah, your planet-saving sweater. Very dashing.