Climate Change

Americans continue to grow more skeptical of the threat of global warming, with a new Gallup poll showing that nearly half of all Americans believe the threat is exaggerated.
According to the poll, 48 percent of the population considers the seriousness of global warming to be “generally exaggerated” — up from 41 percent last year and [...]

One-time presidential hopeful Mitt Romney wrote a book to gain publicity in advance of an all-but-certain 2012 presidential run. He may have terribly miscalculated, however, by writing that he agrees with the overwhelming majority of scientists on the planet in believing that climate change is happening and that human industrial activity is a major factor. [...]

U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, mentioned early and often as a potential Democratic replacement for Gov. Bill Ritter — who announced Wednesday morning he won’t seek a second term — issued the following statement calling the development “a nightmare for the Republican Party” and leaving his options open:

Climate crisis skeptics come in two major varieties: The kind who believe that the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists are wrong; and the kind who believe that the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists are engaged in a conspiracy. It’s bold to believe a majority of the world’s scientists are just plain [...]

A Boulder lawmaker says she’ll introduce a bill next session aimed at cleaning up questionable campaign practices in rural electric association (REA) board elections.Claire Levy, D-Boulder, told the Colorado Independent Tuesday she is still working on a draft of the bill she’ll introduce in the upcoming legislative session in January, but she outlined the basics.

While uncertainty swirling over a meaningful climate change agreement coming out of Copenhagen, and the U.S. Senate far from passing anything close to last summer’s House climate change bill, the Obama administration’s Plan B – the threat of stepped-up EPA regulation – is making Colorado’s oil and gas industry increasingly nervous.

Tuesday’s announcement by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack that the U.S. Forest Service is pumping $40 million more into coping with the ongoing pine bark beetle epidemic predictably stirred up the same old tired climate change debate.
The rice-sized beetles have killed more than 2 million acres of lodgepole pines across Colorado and southern Wyoming alone, and [...]

Hard on the heels of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson announcing greenhouse gas emissions pose a public health threat, the agency’s Denver office said it will review air pollution standards for oil and gas operations.
According to the Associated Press, the latest announcement comes in response to a January complaint filed by WildEarth Guardians and [...]

One of the perks of political rock star-dom is that you get to write pretty much whatever you want and the nation’s leading newspapers will publish it. Take Sarah Palin: Judging from The Washington Post’s op-ed page, she’s now one of the country’s top experts on climate change. In July, The Post devoted valuable ink [...]

Despite a flood of recent evidence that drought is endangering the Colorado River and all of the communities from Colorado to California that depend on its unimpeded flow, the Aspen Daily News reports climate-change doubters are still clouding the debate over proper management of the Southwest’s most critical water supply.
Speaking at Aspen Global Change Institute [...]