Tag: global climate change

DENVER — There was a serious messaging battle this week in the Colorado Senate race between Democratic incumbent Mark Udall and Republican challenger Rep....

Denver is playing host Tuesday and Wednesday of this week as the EPA opens its LEED-certified doors, inviting testimony from all over the region and nation on the agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan, which would cut overall carbon pollution from existing power plants to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The proposal is billed as part of the President’s Climate Action Plan and carried out through the EPA’s rulemaking authority under the Clean Air Act.

President Barack Obama today agreed with a U.S. State Department recommendation not to fast track the controversial Keystone XL pipeline that would move tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas. That decision predictably drew mixed reviews from Colorado’s congressional delegation and praise from the state’s conservation community.

Despite the recent round of wet weather in Colorado – including some snow above 12,000 feet – Colorado politicians and fire officials warned fall can be one of the most active seasons for wildfires.

A bear that attacked a teenage camper in Twin Lakes earlier this month is among just a few that the Colorado Division of Wildlife has had to put down this year — a far cry from the last couple of years. Last year, wildlife officers killed 80 bears mostly due to hot, dry conditions that forced scores of the animals into urbanized areas in southeastern Colorado.

Hard to imagine in a year when snowpack up until recently has been more than 200 percent of normal in the Colorado River Basin and its major tributaries on the state’s Western Slope, but the long-term prognosis for the river that provides water to more than 30 million people in the Desert Southwest is not good. A new interim report released this week by the federal government, Colorado and six other states along the river suggests that “by mid-century the average yield of the Colorado River could be reduced by 10-20 percent due to climate change.

While Al Gore’s passion for the environment helped him ascend to the highest political offices – and earned him a Nobel prize and an Oscar — he told a symposium audience in Aspen Friday night that the Colorado forests he learned to love on a road trip 40 years ago have plunged into despair no thanks to rising temperatures, poor political will and tiny insects.

The level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere deemed acceptable by many scientists - including NASA's James Hansen - is 350 parts per million....

A game a lot of the jaded journalists covering the Olympic Winter Games like to engage in is coining the most derogatory nickname describing the shortcomings of the host city or venue. In Italy in 2006, for example, the purpose-built (by Fiat) and frankly quite hideous ski town of Sestriere became “Sewerstriere” or “Disastriere.”

Democrats differ widely on whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should be able to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as a form of air pollution under the Clean Air Act, and the rift seems to be mostly geographical and based on how much coal a state contains.