An Associated Press story that ran recently above the page one fold in Billings and Butte, Mont., didn’t qualify even as a brief in Baltimore, Md. No surprise, there. More people live in public housing in Baltimore than populate the states of North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming, combined. But it was big news on the […]
Climate change
Posted inWotr
California steps up to lead the nation
Despite vociferous opposition from the California Chamber of Commerce, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R, and Democrat state legislators cemented a deal on Aug. 30 to pass the much-heralded Global Warming Solutions Act. California is the world’s twelfth-largest producer of global-warming causing greenhouse gases, and the bill commits the state to cutting its greenhouse-gas emissions 25 percent […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
Reborn
The West casts a wary eye on the latest nuclear craze
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
Where there’s fire, there’s global warming
“I think there was a tendency to think that the overwhelming factor (driving forest fires) was short-term weather. There’s this idea that drought matters, and it does. But it’s taking time and a lot of research to show that climate plays a big role as well.” — Anthony Westerling Six years ago, climate scientist Anthony […]
Posted inWotr
The good news about garbage
One summer day, in my favorite wild place, I found enlightenment through garbage. Other people’s garbage, I realized, is my destiny — and maybe my redemption. Spiritual enlightenment found in a wilderness is a cliche; few special moments occur anywhere else these days, and just once, can’t someone admit to finding rapture in a mall? […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
The wild, wild weather
Blame it on climate change or the vagaries of nature, but whatever the cause, weather in the West has been extreme — and wacky. The Southwest has become a tinderbox, while Northwesterners are sopping wet. WASHINGTON Average yearly moisture: 37.02 in.* Moisture June ‘05-May ‘06: 41.53 in. Nine consecutive days of downpour hit western Washington […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
Climate-change clues — in tropical glaciers
To understand why nearly every climate expert on the planet believes our hundred-year binge on fossil fuels has set the stage for today’s wrenching weather disruptions, you have to take the long view, looking beyond a single hurricane or heat wave. If you do that, the news gets worse. And if you really wish to […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
The hazy days of summer … and winter, spring and fall
Air pollution settles over the West’s national parks
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
The Tamarisk Hunter
In the desert Southwest of 2030 Big Daddy Drought runs the show, California claims all the water, and a water tick named Lolo ekes out a rugged living removing tamarisk.
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
Tribes look to cash in with ‘tree-market’ environmentalism
Carbon banking could help restore forests and fight global warming
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Dust and Snow
High in the snowy San Juan Mountains, tiny particles have big implications
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
Science vs. science fiction — get it straight
Science and scientists are taking quite a beating in the public opinion department these days. Sometimes there’s a good reason for it. Consider the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Every year, the geologists’ association honors someone “for notable journalistic achievement in communications contributing to public understanding of geology.” The oil geologists gave Michael Crichton their […]
Posted inWotr
Raising Bella in springtime
Spring can be a time of quirky deception in the Rocky Mountains. All manner of creatures are born into this seasonal maelstrom, where soothing sunshine one moment can give way almost instantaneously to a howling snow squall. I pity the frail calves and lambs born wet on the High Plains. They trudge dutifully behind their […]
Posted inWotr
A real rain is what happens in New Mexico
It is a short flight from one extreme to another. My plane takes off in lush, green Portland, Ore., and lands two hours later in Albuquerque,N.M. As the plane comes over the Sandia mountains, another passenger, making a first trip to New Mexico, is startled to see a panorama of browns shining in the sunlight, […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
A season of change
At the beginning of winter a few years ago, nature writer Bruce Stutz lay in a hospital bed in New York, recovering from heart surgery. Eight months later, seeking the same renewal that nature experiences each year, Stutz set out on a trek from New York to Alaska to mark the coming of spring — […]
Posted inWotr
Global warming can give you the chills
It was an odd juxtaposition: As news outlets were reporting last winter about astonishingly frigid conditions in Russia, where nearly 40 deaths had been linked to temperatures as low as 24 degrees below zero, they were also reporting an announcement by climate experts that 2005 was the hottest year worldwide in more than a century. […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
Corporations ask feds to set emissions limits
Last month, executives from six of the country’s largest energy companies made a startling request to federal lawmakers: Set mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. At an April 4 climate conference held by New Mexico Sens. Pete Domenici, R, and Jeff Bingaman, D, the leaders of Shell, General Electric and others said they would prefer […]
Posted inWotr
What’s behind all these natural disasters
That was some mudslide that hit Leyte Island in the Philippines last month, when something like several tons of sludge and rock a mile wide slid down a mountain onto the village of Guinsahugan, killing children in their schoolrooms and villagers in their stores and homes. No wonder. In just two weeks before the Feb. […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
Save Our Snow
Can Aspen and other Western towns put a dent in a global problem?
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
States tighten rules, challenge feds to follow
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Save Our Snow.” During the summer of 1943, the streets of Los Angeles filled with a nauseating brown haze. Visibility shrank to three blocks, and residents endured smarting eyes, sore throats and spells of vomiting. The problem, it turned out, was a combination of […]