Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Written in the Rings.” Tom Swetnam, the director of the Arizona tree-ring lab, grew up with wildfire. His father was a forest ranger in northern New Mexico, and after Swetnam graduated from college in the late 1970s, he spent two years as a seasonal […]
Climate change
Posted inJanuary 24, 2005: Written in the Rings
Glaciers offer a glimpse of the distant past
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “Written in the Rings.” Inside one particular warehouse in suburban Denver, it feels like Antarctica. In a sense, it is. Within the cavernous walls of polystyrene foam lies an 80,000-cubic-foot deep freeze, filled with columns of ice: a few from Wyoming’s Wind River Range, […]
Posted inWotr
Here’s hoping the drought is not over
Since Christmas, an almost continuous stream of Pacific moisture has raced over Colorado and much of the West, dumping rain in the valleys and heavy snows in the mountains. The sun and crystalline blue skies I brag about to my non-Western friends and relatives have only made rare appearances in the narrow seams between storms. […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
A beautiful ode to a melting earth
Gretel Ehrlich’s latest book, The Future of Ice, is an intimate “ode and lament” on the effects of global warming. The conclusions are dire, of course: In the Arctic, as billions of gallons of fresh water pour into places like the Greenland Ice Sheet and where, in 2002, “at least 264,400 square miles of ice […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
State loopholes upset Clean Air Act
Six Western states are among those accused of shortchanging public health by ignoring certain hazardous chemical emissions from power plants. A new report from the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Integrity Project reveals that the majority of state regulatory agencies overlook power plant “upset” emissions that exceed federal pollution limits. Gaming the System: How the Off-the-Books Industrial […]
Posted inNovember 8, 2004: Keepers of the Flame
Think global (warming,) act local
The Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, a new nonprofit in Colorado, is taking a backyard approach to the global problem of climate change. “Our main thrust is what (global warming) can mean right here, and that is more drought, more fire, and less biodiversity,” says founder Stephen Saunders, a 30-year Colorado resident. “It’s threatening what makes […]
Posted inOctober 11, 2004: The First Family of Western Conservation
Citizens wary of their nuclear neighbor
Rather than excavating a Cold War-era landfill just outside Albuquerque, Sandia National Laboratories wants to leave the nuclear waste in the ground and “monitor” it indefinitely — and the state of New Mexico has agreed that’s a good idea. From 1959 until 1988, Sandia used the site, now known as the Mixed Waste Landfill, to […]
Posted inSeptember 27, 2004: Life After Old Growth
In a warming West, expect more fire
Overall wildfire size likely to double by 2100, new study concludes
Posted inSeptember 27, 2004: Life After Old Growth
When yesterday’s garbage becomes today’s collectible
To get to Glass Beach, you turn toward the ocean at the Denny’s on the outskirts of Fort Bragg, Calif., and drive down the lane to park. Signage is minimal. This is not Big Sur. The day we go, two local guys drive up and park next to us in a Volvo that has seen […]
Posted inWotr
When yesterday’s garbage becomes today’s collectibles
To get to Glass Beach, you turn towards the ocean at the Denny’s on the outskirts of Ft. Bragg, Calif., and drive down the lane to park. Signage is minimal. This is not Big Sur. The day we go, two local guys drive up and park next to us in a Volvo that has seen […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Wanted: Leak-proof dumps
Until the 1980s, conventional wisdom held that Wyoming was so arid that landfills didn’t need liners to prevent leaks. As a result, at least 21 of the state’s currently operating and closed municipal landfills are now leaking dangerous chemicals, such as nitrates, chlorides, pesticides and dry-cleaning solvents, into groundwater. The number could be even higher; […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Mowing down pollution
The drone of lawn mowers is a classic sign of summer in the suburbs. But these gas guzzlers contribute heavily to another summer phenomenon: smog. The yearly pollution from one gas mower is equivalent to “43 new cars driving 12,000 miles each,” says Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District. […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Of global warming and White House elephants
Any day now, if all goes according to plan, a bill that will actually do something about global warming will come up in the United States Senate. Come up, and go right down. Not even the bill’s sponsors, Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, predict passage. Their goal is to […]
Posted inJuly 19, 2004: They're Here: Global Warming's Unlikely Harbingers
Global Warming’s Unlikely Harbingers
The West is heating up — and bark beetles are moving in for the kill
Posted inJune 21, 2004: A Walk Between Worlds
Perspectives on change — climate change
On the northern edge of Alaska, says journalist Charles Wohlforth, the impacts of human-caused climate change have become part of daily life. Spring is coming earlier, and Iñupiaq whaling crews are making ever-narrower escapes from cracking sea ice. In The Whale and the Supercomputer, Wohlforth looks at such changes from the perspectives of two very […]
Posted inWotr
The salting of the West – who cares?
If a Colorado mine were to dump a hundred thousand tons of chemical salts onto the ground, chances are good that residents nearby would be upset and local and state agencies would get on the mine operator’s case. Yet, the state of Colorado dumps 125,000 tons of chemical salts on its roads each year, and […]
Posted inDecember 22, 2003: Being Green in the Land of the Saints
A near-miss for California’s clean-air rules
California’s newest clean-air law narrowly escaped an attempt to shoot it down in the U.S. Congress. Faced with the worst air pollution in the nation, the state has led the way in enacting tough air-quality regulations. But although California has made progress in combating auto emissions, pollution from small engines like lawnmowers and weed whackers […]
Posted inWotr
The biggest environmental issue is staring us in the face
Tom Bell says we’d better connect the dots that reveal global warming.
Posted inOctober 27, 2003: The Gear Biz
West Coast states tackle global warming
While the Bush administration takes a light-handed approach to curbing global warming, West Coast governors are determined to give the cause some regulatory punch. In September, outgoing California Gov. Gray Davis, in collaboration with Gov. Gary Locke, D-Wash., and Gov. Ted Kulongoski, D-Ore., announced a new, region-wide approach to slowing greenhouse gas emissions. The governors […]
Posted inWotr
Leaving Las Vegas
I lived in Las Vegas recently for about a year, doing research at a large weapons-testing facility outside of town. Among all the places I’ve lived, from tropical islands to small towns and Western strip-mall communities, Las Vegas seemed uniquely American in its boosterism for get-rich-quick schemes, the sex industry and for the stupendous desert […]