Rob Inglis

Here’s one more addition to the list of problems our greenhouse-gas emissions are causing: cheatgrass flammability. According to an article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels cause the non-native weed, which has spread over vast stretches of the West’s high desert, to produce more biomass and incorporate more decay-inhibiting carbon into that biomass, making it even more combustible than it would be in a normal-carbon world. That’s a problem, because even in its natural state, cheatgrass burns pretty darn easily. Areas that it has taken over tend to burn, on average, every 3-5 years, making it impossible for native plants to survive.

The Times article draws attention to an issue that the HCN blog has dealt with in the past: how climate change is going to fuel the revenge of the weeds. In a changing world, plants with more genetic diversity will be able to evolve faster — and thus out-compete — those with less. Weeds have much more genetic diversity than crop plants, which have historically been bred for uniformity. Plant breeders of the high-carbon future are going to have to work extra-specially hard to make sure that crop plants stay one step ahead of their weedy competitors.

Ernie Atencio

The Western Environmental Law Center has been busy filing legal challenges to BLM oil and gas leases around the West. Nothing new about that. What is new is that these challenges are based on potential impacts to global warming.

When I first read this, I thought they were talking about what will happen when these leases are developed, the oil and gas pumped, and all that carbon released into the air when it’s burned as fuel. A novel legal argument, I thought. We need to work every angle we can. But I’m surprised to learn that you don’t even have to burn it to affect climate change. According to an April 23, 2008 press release,

While the natural gas industry promotes its product as a “cleaner-burning fuel,” the global warming impact of natural gas, also known as methane, is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide. In Colorado, preliminary inventories show that accidental leaks and deliberate releases inject more than 5.6 million tons of methane and carbon dioxide into the air every year.

(Read on …)

Felice Pace

California Governor Schwarzenegger wants to build two new dams - Sites and Temperance Flat. They are being sold as necessary to cope with the reduction in Sierra Nevada, Cascade and Klamath Mountains snowpack expected as a result of climate change. New and “enhanced” storage is being marketed by Lester Snow, director of California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) as part of a “portfolio approach” which also calls for urban water conservation, better groundwater facilities, improved wastewater processing and research into lowering the cost of desalination. The dams are to provide increased capacity in order to catch earlier runoff that – according to climate change data and predictions - will no longer be held in mountain snowpack.

Schwarzenegger and Snow are counting on the climate change predictions to be fairly accurate. If the actual climate does not follow the predictions, the new and “enhanced’ reservoirs might never fill. Furthermore, increasing surface storage would result in more extensive water loss through evaporation. In 1998 the measured evaporation from California reservoirs was about a million acre feet - that’s enough water to cover a million acres of land with a foot of water. That’s a lot of water but the amount will rise if new and “enhanced’ reservoirs are developed. Furthermore, if climate change results in higher summer temperatures evaporation from all reservoirs will increase.

(Read on …)

Marty Durlin

Online Editor

Bamboos are part of the grass family, and estimates of the number of species range from 200-1,200. Some bamboos reach heights of 60-90 feet, with stalks up to 8 inches in diameter. Canebreaks, once common in the southeastern U.S., are native North American bamboos.

“Gregarious flowering” is common to bamboos: all members of a particular species flower, produce seeds and then “die in synchrony.” Bamboos produce only once every 3 to 120 years, creating seed crops numbering in the thousands. Between flowerings, they reproduce via rhizomes, which develop underground and send up shoots that emerge from sheaths to grow into stalks.

(Read on …)

Jonathan Thompson

Editor in Chief

She was about 20 years old when she hit the top of her game — loved by all, her future bright. Then, too much use and abuse led her on a downhill slide, so that in recent years she’s only been a mere shadow of her former self. Now, she may be on her way back up.

No. I’m not talking Britney Spears. I’m talking Lake Powell. Reservoir Powell to her detractors (and those who understand the proper definition of “lake” and “reservoir”). She was so high in 1983 that the Bureau of Reclamation had to essentially flush the lake, sending some 100,000 cubic feet of water each second down the Grand Canyon. Then, in the 90s, things went bad. There was a big drought. Lake Powell started tanking. Where once was lake, only a 100 foot bathtub ring remained. Now, a big winter has inspired news of a dramatic comeback: High snowpack will raise Powell by 50 feet!

So Powell is poised for a comeback. Or not. This rebirth’s likely to be about as successful as Britney’s comeback last fall. Fifty feet on top of currrent levels will still leave the reservoir far below capacity — look for a 60 to 70 foot bathtub ring during this summer’s peak levels. And unless the arid West is soggy this summer, Powell will plummet back to about 50 percent of capacity this fall. And yeah, we may get some flooding here and there, but the Grand Canyon will not relive the torrent of ‘83. Unless the dam breaks, that is.

Mary K. Bowannie

This week has been a blur. A whirlwind of information came at me on a variety of environmental issues: climate change, solid waste, underground storage tanks, the protection of sacred and cultural sites from mining and development, and water – its availability and quality. All of these issues impact those who live in the West on a daily basis. What hit me as I listened to the various speakers working in these areas was how all these issues impact tribal communities, and the responsibility tribes have for the future of our respective communities to talk about these difficult issues and raise awareness among our own people, and the larger global community.

Jerry Pardilla is Penobscot and the Executive Director of the National Tribal Environmental Council based in Albuquerque, NM. NTEC’s mission is “to support Indian Tribes and Alaskan Native Villages in protecting, regulating, and managing their environmental resources according to their own priorities and values.” 184 Federally Recognized Tribes are NTEC members out of the over 500 Federally Recognized Tribes.

Pardilla spoke to students in the Environmental Ethics and Practices in Native America course at the University of New Mexico on Tuesday, March 25. Dr. Lloyd Lee, Navajo, is the course instructor. Lee had heard about NTEC and wanted to know exactly what the organization does to protect the environment.

(Read on …)

Jodi Peterson

Associate Editor

Unless you’ve been living in a cave somewhere, you’re starting to see the impacts of a climate out of whack. Around here the past few years, in the Colorado mountains at nearly 6,000 feet, we’ve seen heavy rain in January and February, when by all rights it should be snowing. And butterflies, hatched weeks too early, flapping over barely-budded plants in a vain search for flowers. And premature blossoms on fruit trees, fooled into bloom by an oddly-warm March, only to be zapped by freezes into May.

Now researchers have confirmed that global warming is whacking Westerners especially hard. Over the past five years, we’ve had an increase in average temperature that’s 70 percent greater than the increase experienced by the rest of the planet.

For “Warming in the West,” the report released today by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) and the Natural Resources Defense Council, RMCO analyzed new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration temperature data for 11 Western states. For the five-year period 2003-2007, the average regional temperature was 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 20th-century average, compared to the overall global rise of 1 degree. Both Washington and Oregon saw temperatures 40 percent higher than the worldwide figure.

The report’s next-to-last chapter, “Immediate Action Can Curb Global Warming,” holds out the hope of salvation — if we’ll get off our collective asses and make meaningful policy changes. Now.

But stopping the climatic train wreck is going to be much, much harder than we can even imagine, writes HCN contributing editor Matt Jenkins in a story for Miller-McCune. Read Matt’s grim — but realistic — assessment in A Really Inconvenient Truth. And check out our earlier story, Save Our Snow. On second thought, a cave might be a great place to be.

Felice Pace

I confess that my favorite part of HCN is often the letters. Now I may be a wee bit biased since I have been known to write a letter or two to HCN and, occasionally, see one published. Nevertheless I do believe that HCN has the good fortune of excellent letter writers.

This does not mean that I always or even usually agree with the letter writers. It is just that, even when I don’t agree (or even violently disagree) the letters are so often well written and well reasoned.

Take the March 3rd edition for example.

Alexander Evans of the Forest Guild offered a thoughtful letter about the key role “working landscapes” can play in addressing the impact of climate change on species and ecosystems.

Now I hate that term “working landscapes”. What does it really mean anyway? If we really have “working landscapes” do we then also have “idle landscapes”? Are wilderness areas and national parks “idle landscapes” and are they therefore lazy and dissolute?

(Read on …)

Felice Pace

In California and throughout the West everyone seems to be talking about global warming. Dominating the conversation are dire predictions about diminished water supplies that will result from shrinking snow pack in the West’s mountains. Conspicuously absent from the debate has been discussion of the impact of forest management on dry season water supply - “baseflow” in the lexicon of hydrologists.

The Western US may be the only place in the world where the connection between trees – or more precisely upland forests – and water supply is not recognized. Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai’, whose organizations have planted millions of trees in Africa, claimed in an interview with Sierra Magazine that everyone knows that where there are trees there is also water. She was wrong. With a few notable exceptions, the Western US is in denial about the connection.

This denial is reflected in research programs and management plans being crafted to address global warming. The Forest Service, for example, has a massive global warming research program underway with a focus in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. One would think that the relationship between forest management and water supply would figure prominently in that research. But one would be wrong. The connection is not a focus for research and is barely even mentioned on the research programs web site. You can check it out for yourself at http://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pep/climatechange/.

(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

Every year, the League of Conservation Voters rates Congressfolk on how they act on environmental legislation.

David Roberts, on Grist.org, has a good summation of the new LCV ratings:

The LCV scorecard has its critics, but it’s nonetheless become something of a gold standard when measuring how “green” a lawmaker is.

A couple of big stories emerge from this year’s scorecard.

The first speaks for itself:

* Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.): 67%

* Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY): 73%

* Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): 0%

No, that’s not a typo. McCain scored a big fat zilch, mainly because missed every single vote LCV scored, including the big votes around the energy bill. … McCain was the only Senator to miss every LCV vote — he was outvoted by legislators who were out sick most of the year, even some who died this year.

If you’re dead silent, is it still straight talk?

Also, nine new Congressfolk — backed by enviros on the campaign trails — all have high LCV ratings now. They’re already delivering on the green issues.

The LCV press release features three new Western Congressfolk:

* Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney, of California, scored 90 percent in 2007 (replacing Republican Rep. Richard Pombo, whose lifetime score was only 7 percent).

* Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, of Montana, scored 80 percent (replacing Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, whose lifetime score was only 5 percent).

* Democratic Rep. Harry Mitchell, of Arizona, scored 100 percent (replacing Republican Rep. J.D. Hayworth, whose lifetime score was 7 percent).

It’s good evidence of how enviros can have an impact in politics — even if they can’t get their issues into the presidential candidates’ debates. Blame that on the shallow national TV journalists who frame the presidential race.

Ed Quillen

Just about everybody I know in various mountain towns, including my own Salida in the middle of Colorado, has remarked upon the severity of this winter. Those who ski, or who get their livelihood from skiers, may profess to enjoy it, and just about everybody says “Well, the moisture will be good to have come spring run-off,” but you can tell that they’re struggling to find something nice to say.

Doubtless there are mathematical methods, based on years of National Weather Service statistics, to determine just how this winter ranks with such criteria as average daily snow depth, average wind velocity, mean daily high and low temperatures, etc. But most of us, I suspect, have come up with other ways to tell:
(Read on …)

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

They’re all the rage, because:

They use less energy. They save you money on your electricity bill. And they kind of save the planet, or at least, they reduce the upward trend of global warming.

So we’re all installing compact fluorescent bulbs in all the light fixtures in our houses.

Turns out, “there’s a catch.”

That’s the warning from the new Santa Barbara-based Miller-McCune think tank:

Low-energy bulbs — also known as compact fluorescent lamps — contain small amounts of mercury. … (And) when you break a bulb with mercury in it, the mercury instantly vaporizes in the air and poses a health risk to people who inhale it. The U.S. National Institutes of Health warns: “Exposures to very small amounts of mercury can result in devastating neurological damage and death.”

One country — the United Kingdom — has begun alerting the public:

So this month, as stores throughout the United Kingdom began pulling traditional tungsten bulbs from their shelves as part of a government mandate to completely replace them by 2011, ministers at the Environment Agency were simultaneously calling for more public education — including warnings printed on bulb labels — about the health and environment risks presented by low-energy lights.

As a sober BBC report put it: “Official advice from the Department of the Environment states that if a low-energy bulb is smashed, the room needs to be vacated for at least 15 minutes. A vacuum cleaner should not be used to clear up the debris, and care should be taken not to inhale the dust. Instead, rubber gloves should be used, and the broken bulb put into a sealed plastic bag, which should be taken to the local council for disposal.”

Sheesh. The Miller-McCune story is here. Is no type of progress completely safe?

Ray Ring

Senior Editor

I suspect this kind of problem occurs pretty broadly, in many of the efforts to improve energy use in homes and businesses.

The problem: Mostly it’s wealthy people who conduct such efforts. They can afford to invest in expensive energy hardware like solar panels and better insulation and efficient appliances and windows.

It’s ironic too, because often as a result, their monthly electricity and gas bills are reduced.

Meanwhile, people who can’t afford to invest in solar panels and better appliances and windows pay higher monthly utility bills.

Here’s a story in the LA Daily News, about a local government program where three-fourths of the benefits go to wealthy residents. It indicates the pattern.