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My opinion.. so could be wrong but I think the thing most of us will experience from global weirding is increased property insurance rates. Already saw this in an area with forest fire risk. I think we are likely to have longer fire seasons but also increased flooding in prone areas and more powerful storms. Do more powerful storms mean more and larger hail.. dont know, hope not. Most wont be directly affected.. but if the percent of claims go up and you are in that pool, your insurance rate goes up.
Their opinions on the natural resources are misguided.
1. We don't need more public land. The state has millions of acres of public land that has hardly anybody using or traversing through it. Animal populations seem to all be fairly well off and better than the last several decades. We don't need more wildernessed off, especially after the What we do need is better access to the land we do have with things such as improved parking lot capacity in popular areas. There's big swaths of national forest, particularly along hwy 285 that are "public" but are only accessible through individual trails that don't connect to a wider trail network and are almost deliberately hard to access.
2. Climate change is a dumb word that people use to mean "everything bad that's happening". Global warming is not a big problem for CO, unless it somehow comes with less rain, but that doesn't seem to be the prediction. What is a problem is our mono culture forests that got eaten by beetles over the last 20 years and are now dry tinder boxes. 2000 F fires are not healthy for any ecosystem. Some areas have done a good job addressing this problem like Summit County, but there's millions more acres that need to be looked at, and preferably replanted with a broader mix of species, so we don't have solid strands of single species forest replacing the single species forest that just died.
From a conservation standpoint, herbivore wildlife populations are in stasis in Colorado. I couldn't find any figures besides the hunting harvest counts for apex predators. Their numbers are often used as indicators of overall ecological health, and the number harvested hasn't particularly changed in the past decade at least. The point of National Forest Service isn't recreation but rather to manage land like lumber farms, and Colorado doesn't have much say over that.
Global warming is impacting Colorado like everywhere else. Annual average temperatures have increased 2°F statewide in just the past 30 years, which exacerbates both drought conditions and heavy precipitation events, particularly for lower areas with hotter summers. How the overall amount of precipitation is affected remains to be seen, but a less even distribution of precipitation is the projection, which leads to a more arid climate. https://wwa.colorado.edu/climate/co2...August2018.pdf
I wholeheartedly agree with increasing tree diversity in response to the increased range of the pine beetle. In general, I ascribe to the idea that just like we're smart enough to fight the environment and farm monocultures to feed us, we're smart enough to enrich nature to the point where we can harvest the abundance. We have to figure that out as the topsoils dry up and blow away.
Colorado will probably fare better than most places as the effects of global warming ramp up and exceed expectations, but it'll still require some fundamental changes to how we use land and how we store and allocate water.
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Originally Posted by waltcolorado
My opinion.. so could be wrong but I think the thing most of us will experience from global weirding is increased property insurance rates. Already saw this in an area with forest fire risk. I think we are likely to have longer fire seasons but also increased flooding in prone areas and more powerful storms. Do more powerful storms mean more and larger hail.. dont know, hope not. Most wont be directly affected.. but if the percent of claims go up and you are in that pool, your insurance rate goes up.
This is exactly what's happening. Insurance actuarials don't even look at the future, just past risk, and the patterns are becoming apparent. After Tropical Storm Barry, my cousin in southern Louisiana asked about the housing market in the Denver South Metro as she and her husband were considering job opportunities. She was shocked to see that once the insurance and income/property taxes factored in, the monthly mortgage payment in the Denver suburbs wasn't much more than a house there. One or two more hurricane seasons might tip that equation.
Last edited by Westerner92; 12-30-2019 at 10:30 AM..
The main animal that comes to mind is the resurgence of the moose, which went from 0 in Colorado to all over the state in like 50 years. It sounds like the pikas are doing ok, scientists just didn't really know where they all were https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0501085303.htm The smaller animals and bugs that seem to be fairing worse can really only be helped by additional habitat. Whether I'm biking next to a blue jay or not will not impact it's survival. And habitat is not really dependent on what the public status of the land is, whether that be wilderness, national / state forest, or private. All that changes is the amount of people wandering through and the roads and trails criss crossing the area. It's not like a private land owner is going to cut down the forest on a mountain side and plant hemp or making an area a wilderness will somehow boost seed production in the trees. In fact, one could argue private land owners have better maintained forests than a lot of COs national forest land.
Concerning overuse, it's not like we can tell people to stop going outside or stop visiting the state. The best way to combat overcrowding IMO is more trailheads and use areas and better advertisement of the lesser known areas. The Instagram phenomenon is definitely a problem where "check the box" tourism is completely over running the 5 star areas of the state. Permitting and fees are a good way to help prevent this, but the state of CO could do a better job at promoting lesser known spots in places like Clear Creek county, cause many of the mountain activities and scenery watching people people do can be done in this county, without clogging up the interstates trying to go 200 miles away. There's a lot of people hiking in Clear Creek county, but there's enough trails dispersing people out that it still has a wilderness feel. That's what's needed across the rest of the state.
Concerning climate change, this may be short sighted but it seems like it's increasing our snowpack more than anything due to the weakened jet stream allowing these polar vortexes to become more common, dumping a ton of snow. Hopefully it doesn't widen the precipitation gap, but that is yet to be seen. However, the CO2 particularly helps conifers and especially ones in arid regions by preventing excess transpiration, a double positive for CO.
That aside though, what is CO supposed to do to reduce carbon emissions? Make Xcel Energy have more renewables? They are already a nation leader in that front. Electric cars like Mr. Polis wants? It's debatable whether they will do anything at all to reduce CO2 when accounting for their production. Ban fracking? lol. All of these effects would be dwarfed by the carbon emissions from another Hayman like fire that could be prevented with better forest management and prescribed small burns. Improved forestry is our best card to play on the environmental front.
The main animal that comes to mind is the resurgence of the moose, which went from 0 in Colorado to all over the state in like 50 years. It sounds like the pikas are doing ok, scientists just didn't really know where they all were https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0501085303.htm The smaller animals and bugs that seem to be fairing worse can really only be helped by additional habitat. Whether I'm biking next to a blue jay or not will not impact it's survival. And habitat is not really dependent on what the public status of the land is, whether that be wilderness, national / state forest, or private. All that changes is the amount of people wandering through and the roads and trails criss crossing the area. It's not like a private land owner is going to cut down the forest on a mountain side and plant hemp or making an area a wilderness will somehow boost seed production in the trees. In fact, one could argue private land owners have better maintained forests than a lot of COs national forest land.
Concerning overuse, it's not like we can tell people to stop going outside or stop visiting the state. The best way to combat overcrowding IMO is more trailheads and use areas and better advertisement of the lesser known areas. The Instagram phenomenon is definitely a problem where "check the box" tourism is completely over running the 5 star areas of the state. Permitting and fees are a good way to help prevent this, but the state of CO could do a better job at promoting lesser known spots in places like Clear Creek county, cause many of the mountain activities and scenery watching people people do can be done in this county, without clogging up the interstates trying to go 200 miles away. There's a lot of people hiking in Clear Creek county, but there's enough trails dispersing people out that it still has a wilderness feel. That's what's needed across the rest of the state.
It really just depends on the species and time of year. Elk herds are seeing large declines in popular tourist areas because disturbing mothers during calving leads to calf death. https://www.hcn.org/articles/wildlif...orado-elk-vail
I don't disagree that private ownership can be good for forested land, but for states like Colorado, I think there should be a right to roam so that people can spread out exactly like you describe. I don't see the Colorado state government particularly being effective at influencing which instagram hotspots people want to go to.
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Concerning climate change, this may be short sighted but it seems like it's increasing our snowpack more than anything due to the weakened jet stream allowing these polar vortexes to become more common, dumping a ton of snow. Hopefully it doesn't widen the precipitation gap, but that is yet to be seen. However, the CO2 particularly helps conifers and especially ones in arid regions by preventing excess transpiration, a double positive for CO.
Once Arctic sea ice consistently completely melts in the summer (usually called the Blue Ocean Event), we'll get a better idea of the new climate paradigms. The most conservative estimates put it at 2030-2050, but given that most models assume rampdown in emissions and don't account for any feedback loops, namely that sea ice loss accelerates due to dark ocean absorbing heat, I would put my life's savings on it happening this decade.
The weakening jet stream is causing weather patterns to get stuck for weeks at a time, which is how an area can have increasing precipitation and become more arid at the same time. Increased snow pack up in the mountains won't mean much if we don't wisely manage water when we get weeks of 105°F in July and August down on the Front Range.
Do you have a source for conifers reducing transpiration in the presence of increased CO2? That's the first time I've heard about it. There's increasing evidence that due to beetle kill and other stressors, Colorado's forests (and tundra) are net emitters of CO2. https://gazette.com/news/front-range...5211db56b.html
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That aside though, what is CO supposed to do to reduce carbon emissions? Make Xcel Energy have more renewables? They are already a nation leader in that front. Electric cars like Mr. Polis wants? It's debatable whether they will do anything at all to reduce CO2 when accounting for their production. Ban fracking? lol. All of these effects would be dwarfed by the carbon emissions from another Hayman like fire that could be prevented with better forest management and prescribed small burns. Improved forestry is our best card to play on the environmental front.
That ship sailed in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Voters and politicians decided they'd rather have cheap disposables made in China and Mexico instead. We should be in damage control now and try to make our economy as self-reliant as possible by beefing up our infrastructure and natural resource management.
That said, the single most effective thing a government can do to reduce carbon emissions is putting a price on the emissions as soon as the fossil fuel comes out of the ground. When you price the full lifecycle of carbon at its source, existing economic structures don't even have to change, and reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint is simply a matter of saving money. The money from this pollution pricing can be used for environmental restoration projects, improving infrastructure, distributed as a dividend to taxpayers, heck, maybe even large-scale experiments with permaculture. We could even build more renewable power capacity and hand it directly back to oil companies since they're too shortsighted to make long-term investments. Cities would naturally infill. Demand for 80mpg cars and public transit would go through the roof. Manufacturers would majorly streamline their supply chains and focus on local sources of materials.
The problem with this is that since the US federal government won't do this, no one in the world will. The dynamics are changing now that China has built up a massive internal market, but it's still not an exaggeration to say that the federal government effectively sets the rules for the entire world's economic game, and it's currently incapable of doing anything more than maximizing quarterly report metrics. It's the prisoners dilemma, only instead of suspects deciding whether or not to rat each other out for reduced sentences (when they could have just cooperated and got off scot-free), it's billionaires deciding whether maximizing the numbers on a computer screen this quarter is worth billions dying of famine 30 years from now, when they could just cooperate instead. Fun times I get to inherit.
Last edited by Westerner92; 12-31-2019 at 09:35 AM..
It really just depends on the species and time of year. Elk herds are seeing large declines in popular tourist areas because disturbing mothers during calving leads to calf death. https://www.hcn.org/articles/wildlif...orado-elk-vail
I don't disagree that private ownership can be good for forested land, but for states like Colorado, I think there should be a right to roam so that people can spread out exactly like you describe. I don't see the Colorado state government particularly being effective at influencing which instagram hotspots people want to go to.
Once Arctic sea ice consistently completely melts in the summer (usually called the Blue Ocean Event), we'll get a better idea of the new climate paradigms. The most conservative estimates put it at 2030-2050, but given that most models assume rampdown in emissions and don't account for any feedback loops, namely that sea ice loss accelerates due to dark ocean absorbing heat, I would put my life's savings on it happening this decade.
The weakening jet stream is causing weather patterns to get stuck for weeks at a time, which is how an area can have increasing precipitation and become more arid at the same time. Increased snow pack up in the mountains won't mean much if we don't wisely manage water when we get weeks of 105°F in July and August down on the Front Range.
Do you have a source for conifers reducing transpiration in the presence of increased CO2? That's the first time I've heard about it. There's increasing evidence that due to beetle kill and other stressors, Colorado's forests (and tundra) are net emitters of CO2. https://gazette.com/news/front-range...5211db56b.html
That ship sailed in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Voters and politicians decided they'd rather have cheap disposables made in China and Mexico instead. We should be in damage control now and try to make our economy as self-reliant as possible by beefing up our infrastructure and natural resource management.
That said, the single most effective thing a government can do to reduce carbon emissions is putting a price on the emissions as soon as the fossil fuel comes out of the ground. When you price the full lifecycle of carbon at its source, existing economic structures don't even have to change, and reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint is simply a matter of saving money. The money from this pollution pricing can be used for environmental restoration projects, improving infrastructure, distributed as a dividend to taxpayers, heck, maybe even large-scale experiments with permaculture. We could even build more renewable power capacity and hand it directly back to oil companies since they're too shortsighted to make long-term investments. Cities would naturally infill. Demand for 80mpg cars and public transit would go through the roof. Manufacturers would majorly streamline their supply chains and focus on local sources of materials.
The problem with this is that since the US federal government won't do this, no one in the world will. The dynamics are changing now that China has built up a massive internal market, but it's still not an exaggeration to say that the federal government effectively sets the rules for the entire world's economic game, and it's currently incapable of doing anything more than maximizing quarterly report metrics. It's the prisoners dilemma, only instead of suspects deciding whether or not to rat each other out for reduced sentences (when they could have just cooperated and got off scot-free), it's billionaires deciding whether maximizing the numbers on a computer screen this quarter is worth billions dying of famine 30 years from now, when they could just cooperate instead. Fun times I get to inherit.
I've seen that elk article and I'm not sure I buy it. Bull elks kind of harass cows while they are young mothers. If humans were so different, elk wouldn't be as immune to them as they are in RMNP or the suburb areas like Black Forest where they seem to be fine tramping through peoples yards. I'd have to see more evidence.
It seems there's a good number of areas that aren't public land but people are fine with people hiking around. That Beaver Brook area by Evans has a lot of private land with trails running through it and that seems to be fine, or else they'd fence it off. It seems like as long as you aren't being stupid, near some industrial site, or in someone's back yard, they don't seem to care if you pass on through. But most people don't go bushwacking in random corners of public land, they stick to the trail, so we just need smarter access routes, not necessarily more raw acreage.
True about the feedback loops, it's hard to predict the future. But there will be mixed effects, like more drought resistant plants even if that comes with more erratic rainfall. Here's the article for CO2 with evergreens https://www.discovermagazine.com/env...ericas-forests. What happens is as trees get more CO2 per "breath" they need to have their stomata open less, meaning less transpiration and better drought tolerance, and apparently evergreens are better at taking advantage of this.
It's true that the Fed's haven't done really much of anything. In the past, GDP growth came from increased energy and resource usage. Over the last decades, we've been able to grow without really increasing farmed acres or big increases in energy use. Gasoline usage seems to have flatlined and there's a lot more corporate pressure on utilities, airlines, data centers, and the energy sector to clean itself up, seeming to fill in the gap a bit.
A simple gas tax would really help the situation though, I wish they would pass one. The demand for gasoline is so high oil producers are flaring off natural gas because it's so cheap no one want it.
I've seen that elk article and I'm not sure I buy it. Bull elks kind of harass cows while they are young mothers. If humans were so different, elk wouldn't be as immune to them as they are in RMNP or the suburb areas like Black Forest where they seem to be fine tramping through peoples yards. I'd have to see more evidence.
Different herds behave differently. Suburban herds on the Front Range and national park wildlife are obviously used to people year round. I’ve pet deer in Glacier National Park, but you can’t get within a quarter mile of the vast majority of deer without scaring them.
I buy the research in the article. I don’t believe bull elk have in Eagle County have collectively decided to kill off their herd for kicks.
- Leaders who treat climate resiliency with the weight and urgency it deserves.
- A governor who will actually show to whiny boomers, with numbers, that taxes have been continually decreasing since the 80s and to shut up if they don't want to pass any bonds that their pocketbooks won't even notice. Polis beats around the bush and clearly has ambitions for federal office.
- Tacking onto the above, any sort of fix for the conflict between the Gallagher Amendment and TABOR. This really hurts municipalities outside the Front Range.
- A Denver metro regional government so that comprehensive planning and funding can be done without thousands of municipal entities competing with each other and without involving state government. The Denver metro contains the majority of Coloradans, but I think we're all better off if Denver metro residents don't impose laws on the rest of the state because it tends to create unintended consequences for rural areas, like the example above.
- Ranked-choice voting
Oh hey, I actually got something on my wish list! Maybe getting rid of the ratchet down effect will help rural communities out since the state government won't have as much revenue. I'm gonna have a hard time figuring out what all I can do with my extra $70/year.
Also, it was fascinating to see the "Approval Voting" party on the ballot. I'm going to have to check them out and maybe get involved.
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