Category: General Interest

Evidence from Snowball Earth found in ancient rocks on Colorado’s Pikes Peak – it’s a missing link

Rocks can hold clues to history dating back hundreds of millions of years. Christine S. Siddoway

November 21, 2024

Liam Courtney-Davies, University of Colorado Boulder; Christine Siddoway, Colorado College, and Rebecca Flowers, University of Colorado Boulder

Around 700 million years ago, the Earth cooled so much that scientists believe massive ice sheets encased the entire planet like a giant snowball. This global deep freeze, known as Snowball Earth, endured for tens of millions of years.

Yet, miraculously, early life not only held on, but thrived. When the ice melted and the ground thawed, complex multicellular life emerged, eventually leading to life-forms we recognize today.

The Snowball Earth hypothesis has been largely based on evidence from sedimentary rocks exposed in areas that once were along coastlines and shallow seas, as well as climate modeling. Physical evidence that ice sheets covered the interior of continents in warm equatorial regions had eluded scientists – until now.

In new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, our team of geologists describes the missing link, found in an unusual pebbly sandstone encapsulated within the granite that forms Colorado’s Pikes Peak.

An illustration of an icy earth viewed from space
Earth iced over during the Cryogenian Period, but life on the planet survived. NASA illustration

Solving a Snowball Earth mystery on a mountain

Pikes Peak, originally named Tavá Kaa-vi by the Ute people, lends its ancestral name, Tava, to these notable rocks. They are composed of solidified sand injectites, which formed in a similar manner to a medical injection when sand-rich fluid was forced into underlying rock.

A possible explanation for what created these enigmatic sandstones is the immense pressure of an overlying Snowball Earth ice sheet forcing sediment mixed with meltwater into weakened rock below.

A hand holds a rock with dark seams through it and other colors.
Dark red to purple bands of Tava sandstone dissect pink and white granite. The Tava is also cross-cut by silvery-gray veins of iron oxide. Liam Courtney-Davies

An obstacle for testing this idea, however, has been the lack of an age for the rocks to reveal when the right geological circumstances existed for sand injection.

We found a way to solve that mystery, using veins of iron found alongside the Tava injectites, near Pikes Peak and elsewhere in Colorado.

A cliff side showing a long strip of lighter color Tava cutting through Pikes Peak Granite. The injectite here is 5 meters tall
A 5-meter-tall, almost vertical Tava dike is evident in this section of Pikes Peak granite. Liam Courtney-Davies

Iron minerals contain very low amounts of naturally occurring radioactive elements, including uranium, which slowly decays to the element lead at a known rate. Recent advancements in laser-based radiometric dating allowed us to measure the ratio of uranium to lead isotopes in the iron oxide mineral hematite to reveal how long ago the individual crystals formed.

The iron veins appear to have formed both before and after the sand was injected into the Colorado bedrock: We found veins of hematite and quartz that both cut through Tava dikes and were crosscut by Tava dikes. That allowed us to figure out an age bracket for the sand injectites, which must have formed between 690 million and 660 million years ago.

So, what happened?

The time frame means these sandstones formed during the Cryogenian Period, from 720 million to 635 million years ago. The name is derived from “cold birth” in ancient Greek and is synonymous with climate upheaval and disruption of life on our planet – including Snowball Earth.

While the triggers for the extreme cold at that time are debated, prevailing theories involve changes in tectonic plate activity, including the release of particles into the atmosphere that reflected sunlight away from Earth. Eventually, a buildup of carbon dioxide from volcanic outgassing may have warmed the planet again. https://www.youtube.com/embed/PLZze4Yok98?wmode=transparent&start=0 University of Exeter professor Timothy Lenton explains why the Earth was able to freeze over.

The Tava found on Pikes Peak would have formed close to the equator within the heart of an ancient continent named Laurentia, which gradually over time and long tectonic cycles moved into its current northerly position in North America today.

The origin of Tava rocks has been debated for over 125 years, but the new technology allowed us to conclusively link them to the Cryogenian Snowball Earth period for the first time.

The scenario we envision for how the sand injection happened looks something like this:

A giant ice sheet with areas of geothermal heating at its base produced meltwater, which mixed with quartz-rich sediment below. The weight of the ice sheet created immense pressures that forced this sandy fluid into bedrock that had already been weakened over millions of years. Similar to fracking for natural gas or oil today, the pressure cracked the rocks and pushed the sandy meltwater in, eventually creating the injectites we see today.

Clues to another geologic puzzle

Not only do the new findings further cement the global Snowball Earth hypothesis, but the presence of Tava injectites within weak, fractured rocks once overridden by ice sheets provides clues about other geologic phenomena.

Time gaps in the rock record created through erosion and referred to as unconformities can be seen today across the United States, most famously at the Grand Canyon, where in places, over a billion years of time is missing. Unconformities occur when a sustained period of erosion removes and prevents newer layers of rock from forming, leaving an unconformable contact.

Unconformity in the Grand Canyon is evident here where horizontal layers of 500-million-year-old rock sit on top of a mass of 1,800-million-year-old rocks. The unconformity, or ‘time gap,’ demonstrates that years of history are missing. Mike Norton via Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

Our results support that a Great Unconformity near Pikes Peak must have been formed prior to Cryogenian Snowball Earth. That’s at odds with hypotheses that attribute the formation of the Great Unconformity to large-scale erosion by Snowball Earth ice sheets themselves.

We hope the secrets of these elusive Cryogenian rocks in Colorado will lead to the discovery of further terrestrial records of Snowball Earth. Such findings can help develop a clearer picture of our planet during climate extremes and the processes that led to the habitable planet we live on today.

Liam Courtney-Davies, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Geological Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder; Christine Siddoway, Professor of Geology, Colorado College, and Rebecca Flowers, Professor of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

New Moffat Tunnel deal moves daily passenger train to mountain communities a step closer to reality: #Colorado officials and Union Pacific announce broad agreement for access to tunnel, tracks — The #Denver Post

The nearly-completed Moffat Tunnel in December 1927. By International Newsreel Photos – Original text : eBayfrontback), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47286692

Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (Nick Coltrain). Here’s an excerpt:

December 23, 2024

Colorado state officials and the Union Pacific Railroad reached a tentative agreement on the future of the 100-year-old Moffat Tunnel — and, in the process, set the stage to expand passenger rail service in the mountains between Denver and Craig, officials announced Monday. Barring any major hiccups between now and the formal signing in May, the state will extend the 99-year lease allowing Union Pacific to use the tunnel for another 25 years. In exchange, the state will receive expanded access to Union Pacific’s railroad tracks for passenger trains from Denver to northern Colorado over that time frame. The final technical details still need to be finalized, but the state’s key negotiators were confident Monday that this agreement would set the stage for final approval. If all proceeds smoothly, regular daily passenger train service between Denver and Grand County — a portion of the full corridor — could begin in time for the start of the ski season in late 2026. For several years, Amtrak has run the revived Winter Park Express ski train along that route seasonally, but only around weekends — including from Thursdays through Mondays this season. The mountain rail expansion could eventually lead to up to three roundtrip services per day between Denver and Craig, with several stops, including Winter Park and Steamboat Springs, along the way…The deal announced Monday will also settle the use of the Moffat Tunnel, with the expiration of the 99-year lease just weeks away. The state owns the tunnel and leases the tracks that run through it to Union Pacific, which other train operators can then pay to use.

The 6.2-mile Moffat Tunnel is the only rail tunnel in the state that spans the Continental Divide. It connects Gilpin and Grand counties west of Denver. At more than 9,200 feet in elevation, it is the highest point in Amtrak’s national rail network, according to Sky-Hi News. The tunnel serves as a crucial rail connection between the Front Range and the Western Slope, as well as the grander American West.

Moffat Tunnel/Rollins Pass. By Francisbausch – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78722779

Beautiful Bears Ears is at risk, again — Jonathan P. Thompson (High Country News)

Valley of the Gods and Cedar Mesa in Bears Ears National Monument. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson

Click the link to read the article on the High Country News website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

November 22, 2024

This story was originally published by The Land Desk and is republished here by permission.

On a mid-November evening I stood on a gravelly plain, shivering in the wind as clouds dangled their wispy fingers of snow onto Cedar Mesa to the north of me. The long sunset finally fizzled into darkness and I watched for the one-day-past-full moon to rise over the Valley of the Gods. But the dark horizon never yielded the anticipated orb. Instead, I was treated to evanescent shards of orangish light escaping through cracks in the clouds. 

I was in southeastern Utah on a nearly flat expanse of scrub-covered limestone some 1,200 feet above the winding and silty San Juan River. I was also just barely inside the boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument. At least for now. But the national monument protections on my little dispersed campsite, along with a good portion of the landscape I looked out upon, will likely go away shortly after President-elect Donald Trump takes office next year. 

Last week the New York Times reported that Trump will again shrink Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments back to the diminished boundaries he established in 2017. The 1.36-million-acre Bears Ears — which President Joe Biden restored in 2021 — will become a 200,000 acre national monument divided into two discrete units. Left out will be Valley of the Gods, Cedar Mesa, the Goosenecks of the San Juan, the White Canyon and Dark Canyon regions, and portions of Butler and Cottonwood Washes.

Raplee Ridge in Bears Ears National Monument. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson

The act is likely illegal, since the Antiquities Act only gives presidents the power to establish national monuments, not shrink or eliminate them. And it will revive lawsuits still pending since Trump’s previous shrinkage. But while the legal challenges wend their ways through the courts, Trump’s shrinkage will take hold (barring a court injunction). The draft management plan that federal officials and tribal representatives have worked on for years will be rendered obsolete before it’s even approved, and about 1.2 million acres of public land will be re-opened to new mining claims and oil and gas and coal leasing. 

There are the conservation consequences to think of, which I’ll get to, but more importantly is the symbolic significance. Bears Ears was originally proposed and conceived of and pushed by five sovereign tribal nations — with the backing of another two dozen tribes — who were looking to protect lands that had been stolen from them and put into the “public domain.” Representatives from those tribes had a hand in crafting the new management plan, which uniquely incorporates Indigenous knowledge into decision-making. 

By overturning the national monument, Trump is thumbing his noses at those same tribal nations, essentially telling them that their efforts and ties to this land are meaningless. As I stood out there dissolving into the darkness, a question arose: Why? Why the hell would a Manhattan real estate developer and reality show personality, who probably had never set foot on the West’s public lands, make such a cruel and thoughtless gesture? What was he hoping to achieve?

I’ve posited potential motives for the initial shrinkage. Trump wanted to curry favor with the powerful Sen. Orrin Hatch, of Utah, so he could gut Obamacare and get tax cuts for the wealthy through Congress. He wanted to help out his friends in the uranium mining and oil and gas industries. He wanted to repay Utah voters for abandoning their principles and voting for him.

Snow virgas over Cedar Mesa. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson

But the oil and gas industry isn’t exactly champing at the bit to drill in the Bears Ears area. There are many other more accessible and profitable places to chase hydrocarbons. And in 2017 the domestic uranium mining industry was virtually nonexistent, and its 200 or so employees hardly made for a significant voting bloc. Mark Chalmers and Curtis Moore, the CEO and VP of Energy Fuels, probably the most viable uranium mining and milling company out there, didn’t even donate to any of Trump’s presidential campaigns.

It really seems that Trump diminished Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments for no other reason than to dismantle the environmental legacies of his rivals and predecessors, former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. And given his cabinet picks so far, Trump is planning on more of the same in his second term. He “governs” out of greed and self-interest, first, followed closely by spite — aimed at liberals, his political rivals, and Republicans who don’t show enough fealty to him. 

The expected shrinkage won’t have an immediate impact on the landscape where the protections are lifted, which will simply revert back to federal land managed under the multiple-use mandate. Come Jan. 20, there will not be a battalion of drilling rigs marching upon the weird formations of Valley of the Gods or mines opening up in White Canyon’s cliffs.

Yet there will be longer term consequences. All of the debate and back and forth over the national monument has attracted more visitors to the general area, and that has brought more impacts. Taking away national monument status from most of those lands will not reduce visitation, but it will take away resources for and opportunities to manage their impacts. The Trump-era management plan, which was hardly a plan at all and replaced the tribal commission with a bunch of monument opponents, will remain in place, rendering what’s left of the national monument almost meaningless.

After Trump’s first shrinkage, speculators and would-be mining firms staked a handful of claims in lands that had been taken out of Bears Ears national monument. That was when the uranium industry was moribund. Now, higher prices, a renewed interest in nuclear power, and a ban on enriched reactor fuel from Russia has given the industry new life. While uranium production remains minimal, exploration has kicked up significantly, including in lands just outside the Bears Ears boundary. This time around we’re likely to see not only mining claims being staked soon after the shrinkage in places like White Canyon and Cottonwood Creek, but also exploratory drilling. Even if companies don’t have any short-term interest in mining in the area, the drilling can help them establish the claims’ validity, thereby increasing the likelihood that the right to mine those parcels would be locked in if a future administration or the courts were to restore Bears Ears. 

Plus, the shrinkage will make the land removed from the national monument more vulnerable to Utah’s attempt to seize control of all “unappropriated” public lands within the state’s boundaries.

Just as night became complete, the moon emerged from behind the clouds and cast a pale light over everything. At the same time, I saw my friends’ truck’s headlights bouncing up the road, so I trudged through the cold to guide them to the campsite. We laughed and talked and played music. One was still reeling from the shock of the presidential election’s outcome, the other, who works with rural communities across the West, had seen Trump’s victory as almost inevitable.

Eventually, I snuggled up in my sleeping bag in my little tent and emerged more than ten hours later, just as the moon was getting ready to set and the sun prepared to rise over the corner of the Carrizo Mountains along the New Mexico-Arizona border. The landscape around me slowly revealed itself as if awakening from slumber. Later, under the almost harsh blue sky, my friends and I made our way almost aimlessly across the scrub-covered plain, trying to avoid the Russian thistle that had proliferated after more than a century of cattle grazing and following the erratic cow paths when we encountered them.

At one point we heard the report of what sounded like a semi-automatic firearm being shot in the distance. It wasn’t a hunter, I’m sure of that. More likely a recreational shooter looking to waste some ammo before the proposed shooting ban goes into effect — though now it’s not likely to. Maybe they were targeting cans, or petroglyphs, or a desert-varnish-covered boulder or grazing cattle. I involuntarily flinched at each bang.

Sunset in Bears Ears National Monument. Photo credit: Jonathan P. Thompson

I walked with gratitude for the beauty all around and the freedom to wander through it. I walked with sadness, too, and anger at those who would try to reduce this place, this living landscape, to a pawn in their petty and vindictive game, and who would try to open it back up to corporations looking to wring every last particle of profit from it. But I also found hope in the knowledge that powerful tribal nations, land protectors and nonprofits will continue their fight to protect this land and challenge the spiteful attempts to diminish this place.

We came to the edge of the San Juan River gorge and dropped into it, following a path forged by gold prospectors back during the “Bluff Excitement” of the early 1890s, when folks thought they could get rich by scouring the San Juan River’s banks for flakes of gold. The gold rush fizzled before it got started, but the trail endures. After reaching its terminus, we stopped our banter and sat quietly and listened to the silty waters gurgle by slowly and watched a red tail hawk frolic reassuringly in the updrafts far above. The future is uncertain, but this much I know: Beauty will persist regardless of who occupies the White House.

Happy birth anniversary Mrs. Gulch

Mrs. Gulch’s landscape December 23, 2024.

Mrs. Gulch would have turned 70 today. Her family joked that she was their Christmas present back in 1954. I miss her and in particular I miss her sense of humor and wise counsel. Here’s a story from the first days of our 50 year marriage when we moved into my VW bus for the summer.

Mrs. Gulch Yellowstone National Park 1973.

Sense of humor

We camped for a few days at the Great Sand Dunes and then headed over to Monarch Pass to the Gunnison Valley. After we dropped into the valley Mrs. Gulch asked about lunch and decided she could create something, while moving towards Gunnison, with a can of tuna in oil that we had in the food box. The dilemma at hand was what to do with the oil. She slides the passenger window open and uses the lid to release the oil onto the highway.

Mrs. Gulch Great Sand Dunes June 1973.

In a little while I notice a car behind us, with it’s windshield wipers going, lights flashing, and horn honking. The driver had his head out the window which I figured out later probably served two purposes, my cussing out, and the ability to see the road. I concentrated on looking straight ahead not giving away the fact that I saw them behind me and overcame the urge to pull over to see what they wanted.

After a short while the driver moved his car into position for revenge. He pulled alongside and a little ahead of the bus while his passenger was shaking a can of pop preparing the contents for launch. When she popped the top the soda blew back into her window instead of coating the bus. They then took off west down US-50.

We couldn’t stop laughing, great belly laughs, howls of laughter, embarrassed red-faced laughter, guilty laughs for the trouble we had caused, and relieved laughter that they had sped away. This went on for a good long time and every time we looked at each other another round would break out.

After gassing up on the edge of Gunnison we were moving west down the main drag through town and saw them at a car wash. Of course this spawned another wave of guilty laughter. It would’ve been hard to deny culpability with tuna oil caked with road dust all along the side of our vehicle.

Mrs. Gulch

Wise counsel

Mrs. Gulch’s wise counsel that afternoon was to keep heading west up into the National Forest and find a place to camp — maybe for a couple of days.

Coyote Gulch’s VW Bus South Park 1973. Photo credit: Mrs. Gulch

Coyote Gulch’s excellent EV adventure: #Colorado, I’m coming home

Mrs. Gulch’s landscape December 8, 2024.

The Great American meditation
Two hands on the wheels two eyes on the road
Truck-stop sunsets and filling stations
That′s what you see when you’re always on the go

But I′m headed home
Colorado, I’m headed home
Colorado, I′m headed home

— Excerpt from Daniel Rodriquez’s, “Colorado”

Superbloom along Utah-128 May 22, 2023. A species of globemallow (I think) in the foreground.

I have to respectfully disagree with Daniel over the notion that taking those long highway treks are a meditation. When I meditate I try to clear my mind and the highway does not fit that bill. I think of a thousand things and with a nod to Gurdeep Pandher of the Yukon I try to use the tools that keep the thoughts positive. Mrs. Gulch tops the list of course, but those great hikes, reminiscing about family, canyons, flowers, trees, mountains, the big rivers in the Midwest, the wild rivers in the West, all creep into my head. Of course there’s the road trips with Mrs. Gulch starting that first summer when we moved into my VW Bus and the last trip where we followed the Colorado River from Rocky Mountain National Park to Moab.

Anyway, I logged 3,239 Google miles on the journey and visited 9 states. Hellchild was along for the long leg of the trip so there is yet another family road trip to log into long-term memory and chat about.

I took the collection of essays “Water Bodies: Love Letters to the Most Abundant Substance on Earth” along and it is one of the most inspiring reads the I’ve known. Laura Paskus’ introduction drew me in and the other authors and poets left me wanting more at the end.

Gertie and Frank Turner on their wedding day.

One of the essays dealt with place and I believe Denver is that place for me. Four generations of my family have lived on the Northside since the end of the 19th Century. Gertie’s family gave up on dryland farming in Wyoming and Frank’s family moved down from Jamestown, likely with the collapse of the silver market beginning in 1893.

Frank told Gertie in 1906, “There’s been a terrible earthquake in San Francisco and they are paying top wages for workers. I will go out there and work and save for a year, and then we’ll be married.”

He returned in 1911 with no dough in his pockets. He did bring back his memories of hopping trains and the Northwest’s forests and rivers. They finally tied the knot.

Coyote Gulch’s excellent EV adventure: “Get your kicks, on Route 66”

Tower Building in Shamrock, Texas erected in the early 1930s on U.S. Route 66.

On the drive from Thanksgiving dinner to CRWUA with Hellchild I was able to trace some of the route of old U.S. 66. I’ve really enjoyed the drive from Missouri to Arizona so far and last night we feasted on some great Indian (East) food in Holbrook. Forested hills to more open country, then Cholla and Mesquite, the mesa country in New Mexico, beautiful desert landscapes W. of Albuquerque, the S. edge of the Colorado Plateau in the Ponderosa pine forest, and farms, ranches, and windmills galore all the way! We didn’t have a good map but we crossed the Arkansas, Pecos, Rio Grande, and Little Colorado rivers over the past couple of days. Las Vegas is the destination today.

Plaque on the Tower Building in Shamrock, Texas erected in the early 1930s on U.S. Route 66.

The Tesla Model Y has performed flawlessly and the charging is a breeze due to the integration with the onboard navigation.

Along route U.S. 66 in Tucumcari, New Mexico.

NAT KING COLE ROUTE 66

Road trip do-over: Not an excellent EV adventure so far

Tesla Model Y from Avis November 26, 2024.

So when I got to the Hertz rental office yesterday they did not have a Polestar as I had reserved so the clerk said they would substitute similar vehicle, a Suburu Solterra. I thought, “Okay, that might be a nice ride.”

I motored east on I-70 thinking that I would do a first charge in Limon where I had charged my Leaf before because it showed up on a map from an app recommended by Hertz. When I arrived at the charging location the chargers were all offline. When I checked the ChargePoint app later the location didn’t show up which tells me that it has been closed.

It was a bummer but I had enough charge to get Flagler where I had also charged my Leaf there once before. When I connected I was immediately stunned by the charger telling me that it would take more than two hours to 100%. This can’t be right I thought, the charger (Electrify America) is capable of providing 350 KW of shared charge. I called Hertz and was told that the Solterra does not charge at Level 3. The only cars they have that charge at Level 3 are Teslas and Polestars.

I charged enough to get back home (3% charge when I arrived), hooked up to my Level 2 charger for an hour or so, then returned the car.

While charging at Flagler I called Avis to rent a Tesla. I picked up the car (Model 3) this morning and it crapped out just before Central Park Avenue on I-70. After being towed back to Avis I now have a different Tesla (Model Y) and am heading out again.

Coyote Gulch outage

I’m heading out for Thanksgiving dinner with Hellchild and then to Las Vegas for the Colorado River Water Users Association Conference December 4-6, 2024. Posting my be intermittent. Hertz didn’t have a Polestar this morning so I’m in a Suburu Solterra.

The Colorado killer tornadoes of November 4, 1922 — Russ Schumacher #Colorado #Climate Center (@rschumacher.cloud)

A cafe along Colorado Street in Sugar City. By Jeffrey Beall – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59695205

Click the link to read the blog post on the Colorado Climate Center website (Russ Schumacher). Click the link to read Russ’ article:

November 5, 2024

A couple years ago, before we had a blog, I put together an analysis of a truly remarkable severe weather event from Colorado history on its 100th anniversary: the killer tornadoes of November 4, 1922.

There’s not much comparison for this storm: it was one of the deadliest tornado outbreaks in state history, and it happened in November (!) in the early morning (!!). I took a look back both at what happened, and tried to recreate what the storms might have looked like using a modern weather prediction model. I figured it was worth sharing the link here on the blog, in case it might be of interest on the 102nd anniversary: https://www.authorea.com/users/334136/articles/593038-the-colorado-killer-tornadoes-of-november-4-1922 . It’s an interesting and tragic piece of Colorado weather and climate history.

Article about the Mossman family that was killed by the tornado, from the Sugar City Gazette, November 10, 1922. Kindly provided by Annette Barber of the Crowley County Heritage Center.

My family lived the horrors of Native American boarding schools – why Biden’s apology doesn’t go far enough

A photograph archived at the Center for Southwest Research at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque shows a group of Indigenous students who attended the Ramona Industrial School in Santa Fe. AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan

Rosalyn R. LaPier, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

I am a direct descendant of family members that were forced as children to attend either a U.S. government-operated or church-run Indian boarding school. They include my mother, all four of my grandparents and the majority of my great-grandparents.

On Oct. 25, 2024, Joe Biden, the first U.S. president to formally apologize for the policy of sending Native American children to Indian boarding schools, called it one of the most “horrific chapters” in U.S. history and “a mark of shame.” But he did not call it a genocide.

Yet, over the past 10 years, many historians and Indigenous scholars have said that what happened at the Indian boarding schools “meets the definition of genocide.”

From the 19th to 20th century, children were physically removed from their homes and separated from their families and communities, often without the consent of their parents. The purpose of these schools was to strip Native American children of their Indigenous names, languages, religions and cultural practices.

The U.S. government operated the boarding schools directly or paid Christian churches to run them. Historians and scholars have written about the history of Indian boarding schools for decades. But, as Biden noted, “most Americans don’t know about this history.”

As an Indigenous scholar who studies Indigenous history and the descendant of Indian boarding school survivors, I know about the “horrific” history of Indian boarding schools from both survivors and scholars who contend they were places of genocide.

Was it genocide?

The United Nations defines “genocide” as the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Scholars have researched different cases of genocide of Indigenous peoples in the United States.

Historian Jeffery Ostler, in his 2019 book “Surviving Genocide,” argues that the unlawful annexation of Indigenous lands, the deportation of Indigenous peoples and the numerous deaths of children and adults that occurred as they walked hundreds of miles from their homelands in the 19th century constitute genocide.

The mass killings of Indigenous peoples after gold was found in the 19th century in what is now California also constitutes genocide, writes historian Benjamin Madley in his 2017 book “An American Genocide.” At the time, a large migration of new settlers to California to mine gold brought with it the killing and displacement of Indigenous peoples.

Other scholars have focused on the forced assimilation of children at Indian boarding schools. Sociologist Andrew Woolford argues that scholars need to start calling what happened at Indian boarding schools in the 19th and 20th century “genocide” because of the “sheer destructiveness of these institutions.”

Woolford, a former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, explains in his 2015 book “This Benevolent Experiment” that the goal of Indian boarding schools was the “forcible transformation of multiple Indigenous peoples so that they would no longer exist as an obstacle (real or perceived) to settler colonial domination on the continent.”

A black and white photo shows students seated in rows in a classroom, while the instructor is standing in front.
First- and second-grade students sit in a classroom at the former Genoa Indian Industrial School in Genoa, Neb. Researchers are now trying to locate the bodies of more than 80 Native American children buried near the school. National Archives/AP

Indigenous writers have explained how this transformation at Indian boarding schools occurred. “Federal agents beat Native children in such schools for speaking Native languages, held them in unsanitary conditions, and forced them into manual and dangerous forms of labor,” writes Indigenous law professor Maggie Blackhawk.

What my grandmother witnessed

Secretary of the Interior Debra Anne Haaland has stated that every Native American family has been impacted by the “trauma and terror” of Indian boarding schools. And my family is no different.

One of the more horrific stories that my maternal grandmother shared with her grandchildren was that she witnessed the death of another student. They were both under the age of 10. The student died of poisoning after lye soap was put in her mouth as a punishment for speaking her Indigenous language.

We know that similar punishments happened and children died at Indian boarding schools. The Department of Interior reported in 2024 that 973 children died at Indian boarding schools.

Tribes are increasingly seeking the return of the remains of children who died and are buried at Indian boarding schools.

A man seems to look intently as he digs with a shovel.
A worker digs for the suspected remains of children who once attended the Genoa Indian Industrial School, on July 11, 2023, in Genoa, Neb. AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Lasting legacy

The U.S. government is beginning to encourage survivors to tell their stories of their Indian boarding school experiences. The Department of the Interior is in the process of recording and documenting their stories on digital video, and they will be placed in a government repository.

At 84 years old, my mother is the only living Indian boarding school survivor in our family. She shared her story with the Department of the Interior this past summer, as did dozens of other survivors.

Haaland stated these “first person narratives” can be used in the future to learn about the history of Indian boarding schools, and to “ensure that no one will ever forget.”

“For too long, this nation sought to silence the voices of generations of Native children,” Biden added at the apology ceremony, “but now your voices are being heard.”

As a descendant of Indian boarding school survivors, I appreciate President Biden’s apology and his effort to break the silence. But, I am also convinced that what my mother, grandmother and other survivors experienced was genocide.

Rosalyn R. LaPier, Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Eight #Colorado counties receive funding to improve urban tree canopy — Colorado State Forest Service

Students collect tree measurements on the Colorado State University campus on March 19, 2024. Tree surveys are one of the tasks funded by the Colorado IRA UCF grants. Photo: Field Peterson, CSFS

Click the link to read the release on the Colorado State Forest Service website:

October 23, 2024

The Colorado State Forest Service announced awards for the first round of funding for the Colorado Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Urban and Community Forestry (UCF) grant program. The CSFS created the new grant program with IRA funding from the U.S. Forest Service, and the money will be used to improve the tree canopy in communities in disadvantaged areas across Colorado. In total, the CSFS will award $1.6 million for 11 projects in 8 counties across Colorado.   

“This infusion of funding for urban forestry into some of our most vulnerable communities is overdue,” said Matt McCombs, state forester and director of the CSFS. “This is a historic investment in trees and one that will transform the canopy in these communities. Healthy trees and a flourishing urban canopy will improve the lives of Coloradans by providing more shade, cleaner air, and more beautiful places to work, live and play.”  

The funded projects include a variety of activities that will improve Colorado’s urban forests: 

  • Planting hundreds of trees 
  • City tree inventories 
  • Community outreach events 
  • Removal of hazard trees and storm-damaged trees 
  • Hiring arborists, interns and tree stewards  

“I’m excited to work closely with these communities as they make long-lasting investments to their urban trees,” said Cori Carpenter, tree equity specialist at the CSFS. “Many of these towns don’t have dedicated forestry staff, so this funding source is really the only way they can make much-needed improvements to their community’s tree canopy.” 

For the first round of Colorado IRA UCF grants, the CSFS received 23 eligible applications requesting more than $4.7 million. Since $1.6 million was available for this round of grants, 12 projects totaling more than $3 million could not be funded. Another $1 million will be available through the grant program each year in 2025 and 2026.  

These counties received Colorado IRA UCF funds during this funding cycle: Adams, Alamosa, Boulder, Chaffee, Las Animas, Mesa, Sedgwick and Yuma. Review a full list of awardees. 

The CSFS will announce the next round of funding assistance through the Colorado IRA UCF grant program in spring 2025. Learn more about the Colorado IRA UCF grant program.  

Let’s check in and see how October temperatures in #Alaska have changed over the last 50 years — Brian Brettschneider (@Climatologist49)

Aurora Borealis images from northern #Colorado October 10, 2024

Two of my colleagues at the City of Thornton granted me the permission to use the photos below.

Northern Lights from northern Colorado near Thornton October 10. 2024. Photo credit: Matt Stockton
Northern Lights from Nunn October 10, 2024. Photo credit: Karen Langston
Northern Lights from Nunn October 10, 2024. Photo credit: Karen Langston

Urban Agriculture Takes Root: USDA and Partners Connect in #Colorado — NRCS

Photo credit: NRCS

Click the link to read the article on the Natural Resources Conservation Service website:

October 2, 2024

Over 40 attendees gathered for the first Urban Agriculture Connector’s Meeting at the CSU Spur campus in the heart of Denver on September 26th. This groundbreaking event brought together a diverse group of stakeholders, including representatives from federal, state, and local governments, non-profit organizations, and urban agriculture producers. The meeting served as a nexus for networking and learning about the myriad resources available for urban agriculture.

The meeting marks a milestone in the USDA’s continuing commitment to urban agriculture. In 2018, the USDA established the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production, showcasing its dedication to including urban, small-scale, and innovative producers in its support of agriculture in all its forms. This office plays a crucial role in coordinating across USDA agencies to ensure that the needs of urban producers are met and adapted to as the landscape of agriculture evolves.

Cindy Einspahr, NRCS Outreach & Beginning Farmer/Rancher Coordinator, emphasized the importance of the event, stating, “The Urban Conservation Connectors meeting will be an excellent opportunity to connect with the urban agriculture community and establish new relationships. This is only the beginning of numerous meetings to follow.”

The event kicked off with a warm welcome from Petra Popiel, NRCS State Public Affairs Specialist. Setting a collaborative tone for the day, attendees had the opportunity to introduce themselves and share their background and interest in urban agriculture.

Elizabeth Thomas, FSA Outreach & Administrative Specialist, provided an overview of USDA conservation assistance available in urban settings and discussed strategies for providing resources to historically underserved farmers. The focus on urban conservation underscores the USDA’s recognition of the unique challenges and opportunities presented by city-based agriculture.

The meeting featured presentations from a diverse array of urban agriculture partners, each bringing their unique perspective and expertise to the table. Presenters included:

  • Consumption Literacy Project
  • Colorado Department of Education-School Nutrition Unit
  • Denver Department of Public Health & Environment
  • Denver Urban Gardens (DUG)
  • Farm Service Agency (FSA)
  • Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS)
  • Rural Development (RD)
  • Shannon Dobbs/Food System Hackers
  • US Department of Health and Human Services

This wide-ranging group of presenters highlighted the interdisciplinary nature of urban agriculture, touching on aspects from education and public health to innovative farming techniques and community development.

As the meeting drew to a close, discussions turned to the future of urban agriculture in Colorado. The NRCS is committed to continuing its work with urban agriculture and keeping the conversation going by asking the crucial question: “What is Urban Ag in Colorado?”

As urban populations continue to grow and the demand for locally-sourced, sustainable food increases, the importance of urban agriculture cannot be overlooked. The Urban Agriculture Connector’s Meeting represents a significant step forward in fostering the relationships, knowledge-sharing, and resource allocation necessary to support producers and communities.

By bringing together a diverse group of stakeholders and focusing on the unique needs of urban producers, the USDA and its partners are laying the groundwork for a more inclusive and sustainable agricultural future. The connections made and ideas shared at this event will undoubtedly sprout into innovative projects and collaborations that will shape the landscape of urban agriculture in Colorado and beyond.

Jen Bousselot and Amanda Salerno plant seedlings at CSU Spur alongside City of Denver employees Colin Bell and Austin Little. Photo credit: Colorado State University

Grand Valley Power plans to use a federal grant to reduce wildfire-related dangers and boost system reliability in the Mesa Lakes area — The #GrandJunction Daily Sentinel

Grand Junction back in the day with the Grand Mesa in background

Click the link to read the article on The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel website (Dennis Webb). Here’s an excerpt:

October 4, 2024

Grand Valley Power plans to use a federal grant of nearly $2 million to bury 4.1 miles of existing power line serving the Mesa Lakes area to reduce wildfire-related dangers and boost system reliability. The local not-for-profit rural electric cooperative has received $1,947,204 from the U.S. Department of Energy through the Wildfire Assessment and Resilience for Networks project, or WARN. WARN funding comes from the department’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program created by the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. Grand Valley Power is a member of a consortium of 38 electric co-ops and other rural utilities selected to receive federal funding through WARN, it said in a news release. It will provide matching funds for the Mesa Lakes project. It expects the work to begin in late spring after the winter snow has melted.

R.I.P. Kris Kristofferson, “‘Cause there’s somethin’ in a Sunday that makes a body feel alone” — The New York Times

Kris Kristofferson with Rita Coolidge at the 1972 Dripping Springs Reunion. By Bozotexino at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19963094

Click the link to read the obit on The New York Times website (Bill Friskics-Warren). Here’s an excerpt:

September 29, 2024

He wrote songs for hundreds of other artists, including “Me and Bobby McGee” for Janis Joplin and “Sunday Morning Coming Down” for Johnny Cash, before a second act in film.

Kris Kristofferson, the singer and songwriter whose literary yet plain-spoken compositions infused country music with rarely heard candor and depth, and who later had a successful second career in movies, died at his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday. He was 88. His death was announced by Ebie McFarland, a spokeswoman, who did not give a cause. Hundreds of artists have recorded Mr. Kristofferson’s songs — among them, Al Green, the Grateful Dead, Michael Bublé and Gladys Knight and the Pips. Mr. Kristofferson’s breakthrough as a songwriter came with “For the Good Times,” a bittersweet ballad that topped the country chart and reached the Top 40 on the pop chart for Ray Price in 1970. His “Sunday Morning Coming Down” became a No. 1 country hit for his friend and mentor Johnny Cash later that year…

Kris Kristofferson & Johnny Cash – Sunday morning coming down (1978 Johnny Cash Christmas Show)

Mr. Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge, who were married for much of the ’70s, won Grammy Awards for best country vocal performance by a duo or group with “From the Bottle to the Bottom” (1973) and “Lover Please” (1975). They also appeared in movies together, including Sam Peckinpah’s gritty 1973 western, “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid,” in which Mr. Kristofferson played the outlaw Billy the Kid. Peckinpah cast Mr. Kristofferson in the film after seeing him perform at the Troubadour in Los Angeles and in “Cisco Pike” (1972), his big-screen debut.

Martin Scorsese then cast Mr. Kristofferson, whose rugged good looks lent themselves to the big screen, as the laconic male lead, alongside Ellen Burstyn, in the critically acclaimed 1974 drama “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” He later starred opposite Barbra Streisand in Frank Pierson’s 1976 remake of “A Star Is Born,” a performance for which he won a Golden Globe Award. Over four decades Mr. Kristofferson acted in more than 50 movies, among them the 1980 box-office failure “Heaven’s Gate” and John Sayles’s Oscar-nominated 1996 neo-western “Lone Star.” Singer-songwriters may not be the likeliest of movie stars, but Mr. Kristofferson consistently revealed onscreen a magnetism and command that made him an exception to the rule. In 2006 he was inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame, along with Matthew McConaughey, Cybill Shepherd and JoBeth Williams. Mr. Kristofferson’s last major hit as a recording artist was “The Highwayman,” a No. 1 country single in 1985 by the Highwaymen, an outlaw-country supergroup that included his longtime friends Waylon Jennings, Mr. Nelson and Mr. Cash.

#Westminster pulls out of Rocky Flats tunnel and bridge access project, citing health concerns: Council’s 4-3 vote means the city will not contribute nearly $200,000 it owes for the project — The #Denver Post

Rocky Flats circa 2007

Click the link to read the article on The Denver Post website (John Aguilar). Here’s an excerpt:

September 29, 2024

Westminster is making it clear the city doesn’t want to increase access to hikers and cyclists visiting the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge — the one-time site of a Cold War nuclear weapons plant that continues to spark health worries 30 years after it closed. The city last week became the second community surrounding the 6,200-acre federal property to withdraw from an intergovernmental agreement supporting construction of a tunnel and bridge into the refuge, home to more than 200 wildlife species, including prairie falcons, deer, elk, coyotes and songbirds. Broomfield exited the $4.7 million Federal Lands Access Program agreement four years ago, and both cities point to potential threats to public health from residual contamination at the site — most notably the plutonium that was used in nuclear warhead production over four decades — for their withdrawal…

Westminster’s withdrawal comes less than a month after a federal judge denied several environmental organizations a preliminary injunction that would have stopped the project cold. The plaintiffs had sued federal agencies in January, claiming the refuge is not fit for human use.

As part of the City Council’s 4-3 vote last week, Westminster will not pay the nearly $200,000 it owes to the project. The city also will no longer complete a 0.4-mile trail segment in its Westminster Hills Open Space property that would bring hikers and cyclists traveling from the east to the bridge to cross into Rocky Flats.

Microplastics: Meant to last, just not forever and not in our bodies — #Colorado State University

Photo credit: Colorado State University

Click the link to read the release on the Colorado State University website (Mark Gokavi):

September 2024

Megan Hill is an assistant professor of chemistry and leader of the Hill Lab in Colorado State University’s College of Natural Sciences. Her research leverages organic chemistry to design advanced polymeric materials for applications in sustainability, catalysis and soft materials. She recently sat down with SOURCE to answer some common questions.

What are microplastics?

Given their name, they are micro-sized bits of plastic. There are even smaller nanoplastics that are below that (.5 mm in diameter) threshold (about the size of a grain of rice). They are pieces of plastic that have broken down but never fully degraded.

How long has synthetic, mass-produced plastic been around?

Let’s say about 100 years. Chemists spent a lot of time and effort optimizing polymerization techniques, eventually making catalysts that enabled extremely fast, cheap and easy production of plastic materials. Once the industry realized how useful these lightweight, durable and cheap materials were, then it just kind of exploded. It’s much more complex than that because there was government assistance in making these types of products more affordable. Within the last 10 to 20 years, people started to realize, “Wow, this stuff is still around, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going away anytime soon.”

Dr. Megan Hill at Colorado State University where she teaches. “There’s not a future that is without plastic, but there should be a future with much less and better plastic.” Photo credit: Colorado State University

Have we had better living through chemistry, i.e. plastics, in the past century?

You absolutely have to take that into account. Plastics make cars and airplanes lighter, reducing the amount of fuel that is needed. Wind turbines are made from epoxy resins, crosslinked polymer networks. Polyethylene is used in hip replacements, and Kevlar is something that saves people’s lives. These are all plastic materials.

What are the unintended consequences?

We’ve never had to deal with materials that have such a long lifetime. Every material that we’ve worked with in the past has been environmentally degradable over at least long periods of time. People didn’t realize how long it would actually take these materials to degrade. But now we are facing the fact that nearly every piece of plastic that has ever been made still exists, except for a small percentage that has been incinerated. 

Is it bad that microplastics are found in virtually every part of human bodies?

We still have a lot to learn about how microplastics affect our health. Initially, it was thought that it wouldn’t be that big of an issue because particles have to be really small to pass through your esophagus or digestive tract, so we assumed microplastics would not persist in the body. But as these particles have become smaller and smaller, now they’re accumulating in tissues and throughout our bodies. We are still not sure what this means to our health. Plastics are designed to be inert, so the chemical structures are not likely interacting with anything in our body, but they are foreign objects that your body will likely react to. There’s still a lot unknown about the severity or what might actually happen as these particles accumulate more in animals and then humans as it goes up the food chain.

Dr. Megan Hill in the chemistry lab at Colorado State University where she teaches. Photo credit: Colorado State University

What’s an example of your lab’s research in polymers?

One area of research our lab focuses on is integrating reversible or degradable bonds into polymer networks and backbones. By making some of the bonds reversible, we can improve the ability for the materials to be broken and reformed, without compromising their material properties — a big problem plastic recycling is currently facing. Another CSU group has pioneered polymer materials that can be chemically recycled, a route that enables polymers to be broken down to their starting materials so they can be remade into the high-quality materials that are needed in industry.  

What does it mean for a polymer to be sustainable?

It means finding starting materials that aren’t derived from oil. [ed. emphasis mine] It means using processes that are less energy intensive. It means thinking about the end-of-life of the materials we are making. We still aren’t exactly sure how long it’s OK for something to persist in the environment, and the answer will certainly depend on several different circumstances, but it needs to be addressed. Something I find hopeful and inspiring is how the whole polymer community, and chemistry community, has refocused our attention on these issues. I wouldn’t say that anyone’s doing research now without thinking about the end fate of the materials they are making, which is something that people just didn’t consider before.

What are some positive developments?

Scientists have teamed up and come up with some really promising solutions. They have developed new recycling methods, they have engineered enzymes that are more efficient at breaking down plastics, they have developed catalysts that can convert plastics into useful chemicals, etc. There is also funding for researchers to develop sustainable materials, figure out creative methods to tackle the abundance of plastic waste, and for people to start companies. So I see a very bright future in this. It would help if the government would make plastic a little more expensive or have some sort of incentives to get companies to stop using it. It’s incredibly difficult for individual consumers to avoid all the plastic that is cheap and easy.

What can people do to help?

Every little action helps. Support companies that try to steer away from plastics, vote for politicians who support research, and if you can, spend or give a little extra money to show it’s something you care about.

Top 10 sources of plastic pollution in our oceans.

Coyote Gulch outage

Map of the greater Colorado River Basin which encompasses the Colorado Plateau. Credit: GotBooks.MiraCosta.edu

I’m in Dolores tonight camped near the Dolores river. We’re over here for a little R & R on the eastern edge of the Colorado Plateau.

Blazing Tuesday sunset. #SanLuisValley #Colorado

Sunset September 10, 2024 in the San Luis Valley. Photo credit: Alamosa Citizen

Happy #LaborDay 2024

Silverton’s Greene Street, once a strong Union town photo via The Denver Public Library.

As Global Hunger Levels Remain Stubbornly High, Advocates Call for More Money to Change the Way the World Produces Food — Inside #Climate News

Credit: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Click the link to read the article on the Inside Climate News website (Georgina Gustin):

August 26, 2024

High-level policy discussions have built momentum for “food system transformation” that would help farmers address the climate crisis.

As much of the world heads into the fall harvest season and agriculture once again enters international policy conversations, humanitarian groups are calling for fundamental changes to the global food system—not only to feed the world’s hungry but also to enlist more farmers in solving the climate crisis.

At the United Nations annual climate conference, being held this November in Azerbaijan, a working “hub” organized by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and conference leaders will focus on agriculture and food systems. Agriculture will also get the spotlight at an upcoming UN conference on desertification and at Climate Week in New York, during the UN General Assembly next month.  

This intensified attention on food systems, which generate between one quarter and one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions, adds to momentum building for the past couple of years as advocacy and policy groups have moved agriculture toward the forefront of climate policy discussions. In 2022 and 2023 at the UN’s annual climate conferences, referred to as COPs for conference of the parties, food systems and agriculture got increasingly higher billing.

“Food and agriculture is, indeed, a big part of the agenda again, heading into COP29. I think what we’ve seen in the past few years is a major change in that agriculture and food systems and food security are no longer confined to one small part of the conversation,” said Kaveh Zahedi, director of the office of climate change, biodiversity and environment at FAO. “It took about 20 COPs for food to be even mentioned at a COP. It was invisible.”

The attention, hunger and food advocacy groups say, can’t come soon enough: As agriculture’s role in the climate crisis has become more prominent, so have the inequities in the global food system, prompting more urgent calls for a major agricultural overhaul. 

Within 25 years, the world’s farmers will have to produce 50 percent more food than they do now, and already one in 11 people on the planet doesn’t have enough to eat. As climate change continues to fuel more disruptive weather events, from drought to floods, the UN estimates that 1.8 billion more people could be pushed into hunger by mid-century.

Credit: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

For the past three years, the number of hungry people around the world has stayed at frustratingly high levels, foiling aid and humanitarian groups that celebrated a decline in hunger through the previous decade. In its annual flagship report on global hunger published in July, FAO and the other major UN food agencies said that roughly 773 million people on the planet are facing acute hunger.

“We saw a big jump during COVID, but the numbers aren’t going down,” Zahedi said. “There are, of course, regional differences, but the number I find quite shocking—in Africa, one in five people face hunger.” In South America, where countries spend more on social programs, the numbers are heading in a positive direction, with 5 million fewer people going hungry on that continent in 2023 over the previous year, the FAO report found.

Wars, conflict and economic conditions are primary drivers of hunger. In Sudan, an ongoing civil war has pushed millions of people to the brink of starvation, as opposing sides have choked off supplies and weaponized the lack of food against their own people. The ongoing war in the Ukraine, a major wheat grower, has roiled global grain markets, raising prices. The Israel-Hamas war drove nearly 580,000 people into famine, the most severe level of food insecurity and the most severe crisis since the UN assessments began. By the latter part of 2023, the entire 2.2 million population of Gaza was facing crisis-level hunger, the FAO report said.

But climate change is, increasingly, becoming the primary driver in many parts of the world. 

“We have 18 countries where 71.9 million people face high-acute food insecurity because of weather extremes,” said Gernot Laganda, who leads climate and disaster risk reduction programs at the UN’s World Food Program (WFP). “So a larger number of countries with a larger number of people.”  

Most of these countries were in Africa and Latin America. In 2020, that number was 15.7 million in 15 countries, mostly in Africa, Latin American and South Asia.

The WFP, the world’s largest humanitarian aid organization, has only 50 percent of the funding it needs to reach the world’s hungriest people. It provides the bulk of the food aid distributed by relief agencies but is chronically stretched, bouncing from crisis to crisis. Laganda and others have called for years for the UN food agencies to change the way they respond to hunger by providing financing to potential victims ahead of a crisis.

“We didn’t see the Russian invasion or COVID coming,” Laganda said. But with improved technology for better predictive forecasting, experts can position resources in potential crisis areas before they happen, he explained. “We need to invest in these capabilities for countries that are getting hit the hardest. That’s not happening at the scale and speed that’s required.”

Laganda said that of all the funding in the international aid system, only 2 percent is in place ahead of time. The rest is raised and distributed on the fly.

“We’re not moving from a system that’s waiting for things to happen and then using very costly resources to absorb the shocks—we’re not moving from that age-old model into a model that pre-positions financing and makes that financing available before these shocks happen, which would gives us the time, and the communities [time], to brace for impact,” Laganda said. 

The July FAO report not only notes the stubbornly high number of acutely food insecure people across the world, but also emphasizes a need for better global financing to help lower- and middle-income countries adapt to weather extremes driven by climate change. In June, the Rome-based UN food agencies—WFP, FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)—met with COP organizers to plan for the Azerbaijan conference and called for an urgent scaling up in climate action and financing to help farmers, especially in politically fragile counties.

“All three Rome-based agencies are working closely with the incoming [COP] presidency to take this forward,” said Juan Carlos Mendoza, who directs climate efforts at IFAD. “There’s going to be an increased focus on financing.”

More of the funding needs to go toward helping farmers make their operations more resilient to climate shocks, by, for example, planting crops better suited for the conditions, taking steps to develop their soils to withstand drought or flood conditions, or growing crops and raising livestock in ways that don’t lead them to cut down trees. Deforestation is the largest source, globally, of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.

“By managing landscapes in a more integrated manner and improving farming methods to make farms more regenerative, we can make food systems more resilient,” Laganda said.

Graphic credit: Yellow Barn Farm

While “regenerative agriculture” is a somewhat fuzzy concept, conversations about it will be prominent at Climate Week in New York next month. 

“There’s a definition issue with regenerative agriculture, but we really define it in terms of outcomes,” said Roy Steiner, who leads food initiatives at the Rockefeller Foundation and will be a panelist at upcoming events during Climate Week. “Regenerative agriculture moves you toward better soil health, better biodiversity, better water quality and better farmer well-being. Ninety percent of agriculture in the world doesn’t meet that definition.”

The foundation’s research suggests that it will take $400 to 500 million over the next decade to transition more agricultural systems in that direction.  

Roughly $600 million a year in government subsidies goes toward agriculture, 80 percent of which flows to larger agricultural operations that grow or produce major commodities and tend to be more greenhouse gas intensive. The World Bank has even called for those subsidies to be redirected toward lower greenhouse gas-emitting farms and food production. 

“That 80 percent is not going to regenerative agriculture,” Steiner said.

This type of farming improves soils, making them better able to sequester planet-warming carbon dioxide, and produces livestock in less greenhouse-gas polluting ways. But it has benefits beyond greenhouse gas reductions.  

“Globally we depend on just a handful of crops,” Laganda said. “The diversification of food systems is an important part of the conversation. Diversified farms are more resilient.”

Greater resilience, Laganda said, will mean the world’s small-scale farmers can weather climate extremes better and feed their communities when a crisis strikes.

#Utah goes for the ultimate public land grab: Lawsuit would seize control of 18.5 million acres of your land — Jonathan P. Thompson (www.landdesk.org)

Credit: AI from the Land Desk

Click the link to read the article on the Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

August 23, 2024

🤯 Annals of Inanity 🤡

This week, the state of Utah filed a lawsuit looking to seize control of some 18.5 million acres of federal land in the state, culminating decades of effort by movements such as the Sagebrush Rebellion and Wise Use to wrest America’s public lands from the public’s hands. The suit only targets “unappropriated” lands, meaning those managed by the BLM that are not designated as national monuments, parks or conservation areas or wilderness areas. It’s not clear how this would apply to national monuments the state is looking to shrink or revoke, such as Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. 

Utah says it launched the legal action to “answer the constitutional question of whether or not the Federal Government can retain unappropriated lands in a state indefinitely.” And on the state’s website — standforourland.utah.gov — created solely to promote the suit, the state justifies the action by saying, “Federal overreach prevents Utah from actively managing public lands, impacting recreation, local economies, and resource development.” 

And they’re mad because the feds shut down a handful of trails to motorized travel (while leaving far more open to OHVs and jeeps and other internal-combustion-engine-propelled machines). Oh, yeah, and Gov. Spencer Cox is apparently feeling sensitive about his opponent and state lawmaker Phil Lyman out-wing-nutting him on public lands issues. So instead of his old “disagree better” routine, Cox has gone all in on the MAGA grievance party, in which he whines and cries about having too much public land in his state, even though that public land is easily the state’s most valuable asset and alluring draw. It’s all a vain and vacuous spectacle aimed at riling up the extreme right wing that is increasingly calling the shots in Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho. 

And one way to do that is to appeal to a sense of nostalgia for a past that never really existed, for which “Make America Great Again” is exhibit A. Exhibit B? The ad Utah posted on Twitter or X or Elno’s rantroom to build support for its lawsuit (I’ll get to the legal merits in a moment). Let’s take a look:

          The ad is overflowing with misinformation, but it tugs at the heartstrings and evokes that faux nostalgia, which is the objective, I guess. It does harken back to the wrong era, though: The Sagebrush Rebels’ glory days ended in 1976, when Congress passed the Federal Land Policy Management Act, and when President Jimmy Carter vowed to end the Western “rape, ruin, and run” ethos. And, besides, I’m pretty sure no RV-appropriate roads are being closed anywhere in Utah. The handful of routes that are going non-motorized are in the backcountry, and are mostly used by OHVs. 

          Okay, but let’s get to the legalese. First of all, Utah’s claim is baseless, because the 1894 Enabling Act, which paved the way to Utah’s statehood, gave up all right to the public domain (i.e. lands stolen from the Diné, Ute, and Paiute people). It reads: 

          That the people inhabiting said proposed State do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof.

          See that “forever” part? Well, we’re still within that timeline. 

          Utah’s complaint reads: “Nearly half of that federal land—roughly 18.5 million acres—is ‘unappropriated’ land that the United States is simply holding, without formally reserving it for any designated purpose or using it to execute any of its enumerated powers.” But then, in the very same paragraph, Utah contradicts the no-designated-purpose part by writing that the BLM “earns significant revenue by leasing those lands to private parties for activities such as oil and gas production, grazing, and commercial filmmaking, and by selling timber and other valuable natural resources that the federal government retains for its own exploitation.” 

          The formal purpose of unappropriated BLM land is just this, what’s called multiple-use in FLPMA. And, by the way, the federal government isn’t exploiting those resources — which belong to the American people. The oil and gas companies, livestock operators, mining companies, and recreationists are. Utah also fails to mention that a lot of that revenue comes back to the state and local communities. 

          Meanwhile all the taxpayer money the state is throwing away on spurious lawsuits, and on the ads to support them, ain’t coming back.

          But what’s most irking is Utah’s victim shtick. They feel like they’re being discriminated against because nearly 70% of the state is public land, while only 1% of Connecticut and New York or managed by the federal government. I guess Utah’s so-called leaders haven’t noticed that East Coasters are coming to Utah in droves, to visit or to live, and are stocking up the state’s coffers in the process. Are they coming for the sodas? The fry sauce? The backwards ass politics? 

          Nope. They’re coming for all of that public land. 

          The arrogance of the off-road vehicle lobby — Jonathan P. Thompson, January 2, 2024

          The AI intern made this. Not terrible, I guess. Credit: Jonathan P. Thompson/The Land Desk

          In a rather predictable — but still maddening — move, the off-road-vehicle lobby is suing the Bureau of Land Management over the agency’s Labyrinth Canyon and Gemini Bridges travel plan for off-highway vehicle use. Read full story

          🏠 Random Real Estate Room 🤑 

          A new report from CoreLogic finds 2.6 million homes in the West are in wildfire danger zones. That includes 1.26 million in California and more than 321,000 in Colorado. Damn. I reckon a lot of those folks have or will get a grim letter from their insurance company canceling coverage or hiking prices.

          📸 Parting Shot 🎞️

          Women and other changes in water: Women in water? Younger people with voices? Doug Kemper has seen those and other changes during his 40 years in Colorado water — Allen Best (@BigPivots)

          Doug Kemper near his home in Denver. Photo/Jill PIatt Kemper

          Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):

          August 19, 2024

          Women will be among the attendees at the Colorado Water Congress annual summer conference this week, and relatively speaking, lots of them.

          It wasn’t always so, says Doug Kemper, the executive director for the organization, Colorado’s largest group dedicated to convening discussions about water issues.

          Kemper, who is moving on in September after 20 years managing the Water Congress, recalls that when he got involved in Colorado water matters about 40 years ago, water meetings were very different. Young people were expected to sit in the back and listen, to pay their dues.

          “It wasn’t 100%, but the feeling was that you sit in the back and go along for the ride.”

          Water Congress – and by extension all water matters in Colorado – have become more intergenerational. And more diverse in gender.

          “You see a much higher percentage of women, and that just makes for a better (water) community. We are not where we need to be yet. But those are the two big changes in the makeup of the water community in the last 20 to 30 years, and especially in the last 10.”

          Also evident, at least in the agenda for Water Congress conferences in the last few years, has been the inclusion of native voices – including native women. This summer’s conference in Colorado Springs is no exception. In addition to sessions devoted to agriculture, the Colorado River and other topics, a half-hour is allotted to comments from representatives of both the Southern Ute and the Ute Mountain Ute tribes. Both speakers will be women.

          And yet another change, which can also be seen in the agenda for Water Congress but elsewhere, too, is the proliferation of locally based watershed groups.

          Kemper grew up primarily in Atlanta, and got his first college degree in Nashville before making his way to Colorado. Part of his motivation was the Colorado River. In a freshman class he had heard an explanation about the Colorado River Compact that stuck with him.

          “We were being told in 1973 – 51 years ago — that out West, they have these seven states that share the Colorado River, and you know what they did? They have allocated more water from the river than there is river.”

          Kemper remembers thinking, “What an interesting problem.”

          Colorado River headwaters-marker. Photo credit: Allen Best/Big Pivots

          Engineers are attracted  to problems, he says. “Not that I thought I had the solution. But I was fascinated by the problem.”

          By late 1980, with a degree in environmental and water resources engineering, he was in Colorado. (He later picked up a master’s in civil engineering and water resources from the University of Colorado-Boulder).

          At the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division, working on problems that are familiar yet today: ozone and particulates. But his greater interest was in water, and so he then worked for a variety of smaller consulting firms, working on everything from uranium mining to a job in Longmont that led to a deeper understanding of the conversion of water from agriculture to urban uses.

          By 1986, he was ready for a new challenge. He got hired by Aurora and eventually became the manager of water resources, a position that he held until 2005, when he left to oversee the Colorado Water Congress.

          Even when he started that position, Aurora was getting water from three different river basins in Colorado: The South Platte, the Arkansas and the Colorado.

          Aurora, working with Colorado Springs, wanted to expand its diversions from the Colorado River Basin through a project in the Eagle River Basin, near Vail, called Homestake II.

          The project, as proposed, was scuttled in the early 1990s, and it remains unclear whether any of that water will ever get diverted.

          In 1992, Denver and other Front Range water providers also were sent reeling when the Environmental Protection Agency refused to issue a permit vital for a giant diversion project called Two Forks. It would have enlarged diversions from Summit County – and even from the Vail area.

          From his Aurora Water office Kemper saw this and thought, “You know, we have to change our whole approach to water resources, at least in the cities.”

          He obtained training, at Harvard and elsewhere, on collaborative problem solving and consent building. The task: learn how to work with people in a high-conflict environment. That, says Kemper, defined the rest of his career — although, he adds, the us vs. them that dominated water thinking 50 to 75 years ago may not be entirely gone. “We may be coming back to that now.”

          Aurora has gone from a typical Front Range city, intent upon recreating landscapes from the Midwest or East, to one that aggressively promotes low-water landscapes. One educational tool is a demonstration garden near the municipal building. Photo/Allen Best

          Aurora, founded in 1891, began as a farming community. The population rapidly expanded from 11,000 in 1950 to 222,000 in 1990, when Kemper was trying to figure out where the water was to come from. (It is now 400,000).

          That was the era of big projects. Homestake and Two Forks were big, big projects. Their defeat forced cities to look at transfers from agriculture in Eastern Colorado and in smaller, more incremental ways.

          Something else also happened: water conservation. Per capita water use in the 20th century had been rising, in the case of Aurora from 110 gallons daily per capita in the mid-1950s to 180 gallons per capita by the 1980s.

          During the last several decades, that per-capita growth flattened and then declined. Aurora’s water use per capita is now at 115 gallons per day.

          We have low-water toilets and washing machines, but also new urban landscapes. Cities are also rising vertical. The denser housing reduces the amount of water devoted to front yards and backyards.

          Front Range cities have grown considerably but in the last 20 years without necessarily expanding water supplies.

          Concurrent with this change has been a revised attitude about water supplies in Colorado. Early in Kemper’s career, it was a mantra that Colorado had at least a half-million acre-feet of water on the Western Slope to develop.

          Any lingering thoughts in that regard have largely been shelved by the drought of the 21st century coupled with the aridification caused by a warming climate. Transmountain projects are expensive – and will the water even be there?

          Long-time Western Slope water activist Ken Neubecker credits Northern Water with taking local and envirornmental concerns seriously, in its project to enlarge diversions from Windy Gap, but he also says that Doug Kemper was a pioneer in the art of listening. Photo/Norhern Water

          Ken Neubecker credits Kemper with being a “pioneer in the changing of the guard.” He points to the attitudes of Denver Water in the 1960s and 1970s. He summarizes the attitude of at least one chief executive of Denver water during that time as being: “We have the water rights, we have more money than you, and we will see you in court.”

          Neubecker, a Glenwood Springs-area resident who was a long-term representative for American Rivers, says that Denver retained elements of this attitude even after it lost in the Two Forks battle.

          Other water diverters over time had become more willing to have discussions, to take the problems of the Western Slope interest and the environmental community more seriously. He credits in particular the wok of Northern Water.

          Denver Water, though, didn’t entirely shift until another Western Slope resident, Jim Lochhead, was hired to oversee the agency.

          Neubecker says that Kemper dramatically changed Water Congress. “Not overnight, but he shifted the organization’s thinking into greater inclusivity, the idea that ‘we’re in all in this together,’” he said. “And my position also changed,” he added, from “‘Hell no, not one more drop,’ to  ‘We can work together. And the Front Range can still get some of the water. It just depends upon how we do it.’”

          As for Kemper’s plans after leaving the Water Congress in September, he says he has deliberately chosen to have none. “I have never taken more than two weeks off literally from the time I was in 10th grade, So, right now, I am trying not to have any commitments. I’ll just let things happen.”

          Doug Kemper was surrounded by previous Wayne N. Aspinall recipients at the CWC Summer Conference, where he received the award.

          Forest Service orders Arrowhead bottled water company to shut down #California pipeline — The Los Angeles Times

          Credit: Blue Triton via Reddit

          Click the link to read the article on The Los Angeles Times website (Ian James). Here’s an excerpt:

          August 7, 2024

          In a decision that could end a years-long battle over commercial extraction of water from public lands, the U.S. Forest Service has ordered the company that sells Arrowhead bottled water to shut down a pipeline and other infrastructure it uses to collect and transport water from springs in the San Bernardino Mountains. The Forest Service notified BlueTriton Brands in a letter last month, saying its application for a new permit has been denied. District Ranger Michael Nobles wrote in the July 26 letter that the company “must cease operations” in the San Bernardino National Forest and submit a plan for removing all its pipes and equipment from federal land. The company has challenged the denial in court.

          Environmental activists praised the decision.

          “It’s a huge victory after 10 years,” said Amanda Frye, an activist who has campaigned against the taking of water from the forest. “I’m hoping that we can restore Strawberry Creek, have its springs flowing again, and get the habitat back.”

          She and other opponents say BlueTriton’s operation has dramatically reduced creek flow and is causing significant environmental harm. The Forest Service announced the decision one month after a local environmental group, Save Our Forest Assn., filed a lawsuit that alleged agency was illegally allowing the company to continue operating under a permit that had expired.

          #FossilFuels made the Olympics 5 degrees hotter: So did deforestation and animal agriculture — Heated #ActOnClimate

          Opening ceremony Summer Olympics Paris 2024. Photo credit: Olympics.com

          Click the link to read the article on the Heated website (Emily Atkin). Here’s an excerpt:

          August 1, 2024

          I haven’t had time to analyze media coverage of the 2024 Olympic Games. So I’m not sure how many stories about Tuesday’s dangerous heat in Paris mentioned that the high temperatures were fueled by climate change. But just in case you didn’t see, here’s an important stat: Fossil fuels, deforestation, and animal agriculture made outdoor temperatures at Tuesday’s Olympics about 5.2°F degrees hotter than they would have normally been.

          The reason we know this is because of incredible recent advancements in attribution science, which uses observational data and statistical methods to figure out how likely and severe an extreme weather event would be today, compared to how it would have played out in a world un-warmed by human activities. Specifically, the 5.2°F number comes from a “super rapid analysis” published Wednesday by World Weather Attribution (WWA), an international group dedicated to conducting and communicating attribution science. It found the heat wave that’s plagued France and other Mediterranean countries this July would have been anywhere from 4.5°F (2.5°C) to 5.9°F (3.3°C) cooler in a pre-climate-changed world. The average of that range is 5.2°F.

          And the idea that fossil fuels, deforestation, and animal agriculture caused this 5.2°F increase comes from basic climate science. Approximately 75 percent of current anthropogenic CO2 emissions come from fossil fuels, and anywhere from 13 to 20 percent come from agriculture, forestry and land use (AFOLU), according to the IPCC. In the AFOLU category, 45 percent of emissions come from deforestation, and 41 percent of global deforestation comes from beef production.

          I spell all this out because I want to make it clear: If we want the summer Olympics to continue to exist and be safe for athletes, we need to rapidly reduce emissions from these sectors. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: It’s not enough to say that “climate change” is screwing with the things we love. Communicators have to also be clear about why climate change is happening, so it’s equally clear what must be done.

          August 14th marks the anniversary of The American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978

          North American Indian regional losses 1850 thru 1890.

          North High School Class of 1969 55th Reunion September 21, 2024

          Remember, anyone from the Classes of 68/69/70 are invited to participate. Help us spread the word. Please post in the comments if you’re planning to attend.

          Project 2025’s extreme vision for the West: The demolition of public lands, water and wildlife protections are part of conservatives’ plan for a second Trump term — @HighCountryNews

          An aerial view of Assignation Ridge in the Thompson Divide area of Colorado. Project 2025 calls to restore mining claims and oil and gas leases in the Thompson Divide withdrawal area. (Courtesy of EcoFlight)

          Click the link to read the article on the HIgh Country News website (Michelle Nijhuis and Erin X. Wong:

          If Donald Trump is re-elected president in November, a coalition of more than 50 right-wing organizations known as Project 2025 will be ready with a plug-and-play plan for him to follow, starting with a database of potential administration appointees carefully vetted by coalition members; an online “Presidential Administration Academy” run by coalition members to school new appointees; and a 920-page policy platform called Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.

          Written by former members of the Trump administration and other conservative leaders, Mandate for Leadership exhorts its readers to “go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative state.” Among many other measures, it calls for radical reductions in the federal workforce and in federal environmental protections, and for advancing a “Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda.”

          The full text of Mandate for Leadership is below, preceded by an agency-by-agency overview of the proposals that could have the greatest impact on Western land, water and wildlife — as well as on Westerners themselves.

          DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR (p. 517)

          The Project 2025 recommendations for the Department of the Interior were primarily authored by attorney William Perry Pendley, a vociferous opponent of protections for public lands and wildlife. As acting director of the Bureau of Land Management during the Trump administration, he transformed the agency into what one high-level employee described as a “a ghost ship,” in which “suspicion,” “fear” and “low morale” abounded.

          Energy Policy

          Pendley notes that the energy section was written “in its entirety” by Kathleen Sgamma of the Western Energy Alliance, an oil and gas industry group; Dan Kish of the Institute for Energy Research, a think tank long skeptical of human-caused climate change; and Katie Tubb of The Heritage Foundation. They recommend reviving the “Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda” by: 

          • reinstating a dozen industry-friendly orders issued by the Trump administration’s secretaries of the Interior (p. 522);
          • expanding oil and gas lease sales onshore and offshore (p. 522);
          • opening the large portions of Alaska, including the Alaska Coastal Plain and most of the National Petroleum Reserve, to oil and gas exploration and development (pp. 523, 524);
          • halting the ongoing review of the federal coal-leasing program and working “with the congressional delegations and governors of Wyoming and Montana to restart the program immediately” (p. 523);
          • restoring mining claims and oil and gas leases in the Thompson Divide of the White River National Forest in Colorado and the 10-mile buffer around Chaco Cultural Historic National Park in New Mexico. (p. 523);
          • and expanding the Willow Project, a ConocoPhillips oil-drilling operation on Alaska’s North Slope (p. 530).
          William Perry Pendley. By Bureau of Land Management

          Agency Operations

          The project’s organizers plan to upend federal land-management agency operations by:

          Land Conservation

          The project aims to undo large landscape protections by:

          The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument was expanded via proclamation from President Obama in 2017, making the new monument approximately 112,000 acres. Bob Wick/Bureau of Land Management

          Wildlife 

          Pendley expresses particular hostility toward the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, whose work he described as “the product of ‘species cartels’ afflicted with group-think, confirmation bias, and a common desire to preserve the prestige, power, and appropriations of the agency that pays or employs them.” He recommends:

          DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE (p. 289)

          The free-market advocate behind Project 2025’s section on the USDA has long railed against the subsidies and food stamp programs administered by the agency. As a fellow at The Heritage Foundation, Daren Bakst penned a lengthy report, Farms and Free Enterprise, that objects to many aspects of the farm bill, which funds annual food assistance and rural development programs. His vision, documented in the report, is present throughout Project 2025’s proposed agency overhaul.

          Agency Organization

          Project 2025 seeks to limit regulation in favor of market forces by:

          • reducing annual agency spending, including subsidy rates for crop insurance and additional programs that support farmers for lost crops (p. 296); 
          • removing protections for wetlands and erodible land that farmers must comply with to participate in USDA programs (p. 304); 
          • eliminating the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to enrich and protect parts of their land from agricultural production (p. 304); 
          • removing climate change and equity from the agency’s mission (p. 290, 293); 
          • and working with Congress to undo the federal labeling law, which requires consumer products to disclose where they were made and what they contain, as well as encouraging voluntary labeling (p. 307). 

          Forestry

          The project will reduce forests on public lands by:

          Logging within the Cougar Park timber sale in Kaibab National Forest in 2018. The timber project was part of an initiative intended to treat more than 2.4 million acres of ponderosa pine forest across northern Arizona. Dyan Bone/U.S. Forest Service

          ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (p. 417) 

          Prior to serving as the EPA’s chief of staff during the Trump administration, Mandy Gunasekara was famous for handing Republican Sen. James Inhofe a snowball to disprove the existence of human-caused climate change. At the EPA, she played a key role in the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and in the dismantling of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. Gunasekara’s vision for the EPA is characterized by staff layoffs, office closures and the embrace of public comment over peer-reviewed science. 

          Agency Organization

          The plan will diminish the agency’s scope of work by:

          • reducing full-time staff and cutting “low-value” programs (p. 422);
          • shuttering offices dedicated to environmental justice and civil rights, enforcement and compliance, environmental education, children’s health and international and tribal affairs, and distributing their functions elsewhere (p. 421); 
          • eliminating all research that is not explicitly authorized by Congress (p. 436);
          • restructuring scientific advisory boards and engaging the public in ongoing scrutiny of the agency’s science — potentially opening the door to a wave of pushback against the international consensus on climate change (p. 422, 436-438);
          • eliminating the use of catastrophic climate change scenarios in drafting regulation (p. 436);
          • relocating a restructured American Indian Office to the West (p. 440);
          • partially shifting personnel from headquarters to regional offices (p. 430);
          • and striking the regulations, including a program to reduce methane and VOC emissions, that enable the EPA to work with external groups to help enforce laws (p. 424).

          Natural Resources

          The project would jeopardize clean air and water by:

          • limiting California’s effort to reduce air pollution from vehicles by ensuring that its standards and those of other states avoid any reference to greenhouse gas emissions or climate change (p.426);
          • supporting the reform of the Endangered Species Act to ensure a full cost-benefit analysis during pesticide approval (p. 434-435); 
          • repealing some regulations imposed by the Biden administration to limit hydrofluorocarbons, a particularly potent greenhouse gas (p. 425);
          • and undoing the expansion of the Good Neighbor Program, which requires states to reduce their nitrogen oxide emissions, beyond power plants to include industrial facilities like iron and steel mills (p. 424).

          Full text of Project 2025 via Document Cloud

          Study suggests nearby rural land can cool cities by nearly 30 percent: Researchers looked at land surrounding urban areas and ranked the capacity of various urban-rural configurations to cool the cities. — The Washington Post

          a–e, From the left to right, respectively: NRLC, woodland, cropland, impervious surface and water body. The horizontal coordinates represent the different urban ladders (ULi, i = 1–5). The vertical coordinates represent the explanation degrees (R2) of different cover types to the surface UHI. f, The schematic representation of urban regions and rural land cover (the variation of color range standing for different urban regions). g, The specific locations of various urban and rural regions. Credit:https://www.nature.com/articles/s44284-024-00091-z

          Click the link to read the article on The Washington Post website (Erin Blakemore):

          August 3, 2024

          Rural land surrounding urban areas could help cool cities by up to 32.9 degrees Fahrenheit, an analysis in Nature Cities suggests, hinting at a way to cool increasingly scorching urban areas. In an attempt to understand how rural land cover affects urban heat islands — a phenomenon in which cities become significantly warmer than the areas surrounding them — researchers studied data from 30 Chinese cities between 2000 and 2020. They looked at land cover surrounding the urban areas and ranked the capacity of various urban-rural configurations to cool the cities. Rural areas hold “great potential” for cooling urban heat islands, the researchers concluded, with the biggest impacts occurring within a six- to nine-mile radius of the urban boundary. Rural land in that range can reduce the urban heat island intensity by nearly 30 percent, they found.

          The reason is a matter of physics, they write: Air warms in cities, leaving a low-pressure zone near the ground that then helps transport cooler air from surrounding rural areas. The rural areas then go on to absorb the heat. Different factors affect the process, including geographic features like hills and mountains, a city’s shape, and climatic zones, the researchers write.

          Land use in rural areas “can make a big difference to temperatures downtown,” Shi-Jie Cao, a visiting professor at the University of Surrey’s Global Center for Clean Air Research and a co-author of the paper, said in a news release.

          Pollinator health study leads to #Colorado law protecting pollinators, rare plants — Colorado State University

          A selection of Colorado butterfly and bee species in the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History Entomology Collection. A collaborative study found that pollinators provide billions of dollars’ worth of services to Colorado, and they are at risk. Credit: Adrian Carper/CU Museum of Natural History

          Click the link to read the release on the Colorado State University website (Jaymie DeLoss):

          Pollinators are responsible for everything from the food we eat to the clothes we wear, and Colorado would not be so colorful without their contributions to the state’s landscape. But studies have shown that even in protected areas of Colorado, insects have declined by more than 60% over the past few decades.  

          A pollinator study led by Colorado State University Extension has found that native pollinators are worth billions of dollars to Colorado, and they need protection. The study has resulted in a state law that dedicates public funding to studying and conserving invertebrates and rare plants. 

          Legislators wasted no time in applying recommendations from the study, which was released in January. The law addresses the No. 1 priority outlined by the study: Protect imperiled native pollinating insects. 

          Deryn Davidson, principal investigator of the study and CSU Extension sustainable landscape state specialist, said the study and now the law recognize the importance of pollinators and called them significant steps toward invertebrate protection. 

          “The quick action on this bill is really fantastic because if we do nothing, the decline in not just pollinators but all invertebrates is going to be serious, and we’ll all be affected far more than people realize,” Davidson said. 

          Squash bees, like this Peponapis pruinosa, are among the most effective squash and melon pollinators. More than a third of the world’s crops depend on pollinators. Credit: Adrian Carper

          Before the law, signed by Gov. Jared Polis on May 17, invertebrates were not included among wildlife managed by the state. The law authorizes Colorado Parks and Wildlife to make land management decisions based on pollinator conservation and establishes pollinator-related staff positions. 

          “The ability to specifically study pollinators and the plants that depend on them is crucial to our understanding of factors impacting native pollinators and how we can best support them,” said Adrian Carper, an entomologist with the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and co-lead author of the study with Davidson and Steve Armstead of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Carper led the study’s science team, and Armstead led its land management team, while Davidson managed the project overall.  

          The combined team of experts spent a year synthesizing pollinator data and best management practices for large-scale pollinator conservation to present to the governor’s office at the end of 2023. The 306-page study, commissioned by the Colorado General Assembly in 2022, is the most detailed account of statewide pollinator health ever undertaken. 

          “This bill begins to implement the recommendations of Colorado’s Native Pollinator Study by enabling our state wildlife professionals to study and conserve all native species, including invertebrates and rare plants that serve as the foundation of healthy, functional ecosystems,” said Sen. Janice Marchman, who co-sponsored the bill in the Colorado Senate. 

          An orange-tipped cactus borer pollinates a curly cup gumweed; both species are native to Colorado. A collaborative study led by Colorado State University Extension is the most detailed account of statewide pollinator health ever undertaken. Credit: Adrian Carper

          Protecting pollinators

          The study found that pollinators are worth billions of dollars to Colorado agriculture alone. They are also essential for the plants, wildflowers and wildlife that make the Colorado outdoors so desirable for recreation – a significant economic driver for the state in addition to a quality-of-life enhancer for residents.  

          “Native pollinators are crucial to our crops, economy, natural areas, and overall health and wellbeing,” Carper said. “Without the pollination services they provide, our landscapes would be much less productive, diverse and sustainable.” 

          Resources for creating pollinator habitat

          Creating Pollinator Habitat fact sheet

          Attracting Native Bees to Your Landscape fact sheet

          “They’re not just creepy-crawly annoyances,” Davidson added. “Pollinators are the unsung heroes.” 

          Without protection, however, the outlook for Colorado’s native pollinators is dire. Research in a protected high-altitude meadow near Crested Butte over the past 35 years found that there are about 61.5% fewer insects, due mainly to warmer temperatures and less precipitation. 

          Habitat loss, climate change, pesticides, inadequate land-management practices and competition from non-native species are the primary causes of pollinator decline. 

          Colorado has 24 species of bumblebees, and nearly one-fifth are under review for federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. Three Colorado butterflies already are listed as endangered. 

          “This bill takes a big step forward in making sure we’re managing and protecting the state’s wildlife holistically,” said Marchman, who represents Larimer and Boulder counties in the Senate.  

          Davidson said that there are simple things people can do in their own yards to help support pollinators, adding that pollinator habitat can boost the curb appeal of your home, too. For more information on how to create pollinator habitat in your own yard, view the video below. 

          PlantTalk: Pollinator Habitat

          Happy 148th Birth Anniversary #Colorado!

          Rocky Mountain Alpine-Montane Wet Meadow. Photo credit: Colorado Natural Heritage Program

          R.I.P. John Mayall: “So many roads, yeah. So many trains to ride.”

          John Mayal in 1968. This is an image from the Nationaal Archief, the Dutch National Archives, donated in the context of a partnership program

          Click the link to go to the Wikipedia entry:

          John Brumwell Mayall OBE (29 November 1933 – 22 July 2024) was an English blues and rock musician, songwriter and producer. In the 1960s, he formed John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, a band that has counted among its members some of the most famous blues and blues rock musicians. A singer, guitarist, harmonica player, and keyboardist, he had a career that spanned nearly seven decades, remaining an active musician until his death aged 90. Mayall has often been referred to as the “godfather of the British blues“, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the musical influence category in 2024…

          Mayall died at his home in California on 22 July 2024, at the age of 90.

          What causes lightning and how to stay safe when you’re caught in a storm – a meteorologist explains — The Conversation

          Baseball fans clear the stands as lightning strikes near the Colorado Rockies’ stadium in 2019. Julio Aguilar/Getty Images

          Chris Vagasky, University of Wisconsin-Madison

          As the weather warms, people spend more time outdoors, going to barbecues, beaches and ballgames. But summer isn’t just the season of baseball and outdoor festivals – it’s also lightning season.

          Each year in the United States, lightning strikes around 37 million times. It kills 21 people a year in the U.S. on average.

          For as often as lightning occurs – there are only a few days each year nationwide without lightning – there are still a lot of misunderstandings about nature’s largest spark. Because of this, a lot of people take unnecessary risks when thunderstorms are nearby.

          I am a meteorologist who studies lightning and lightning safety, and a member of the National Lightning Safety Council. Here are some fast facts to keep your family and friends safe this summer.

          What is lightning, and where does it come from?

          Lightning is a giant electric spark in the atmosphere and is classified based on whether it hits the ground or not.

          In-cloud lightning is any lightning that doesn’t hit ground, while cloud-to-ground – or, less commonly, ground-to-cloud – is any lightning that hits an object on the ground. Cloud-to-ground lightning accounts for only 10% to 50% of the lightning in a thunderstorm, but it can cause damage, including fires, injuries and fatalities, so it is important to know where it is striking.

          A vibrant display of lightning striking the tall tower and zigzagging through the sky.
          Lightning strikes One World Trade Center in New York City and carries through clouds over the Hudson River in April 2023. Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

          Lightning occurs when rain, ice crystals and a type of hail called graupel collide in a thunderstorm cloud.

          When these precipitation particles collide, they exchange electrons, which creates an electric charge in the cloud. Because most of the electric charge exists in the clouds, most lightning happens in the clouds. When the electric charge in the cloud is strong, it can cause an opposite charge to build up on the ground, making cloud-to-ground lightning possible. Exactly what initiates a strike is still an open question.

          When and where does lightning happen?

          Lightning can happen any time the conditions for thunderstorms – moisture, atmospheric instability, and a way for air to rise – are present.

          There is a seasonality to lightning: Most lightning in the United States strikes in June, July or August. In just those three months, more than 60% of the year’s lightning typically occurs. Lightning is least common in winter, but it can still happen. About 2% of yearly lightning occurs during winter.

          Know who else reads the #ENSO Blog? Investors! — NOAA

          Click the link to read the article on the NOAA website (Derek Lemoine):

          July 26, 2024

          This is a guest post by Dr. Derek Lemoine, who is APS Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Sarah Kapnick, currently the NOAA Chief Scientist, collaborated with Dr. Lemoine on NOAA CPO-funded research while at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.

          As regular readers of the ENSO blog know, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) issues forecasts of the large-scale climate patterns that we may see many months later. But they may not know that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Outlook is but one of the seasonal climate outlooks that NOAA produces. Creating and disseminating these outlooks requires a large investment in monitoring and forecasting systems, scientists, forecasters, and, of course, climate.gov bloggers. Do these outlooks matter in the financial world?

          In a new paper published in Nature Communications, Dr. Sarah Kapnick and I (an atmospheric scientist and economist odd couple, in work done before she became NOAA Chief Scientist) show that they matter to investors in financial markets. And, importantly, some matter more than others.

          But first…options!

          To test whether seasonal outlooks influence the market, we examined how the prices of options on stocks changed when a seasonal outlook was released. Why test option prices rather than stock prices? We have a clear prediction for how option prices should move on average when an outlook is released, whereas we lack this clear prediction for stock prices (footnote #1).

          An option gives you the right—but not the obligation—to either buy or sell a particular company’s stock at a predefined “strike” price by a predefined “expiration” date. Let’s imagine that you’ve bought an option to buy stock and the expiration date is upon you. Should you exercise the option? If the stock’s price is now above the strike price, then yes: you get to buy the stock cheaply and can, if you want, immediately sell it at the market price for a profit. If the stock’s price is below the strike price, then no: just buy the stock on the open market if you want it, since you would pay more than necessary by exercising the option.

          Earlier on, before the expiration date draws nigh, you have a lot of upside from holding the option because the actual stock price could end up way above your strike. And you have no corresponding downside because you can always walk away and let your option expire unexercised if the stock price ends up below your strike. Who doesn’t like upside risk when it’s not contaminated with downside risk?

          So, you like holding an option. Now consider how much you would pay to acquire it. You tend to be willing to pay more to buy an option when you are more uncertain about what the stock’s price on the expiration date will be, because you get more of that sweet upside risk still without bitter downside risk. Conversely, the more certain you are about the future price of the stock, the less you are willing to pay for the option. So, the current price of an option tells us how uncertain investors must be about the future stock price. This measure of uncertainty is called “implied volatility,” as it is implied by market data. All else equal, higher prices for options imply more expected volatility; lower prices imply less.

          This cartoon shows a case where the investor made a profit, but a different pathway is plausible as well. It is possible when the expiration date arrives, it turns out the investor paid too much for the option and the strike price is larger than the price of the fishing stock. In which case the investor may decide to not exercise the option. Cartoon Credit: Anna Eshelman, climate.gov.


          You too can bet on outlooks

          Our work shows that, on average, the implied volatility will fall when a seasonal outlook is released, but ONLY IF investors think that the seasonal outlook might say something relevant to the firm’s stock price (footnote #2). If investors think the seasonal outlook is either worthless as a forecast or irrelevant to a particular firm, then the firm’s stock and option prices will not be affected by the outlook. If they instead believe the outlook is both skillful and potentially relevant to that firm, then, before the outlook is released, the firm’s stock and option prices should reflect investors’ expectations of what the outlook will say.

          Once a relevant outlook is released, the firm’s stock and option prices change to reflect the new information in the outlook. A particular outlook could increase uncertainty about the company’s future stock price by forecasting an especially unpredictable climate. However, once we average over many outlook releases, uncertainty about the company’s future stock price (in the form of implied volatility) falls upon the release of outlooks, simply because investors are no longer uncertain about what an outlook will say once they have the outlook in hand.

          An example

          Imagine that you are investing in a fishing company whose profits are affected by the state of ENSO. Its stock price should already incorporate investors’ expectations about what NOAA’s upcoming ENSO Outlook will say. For instance, they may already think an El Niño is coming, based on past months’ outlooks. If you think that an upcoming monthly update is unlikely to have much new to say, then that upcoming monthly update does not make you willing to pay much more for an option on the firm’s stock. But what if, instead, you think that an upcoming monthly update could offer additional news about how strong that El Niño will be? The greater the potential for news that is relevant to the value of the fishing company, the more uncertain you are about what its stock price will be once the monthly update is released. You are then willing to pay more for an option to take advantage of uncertainty about the firm’s stock price induced by the ENSO Outlook.

          Once the seasonal outlook is released, uncertainty about the outlook’s contents vanishes. You may still be uncertain about what the seasonal climate will be, but you are no longer uncertain about what the outlook will say about it or how the outlook will affect the company’s stock price. If the outlook did not contain much new information about the coming El Niño, then you are now not willing to pay as much as before for the option on the fishing company. If other investors make similar assessments, the price of the option will fall.

          Our study tested whether the degree of uncertainty implied by option prices (“implied volatility” again!) did indeed fall on average when seasonal outlooks were released from 2010–2019. If implied volatility did tend to decline, then some fraction of investors must have judged these climate outlooks to be skillful at forecasting patterns that are relevant to firms’ valuations—and thus to their stock prices.

          June ENSO Outlook affects option prices throughout the economy

          We find that, across approximately three thousand firms traded in U.S. markets, implied volatility does fall when NOAA releases the ENSO Outlook in June and the Winter Outlook in October. Investors do not know what the ENSO and Winter Outlooks will say ahead of the release, but they apparently believe they could say something relevant to firms’ stock prices. We do not detect a response to NOAA’s May Hurricane Outlook or to two less skillful outlooks: Colorado State University’s April Hurricane Outlook or the Farmers’ Almanac’s August Winter Outlook (footnote #3).

          Because options are tied to particular companies, we can drill down on how broadly outlooks matter to different parts of the economy. When finely classifying firms into “industry groups”, we find that around 90% of industry groups see their implied volatility fall when NOAA releases the June ENSO Outlook. When we aggregate these industry groups into 21 broader “sectors”, we find significant effects of the June ENSO Outlook in an amazing 20 of them.

          How much the June ENSO outlook matters to different sectors of the economy. Purple lines indicate a statistically significant change. Credit: Climate.gov, adapted from original by Lemoine and Kapnick.


          Whether these economy-wide effects represent broad impacts of ENSO or instead represent impacts to particular firms rippling through trade networks, investors apparently believe ENSO has broad reach (footnote #4).

          Overall, the June ENSO Outlook affects firms worth $13 trillion. An upcoming June ENSO Outlook incentivizes traders to pay an extra $12 million [95% confidence interval: $3.6–$20 million] to hold options. Traders seem to find this spending worth it in order to hedge the risk of what the outlook may say.

          But what about other months’ ENSO Outlooks? The June ENSO Outlook was of most interest to us because it is the month when we’re most sure to be past the spring barrier and the accuracy of the ENSO Outlook increases. When we test each month’s ENSO Outlook, we indeed find that implied volatility falls by the largest amount upon the release of the June ENSO Outlook. In fact, that is the only month’s outlook for which the change in implied volatility is statistically significant.

          Showing the change in implied volatility (%) by calendar month as a response to the ENSO outlook. The range shown in purple is statistically significant because all values of the 95% confidence interval (from top whisker to bottom whisker) are less than zero. The other months have ranges that overlap into positive values and, therefore, positive or zero change cannot be ruled out. Credit: Climate.gov, adapted from original by Lemoine and Kapnick.

          We calculate how much traders value the increase in skill from the May to June Outlooks. We find that the more skillful June outlook carries an option market premium that is $9.4 million [95% confidence interval: -$1.6–$20.5 million] larger than the May outlook. Combining this additional premium with the difference in skill from this paper, we infer that a 1% improvement in ENSO prediction skill induces traders to spend an additional $1.8 million [95% confidence interval: -$0.31–$3.9 million] annually hedging news about seasonal climate.

          Adaptation must not be a silver bullet

          In practice, seasonal outlooks are even more valuable than what we estimate here. Traders have access to earlier forecasts of seasonal climate from forecasters besides NOAA and also from prior ENSO outlooks. This pre-existing information waters down the value of any specific month. Moreover, any value we do estimate remains only that from the financial sector (footnote #3 again).

          It is important to understand what our estimates mean. We do not measure the impact of exposure to seasonal climate. We instead capture exposure to the forecasted portion of seasonal climate. If firms could costlessly and perfectly adjust to seasonal outlooks, then their stock and option prices would not be affected by the outlook’s contents. But this is not what we see. Therefore, adaptation based on these outlooks must be incomplete and/or costly: firms are exposed to the seasonal climate despite the early warning (perhaps because the information in the outlook is not actionable), and/or firms do adjust their exposure but only at some nontrivial cost that affects their value on the stock market. Seasonal outlooks are valuable, but they transform risk rather than eliminate it.

          Lead Editor: Michelle L’Heureux (NOAA CPC)

          Footnotes:

          1. To test whether the outlooks influence the market, you might think about looking at stock prices and seeing whether they move when a seasonal outlook is released. However, if you look at only one year’s outlooks this way, then you couldn’t be sure that stock prices did or didn’t move due to some other news released that day. If you instead look at the average movement over many years’ releases, then (in theory) you should not find any average change in stock prices, even if the market did respond to the outlooks. Sometimes an outlook’s news goes in one direction, and sometimes it goes in the opposite direction. If investors form proper expectations of what the outlook will say, then these two types of news should cancel each other over time, leaving no net effect on average.
          2. Technical point: Options’ prices and their implied volatilities are closely linked, but there is a subtle difference when talking about average changes in prices or implied volatilities. Ignoring one wrinkle that reflects aversion to risk, investors should never expect the price of an asset to move on average. Otherwise, they could make money on average by buying or selling it just before that movement, and such free opportunities to make money should not persist in a liquid market. It is possible for an option’s implied volatility to decline on average without its price changing on average because the level of the price reflects other factors that change over time, such as the price of the underlying stock and the time to expiration. This logic is why we test for changes in implied volatility, not in raw option prices.
          3. This is not to say that these other outlooks do not matter or are worthless. We estimate only the value broadly reflected in financial markets. These outlooks may matter to smaller sets of firms, may matter to firms not traded in financial markets, and may matter for people in all sorts of ways that do not show up in stock prices.
          4. Interestingly, the only sector for which we find no effect is agriculture, which is the sector one might have expected to be most exposed to weather. This exception may reflect ENSO being primarily linked to winter weather in the Northern Hemisphere and thus maybe not strongly linked to growing season weather (but see this post for a finer discussion) for the firms we study, which are listed in U.S. markets.

          R.I.P. Dr. Wallace J. Nichols: “I wish you water”

          Click the link to read the blog post on the Wallace J. Nichols website (Dana Nichols):

          July 2024

          Dr. Wallace J. Nichols Memorial Foundation Update

          Hello everyone,

          By now, you’ve likely heard the news of J’s passing. We want to thank you for your outpouring of love and support over the past few weeks.

          I also want to thank Outside Magazine for its tribute to my husband, which was published earlier this month. And Plastic Pollution Coalition, who published this blog to honor him and his work.

          J dedicated his life to understanding how our connection to water and wildlife has the power to change our health and well-being. He worked tirelessly to share his findings with the world – from his best-selling book Blue Mind, to countless environmental organizations and movements that he founded and supported.

          We are currently in the process of turning the Dr. Wallace J. Nichols Memorial Fund into a foundation. Our goal is to continue J’s important work, complete unfinished projects, and support causes he was passionate about, including:

          • The Blue Mind Movement reconnects people to water by linking ocean and waterway exploration, restoration, and conservation with neuroscience, psychology, public health, and well-being. This involves an annual summit, workshops, research collaborations and a small grants program through The Ocean Foundation.
          • Billion Baby Turtles Project was founded by J and Brad Nahill to increase the number of baby sea turtles in oceans around the world. To date, we have saved nearly 1 million hatchlings at nesting beaches in El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and elsewhere.
          • Blue Marbles Project has a goal of passing a marble through every person’s hand on earth, with a simple message of gratitude. Since our launch in 2009, millions around the world have joined hands to create a blue global community.
          • Force Blue unites the community of Special Operations veterans with the world of marine conservation, for the betterment of both. J was deeply passionate about Force Blue’s mission and loved supporting the project with his time and energy.
          • Plastic Pollution Coalition is a non-profit communications and advocacy organization that collaborates with an expansive global alliance of organizations, businesses, and individuals to create a more just, equitable, regenerative world free of plastic pollution and its toxic impacts. J was a longtime friend and founding advisor to the Plastic Pollution Coalition.

          Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the fund thus far. We are grateful for your generosity and deeply moved by your stories of J’s impact on all our lives.

          If you’re interested in helping with the foundation and preserving J’s legacy, please contact me directly at legacy@wallacejnichols.org.

          We wish you water,

          Dana Nichols

          Blue Mind can be a life-changing read, wholeheartedly recommended by Coyote Gulch.

          GoFundMe for Laurna Kaatz

          I’m reupping this in case you missed it. $9,000 to go.

          Laurna Kaatz photo credit Aspen Global Change Institute.

          From email from Taylor Winchell:

          June 26, 2024

          Hi all, 

          I hope this message finds you well. I am reaching out to let you know about a GoFundMe campaign to support Laurna Kaatz as she continues her recovery from a traumatic brain injury suffered in October 2021. 

          Laurna’s impact on climate adaptation, water resource management, and in supporting her many colleagues is simply immeasurable. This GoFundMe campaign is an opportunity for us to come together and show our support to Laurna during this ongoing challenging experience.

          Here is the link to Laurna’s GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-laurnas-journey-to-recovery

          If you have any questions or need further information, please feel free to reach out (taylorwinchell@gmail.com). My apologies if this email has reached you and you do not know Laurna – this email distribution was assembled from a variety of lists that generally know Laurna and therefore includes some people that may not know Laurna well or at all. 

          Best, 

          Taylor WInchell

          Bike to Work Day 2024

          I have been remiss in getting my photo up for Bike to Work Day 2024. The photo was taken on the Clear Creek Trail on my way to the N-line Commuter Rail so I guess it was “Bike and Ride Trains to Work Day” for Coyote Gulch.

          Thousands of Navajos died on the ‘Long Walk.’ Their descendants still seek the truth — AZCentral.com

          The traditional homelands of the Navajo (Diné) are marked by four sacred mountains that stretch across modern-day Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Credit: Native Knowledge 360º

          Click the link to read the article on the AZCentral.com website (Arlyssa D. Becenti). Here’s an excerpt:

          June 5, 2024

          In June 2018, Virginia Beyale and her brother set out to retrace the steps their ancestors took from Fort Sumner in New Mexico back to Diné Bikéyah, the Navajo Reservation. It was there the people were released after Diné leaders on June 1, 1868, signed what is now referred to as the Treaty of 1868 with the U.S. government. The siblings were dropped off at Fort Sumner (Hwéeldi) to begin the over 300-mile journey that about 8,000 surviving Diné undertook to get home 150 years before. On this arduous trek, known today as the Long Walk, about 2,600 Navajos died. The forced march to Fort Sumner was a horrific four-year ordeal, one of many genocidal and ethnic cleansing campaigns that took place against the Indigenous peoples at that time.

          “The reason we did it was not only to commemorate the 150 years, but to do a lot of healing and understand how it felt,”  Beyale said. “There was a lot of reflecting of understanding on what our people went through.”

          […]

          “The Long Walk and 1863 to 1868 is a watershed in Diné history because that is the point where we lost our freedom and our independence,” Jennifer Nez Denetdale said. “That is when we became another occupation of the American colonial government. We are still under their control and under their authority.”

          U.S. troops at Fort Sumner. By unknown, uploaded by: Aj4444 – Original text : LEGENDS OF AMERICAA Travel Site for the Nostalgic & Historic MindedCopyright © 2003-2009, http://www.Legends of America.com), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10186386

          Nearly 10,000 Navajo men, women and children were forcibly marched to Bosque Redondo. Approximately 200 died of starvation and exposure during the walk, Charles said.

          “Nearly a quarter of our people died in the conditions at Bosque Redondo,” [Mark] Charles said. “The government called Bosque Redondo a reservation but it wasn’t a reservation, it was a death camp. A death camp that was approved by Abraham Lincoln on Jan. 15, 1864.”

          […]

          One notable aspect of Navajo stories is that they often contradict American historical narratives, Denetdale said. These narratives claim that the Navajo returned from Fort Sumner as a better people, having learned to get along with others, mastered silversmithing and understood government. 

          “This is what I had to read when I was in graduate school and I said, ‘no,’” Denetdale said. “This is not how I am going to read this, and I am not going to agree with you. So you go to oral history and to your own people’s stories.”

          She sought out her own grandparents to hear their stories about this period. One story from her book, which she discussed during her presentation on the Long Walk and the Treaty of 1868, highlighted that the treaty included an agreement by Navajo leaders that Navajo children would receive an American education.

          “They call it assimilation, I call it genocide and ethnic cleansing,” Denetdale said. “They never lived up to that article of 1868.”

          We won’t forget what happened 101 years ago — Writers on the range

          La Sal Range in Northern San Juan County, Utah, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

          Click the link to read the article on the Writers on the range website (Shaun Ketchum Jr.):

          May 20, 2024

          One hundred and one years ago, my Ute ancestors were forced to live within a barbed-wire camp in Blanding, a small town in southeast Utah.

          For six weeks, nearly 80 people were trapped in a cage, sleeping in tents and hastily constructed hogans. Only meager meals were provided, and the captors sometimes tossed food over the fence.

          Like the infamous Japanese American prison camps during World War II, the only crime my relatives committed was belonging to a group of people that the white majority deemed a threat. There was no due process for Japanese Americans or for the Utes.

          But while Japanese American incarceration sites, including the Topaz Camp near Delta, Utah, have memorials to the victims, there are no plaques or interpretive displays in Blanding acknowledging the suffering my ancestors endured.

          In fact, the events that led up to their imprisonment are best known by misleading names like the “Posey War” and the “Last Indian Uprising.” My ancestor, William Posey, was a leader in the Anikanuche Band who continued traditional hunting across the vast Canyonlands and Bears Ears region into the 1920s, long after many other Indigenous people had been forced onto reservations.

          On March 19, 1923, two Ute men were convicted for the alleged raiding of a shepherd’s camp. After an altercation with the San Juan County sheriff, the two men fled and joined their families.

          Bluff UT – aerial with San Juan River and Comb Ridge. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6995171

          They escaped over Comb Ridge into what is now Bears Ears National Monument. A posse of 50 armed white settlers pursued the Ute people on horseback and in a Model-T Ford. County commissioners also requested an airplane equipped with WWI bombs for use in the chase. Before a plane arrived, the posse found the families, forced them into trucks at gunpoint, then transported them to the barbed-wire stockade in Blanding.

          I tell this story because the jailing of Ute people 101 years ago had devastating consequences for my community and healing is necessary even today.

          Two Ute men were murdered, including Posey. Ute children were among those shipped to Indian Boarding Schools, separating families and cutting off traditional teachings. As a condition of release, prisoners in the camp had to sign allotment papers for small parcels of land that relinquished their claims to the large Ute reservation that had once been proposed for nearly all of San Juan County.

          These events were tragic but they were not a “war” or an “uprising.” Like the Long Walk of the Diné people in 1864, or the Trail of Tears that began in the 1830s, my Anikanuche ancestors were subjected to brutal settler violence in Utah, which had no similarities to a war fought between two nations’ militaries.

          Despite these injustices, my people carry on what we call a Legacy of Resilience, and last year the Ute Mountain Ute community of White Mesa began telling our side of the story for the first time.

          I was selected to direct the 100 Years of Silence project, and I’ve been working with elders, historians and artists to facilitate healing. We’ve hosted many meetings to listen to community members talk about this history. Seven local artists produced pieces now on display at The Leonardo Museum of Creativity and Innovation in Salt Lake City until May 28. On March 23, we hosted a public launch for the project with presentations from 18 Ute Tribal members.

          Throughout the process, I’ve been inspired by the courage and wisdom of my community. Our collective effort aims to end a century of silence to usher in an era of recognition and empowerment for all sides.

          As the 101st anniversary of the Anikanuche incarceration drew to a close last month, we hoped Utahns would begin to acknowledge the events of 1923. We ask that those awful weeks no longer be referred to as the “Posey War,” a term based on misinformation that spread as the events unfolded. The 100 Years of Silence project is currently seeking input from the White Mesa community to rename this series of traumatic events.

          Shaun Ketchum Jr.

          Perhaps one day, a memorial could be installed on the site of the incarceration camp that is near the historic bank building that still stands in Blanding. As the Ute scholar Forrest Cuch reminded us at the anniversary, healing cannot occur until the truth is known and accepted.

          Shaun Ketchum Jr is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring conversation about the West. He directs the 100 Years of Silence project and is a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

          Biden wages a war on #coal-burning. Really!: But supports U.S. #uranium mining with Russia import ban — Jonathan P. Thompson (www.landdesk.org)

          Okay, it isn’t the Powder River Basin, but it is a coal mine: The West Elk near Somerset, Colorado. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

          Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):

          BIG NEWS: On May 16, the Bureau of Land Management proposed ending new federal coal leasing in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana, which is by far the nation’s largest coal-producing region. The announcement comes on the heels of the finalization of a trio of more stringent rules for power plants. Together, the two moves could one day substantially diminish coal-fired electricity generation in the U.S., if not wipe it out altogether.

          CONTEXT: Can we please stop accusing President Biden of “climate indifference” — and worse? I mean, seriously, folks: He may not have ended oil and gas drilling on public land, but he is standing up to the fossil fuel industry more potently than any president before him. 

          Granted, this is not a ban on coal mining. The gargantuan mines of the Powder River Basin will continue to churn out the carbon-intensive fuel for years. But when they deplete their current lease areas, which is expected to occur between 2035 and 2060, depending on the mine and region, they won’t be able to expand. That could potentially keep more than 48 billion tons of coal in the ground that otherwise would be mined and burned, thereby avoiding a heck of a lot of greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutant-spewing.

          “This decision opens new doors to a future where our public lands are not sacrificed for fossil fuel profits and, instead, can prove a bulwark of ecological and community resilience in the face of a warming climate,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center, in a written statement.

          The coal industry, as one might expect, is enraged, as are Wyoming and Montana leaders. Even Sen. Jon Tester, the Montana Democrat running for re-election against a full-blown climate change denier, is pushing back and considering ways to kill the plan. You can count on lawsuits challenging the plan, but keep in mind that the proposed leasing halt is the outcome of environmentalists challenging a Trump-era land-use plan.

          Thing is, if the coal-burning industry continues to follow current trajectories, it may have perished on its own by the time this leasing ban kicks in. Yes, the Big Breakdown of coal has faltered somewhat in places: Rocky Mountain Power recently announced it was extending the life of some of its coal plants, for example. But it’s still underway as can be seen in the Powder River Basin, where first quarter 2024 coal production was more than 20% lower than a year earlier.

          Coal-burning is going bye-bye, one way or another. Instead of trying to fend off the inevitable, local and state officials would be far better off seeking alternatives and ways to ensure that the transition is just and less painful.

          Waste rock from the Sunday Mine Complex near Slick Rock, Colorado. Western Uranium & Vanadium hopes to start producing ore here in the next year or so. Jonathan P. Thompson photo.

          On May 13, President Biden signed into law the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act, which does exactly what it says: bans imports of low-enriched uranium from Russia or Russian entities. And the domestic uranium mining industry is radiating with joy (see what I did there?) over the possibility it will boost efforts to reopen long-idled mines in the West. 

          Sen. John Barrasso, the Republican from Wyoming, first introduced the legislation back in 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, as a way to cut off funding for Putin’s war machine. Sen. Ted Cruz put it on ice, purportedly to get his way with some other legislation, but finally removed his hold on it this spring. And, despite the MAGA GOP’s growing fondness for Putin, the bill finally made it through the House and Senate earlier this year before heading to Biden’s desk.

          This is a big deal because U.S. utilities currently get almost all of their nuclear reactor fuel, i.e. uranium, from non-domestic suppliers. In 2022, about 12% of U.S. uranium purchases — or 4.9 million pounds of it — came directly from Russia. And another 25%, or some 10 million pounds, came from Kazakhstan, where the mines are mostly operated by Uranium One, a subsidiary of the Russian state-owned firm Rosatom. Uranium One also operates in Namibia and Tanzania. (Uranium One formerly owned mines and in-situ operations in Wyoming, too, but sold out of the U.S. in 2021). 

          In other words, the ban potentially creates a 15-million-pound gap between supply and demand that must be filled to keep reactors running. And domestic suppliers are scrambling to fill the void by reopening long-idled mines and constructing new ones in Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, and Colorado. Energy Fuels — which owns the White Mesa uranium mill in southeastern Utah, the Pinyon Plain near the Grand Canyon, and several other projects in Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming — was giddy over the ban, tweeting: “We stand ready to help supply the #nuclear market with responsibly produced US #uranium.” 

          As the Land Desk has written before, much of the talk of a uranium mining renaissance is merely hype intended to mine investors’ bank accounts more than to extract actual ore. And most of the press releases about this or that upcoming firm’s latest exploratory drilling results are just a bunch of ballyhoo. Even if they do pan out, it wouldn’t be until years or even decades from now. 

          But the import ban, paired with sustained high uranium prices — around $90 per pound for the past six months — certainly will shoot some adrenalin into the figurative veins of established producers, which have been in a zombie state for the past several years. Energy Fuels, for instance, reports that it is producing uranium ore at its Pinyon Plain (Arizona) and La Sal and Pandora (Utah) mines, though it is stockpiling the rock for now rather than shipping it to its Utah mill for processing. The company is also preparing its Nichols Ranch (Wyoming) mine for production as well as its Whirlwind Mine, which lies along the Colorado-Utah state line on the eastern slopes of the La Sal Mountains outside of Gateway.

          But even Energy Fuels’ outlook is tempered: They say they’ll start shipping ore, start producing at other mines, and ramp up permitting for other projects, if market conditions remain strong. And they may not. Miners in Canada and Australia may respond to the high prices and the Russia ban by substantially ramping up production and exports to the U.S., which would dampen prices and make it once again unfeasible for American mines to operate. 

          But in the short-term, it appears that uranium country is going to experience at least a mild mining resurgence. And it’s happening under some of the same mining laws that failed to mitigate the devastating impacts of past booms. 

          See where the hype’s all about at the Land Desk Mining Monitor Map. 

          🏠 Random Real Estate Room 🤑

          One of the ways I like to procrastinate — er, learn new things — is to cruise around the West via Zillow in search of the last affordable place to buy a home. Usually I don’t find much. But last week, the Los Angeles Times did my work for me by publishing a list of the only towns in the state where the median home sale price is $150,000 or less. LA Times staffer Terry Castleton writes:

          Damn, I thought, these sound like some nice little secret gems! So I read on. These are some of the towns they came up with: Trona, Dorris, Macdoel, Tulelake, Boron, Yermo, Hinkley, Johannesburg.

          Now, you might be thinking: Why is this jerk sharing this? Isn’t he worried the towns will be overrun and gentrified if the word gets out?

          Well, no, I’m not too worried. First of all, it already appeared in a very big newspaper. Second of all, I’m not sure most of these towns are prime candidates for gentrification. I mean, consider Trona: a tiny little place sandwiched between an old coal plant/soda ash processing facility and a sprawling borax evaporation ponds.

          Trona, California, from the sky. It’s still affordable and wonderful for folks who want to live in an industrial site. Source: Google Earth.

          Here’s a sampling of homes on the market in Trona:

          So, yeah, not bad prices, really. Especially considering that beyond the industrial facility is a bunch of desert expanse that I’m sure is beautiful.

          Yermo, also on the list, looks similar, but it’s far less remote. And the LA Times story seems to have gone to its head, real estate-wise. The four homes on the market aren’t all that cheap (between $175k and $229k) — possibly due to its proximity to that desert gem of a city, Barstow. Ditto with Hinkley, famous for being the polluted place in Erin Brokovich. Yay.

          I actually considered moving to Boron, another one on the list, after I graduated from college. The local high school was desperate for teachers and willing to hire folks without a teaching certificate. It was tempting, I must admit, especially for a desert rat like myself who could appreciate the sublimity of living on the edge of an open pit borax mine. Thing is, a lot of the land around there is an air force base, and the mountains are kind of far away, limiting exploration. I demurred.

          Anyway, it’s worth checking out the other towns on the list if you’re seeking something affordable. They may be the only places left in all the Western U.S.