Sunday, February 4, 2007

Stand up Citizen Boo: "Every once in a while, a piece of art sticks to something inside of you -- defining something that you've been trying to express but couldn't. This video, Radiohead and Unkle's Rabbit In Your Headlights is so powerful that I've blogged it twice before. Enjoy it for the weekend entry ... become inspired, stand up, then fight like hell for what you believe in." Category: 2008 Presidential Election 10:00:50 AM     Long term effects of global warming on Colorado and the west The Denver Post took some time to look at Friday's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from a Colorado perspective. From the article, "Colorado's average temperature could heat up by 7 or 8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, according to a U.N. climate change report released in part last week. 'That's considerable warming, and it could conceivably be quite a bit greater than that,' said Linda Mearns, a climate researcher with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. It'll almost certainly get warmer in the Southwest, Mearns said, and Colorado's mountain snowpacks along with those across the West will continue to thin. Spring's melt season may end several weeks earlier by 2100, said Mearns, a co-author of the report. The Western forecast bodes poorly for water managers and those using the mountains for recreation, she said. 'We'll be saying 'The National Park formally known as Glacier,' Mearns said." The Post article has links to the IPCC report, video and slide show. (The weblog philosophy of sending people away so they'll come back.) Category: Colorado Water 9:25:24 AM     Healthcare: Research funding Funding sources for healthcare and scientific research have been severely curtailed over the last few years, according to the Denver Post. From the article, "Since 2004, researchers looking for treatments for cancer, heart disease and other ailments have found it harder and harder to get NIH funding as the agency's budget has stagnated. This year's proposed NIH budget, according to a House Appropriations Committee spokesman, is $28.9 billion, just a 2.2 percent increase and less than the rate of inflation. The result is more researchers clamoring for a limited pool of money and more scientists - especially those just starting their careers - shut out of federal research dollars. 'You lose a generation of scientists,' said Dr. Elias Zerhouni, the NIH director. 'They can't stay; they leave science.'" Market driven (private) healthcare research is largely driven by finding chemicals that can be patented and these are seldom low cost or natural. There is no market apparatus that will fund promising research in areas that may not lead to profit. Is there a way to fund Open Source solutions in healthcare and science? Category: 2008 Presidential Election 9:16:49 AM     Environmentalism: A rebellion of the heart? Here's a call to action for environmentalists from Jeffrey St. Clair in Counter Punch. He writes, "A kind of political narcolepsy has settled over the American environmental movement. Call it eco-ennui. You may know the feeling: restlessness, lack of direction, evaporating budgets, diminished expectations, a simmering discontent. The affliction appears acute, possibly systemic. Unfortunately, the antidote isn't as simple as merely filing a new lawsuit in the morning or skipping that PowerPoint presentation to join a road blockade for the day. No, something much deeper may be called for: a rebellion of the heart. Just like in the good old days, not that long ago. What is it, precisely, that's going on? Was the environmental movement bewitched by eight years of Bruce Babbitt and Al Gore? Did it suffer an allergic reaction to the New Order of Things? Are we simply adrift in a brief lacuna in the evolution of the conservation movement, one of those Gouldian (Stephen Jay) pauses before a new creative eruption?... Read the whole rant - it's pretty good actually. Many of us will get new additions to our reading list. Category: 2008 Presidential Election 8:53:00 AM     Energy policy: Oil and gas development From the Glenwood Springs Independent (free registration required), "About 30 people turned out for a showing of the film, A Land Out of Time, at the Glenwood Springs Community Center Wednesday evening. Directed and co-produced by Aspen native Mark Harvey with Laurel Garrett, it follows the stories of ranchers, conservationists and passionate lovers of the West in Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, and close to home in western Garfield County, who have seen the effects of oil and gas drilling on their land. New Mexico ranchers Tweeti and Linn Blancett spoke about selling the ranch that's been in the family for six generations. They talked of losing cows to poisoned water from the gas drilling and seeing their land increasingly cut up by rigs so there isn't enough room for their cattle to graze. Rifle hunting guide Keith Goddard spoke about the loss of the Roan Plateau to oil and gas drilling and how that has brought together folks who had previously been on opposite sides of the table. 'Not too long ago you couldn't get me in the same room with environmentalists,' he said. Now that's changed. 'Sooner or later we'll have to band together to get what we want.'" Category: 2008 Presidential Election 8:36:19 AM     Take a brown trout to dinner Managing fisheries is complicated and subject to fits and starts and in some cases, such as the Gunnison River, success. It seems likely that the Colorado Division of Wildlife will relax rules and encourage fisherman to harvest more brown trout in the Gunnision River to thin out the population, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. From the article, "Anglers below the North Fork confluence presently can take a four-fish limit of rainbows because the DOW several years ago placated local bait fishermen complaining that the rest of the river was fly-and-lure, catch-and-release. Under the planned changes, the fly-and-lure restriction will extend to the Relief Ditch, about four miles below the Forks. Anglers will have to release all rainbows but can take a limit of browns without carrying a tape measure. There are a lot of brown trout available, especially in the Gunnison Gorge. Too many, it turns out, for the health of the fishery. 'The bottom line is that harvesting some brown trout out of the Gunnison would greatly improve the fishery,' said DOW aquatics biologist Dan Kowalski in Montrose. Taking some of the browns not only would relieve pressure on the fingerling rainbows the DOW plants in the Gunnison each spring, but it would open much-needed habitat for any rainbows that make it to adult... "It happens that the Gunnison is a special river way beyond the spectacular scenery, world-class whitewater and magnificent fishing. Kowalski said it's also the only river in Colorado where brown trout have managed to compensate completely for the near-total loss of rainbow trout to whirling disease. Neither the South Platte nor the Colorado rivers, both of which at one time rivaled the Gunnison for their rainbow trout, have managed to recover their fish numbers to anything near the pre-WD days. 'There are more total fish down there (in the Gunnison Gorge) than there ever has been,' Kowalski said. Not only did whirling disease eliminate the rainbows, which opened habitat for brown trout, the lower flows resulting from the drought created more brown trout habitat. Rainbows prefer faster flows and are less cover-oriented, which is why you catch them in the middle of fast riffles while browns tend to hug the shore. 'Before whirling disease and the drought there were lots of rainbow trout,' Japhet said. 'Now, there are lots of trout but they are brown trout.' As in lots of brown trout. The DOW requires any water attaining Gold Medal status to have at least 60 pounds of trout per acre. The Ute Park section of the Gunnison last year was measured at roughly 400 pounds per acre (trout longer than 6 inches). How much of that poundage was rainbow trout? Kowalski broke it down: 380 pounds of browns per acre, 21 pounds of rainbows per acre. 'In the last five years I've seen one single rainbow trout that lived to 1 year old that was wild spawn,' Kowalski said. 'And it carried an immense WD infection.' In the stretch below the Forks, studies indicate there are 1,897 trout longer than 6 inches per mile with 66 pounds of browns per acre and 16 pounds of rainbows per acre." Category: Colorado Water 8:24:09 AM     Roaring Fork Conservancy Water Education Center The Roaring Fork Conservancy is holding a public meeting on their plans for a new education center and offices, according to the Aspen Times (free registration required). From the article, "The conservancy is holding a public meeting at the Eagle County Community Center in El Jebel at 7 p.m. Tuesday to unveil its planning for the center and collect opinions on what people want to see in the facility. Executive Director Rick Lofaro said the center has an ideal site. The 16,000-square-foot lot is a stone's throw from the Roaring Fork River, wetlands, the namesake pond of Old Pond Park and, a bit farther away, the Colorado Division of Wildlife's Lake Christine. Nature will provide a fabulous laboratory right outside the center's door, he said... "The river center won't be for kids only. He envisions it as a place where anglers visiting Basalt might stop for information on flows and hatches. Kayakers might check it out before launching at Old Pond Park. And the displays and exhibits will share a wealth of information even longtime locals don't realize about the Roaring Fork watershed, Lofaro said. For example, he mused, how many locals realize that 40 percent of the Roaring Fork River's water doesn't make it to Aspen because of diversions? Tuesday's meeting is open to the public. The conservancy asks people planning to attend to R.S.V.P. by calling 927-1290." Category: Colorado Water 8:07:42 AM     Water well controversy heads to court on Monday The Greeley Tribune (free registration required) reports that, "The trial involving 440 Weld County irrigation wells shut down by the state last May begins Monday in Greeley. A judge will decide whether 215 of these wells, which belong to junior water-right holders, will be allowed to resume pumping. The case was brought to Weld District Court by the Well Augmentation Subdistrict of the Central Colorado Water Conservancy District and the South Platte Well Users Association. The groups represent 214 Weld farmers who have junior water rights and claim that Colorado's "priority system" is an economic disaster for the state's farmers. 'We're hoping to obtain a decree from the court that will allow these wells to pump again,' said CCWCD Executive Director Tom Cech. 'We're confident that we've done everything to prove... we're protecting the senior water rights and finding enough water for the junior wells to operate.' Cech said he expects a 'very contentious trial' but hopes to prove to Judge Roger Klein that his constituents can replace, or augment, the well water with water they hold senior rights to, like that from gravel-lined ditches and reservoirs. Augmentation is the process by which junior water-right holders are required to replace water they use that interferes with the rights of senior users... "Opponents of the plan to reopen the wells include the cities of Denver, Boulder and Greeley, as well as the State and Division Engineers at the Colorado Division of Water Resources." Category: Colorado Water 7:59:41 AM

© Copyright 2007 John Orr. Last update: 3/1/07; 6:52:48 AM.