‘Smug alert’ about natural gas drilling
CARBONDALE – Oh heavens, can the hypocrisy get any more rank than this? Consider the ongoing battle in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado about natural gas drilling.
The Thompson Valley, located just west of Carbondale, which itself is 30 miles from Aspen, is said to be a wonderful place, not formally wilderness but with many of the same attributes. Locals go there to mountain bike, graze cattle and so on.
It’s also a place rich with fossil fuels. A coal mine used to operate there, and drillers bored wells decades ago. Others hope to do so again. Several companies have leases from the federal government to drill for natural gas, but locals are almost completely in agreement it shouldn’t happen.
The Aspen Times tells of a recent meeting attended by an estimated 300 people.
The newspaper reports what would seem to be an honest appraisal of a local student, who said that everyone uses natural gas and must support, at some level, energy development. But some places must be off limits from our country’s appetite for fossil fuels. “This isn’t the place to (drill),” she said, to widespread applause.
Ranchers also object. “It will drive the wildlife out and kill the cattle industry,” said one, whose family has ranched for multiple generations.
A drilling company with existing permits argued that drillers can leave a light touch on the land. “Oil and gas can be responsibly developed, and it is responsibly developed,” he said.
And then there was a local resident who warned that the “wolf is right at your door.”
He got a resounding “no” when he asked the crowd if it was worth “poisoning the Earth” to extract more natural gas to feed the country’s addiction to fossil fuels.
What exactly is his role in that addiction? Well, he spends his workweek in California, where he runs one of the country’s largest manufacturers of outdoor clothing and other such goods. And on weekends, he jets 2,000 miles back to the small town in the Rockies, where he can have access to “one of the last great places.”
Hmmm. Perhaps he needs to review that South Park episode where everybody decides to buy “Pious” cars, and the most pious of the Pious crowd decides South Park just isn’t pious enough, so moves to San Francisco, where everybody sips wine and sniffs their own behinds.
Until then there’s an unharmonic convergence of smug converging from the Rockies, Hollywood and the Bay Area.
Oil and gas boom has consequences
AVON – It’s now looking like the natural gas revolution is real. Advances in techniques – three-dimensional imaging of underground formations, directional drilling and, most controversially, the improvements in hydrofracturing – have allowed companies to boost the production with enormous consequences.
If there was one theme to the Vail Global Energy Forum, which was held over the weekend at Beaver Creek, it was to explore the ramifications of this profound expansion of a lower-carbon energy source.
One immediate consequence, noted Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, is that the United States has reduced its emissions of greenhouse gases to 1960s levels. The total United States growth in emissions, nonetheless, is higher, because of population growth.
In turn, burning of coal has been rapidly declining in the United States. In the middle of the last decade, coal provided more than 50 percent of electricity. Now, it’s dropped to 43 percent and will likely drop much more during this decade as old coal-fired plants are retired, replaced by natural gas plants in conjunction with a small sector of renewables.
The Untied States did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, committing to reductions in greenhouse gases, but is now nonetheless moving more briskly toward that goal than most of the countries that did so.
What to do with this new wealth? There has been talk of using more for transportation, although there is the risk of fugitive emissions. Methane, when burned, produces half the carbon dioxide of coal. However, depending upon your time scale, methane that gets into the atmosphere has between 20 and 100 times the heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide, noted Sally Benson, a professor at Stanford University, the key collaborating institution in the Vail forum.
Benson has an expansive view of energy sources. She is an expert on carbon capture and sequestration, which most climate scientists say is imperative to avoid the risk of cataclysmic climate change. She sees sunshine as the most abundant and low-risk energy source long term. And it would be a grave mistake, she said, to allow the abundance of natural gas to allow us to become slackers in innovation, as was the case when oil got cheap during the 1980s.
“We need to stay the course,” she said of research and innovation.
And there is a role for the federal government in financing such innovation, several speakers agreed. After all, the boom in natural gas and oil in the Untied States is partly a result of federal research grants that yielded the new drilling techniques.
Couple set age record for peak ascent
WHISTLER, B.C. – After training in the mountains around Whistler, Martin and Esther Kafer have set the Guinness World Record for being the oldest couple to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
He was 85 and she 84.
“Because we’ve been climbers and hikers and kept it up, that’s why we could do it at our age, because we do it all the time,” Esther told Pique Newsmagazine. “We hike three times a week in the summer, and in the winter we downhill ski two days at Whistler, and then on Sunday, we hike up Grouse Mountain.”
They didn’t do it alone, though. They had a 12-person expedition team and a commercial guide.
Asked if they planned to lead a quieter life in 2013, Martin laughed and said they intend to go rafting in Alaska for their 60th wedding anniversary in April.
“We can’t stop now, can we?” he asked.
Apocalypse Couloir lives up to its name
JACKSON, Wyo. – The community of Jackson has lost another of its own to an avalanche in Grand Teton National Park. The Jackson Hole News&Guide reports that Jarad Spackman, 40, was killed while ascending Apocalypse Couloir, which feeds into Death Canyon.
He was carried 1,000 vertical feet down the couloir, and although a friend got to him almost immediately to administer CPR, it was to no avail. The deputy coroner for Teton County said that blunt force trauma caused the death, which came swiftly.
A native of Jackson, Spackman had graduated summa cum laude with a degree in international finance from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1995. He worked as a real estate broker in Sotheby’s International Realty for 18 years alongside his brother and father. The family was ranked among the top in the nation for sales volume in recent years.
As for the terrain, it’s extreme under any and all conditions – even when the avalanche hazard is low.
“We put out a general avalanche forecast, and it doesn’t apply to terrain like that. Ever. The teeniest little slide could sweep you to your death,” said Bob Comey, director of the local avalanche center. “It’s been identified as a go-to place for extreme skiers, and you know what – it has consequences.”
Bear calls reached new high in Aspen
ASPEN – There’s a direct correlation between drought and the bear activity police log in Aspen.
The Aspen Times says statistics describe a town that is safe and small. But it has been getting busier with problem bears. In 2008, there were 82 such calls, and last year it grew to 1,040 calls.
Last year was a monumental year for drought in the Southern Rockies, with few berries and nuts for bears to eat. The Times notes that bears were everywhere between midnight and dawn, scavenging for food in alleys, especially behind restaurants that failed to secure their garbage properly. Even during day, the bears were found atop fruit trees around town
“Often, authorities attempted to chase them out of the city limits, but the bruins would climb a tree or a building and play a waiting game with their pursuers,” explains the Times.
Bears also invaded Telluride, where they broke into home and garages, clawed their way into cars to get groceries and cruised the alleys in search of unsecured garbage cans, reports The Telluride Watch.
Snowmass Village, Vail, Aspen and other ski towns in Colorado have previously toughened requirements for securing garbage and also began levying fines for failure to do so. Now, Telluride is following suit: offenders will pay $250 for the first offense, and up to $1,000 for a third offense.
“It was certainly clear last year the community doesn’t like the consequences of a troublesome bear having to be killed,” said Councilor Chris Myers. “We need to do our part.”
Wasatch ski linkage gets public mugging
PARK CITY, Utah – The idea of linking the ski areas on the east side of Utah’s Wasatch Range with those on the west side was the subject of a recent meeting in Park City. And if the general turnout is any indication of the broader public sentiment, this proposal is one for the deep freeze, reports The Park Record.
The idea of the interconnection has been talked about for decades, but a new proposal has been made by Solitude and Canyons Resorts. They have been pitching it for the last two years as a way for Utah to become a much greater draw for destination visitors. But they also argue that it will reduce the amount of driving, as people can stay on one side and take lifts to the other side of the range, and vice versa.
“We have absolutely no interest in any development (along the route),” said Mike Goar, managing director of Canyons Resort.
Salt Lake City, which draws water from the Cottonwood Canyons, where Solitude and several other ski areas, including Alta and Snowbird, are located, doesn’t like the idea. A representative said she worried about a “piecemeal approach” to the proposals.
And environmentalists are passionately opposed. Peter Metcalf, president and chief executive of Black Diamond Equipment, said outdoor enthusiasts oppose the link.
But can he speak for all outdoor enthusiasts? That was the response of Goar, the ski area manager.
Banff won’t limit formulae stores
BANFF, Alberta – After hashing it out once again, the Banff municipal council appears highly unlikely to adopt limits on the number of chain stores and eateries.
The Rocky Mountain Outlook finds only one supporter on the council and three clear votes against.
“The quota system is basically dictating certain things, and I don’t like the idea of dictating to our partners in the business community,” said Grant Canning, a council member who owns a local mom-and-pop coffee shop – exactly the sort of business that the proposal aimed to protect. “I prefer the idea of working together to come up with a joint economic strategy.”
Banff is home to Starbucks, Tim Hortons, McDonald’s, Gap and Lululemon, as well as Tony Roma’s, Chili’s and The Keg.
The lone supporter, Brian Standish, says he believes Banff needs to protect its competitive advantage over other tourism towns. “Banff has a successful commercial sector primarily because we have a unique sense of place. What could happen to Banff if every business in town was a formula business? Banff would simply cease to be a special place,” he said.
– Allen Best