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Climate change and the Alberta fires

In early October 2011, during a visit to Fort McMurray as part of a tour of what officials pointedly called the Athabascan oil sands, geraniums were still blooming at the local airport. I thought it odd to have flowers blossoming at a location so far north and in a place with a reputation for such deep mid-winter cold.

Although low in elevation for Alberta, at 850 feet, Fort McMurray has a climate bordering on subarctic. January temperatures average just above 0 degrees F.

But Alberta this past winter was mild and dry, and April was exceptionally warm. The fire broke out on May 1 and just two days later, as whole subdivisions in Fort McMurray erupted into flames, a temperature of almost 91 degrees was recorded.

About five hours south of the fire, Banff was also unusually warm, although not nearly as much: 74 degrees F, breaking a 124-year record.

This warming fits in with broad trends. Alberta’s mean annual temperature has increased by 2.5 degrees F over the last century, with much of that increase since the 1970s from rising winter and spring temperatures, according to Banff’s Rocky Mountain Outlook.

The elephant in this discussion is human-caused climate change. Writing in the New Yorker last week, Elizabeth Kolbert conceded the difficulty of pinning any particular disaster on climate change but added: the link is pretty compelling.

“In Canada, and also in the United States and much of the rest of the world, higher temperatures have been extending the wildfire season. Last year, wildfires consumed 10 million acres in the U.S., which was the largest area of any year on record. All of the top five years occurred in the past decade,” wrote Kolbert, the 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner for her nonfiction book, The Sixth Great Extinction.

Kolbert points to a Forest Service report published last April that found fire seasons now last an average of 78 days longer than in 1970. In the past three decades, the area burned each year by forest fires has doubled.

The link to the burning of hydrocarbon is obvious, and Fort McMurray exists almost exclusively to extract oil from the tar-like substance bitumen. From 1,200 residents when the company now called Suncor arrived, the population has grown to 88,000 – all of whom were forced to flee last week as flames destroyed 1,200 homes.

Although how the fire got started had not been established as of her New Yorker piece, Kolbert pointed to a collective guilt. “We are all consumers of oil,  coal and natural gas, which means that we’ve all contributed to the latest inferno,” she said.

That’s particularly true in the Rocky Mountains. About 20 percent of the oil processed at Colorado’s only refinery comes from Suncor’s operation near Fort McMurray.

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A new feat for the Continental Divide

MISSOULA, Mont. – Dave Murray and his wife, Connie, recently set out to walk the length of the Continental Divide Trail, starting in New Mexico and working their way north toward Montana. Lots of people have done this, but Dave Murray is doing it differently: he’s going barefoot.

The Missoulian points out that there have been plenty of capable shoe-less long-distance runners. An Ethiopian runner Abebe Bikila won the 1960 Rome Olympics marathon in bare feet, repeating the feat four years later in Tokyo.

There’s an advantage to not using shoes. A 2016 study by the Harvard Medical School and National Running Center found that runners who use more of their foot to soften their landings avoided injury, reports the Missoulian.

For shoe-less Dave, his mode of travel began when he was 14 and was chased across a creek by a bear that had pillaged his campsite. He says he tried to dry out the high-top Vasque boots by the fire, but they shrunk two sizes, making them impossible to wear. It took him about three weeks before he could walk barefoot anywhere without it bothering him.

Now, he says, he only needs shoes when it’s really cold. He’ll need them when he and his wife hit the San Juan Mountains, where snow lingers into June.

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The captains of cannabis capitalism

DENVER – Fortunes are being made in marijuana in Colorado, and wouldn’t you know it, several of the captains of the cannabis sector have strong ski town connections.

While many ski towns have both medical and recreational stores, the biggest action has been in Denver. There, just 10 people control nearly a fifth of the city’s 1,046 active licenses, The Denver Post reports.

One of the players is Josh Ginsberg, identified as a “straight-A admitted misfit” from Steamboat Springs with a penchant for mischief. Headed for Wall Street, he instead ended up in cannabis sales in partnership with another misfit, Rhett Jordan, who grew up in the foothills west of Denver, the son of a prominent real estate developer.

Together, the two approached Peter Knobel of Vail about leasing property. Knobel arrived at Vail from New York City in 2001 and, defiant of the wishes of Vail’s old-guard, got local voter approval of a giant real-estate development called Solaris. In 2007, at the peak of the boom, penthouses were selling for in excess of $3,000 per square foot.

But Knobel also owns multiple other properties, including a warehouse in Denver that he suggested would be valuable for the operations of the younger cannabis entrepreneurs. The three formed a triumvirate, with Knobel having 50 percent stake, according to the Post.

Native Roots, their company, has 50 medical and 9 recreational licenses in Denver. They also have stores in Aspen, Frisco, Dillon and in Eagle-Vail.

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Talking about pot with adolescents

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – The effect of Colorado’s legalization of marijuana in creating greater availability for teen-agers is poorly understood and mostly anecdotal. Those anecdotes, however, support the fears of many that legalization has not been a good thing for youth.

More scientifically, research has found that heavy use of marijuana by adolescents is not good for developing brains. Some say that people should avoid even moderate use of marijuana until they’re 25 or 26.

With this as the background, the school district in Steamboat Springs has decided to purchase a new curriculum developed locally called the Marijuana Education Initiative. The curriculum, as explained by the Steamboat Pilot & Today, does not demonize marijuana but rather presents facts about the drug’s effect on the teen brain.

“It acknowledges that marijuana is a legal recreational and medicinal substance many adults choose to use, but it also sends a strong message that it’s not OK for kids to use marijuana. The curriculum also offers intervention strategies for teens who self-identify as habitual marijuana users.”

The newspaper adds that school curriculum is not enough. “Fact-based discussions about the realities of legal pot should be taking place around dinner tables, in our homes and churches and among community groups,” the newspaper says.

But in Denver, legislators decided to make non-smokable medical cannabis more accessible in schools to those with identified needs. The new law says that students with medical prescriptions for cannabis-derived products must be allowed to consume their medicine on school grounds. There are about 300 students in Colorado who qualify.

Rep. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio, was among the legislators voting for the new law.

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Taking a number to camp at Conundrum

ASPEN – In the Snowmass-Maroon Bells Wilderness between Aspen and Crested Butte, the U.S. Forest Service thinks it needs to create a reservation system with a cap on users at certain locations.

Most problematic is Conundrum Hot Springs, a popular destination at timberline. Foresters tell the Aspen Daily News they think the site should be able to handle no more than 20 groups at a time. “In the past, we’ve had upwards of 75 groups at a time camping,” says Karen Schroyer, the district ranger.

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Crested Butte, plastic bags, & Fort McMurray

CRESTED BUTTE – Among ski towns of the West, Telluride was the first to adopt a plastic bag ban, in 2010. But even Telluride, among the most liberal of ski towns, has shown restraint. Paper bags could be used, for a 20-cent fee.

Since then, a torrent of ski towns, most in Colorado, have adopted bans or partial bans: Aspen, Breckenridge, Carbondale, Nederland and Vail, as well as two California towns: Truckee and South Lake Tahoe.

In Crested Butte last week, elected officials instructed staff to begin working on similar legislation after hearing entreaties from a high-school senior.

– Allen Best

For more, go to http://mountaintownnews.net