Sure, in the past two years Colorado has made remarkable progress toward replacing dirty coal power with renewable wind and solar. More about that good news soon.
But we here at the Climate & Health Desk remain preoccupied with 2-year-old bad news instead of good, as the thermometer hit 100 degrees Tuesday in Denver: We reference, of course, the international climate catastrophe of 2022, when the Choco Taco was discontinued.
With daily ozone alerts smacking the Front Range on the cheeks like a hard-frozen Bomb Pop, and temperatures stuck above 90 for much of the foreseeable future, coping without help of the 250 happy calories featured in the faux taco is a mental health challenge.
We thought at first the ice cream cancellation was a marketing ploy by Klondike/Unilever. Pretend the Choco Taco was leaving for good, then sell twice as many the next year.
Or, even if true, we were sure that some novelty knuckleheads would buy the Choco Taco name, slap retro packaging on it, and get it back in every grocery store next to Phish Food and Moose Tracks.
But no. That crispy, artery-stuffing, dopamine-delivering treat remains a half-circle hole in our lives. You’ll have to seek sun-seared solace in something healthier this week, like a nice seltzer with orange juice.
Our hearts are heavy. Even if they’re a bit lighter on saturated fats. With a sincere wish that your second-favorite frozen dessert treat never leaves you, let’s move on to the news.
Reporter
TEMP CHECK
CLIMATE
Statewide buddy check for butterflies and other pollinators
Next time you’re considering smashing that flap-mad miller moth with a tennis racquet, consider this: You might be interfering with key Bureau of Land Management research into the future of the Endangered Species Act.
Usher it gently out the door instead. Because Miller moths are important nocturnal pollinators, and the BLM and the Butterfly Pavilion want to see the moths crop-dusting public lands with those dusty, pollen-covered wings as the partners undertake a new statewide survey.
BLM, with ownership or management of rights on 8.3 million public acres in Colorado, needs to know more about the diurnal and nocturnal pollinators and their current state of health — honeybees, bumblebees, butterflies, moths, dragonflies, even some beetle species that drag life-giving fairy dust from plant to plant. And the Butterfly Pavilion, as a leading worldwide invertebrate zoo, wants to advance research into how bugs are holding up amid drought, climate change, pesticide use, grazing and urban development.
“We know very little about the invertebrates that live in Colorado,” said Rich Reading, vice president of science and conservation at the pavilion. “Pollinators are crucially vital to our planet. About 80% of flowering species require pollinators, and about one-third of the food we eat comes from pollinators and thanks to pollinators. A lot of the best things in life, like chocolate and coffee, are thanks to pollinators. So without pollinators, we’d have a very different planet upon which we live.”
Researchers and the BLM have an interest in establishing baselines for pollinators long before conservation battles start to play out, Reading noted. Studying and debating whether species should be listed as threatened or endangered takes an enormous amount of public resources, and prompts lengthy and emotional debates between resource users and conservationists. (See: Wolves. Sage grouse. Humpback chub.)
“The BLM would be very interested in knowing if they have any species of conservation concern that they should be managing for, so we can get ahead of the game, if you will, in terms of conservation management,” Reading said in an interview.
Colorado is already seeing a decline in some bird species, and researchers suspect that’s due in part to loss of invertebrate food stocks. Even the smudged wings of a miller moth are a bird meal, as any grateful Coloradan has seen watching a robin snatch a moth lingering in a garden.
As part of the BLM partnership, pavilion researchers have already started fanning out across public lands in Colorado to collect pollinators. Over the next few years, field collectors will use sweep nets, lighter “aerial” nets and colored pans that invertebrates mistake for flowers. They’ll send collections back to a very busy identification specialist at the pavilion.
Some bee species can only be distinguished by a genital check. How do you check a bee’s genitals? Very carefully, and with a microscope.
One of Reading’s favorites that he is hoping to see in robust collections is the endangered Hine’s emerald dragonfly. The pavilion is working on an in-house breeding program for the striking dragonfly, to boost dwindling natural stocks.
But for those irritated by miller moths, Reading has other bad pollinator news: The surveys also will help defend the lowly mosquito, the nonbloodsucking males of which are excellent pollinators.
Read more about the pollinators survey and how a pavilion team goes out on a Colorado bug hunt in an upcoming edition of ColoradoSun.com.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
CLIMATE
Yes, folks, those wind turbines actually work
One mainstream presidential candidate is a constant critic of wind power, mocking its unreliability, alleged whale-disturbing noise and other impacts on the environment.
The other mainstream candidate is spending billions of dollars in taxpayers subsidies to promote expansion of wind turbines, solar farms and other renewable energy in hope of combating greenhouse gases and transforming the U.S. economy.
Who’s right?
We can’t tackle all those topics in one short piece. There are lingering questions about wind turbines’ impact on birds and other wildlife. Some neighbors object to aesthetics. Who will take care of them when they start falling apart remains an open issue. How much renewable energy should be subsidized is a worthy debate.
But renewable energy, including and especially wind turbines, is working. In a few easy pie charts, we’re showing you how they have already transformed Colorado’s electricity economy, and will continue to accelerate in the next few years.
Here’s how Colorado’s electricity was generated last year:
For charts showing how much that has changed in just 20 years, and how the mix changes further every month as new wind turbines and solar farms come online, head over to ColoradoSun.com.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
MORE CLIMATE NEWS
HEALTH
COVID precautions saved 800,000 lives, but at what cost?
Precautions such as shutdowns and social distancing, combined with the fast rollout of vaccines, saved 800,000 lives in the United States from the clutches of COVID-19, a new study co-authored by a University of Colorado professor estimates.
But the price of that prevention was also tremendous. Shuttered schools creating lasting learning loss and achievement gaps. Delayed routine medical care leading to bigger problems and deaths down the road. And, perhaps most serious of all, a newfound hostility to public health measures, which could leave us more vulnerable for the next pandemic.
“Our hope in the paper is not to downplay those things or say these measures saved 800,000 lives, period,” said Stephen Kissler, an assistant professor of computer science at CU Boulder.
“My concern,” Kissler’s co-author, UCLA economics professor Andrew Atkeson told CU Today, “is that the next pandemic will be deadlier, but people will ignore it, because they will say, ‘Oh, we overdid it during COVID.’”
Instead, Kissler and Atkeson intend the new study, which was published in a Brookings Institution journal, as a call to intensify public health efforts to better understand diseases earlier in outbreaks so that such broad, heavy-handed countermeasures won’t be necessary in the next pandemic.
“If we had been able to gather better information more quickly, we would have been able to reduce the burden of our countermeasures,” Kissler said in an interview with The Sun.
Kissler’s speciality is mathematical epidemiology — using data and computer models to track the spread of disease and its outcomes. For this study, he and Atkeson relied largely on data from blood tests to determine how many people were vaccinated prior to being infected with COVID. From there, they ran modeling scenarios to estimate how many people would have been infected before vaccination — and how many would have died — had social isolation and distancing policies not been in place or had vaccines rolled out more slowly.
Their two models, one that was simpler and another more complex, ended up returning the same result: The U.S.’s COVID countermeasures saved between 800,000 and 850,000 lives.
The study was published this month. What happened next wasn’t entirely unexpected to Kissler, who worked on epidemiological studies about COVID throughout the pandemic. People started emailing him. And they were angry.
“I was a little surprised how quickly and forcefully some of those responses arrived,” he said.
But Kissler doesn’t see this study as divisive. He sees it as attempting to chart a better path forward.
In his view, the study shows how much impact humans can have through their behavior on the course of a disease outbreak. Now comes the work of trying to make that impact more precise.
By learning more now about how different types of viruses spread, by doing a better job of tracking emerging outbreaks, and by developing even faster vaccine-development and distribution systems, we can manage pandemics with less social pain.
“Clearly we can have a huge impact,” he said. “And we just need to do what we can do now to make sure we can have a similar impact at a lower cost.”
Section by John Ingold | Reporter
MORE HEALTH NEWS
CHART OF THE WEEK
At this point in the newsletter, if you are still with us, any daydreams you had of a Choco Taco or its still-on-the-shelves equivalent have dissipated in a windstorm of interesting climate and health news. It’s a good thing you’ve come back to reality, because this week’s charts show there’s going to be more hot air out there in Colorado than a post-debate spin room.
NOAA’s July forecasts came out June 20, and the picture for the West is more of what June gave us: Hotter and drier than normal. With ozone alerts ringing on the Front Range much of this week, some precautions are in order through at least mid-July.
Two words: Fat Boy. Or just one made-up word: Chipwich. Stay hydrated, don’t go on a run at 1 p.m., but do hang with your pets at streamside or in the basement. Ice cream novelties might get us through.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
That’s it. We’ve reached the EPA and FDA limit for ice cream references before the Fourth of July. Before you leave us, take a moment to sign up for The Sun’s free July 9 YouTube panel “Climate Change Hits Home,” showing how skyrocketing insurance costs are one of the first consumer casualties of global warming.
Best of luck in the heat …
— Michael & John
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