Real Climate Science

Temperatures in Boulder have not increased for 60 years, yet the University of Colorado has obtained $800,000 to study how global warming has affected the local rodents. Perhaps the fat furry rats are teleconnected to Yamal?

The massive grant — from the Division of Environmental Biology at the National Science Foundation — is designed to give the researchers three years in the field to try and figure out how climate change is altering prairie dog habitat and how the rodents are responding to those changes. The study also will examine the interactions between native and non-native plants, including whether new species are taking up water used by the native variety.

Heather Swanson, Boulder’s wildlife ecologist, said some of the changes reported in recent years include loss of topsoil and changes in plant species where prairie dogs can be found. One of the primary questions is whether those changes are causing prairie dogs to change their habits, including being more active during the winter — which can lead to soil erosion after the rodents eat plants to the bare ground.

“I’m concerned that our management plan has not been informed by science that would look at what’s happening on these fragmented parcels” of open space, Wilson said. “We’ve seen some impacts that are disturbing, where (prairie dogs) totally defoliate these areas. We need to understand why that’s happening so that we can manage our grasslands better.”

CU to study impact of climate change on Boulder prairie dogs – Boulder Daily Camera

Let me save the taxpayers almost a million bucks and complete the study in the next 30 seconds.

Boulder’s most famous Prairie Dog town is at the corner of Arapahoe and Foothills. Both roads are about eight or nine lanes wide at the intersection. If you look closely at the Google Earth image below, you can see dozens of circular Prairie Dog mounds in an overpopulated village of  potential Bubonic Plague carriers. The animals are boxed in, their natural predators have been nearly eliminated, and they are protected by law.

The little rats are overpopulated and they eat all the grass.

Our friends have been telling us that Pikas die after 20 minutes of 60 degree temperatures.

The hockey team and Peter Gleick are very honorable people, so we can safely assume that all Pikas in Colorado are now dead. RIP Pikas.

Europe 2003 – Moscow – Texas – Colorado … the cherry pickers are at it again.

June 29, 2012

As the American West’s fire season races off to a ferocious start, researchers suggest that the increasingly hotter, drier region is just beginning to pay off a “fire deficit.”
By Tom Yulsman
DailyClimate.org

BOULDER, Colo. – As the West has warmed and dried over the past 30 years, headlines describing fire season have grown ever more apocalyptic: “epic” dryness, “monster” fires, new records for damage and devastation.

There is no trend in western precipitation. We were having floods and record snowpack in Colorado during the previous two Junes. The fires in the west this year have been small compared to the giant fires of 1871, 1881 1898, 1910, etc. The only thing that is epic is the level of bullshit from climate alarmists.

This year is no exception. The Waldo Canyon Fire has incinerated hundreds of homes in Colorado Springs, and every indication points to another big, early start to the wildfire season.

The Waldo Canyon fire is not a huge fire. A lot of people built houses in a very vulnerable location, and the inevitable is happening. The monsoons are starting, and as happens every year, fire activity in the southwest will decline during July and August.

Recent research, however, suggests these severe conflagrations could be a prelude. Climate stressors are putting increasing pressure on a “fire deficit” the West has accumulated over the past 100 years, say scientists who have compared today’s burn rates with fire activity over thousands of years. As the West continues to warm, that debt will come due – possibly with interest – triggering fires that are fiercer and harder to contain, they warn.

In other words, a century of fire suppression has left a forest where the tree density is about 10X higher than it was 100 years ago, so the fires are burning very hot. Yulsman completely misrepresented the point of the study – which was that we have been through 100 years of historically low fire activity and that fire activity may return to normal.

With eight or nine weeks left in the melting season, the bear body count is piling up.

N_daily_extent.png (420×500)

Current Cheyenne NEXRAD Radar Map | Weather Underground

This picture was taken yesterday at ground zero of the High Park Fire west of Fort Collins, which the governor recently described as being the worst fire in Colorado history. No more smoke, no more flames – most of the burn area will be green in six weeks.

If lots of people hadn’t of built houses in stupid places, it would have been just another fire out of hundreds of thousands which burn in the US every year.

Colorado is not on fire. There are some forest fires burning, just like every year. Click on the image to see it full size.

If everyone in America was forced to purchase a Chevy Volt, we could end hurricanes, tornadoes, hot weather, cold weather, floods and drought.

Obama promised that he wouldn’t raise taxes on anyone below $250K income. Then he argued that Obamacare was constitutional, because it was a tax on everyone. This was after he said that Obamacare was not a tax.

FLASHBACK: Obama says individual mandate not a tax [VIDEO] | The Daily Caller

h/t to  John B., M.D.

In the last two days we have seen two federal court rulings showing that the judicial branch has relinquished its responsibility – in deference to dear leader.

“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court’s majority in the opinion.

Supreme Court upholds centerpiece of Obama healthcare law | Reuters

Obama has solved the health insurance crisis by forcing everyone to buy health insurance. The next logical step is to force homeless people to purchase a house. This would end the problem of homelessness, and be a big boost to the sagging sub-prime loan industry.

The Democratic governor of Colorado has been running around today telling people that the fires this year are the worst in the state’s history. Apparently he doesn’t know much about the state’s history. The 1898 fires were much larger than what we have seen in 2012.

Fires happen. If you build a house in the pine forest without a wide fire break, sooner or later the fire will come and burn your house down. Fire is an essential part of the forest cycle, and 100 years of fire suppression has left the forests primed for very hot crown fires.

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