NEWS

This month I’ve been reading about how innovative satellite technologies are being used as important tools for scientists leaders in monitoring and addressing climate change. Recently, the British technology company, SatVu, built a satellite that can measure the heat radiating off buildings and determine whether or not they are energy efficient. This incredible satellite is named Hotsat-1 and was launched with a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in

There has been a lot of climate news in the past two months. In early April an important new report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that we are not doing enough to curb global warming to only 1.5 degrees Celsius, the goal set in the Paris Agreement in 2015. The report which was written by hundreds of leading scientists says that despite some efforts to curb emissions, greenhouse gas emissions did, in fact, increase globally from 2010 to 2019 and c

In February, the Colorado Legislature agreed to move forward with a study to determine whether biochar could effectively help to cap orphaned oil and gas wells. There are estimated to be over three million abandoned oil wells nationwide, many of which leak climate warming gasses into the atmosphere. The gasses can also have negative effects on the health of people and animals living near the wells. Biochar is made through a process called pyrolysis in which wood and other or

Happy Holidays! This month I am going to write about how to be thoughtful about your impact on the Earth and reduce your waste these holidays. No matter what you celebrate you can be helping the environment the whole way through. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s waste increases by 25% to 43%. Not only should we work to reduce this, but it is an opportunity to create good habits for the years ahead. In my family, we celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas, and one big part of Chr

This month, given the theme of gratitude, I have been thinking about how grateful I am to live in a place where the elected leaders and local citizens care about the environment and put in the effort to protect it. For example, recently the town of Telluride has announced that in 2024 there will be a ban on single use plastics. Back in 1993 the Colorado State Legislature passed a bill that banned municipalities from banning single use plastics. Last year the law was finally r

Every time a rocket is launched it releases black carbon or soot, which, when there were only about 70 worldwide rocket launches a year didn’t have a significant impact, but now with an average of about twice that is becoming more of a problem. Each year about 1,000 metric tons of soot is released into the stratosphere from rocket launches. However, this does not include all the fossil fuels used to build and transport these rockets. Currently rocket launches account for 0.2