Comments on: The Coming Classroom Climate Conflict http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/02/16/the-coming-classroom-climate-conflict/ Where science collides with life, slams into culture, crashes with politics, and gets totaled. Tue, 27 Sep 2011 17:28:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: The Coming Classroom Climate Conflict | Colorado News | Colorado Breaking News Headlines | Colorado News Directory http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/02/16/the-coming-classroom-climate-conflict/#comment-88500 The Coming Classroom Climate Conflict | Colorado News | Colorado Breaking News Headlines | Colorado News Directory Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:33:10 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/?p=16058#comment-88500 [...] The Coming Classroom Climate Conflict [...] [...] The Coming Classroom Climate Conflict [...]

]]> By: Gaythia http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/02/16/the-coming-classroom-climate-conflict/#comment-88452 Gaythia Thu, 17 Feb 2011 04:55:09 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/?p=16058#comment-88452 @3, I actually am on the east side, the front range. (That's how I made it to Chris' recent talk in Boulder). But we can buy the wine over here, it's good. All wine is overpriced here. You are right, oil shale is still busted, (but holding water rights just in case). And, oil shale leasing policies on federal land have been under litigation (by environmental groups) and a settlement was just reached. See: http://www.callingducks.com/newsfeed_item.aspx?ID=16223 So it has an aura of being "just around the corner" even if there is no real feasible technology exists. I should have qualified my statement a bit, but comments aren't supposed to be book length. There have been multiple energy resource extraction cycles in this region, uranium, coal, oil shale, oil, natural gas. Makes some peoples economic lives tenuous, and makes them defensive, I believe. Fracking is a problem. Congresswoman Diana DeGette (Denver) has just launched an investigation of the use of diesel fuel in fracking solutions: http://degette.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1048:energy-a-commerce-committee-fracking-investigation-reveals-millions-of-gallons-of-diesel-fuel-injected-into-ground-across-us&catid=76:press-releases-&Itemid=227 @3, I actually am on the east side, the front range. (That’s how I made it to Chris’ recent talk in Boulder). But we can buy the wine over here, it’s good. All wine is overpriced here.

You are right, oil shale is still busted, (but holding water rights just in case). And, oil shale leasing policies on federal land have been under litigation (by environmental groups) and a settlement was just reached. See: http://www.callingducks.com/newsfeed_item.aspx?ID=16223 So it has an aura of being “just around the corner” even if there is no real feasible technology exists. I should have qualified my statement a bit, but comments aren’t supposed to be book length. There have been multiple energy resource extraction cycles in this region, uranium, coal, oil shale, oil, natural gas. Makes some peoples economic lives tenuous, and makes them defensive, I believe.

Fracking is a problem. Congresswoman Diana DeGette (Denver) has just launched an investigation of the use of diesel fuel in fracking solutions:
http://degette.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1048:energy-a-commerce-committee-fracking-investigation-reveals-millions-of-gallons-of-diesel-fuel-injected-into-ground-across-us&catid=76:press-releases-&Itemid=227

]]> By: Eric the Leaf http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/02/16/the-coming-classroom-climate-conflict/#comment-88436 Eric the Leaf Thu, 17 Feb 2011 01:55:38 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/?p=16058#comment-88436 @#2Gaythia, From Grand Junction, eh? Cool looking. Grand Mesa, the Monument, Book Cliffs. My sister is a physician there, her kids went to school there, and one of my brothers is partner in a winery in Pallisades--maybe you know it--Plum Creek Cellars (overpriced some say, but what the hell). Are you sure that the "oil shales" are in a boom/bust cycle? I'm not aware of a commercially viable oil shale operation. But shale gas is a different story. Over Christmas I drove my usual route on I-70 from Grand Junction, through Glenwood Springs, and on to Denver and saw all the frac'ing rigs in Garfield County. That's natural gas. Colorado. Great state. Climbed in almost every range. And you're right, the peaches on the western slope are awesome! @#2Gaythia,
From Grand Junction, eh? Cool looking. Grand Mesa, the Monument, Book Cliffs. My sister is a physician there, her kids went to school there, and one of my brothers is partner in a winery in Pallisades–maybe you know it–Plum Creek Cellars (overpriced some say, but what the hell).

Are you sure that the “oil shales” are in a boom/bust cycle? I’m not aware of a commercially viable oil shale operation. But shale gas is a different story. Over Christmas I drove my usual route on I-70 from Grand Junction, through Glenwood Springs, and on to Denver and saw all the frac’ing rigs in Garfield County. That’s natural gas.

Colorado. Great state. Climbed in almost every range. And you’re right, the peaches on the western slope are awesome!

]]> By: Gaythia http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/02/16/the-coming-classroom-climate-conflict/#comment-88387 Gaythia Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:22:28 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/?p=16058#comment-88387 The Mesa County School District 51 serves Grand Junction, CO. While there are orchards in the surrounding Colorado River irrigated Grand Valley (the peaches are excellent), the growing part of the economy these days is oil and gas exploration. This had a recent boom and bust cycle for oil shale. The orchardists might see the oil shale development as a water rights threat, but so are the urban developments of the Boulder/Denver front range which bring Colorado River water eastward, in pipes under the Rockies for their urban developments. Water demands also come from Arizona and California to the west. Oil and gas development is a pocketbook issue here, and many people have had tough personal experiences with times when that income stream was taken away. The fact that the so called “Balanced Education for Everyone” group has officially disbanded, and is thus apparently not the start of a movement of such groups around the country, as seemed to have been hoped, is thus a good thing. I think that we need to continue to be not only watchful but proactive. And I believe that care needs to be taken to present climate change in a manner that does not get rejected as just another crazy idea from those radical lefty elitists in Boulder. Issues regarding the science of climate change need to be framed in ways that are respectful of and matter to the people on Colorado’s western slope. I believe that water resource availability is a climate change issue that will be seen as a vitally important matter to diverse groups of people. The Mesa County School District 51 serves Grand Junction, CO. While there are orchards in the surrounding Colorado River irrigated Grand Valley (the peaches are excellent), the growing part of the economy these days is oil and gas exploration. This had a recent boom and bust cycle for oil shale. The orchardists might see the oil shale development as a water rights threat, but so are the urban developments of the Boulder/Denver front range which bring Colorado River water eastward, in pipes under the Rockies for their urban developments. Water demands also come from Arizona and California to the west.

Oil and gas development is a pocketbook issue here, and many people have had tough personal experiences with times when that income stream was taken away.

The fact that the so called “Balanced Education for Everyone” group has officially disbanded, and is thus apparently not the start of a movement of such groups around the country, as seemed to have been hoped, is thus a good thing. I think that we need to continue to be not only watchful but proactive. And I believe that care needs to be taken to present climate change in a manner that does not get rejected as just another crazy idea from those radical lefty elitists in Boulder. Issues regarding the science of climate change need to be framed in ways that are respectful of and matter to the people on Colorado’s western slope.

I believe that water resource availability is a climate change issue that will be seen as a vitally important matter to diverse groups of people.

]]> By: Duncan Brown http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/02/16/the-coming-classroom-climate-conflict/#comment-88380 Duncan Brown Wed, 16 Feb 2011 15:37:14 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/?p=16058#comment-88380 I vote for a parallel center on evolution. Darwin's birthday seems to have become fraught with controversy. The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center is have a Darwin Day Road Trip in support of a national holiday: http://deepseanews.com/2011/02/darwin-day-road-show/ I vote for a parallel center on evolution. Darwin’s birthday seems to have become fraught with controversy. The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center is have a Darwin Day Road Trip in support of a national holiday: http://deepseanews.com/2011/02/darwin-day-road-show/

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