The Temperature Archives - The Colorado Sun

Antarctic is svelte from melt, but that’s not good

Michael Booth — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 16:50:58 +0000

When reality has overtaken the cliche, print the cliche.

The Earth actually is melting, at an accelerated pace that has geologists accustomed to thinking in 100,000-year blocks now measuring change at the 100-year level. Our talk with Colorado State University seismologist Rick Aster, previewed below and running at more length later this week at ColoradoSun.com, brought our focus back to global warming in real time.

Rick’s measurements are actually aimed not at ice melt itself, but what happens to the rock shelves called continents lying underneath when that snowcap disappears. Simplified answer: The rock floats, riding around and up and down on the molten interior at the Earth’s core. West Antarctica, the area below South America, is rising at 1.5 inches a year as it sheds ice.

Wait, that could be good, right? A self-correcting problem? As the seas rise and threaten coastlines, the coastline itself rising up could solve that? Correct, Aster says, but only if the melt is held to a moderate level. At the current glacier-gushing rates, the “float” of continental rock can’t keep up with the fast rise of sea water.

And that only helps for the two areas with permanent ice caps, Antarctica and Greenland. Other continents are “stiffer,” without the ability to float. North America, for example, is stuck largely where it is, and will see its ankles — Miami and New Orleans — inundated within our lifetime unless temperatures are stabilized.

Sobering, yes. Aster does not sugarcoat his observations about his beloved Antarctica. But, as we always argue here at The Temperature, knowledge is power. These are the studies that renewable energy activists, for example, are reading when they push for faster change. It’s good to know that Colorado researchers are buried deep in the data that can drive good decisions.

Cheers, and on to the rest of the news …

Colorado State University geophysicist Rick Aster installs seismology equipment to measure ice and continental rock in Antarctica. (Courtesy Rick Aster)

10 feet

Amount of sea rise in North America by 2150 if Antarctica melts at current pace

Rick Aster has spent a career checking up on his favorite patient, the Antarctic ice shelf. Lately, the Colorado State University seismologist is worried about the patient’s weight loss. A little slimming amid the constant pressure of global warming could be OK — the Western Antarctic has an unusual rock underlay that could handle a moderate amount of ice melt.

But what Aster and his colleagues have learned recently is that melting could accelerate in a so-called negative feedback loop, overflowing the rock “bowl” holding in a massive glacier and letting in sea water that will make freshwater ice melt even faster.

They’ve also learned more about the gravitational pull of all that fragile ice, and how up to now it’s saved much of Earth’s coastline from further disaster. The mass has acted like a magnet, pulling liquid water up and around the Antarctic in a thicker layer than natural sea level would dictate. That kept water levels down at coastal cities to the north, from Miami to San Diego to Honolulu.

If West Antarctic keeps melting at current rates, the magnet is gone, said Aster, co-author of an ice study published this month in Science Advances. That means even more coastal inundation on the other continents.

The Antarctic glaciers alone could raise sea levels in North America by 10 feet by 2150, Aster said. Add in the melting glaciers of Greenland, the world’s other ice store, and there’s a world of trouble unless humans slow down climate change, Aster said. If we do, the Antarctic’s contribution to rising seas could be limited to just over a foot.

Scientists have sometimes comforted themselves with the knowledge that Earth has been through everything before. The ice sheets were gone in the warming before the last ice age, Aster noted. Continents survived.

“What’s really different in terms of global warming, and different than anything that the Earth has seen as far as we know,” Aster added, “is the rapidity. We’re spiking the carbon dioxide and otherwise changing the climate so rapidly that we’re in territory where it’s hard or impossible to find natural analogs that we can study in Earth’s past history.”

Geologic time goes by in ticks of a million years; climate change time appears to be passing in mere double digits.

“It’s happening so rapidly that we can see these large effects even in a human lifetime,” Aster said. “And that is something that the Earth has not seen before, as far as we know. So that’s the most stunning thing to me.”

Read more about how Aster and their team go about their work in the deep snow and ice of Antarctica, and what they’ve learned about the weight of ice and water, this week at ColoradoSun.com.

A treatment room at Wellpower, the community mental health center in Denver, used during esketamine treatments in 2022. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

46th

Colorado’s ranking in a recent survey of state mental health systems

No one keeping up with the mental health landscape in Colorado will be all that surprised to find out where our state landed in the annual rankings from Mental Health America. Colorado is still near the bottom, at 46th out of 51.

The national advocacy organization judges states based on how many people are struggling with mental health and substance abuse issues, and how easy it is to get access to treatment.

Colorado is 50th in prevalence of mental illness and substance abuse, with the highest combined incidence of adults, teens and children who said they have thoughts of suicide, depressive episodes or addiction.

The state did mediocre in terms of access to care. Colorado is 16th best in the percentage of adults who have private insurance that covers mental health and 17th best in that category for kids, for example.

Nationally, 10% of adults who had a mental illness in the past year had private health insurance that did not cover their treatment. The 2008 federal parity law says insurance companies can’t have more restrictive rules for mental health than physical health, but that doesn’t mean it’s available. People are far more likely to have to go out-of-network to get an appointment with a behavioral health provider than they are for other medical care.

The top states overall were Massachusetts, Connecticut and Maine, while the worst were Arizona, Nevada and Montana.

Mental Health Colorado CEO Vincent Atchity said the report underscores once again that Colorado “remains in an urgent crisis that demands immediate and ongoing attention.”

“Despite the strengths and beauties of our state, Coloradans of all ages are experiencing serious mental illnesses, suicidality, and substance use conditions at a higher rate than most of the nation,” he said in a news release.

In this file photo, a Lab-mix puppy named Chevy is carried by a staffer at the La Plata County Humane Society. Like the puppy that tested positive for rabies, Chevy came from Texas. Unlike the rabid puppy, though, Chevy does not have rabies. The photo options for rabid dogs are a big bummer, so we thought you’d like this one better. (Jerry McBribe, The Durango Herald)

>80

The number of people who have been screened for rabies exposure following a puppy adoption event at a rescue shelter in Sheridan

More than 20 people have been referred for rabies post-exposure treatment following last week’s announcement about a rabid puppy at a rescue adoption event. But Colorado has so far identified no human cases as a result of the event, as state health officials continue to plead with those who were at the event to come forward for screening.

Rabies is almost universally fatal but can be prevented after exposure (but before symptoms emerge) if those exposed are treated.

A spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said Monday that the state has assessed more than 80 people to determine if they had contact with the puppy that could have spread the rabies virus to them. The 20 people referred for what is known as post-exposure prophylaxis came from that group.

“I don’t want people to either minimize the risk or say ‘I didn’t have that much contact’ or ‘I probably wasn’t exposed,’” said Dr. Michelle Barron, the senior medical director of infection prevention and control for UCHealth and an expert in infectious diseases. “We want the public to get a formal assessment so (public health officials) can ask those questions.”

The puppy, a shepherd mix, was part of a litter brought from Texas to Colorado and made available for adoption at an event July 20 at Moms and Mutts Colorado Rescue for Pregnant and Nursing Dogs in Sheridan.

The CDPHE spokeswoman, Gabi Johnston, said the puppy arrived in Colorado on July 16. It began showing symptoms of rabies July 29, became seriously ill and was euthanized. A veterinarian submitted a sample for rabies testing, which came back positive Aug. 7. CDPHE notified the public Aug. 9.

That delay between when people were potentially exposed at the adoption event and when they were notified is not ideal because the post-exposure treatment should be started as soon as possible. But it is crucial people receive the prophylaxis treatment any time before they begin showing symptoms of infection. Once people begin exhibiting symptoms, especially ones related to the virus’ attack on the brain, then rabies almost always kills — save for a handful of cases worldwide.

Barron said it’s possible the puppy had a lower level of infectiousness at the adoption event, since it wasn’t showing symptoms there. But she said that’s not certain, which is why public health officials are being extra-cautious and urging people to be screened and, if appropriate, start treatment.

“If this was not a uniformly fatal disease, we would play by different rules,” Barron said. “But it’s so high-risk that if we’re wrong about what information you’re giving us, you could die.”

Johnston said the puppy — and likely the rest of its litter — is believed to have had contact with a rabid skunk in Texas. CDPHE said last week that the owners of the puppy and the veterinarian who examined the dog were both bitten. They are among those referred for treatment.

Meanwhile, all of the other puppies from the litter have been surrendered to animal control, where they will likely be euthanized.

“The people who adopted the other puppies were understandably devastated when they learned their puppies were exposed to rabies for a prolonged period of time,” Johnston wrote in an email.

Source: CoreLogic

You knew Colorado was in danger. But did you know it was this bad?

Colorado has more than 320,000 homes sitting in moderate-to-severe wildfire danger, according to the mortgage and insurance company CoreLogic. The analytics firm published a new report with eye-opening charts and maps of just how many homes nationally are in danger zones, and how much it would cost to replace them.

We’re second only to California, with its far larger population of 39 million. The communities up against forested, mountain terrain in the northern Sierra Nevada have seen the most destructive fires in recent years. But CoreLogic’s maps show the scary wildfire band north of Los Angeles in the San Gabriels as an angry red swath awaiting disaster.

Altogether, the CoreLogic report spotlights 2.6 million homes in 14 wildfire-vulnerable states. The total reconstruction cost of those homes? $1.3 trillion.

Thanks for hanging with us — we’d like to think this glacier of a newsletter was packed all the way to the bottom with gemstones and instructive cultural artifacts! If your brain is hungry for more, take a minute to sign up for SunFest’s all-day extravaganza of learning and entertainment, we’ll look forward to seeing you there.

— Michael & John

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Colorado’s health system is stressing patients out

John Ingold and Michael Booth — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 17:25:38 +0000

Happy Wednesday, Colorado, and welcome to another edition of The Temperature, where today we are serving up an absolute feast of health and climate news.

But, first, we need to talk about heart health — specifically the kind of heart health you might have during, say, the closing moments of an extra-time win by the U.S. women’s soccer team over Germany in the semifinals of the Olympics.

You know, just minutes after Colorado’s own Mallory Swanson threaded a pass through the tiniest of needles to Colorado’s own Sophia Smith for what was apparently the game-winning goal, only for Germany to come back with a free header that almost certainly was going to tie the score, except that U.S. goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher (connections to Colorado unclear) somehow miraculously got her left heel on the ball while leaping in the air to keep it out and preserve the U.S.’s unlikely quest for gold and send my blood pressure to roughly 1,000,000/80. That kind of heart health.

Alyssa NaeHER 🧤🧤 pic.twitter.com/PDh36As0oq
— Jodee Storm Sullivan (@jstorm482) August 6, 2024

(We joke, of course, but there is some evidence of cardiac events tied to watching sports.)

There’s really only one cure for stress like that, and it’s rest. So, go ahead and show this newsletter to your boss as proof that you need to take today off to give your heart a break ahead of Saturday’s gold medal match. The Temp says so.

Now, let’s make like we’re in the last 100 meters of a 1,500 and kick it into gear.

A sign outside Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver, photographed on Oct. 22, 2019. (John Ingold, The Colorado Sun)

If you are freaked out about the cost of health care and worried about whether you’ll be able to afford it when you need it, then you have good company. According to a new study, nearly everyone else in Colorado feels the same.

In a survey of more than 1,400 Coloradans, 83% said they worry about affording health care in the future. The survey also found that 68% of people said they delayed needed health care or went without in the prior year due to cost concerns.

The survey was conducted by the Altarum Healthcare Value Hub, a national nonprofit that studies health care policy around costs and affordability. Among its other findings: Large, bipartisan majorities support the idea that the health care system needs to change to improve affordability and also support the government doing more to help control costs.

“Health care may be one of the very few things we can all agree on that needs to be worked on,” said Beth Beaudin-Seiler, the director of the Healthcare Value Hub.

The organization worked on the Colorado survey with the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, a group that advocates for consumers and works on policies at the state Capitol that are often aligned with approaches favored by Democrats. But the survey is part of Altarum’s broader Consumer Healthcare Experience State Survey, which runs in numerous other states.

Beaudin-Seiler said Colorado’s results are similar to those seen across the country, highlighting how health care affordability is a nationwide problem that people are eager to see addressed. But Colorado has also been a leader in doing some of the things the survey suggests have broad public support — such as capping the out-of-pocket price of insulin.

Adam Fox, the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative’s deputy director, said that shows how one-off policy changes aren’t enough to fix the bigger problem.

“Colorado has made some important steps in the right direction, but the reality is health care costs continue to rise,” Fox said. “… It means that folks are continually challenged by health care affordability.”

Fox said CCHI has not yet decided on its policy priorities for next year’s legislative session — much, he said, hinges on the outcome of the presidential election and what that might mean for, say, the policies in the Affordable Care Act. But Priya Telang, CCHI’s communications manager, said the organization will use the information from the survey in helping to guide its policy proposals.

You can read the full Altarum brief on the study, as well as companion briefs on hospital prices and prescription drug costs, on CCHI’s website.

Could a dairy cow like this one give you bird flu without you even knowing it? The state is trying to find out.

The number of human cases of bird flu reported in Colorado in 2024

Colorado hasn’t reported any new human cases of bird flu for a couple of weeks now, but that doesn’t mean the state isn’t looking.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has launched a new study to analyze blood samples from dairy workers who were exposed to sick cattle. The research, known as a seroprevalence study, is looking for antibodies against bird flu in the blood of workers who had not been known to have been infected.

If researchers find the antibodies, it would suggest that some workers had been infected without developing symptoms. And that would mean that bird flu could be silently spreading from animals to people.

According to an update from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Colorado study launched last week. It is unclear when initial results from the study will be available, and CDPHE did not respond with answers as of newsletter emailing time.

Just to provide some reassurance here: The existence of this study doesn’t mean health leaders think there is silent spread. A previous study looking at the blood of dairy workers in Michigan found no bird flu antibodies in workers who hadn’t been known to be infected. And, even if the Colorado study does find evidence of silent spread, there is still no evidence that the virus is spreading person-to-person.

Meanwhile, Colorado’s efforts to better track bird flu on commercial dairies is delivering results. The state has reported nine new cases of bird flu on dairies after discovering them through “bulk tank surveillance.” This is part of the state’s new order for mandatory testing of milk at commercial dairies to identify bird flu cases that weren’t being picked up by just watching for sick cows.

Colorado is now up to 63 dairies affected by bird flu, more than double that of any other state (though, of course, no other state has issued an order for testing at all dairies).

United Power’s battery array, in white cabinets on right, at the Bromley substation at Brighton. (Courtesy of United Power)

The Brighton-based United Power electric cooperative accelerated its innovative push into renewable and “hyper-local” energy supplies late last month, announcing the hookup of backup battery arrays across three counties.

The batteries at eight substations in Weld, Adams and Broomfield counties will store excess power from solar farms and other United Power transmission sources, then disperse the stored energy at peak times like summer’s late-afternoon air conditioning surge when families get home from work and school.

The batteries, which are aimed at providing about four hours of electricity at peak demand or during emergencies, are a key to United Power’s exit from the umbrella Tri-State Generation Association. The goal for United Power, which serves about 300,000 people from 112,000 meters on the northern Front Range, is to add more renewable generation to its grid and control smaller, local sources of power rather than rely on distant coal-fired plants.

The Tri-State exit, the growth in solar and other renewable contracts, and the far-flung battery array follow other United Power moves, including teaming up with Fort Lupton to seek a federal grant for a floating solar array at a containment pond. Fort Lupton wants better backup power sources for a water treatment plant, and tests have shown floating solar farms can block summer sun that produces harmful algae blooms.

Five of the new battery arrays were turned on in July, and the remaining three will be linked by the end of the summer, United Power said. One battery site takes down power sent by Xcel Energy transmission lines from a Whetstone Power solar farm in the San Luis Valley.

“We’re excited to be moving ahead with one of the most aggressive plans for such systems,” said United Power CEO Mark Gabriel. The 78.3MW of batteries are owned by United Power’s partner in the storage project, for-profit renewable energy developer Ameresco.

The renewable energy revolution looks like … a hallway of high school lockers? (Courtesy of United Power)

United Power says it is one of the fastest-growing co-ops in the nation, drawing on the rapid home and business growth from Broomfield to Weld County. It serves communities from Coal Creek and Golden Gate Canyons to Brighton, Hudson and Keenesburg on the plains.

Tri-State and United Power battled over how much the smaller co-op needed to pay to exit long-term power contracts with the parent utility. United Power is still contesting Tri-State’s latest requirement of $627 million, but has set aside enough to cover a final agreement, the co-op has said.

Click the image to go to an interactive version of the chart. (Graphic by John Ingold, The Colorado Sun)

So, you may have heard that COVID infections are rising in Colorado due to new variants known as the FLiRTs.

The variants are descendants of the paterfamilias of most COVID viruses circling the world today, the omicron strain. They take their name from their pattern of mutations and for their ability to cozy up to you and then leave you devastated, heartbroken and lying in bed for several days. (Maybe, we don’t really know, we’re not virus-namers.)

Here’s the thing, though: No shade to the dirty FLiRTies, but we’ve seen this game before.

While a summer COVID wave is often seen as novel, the chart above shows that it’s not — at least not in Colorado. There were also small summer bumps in COVID hospitalizations in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

It’s also not uncommon in Colorado for infections to start their big annual surge in August before peaking consistently — at least so far — in late November, typically well before much of the rest of the nation sees a peak. It’s all part of the mysterious seasonal patterns for the virus that we still don’t really understand.

Anyway, just a reminder to be virus-aware out there and make sure that the FLiRTs’ love for you is unrequited.

Hey, here we are at the finish line. Only one thing to do now — dance like we’re Simone and Elmo.

You’re all gold medalists in our books, Temp family. Thanks for hanging with us.

— John & Michael

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

You thought we’d start with something besides bad air and wildfires?

Michael Booth and John Ingold — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 17:43:23 +0000

On the Front Range, summer has two sub-seasons: June and The Season of Looking Over Your Shoulder. We’re deep into that second half now, as scary wildfires send up new plumes seemingly on an hourly basis, from Jeffco this morning and from above Loveland and Lyons earlier this week.

Denver hit 100 degrees Tuesday and it’s turtles and 97s all the way down. Plus, after a promising spring, the entire West is way behind on precipitation to dampen fire threats. Here’s a look at the current drought monitor:

U.S. Drought Monitor

Watch out, Montana. Keep looking over your shoulders, and, as they say in “Fargo,” call it in.

The good news is that the satellites might have called it in first. Finally, an undeniably beneficial use of artificial intelligence beyond stealing everyone’s intellectual property. Not that we’re bitter. But if a NOAA satellite can call in an air tanker hours earlier for future fires, we’re all for it.

We’re packed with news of this and other climate and health news, so thanks for joining us and away we go.

Wildfire smoke, ozone and other Front Range smog combine over Denver International Airport on July 25, 2024. (The Colorado Sun)

Ozone action alerts called for northern Front Range since June 1

“Where am I going to live?”

We were struck by that plaintive quote from patients treated by Colorado’s top pulmonary doctors in reporting a Q&A for today on how to handle the blast of ozone and wildfire smoke we’re feeling. Patients with chronic respiratory problems are telling their doctors they feel physically and mentally suffocated by more frequent bad air days and a relentless string of 90 degree-plus weather warnings.

Sometimes it helps to fight despair with information. So let’s review how to use a couple of places where you and your family can plan your smoky day.

The first is the EPA’s AirNow.gov, where you can plug in your ZIP code and get an easy-to-read gauge with the current air quality and a forecast of how bad things might get. The gauge combines several factors, not just ozone, to come up with the Air Quality Index number; above 100 is the orange zone considered unhealthy for vulnerable people, and above 150 is the red zone considered unhealthy for everybody.

Colorado’s public health air quality page goes into more detail about regional variances, gives an almanac of what happened the day before and provides longer text descriptions of their daily advisories.

Yes, we’ve got another bad air advisory for today through the afternoon at least.

And for the love of all coughing relatives and the safety of all hardworking firefighters, please, please avoid any potential fire-starting behavior. We watched a guy in our neighborhood yesterday take one last deep drag from a cigarette, drop it on the sidewalk with barely a touch of his foot and leave it smoldering near a dry garden.

Remember one of our phrases to live by here at Temperature headquarters: Don’t be that guy!

Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at Colorado State University and NOAA

22,000 miles/1 acre

Distance from which an AI-armed NOAA satellite can detect a budding wildfire

It didn’t take artificial intelligence to spot the dangerous Alexander Mountain fire challenging Colorado’s firefighting resources west of Loveland this week. Commuters, hikers, open space rangers and TV traffic helicopters can be early detectors for newly sparked wildfires over the heavily populated Front Range.

But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is now armed and ready with AI-empowered, real-time satellite detection for the next, more remote wildfire. The Next Generation Fire System autonomously scans the observations of NOAA geostationary satellites and from a height of 22,000 miles can spot a fire as small as an acre.

A sophisticated communication system then warns land managers and fire forecasters about the hot spot.

The satellites update scans every few seconds and can detect sudden changes in heat on the ground.

The AI scans and communication tools perfected at NOAA’s Boulder test bed in June turn NOAA meteorologists into “scientific first responders,” said Todd Lindley, the National Weather Service science and operations officer for Norman, Oklahoma. “These tools will help us provide timely and life-saving warnings of particularly dangerous wildfires.”

Satellites manage to illustrate the very big alongside the very small.

We were astonished by videos and stills like the one above showing how California’s enormous Park fire is creating its own “pyrocumulonimbus” clouds of smoke and weather after blowing up last week. Started when a burning car was pushed into a ditch on July 24, the wildfire north of Sacramento exploded from 120,000 acres on the 25th to 239,000 acres a day later. It’s up to 386,000 acres as of this morning.

Colorado pediatrician Dr. Matthew Daley, in the first row on the far right, poses for a photo with colleagues during his final meeting of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, in June 2024. (Provided by Dr. Matthew Daley)

When Dr. Matthew Daley began his term on a previously little-known advisory committee with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he knew he had a bigger task before him than he had expected.

Daley is a pediatrician with Kaiser Permanente in Denver, but he also does research through KP’s Institute for Health Research. Daley’s work primarily focuses on vaccines — their safety and patients’ hesitancy to get them — and that had long made it a goal of his to serve on that obscure committee, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP.

But while Daley waited for his chance, the COVID-19 pandemic swept into the nation. By the time Daley took his seat in January 2021, ACIP had become one of the most closely watched medical bodies in the country, responsible for reviewing safety and efficacy data on COVID vaccines and making recommendations about whether and how they should be given.

Daley’s term ended in June, and we recently caught up with him to talk about his experience. The following conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

The Temperature: How are you feeling now that your term has ended? Happy? Relieved?

Matthew Daley: I’m really going to miss it, so I’m kind of sad, frankly. It was such an incredible experience. It was so much more work than anybody anticipated, so now I can put back all that energy into my day job, which is being a pediatric health services researcher and a pediatrician. Certainly I’m excited to get back to the rest of my day job, but I’m going to miss it because it was such an interesting experience.

Temp: You joined the committee at such a tumultuous time for the nation’s health systems. Why did this volunteer job appeal to you?

Daley: I was really grateful to have an opportunity to serve. Often, we have the energy, we have the expertise, but we don’t always have the opportunity. If you remember early in the pandemic, we were under lockdown, everything was shut down. And kids could get quite sick from COVID, but it was just a whole lot less common versus adults. So as a practicing pediatrician, the first couple months of the pandemic were pretty quiet for us. It felt so odd to be a doctor in a public health crisis who was not very busy. So I really was grateful for the opportunity to serve in this very unusual and unprecedented circumstance.

Temp: There was, of course, a lot of public attention on your work, and there was also speculation about political pressure on institutions like ACIP. How did that feel from the inside?

Daley: The ACIP was allowed to independently follow its process for decision-making. We were aware of these different power centers, but I was never getting late-night calls from any of those groups saying, “This is what we need you to do,” or, “This is the decision we need you to make.” We adhered to our process, the process served us well, and we had independence to make vaccine policy decision-making. And so that was very encouraging to find because I think there was always suspicion out there that somebody had their finger on the scale. But really, the ACIP had a process, followed it and was independent.

Temp: But there was still some pretty intense criticism from parts of the public. Did that ever become uncomfortable?

Daley: Our emails are up on the ACIP website, and people could easily find our emails. So we would get emails from the public. And some of those were pretty negative. Some of those were pretty positive, you know, just thanks for the work that you’re doing. And sometimes it was a high volume, but what was interesting there was that it was sort of copied and pasted. So you get a bunch of emails, but it was verbatim from another email that you’d get. So it seemed like a small number of people who had an organized campaign. But, given the circumstances, it was totally understandable and just fine.

Temp: How did you incorporate that feedback?

Daley: I think it was helpful to hear what people were worried about. And to the extent I could, I would try to address that in the public meetings. I remember a meeting where there were some public commenters who were really worried about COVID vaccine side effects. And I remember saying, “We hear how great your concerns are about COVID vaccine side effects. We do factor that into our decision-making.” We know that no vaccine is 100% safe or effective. And then here’s what data we have about safety. We have good safety surveillance systems in the U.S. The safety monitoring was some of the most intensive — probably the most intensive — safety monitoring ever in the history of modern science in terms of how many eyes were on safety. And so I was reassured by that.

Watch ColoradoSun.com in the coming days for an expanded Q&A with Daley, including what non-COVID breakthrough he is most proud of.

(Source: Environmental Protection Agency)

Millions of extra summer travelers in, around and above Denver International Airport get an unusual sight, by car or plane: The ever-growing monument to Colorado consumption known as Republic Services’ Tower Landfill.

Is the garbage tomb a little taller since the last time you flew? Definitely. But what goes on behind the carefully placed caps of soil and methane venting? What could possibly stop all that refuse from causing chaos through leaks?

We’re not guaranteeing that won’t ever happen, but there is a careful design. First we looked for graphics of how the EPA would build the ideal landfill containment. Then we asked Republic Services for their version of how things work at Tower Road, and the concepts were all the same.

On the bottom, the liner gets layers of clay, sand, plastic and more sand. Each finished section of disposed garbage is capped as they go, a process that could last at least 20 more years. The final caps include more sand and clay, to keep rain and snow from penetrating and adding to the contaminated leachate developing inside the garbage mound.

Rotting garbage produces methane, which under modern methods is systematically collected by piping and sent to a gathering plant; the methane can be used in vehicle fueling or electrical turbine fuel. Leachate is also gathered, and pumped to tanks for treatment — 500,000 gallons a year at Tower, from 6,000 tons of waste added every day, Republic Services says.

It’s all designed to keep this decade’s landfill from becoming next decade’s Superfund site, as happened to the long-dormant Lowry Landfill. Will we find out otherwise in our lifetime? Hard to say. But there is a plan.

Stay hydrated, wear a mask even before you smell smoke, take an indoor movie break in the afternoon with the kids, and kiss a firefighter. Or hand them a cool drink. Or whatever form of thanks and encouragement they prefer. We appreciate them, and you. It could be a looooong August.

— Michael & John

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Viruses for cleaner water

John Ingold, Shannon Mullane and Michael Booth — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 17:52:34 +0000

Hey there, Colorado, and welcome to another edition of The Temperature, where we again have viruses on the brain.

Well, not ON the brain. Or in the brain — hopefully. Just, there’s a lot of news that involves viruses, which is always wild, how these rogue, nonsentient bits of genetic scraps, basically dice in nucleic acid form, can have such a profound impact on human life, both for the negative and, as Shannon Mullane reports below, potentially for the positive.

If this stuff tickles your imagination as it does mine, be sure to join us this fall for SunFest, where I will be moderating a panel on how to identify and stop the next pandemic. We have an ace researcher from Colorado State University lined up, plus more experts to help us understand whether we are better prepared now, post-COVID, to do battle with pathogens.

The event is Sept. 27 at the University of Denver. We’ll take questions from the audience, and I’ll also be hanging around after, so we can confess our infection anxieties to one another.

Get your tickets now at ColoradoSun.com/SunFest.

Now onto the news.

An oil and gas drilling rig at Chevron’s Edmonson pad Feb. 7 in unincorporated Adams County. (Andy Colwell, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Viruses in general have been getting a lot of bad publicity lately. But what if a specific kind of virus could actually help by — hear us out — cleaning up wastewater left by fracking?

That wastewater, called produced water, is the major waste stream generated by oil and gas production.

The water can include a cocktail of naturally occurring carcinogenic compounds and radioactive materials. Bacteria in the water can cause costly corrosion. It’s so salty that, if used for irrigation, it could kill plants. When fresh water is used to drill for oil and gas, that water should never re-enter the irrigation and drinking water supply.

In Colorado, fresh water used for fracking averaged about 26,000 acre-feet per year from 2011 to 2020, or about 0.17% of the water used in the state, according to the Colorado Division of Water Resources. One acre-foot roughly equals the annual water used by two to three households.

Increasingly, officials are looking at ways to clean and reuse produced water instead of re-injecting it below drinking water aquifers, letting it sit in ponds to evaporate or releasing it into streams.

With water quality in mind, one group of University of Texas researchers looked to the medical industry and its use of a renewable technology: bacteriophages.

Bacteriophages are viruses that infect specific bacteria. They look a bit like the spiders in the “Starship Troopers” movie, said Zacariah Hildenbrand, part of the six-person University of Texas research team.

Once the phage finds its host bacteria, it hooks into the surface of the cell, injects its DNA into the center of the bacteria, and hijacks the bacteria’s replication mechanisms.

Then it reproduces until the bacteria explodes.

“Under the microscope, at the atomic scale, it’s scary. It’s an all-out civil war between bacteria and viruses,” Hildebrand said. “But from the human perspective, it’s totally innocuous.”

And the researchers showed that phages can take out bacteria in produced water in their study published in the peer-reviewed journal Water in April.

The virus, however, won’t be enough — and the researchers will have to jump big hurdles to take their tech to the industrial scale.

Stay tuned for more in an upcoming article from water reporter Shannon Mullane on ColoradoSun.com.

A cow waits to be milked at a dairy near Fort Morgan on June 17, 2021. (Eric Lubbers, The Colorado Sun)

The number of dairy herds in Colorado that have reported outbreaks of bird flu

The Colorado Department of Agriculture this week stepped up efforts to stop a runaway outbreak of bird flu cases on dairy farms by issuing an order requiring testing for the virus on all commercial cow dairies licensed by the state.

The state has seen at least 48 cases of bird flu on dairy farms since April, meaning close to half of all commercial dairies in Colorado have been affected. Around 30 of those cases have happened in the past 30 days.

Colorado’s outbreak continues to surge even as others have dwindled nationwide — no other state has seen more than four cases in the past 30 days, and some major dairy-producing states like Wisconsin and California have never reported any cases.

In issuing the order, state veterinarian Dr. Maggie Baldwin said the virus, while not causing deaths of many cattle, has still been a devastating disruption to Colorado’s dairy industry.

“We have been navigating this challenging, novel outbreak of HPAI in dairy operations for nearly three months in Colorado and have not been able to curb the spread of disease at this point,” Baldwin said in a statement, using a shorthand term for the virus, which is also known as highly pathogenic avian influenza.

Baldwin noted that, as the dairy outbreaks rage on, they are also generating spillover cases in other animals. Most notably, Colorado has begun seeing infections again in commercial poultry operations.

There have been two major, confirmed outbreaks at egg-laying operations in Weld County, while a third, suspected outbreak is also under investigation. Those outbreaks have resulted in the culling of more than 3.2 million chickens just in July, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Colorado has now seen 33 commercial poultry flocks affected since 2022, with more than 6.3 million domestic birds culled.

Then there’s the human toll. One of those poultry outbreaks led to an unprecedented cluster of cases among workers who were doing the culling. Six workers were confirmed positive for bird flu, though their symptoms were relatively mild and none required hospitalization.

This image, captured through a microscope and artificially colorized, shows particles of avian influenza virus, in orange, inside cells. (Provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, via Flickr)

We just mentioned that the recent human infections in Colorado were acquired at a poultry farm but connected to the outbreaks at dairy farms. But how do we actually know that?

Genetics, baby.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a virus sample from one of the Colorado workers and sequenced its genome. (While some viruses are made up of DNA, flu viruses are made up of RNA, the single-stranded cousin to DNA.)

The analysis produced some interesting findings:

So, to recap: Nothing about the Colorado case suggests the bird flu virus has become better able to infect people, hurt people or spread to other people. The CDC said the analysis “supports CDC’s conclusion that the human health risk currently remains low.”

The CDC also reported some more good news last week: Blood tests of Michigan dairy workers were boring.

Michigan’s public health department conducted what is known as a seroprevalence study of workers with known exposures to infected cows. The goal was to see if workers who showed no symptoms of bird flu actually had antibodies against the virus. If they did, it would suggest that they had been silently infected and that human cases might be more common than known.

Instead, the results from every nonsymptomatic worker tested came back clean — no antibodies against bird flu.

“This is an important finding,” the CDC wrote in a weekly update, “because it suggests that asymptomatic infections in people are not occurring.”

Colorado Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway speaks at a public forum in Frisco on Feb. 21, 2020. (John Ingold, The Colorado Sun)

In talking about proposed prices for health insurance plans next year, Colorado’s insurance commissioner made a bold claim about the Colorado Option, one of the Polis administration’s policy babies.

Michael Conway said the proposed rates were, essentially, proof the controversial insurance product is working — despite the fact that prices for Colorado Option plans, as with other insurance plans, look set to rise next year.

“We’re reducing costs,” he said. “We’re bending the cost curve with the Colorado Option. That was something people used to say couldn’t be done.”

The Colorado Option is a government-designed health insurance plan that private companies are required to offer. Its goal is to deliver richer benefits at lower prices, and Conway has some ability to reduce hospital contract prices with insurers if the Colorado Option plans don’t hit rate targets.

He hasn’t done that yet, but Conway says that’s because hospitals have been lowering prices on their own. As to why Colorado Option plans are going up in price next year — though less than what other plans are — Conway pointed to other components of a health insurance plan’s price, including pharmaceutical costs.

“What has happened is hospitals have reduced contractual costs,” he said. “We’ve reduced the contractual costs between insurance companies and hospitals by 20% every year the program has been up and running.”

That’s a pretty bold claim, so we asked the Colorado Hospital Association what it thought. And the association’s response didn’t exactly refute Conway’s argument.

“Colorado’s hospitals have been working proactively to improve affordability for ALL consumers,” the statement read. “That includes negotiating with health insurers and investing significant resources to reach agreements on Colorado Option plans that have resulted in reduced costs.”

About a third of people shopping on the state’s insurance exchange last year bought a Colorado Option plan. We’ll keep an eye on whether that increases this year.

NOAA

One big reason why the Front Range is choking under dangerous levels of drifting wildfire smoke and PM2.5 pollution is explained by a glance at the world map above, with sirens going off in bright red. June set another worldwide average temperature record — on the high side, yes — another in a series of monthly average records in recent years.

All that heat, which we experienced in late June moving into July throughout Colorado, dried out the West and southwestern Canada, creating prime conditions for another bad season of wildfires.

“The June global surface temperature was 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average of 59.9F, making it the warmest June on record and the 13th consecutive month of record-high global temperatures,” NOAA said. The agency’s global outlook says “there is almost a 60% chance that 2024 will rank as the warmest year on record and a 100% chance that it will rank in the top five.”

Hey, fancy meeting you here down at the bottom. Your brain has now been thoroughly inoculated with knowledge, so go forth with immunity from misinformation.

We say it often here, but we can never say it often enough: We really appreciate you, you beautiful, precious, sparkling human. Take care of yourself, so we can spend more time together, will you?

Until next time.

— John & Michael

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Ozone Week > Shark Week

Michael Booth and John Ingold — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 16:49:24 +0000

And the heat goes on (All)
And the heat goes on (I want)
And the heat goes on (Is to breathe)
And the heat goes on (Thank you, thank you)
And the heat goes on (Won’t)
And the heat goes on (You breathe)
And the heat goes on (With me)

– Talking Heads, “Born Under Punches”

Let’s all give it the Talking Heads try and breathe together this week. But it’s going to be extremely tough. Looks like 101 on Friday in Denver, and as high as 105(!) in Grand Junction — the ozone alerts are coming fast and furious to your cellphone.

It’s the perfect week, unfortunately, for us to re-emphasize the climate and health connection that’s meant to be a core philosophy of our newsletter. Half the Temp staff is writing from the sprawling Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, mere hours away from the Houston-area destruction from Hurricane Beryl. Yet all we got in Dallas was a gorgeous sunset.

So the millions of Dallas residents will be resentful when their home and auto insurance rates go up to help pay the potential billions in claims from Beryl, four hours away. Just as some Colorado residents resent their city premiums rising from the costs of insuring homes in foothills wildfire zones — a big topic of our Climate Change Hits Home event earlier this week, now available on YouTube. (Counterpoint: Mountain residents resent paying for Front Range city dwellers’ big hail claims.)

Meanwhile we’re all baking under a massive heat dome that is amping toxic ozone levels and threatening everyone with asthma or other respiratory problems. And John’s measured discussion of summer disease threats below could prove more dire in coming years, as climate change lengthens the high-temperature season when bacterial and viral vectors increase.

Sorry! That’s a lot, we know. Hey at least politics is a continuing source of joy!

OK, never mind. It may just be a week to take things seriously. Keep breathing, carefully. If necessary, tap into the soothing powers of jellyfish videos on your big screen TV. At least we don’t have hurricanes. Send your kindest thoughts to Houston, where power outages mean millions of folks are facing the post-hurricane heat dome without air conditioning.

In this 2019 photo, southbound Interstate 25 traffic lanes bog down to a crawl at the interchange with Interstate 70 just north of downtown Denver. (David Zalubowski, AP Photo, File)

It lurks just beyond our full consciousness, circling, swirling, eager to prey on the vulnerable, then finally lunging in an attack delivering searing pain.

We’re not talking about Shark Week, folks, we’re talking about Ozone Week, here in the pollution challenged northern Front Range metroplex. With temperatures likely spiking to 100 by the weekend, and official ozone monitors already recording multiple violations of EPA limits, it’s a brutal summer for toxic attacks by the lung-damaging gas.

But it’s also a week where pollution-weary Coloradans appear to be fighting back.

Later in the week we’re going to detail for you a frightening series of early summer ozone violations at many of the state-sanctioned monitoring sites. Go to ColoradoSun.com to see a longer story about high ozone readings that threaten to move us in coming years from the already-bad “severe” nonattainment category into the abysmal “extreme” category.

If you insist on looking for good news to get you through the smoggy days, we’ve promised to look for that, too. So here you go:

But enough with the “good” news, according to Colorado environmental watchdogs and many Sun readers. They believe Colorado’s air pollution cops are in denial about repeat offenders, and their ability to dissuade them with relatively small fines. (Suncor is worth nearly $50 billion.)

They also point out the state keeps filing ozone “improvement” plans that they know will not meet EPA standards in the next few years.

“Seven monitors are now in violation of the 2015 ozone standard, up from six at the end of June,” noted Jeremy Nichols of the Center for Biological Diversity, the most diligent nongovernmental tracker of Colorado’s ozone problem.

“At this rate, we could see every single monitor in the Denver Metro/North Front Range region fall into violation of the ozone standards. Suffice it to say, ozone is affecting every corner of the region this summer, from Black Hawk to eastern Aurora, and from Douglas County north to Larimer and Weld counties and everywhere in between,” Nichols said. “Unfortunately, none of this is a surprise. Just because you say you’ve adopted a bold plan to reduce ozone doesn’t mean you’re actually reducing ozone.”

Rick Casey of the volunteer Larimer Alliance said his group has been working to get its own continuous ozone monitoring station.

“We want to understand where our ozone precursors are originating, which we strongly suspect are coming mostly from Weld County,” where much of Colorado’s oil and gas activity is concentrated, Casey said. “If we can get a continuous monitoring station installed, and begin to quantify those precursors, we feel confident we will have the scientific data to prove this.”

Colorado officials clearly have a lot of community suspicions to overcome, after years of accumulating ozone violations.

A new Larimer County monitor, Casey wrote in an email, “will be of little avail if the state regulatory agencies do nothing with the data. And that will be our next political barrier to overcome, before we start to make progress on curbing our extreme ozone pollution.”

Prairie dogs, like this one at Buckley Space Force Base, can carry plague, so try to avoid hugging them this summer. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

The number of plague cases in Colorado since 2013

You may have seen the news that there’s been a human case of plague confirmed in Colorado. The international media certainly did.

“Colorado is rocked by human case of deadly Medieval disease,” Britain’s Daily Mail trumpeted online.

Are the Dark Ages back upon us? Bring out your dead?

No.

Plague is a rare disease. But that a stray case of plague popped up in Colorado during the summer months, when its disease vectors are most active, is not surprising. It’s endemic here.

The state had two human cases of plague last year, one fatal. Since 2013, Colorado has had 18 confirmed cases of plague, including four deaths, according to data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Every year, health departments report instances of rodents and other animals testing positive for plague.

Colorado’s latest case occurred in Pueblo County, which isn’t surprising given that the disease especially circulates among wildlife in more rural areas. Humans catch plague when they are either bitten by an infected flea or they touch an infected animal.

And here’s another thing: The Black Death isn’t nearly as death-y anymore. The disease, which is caused by a bacterium, is treatable with antibiotics so long as it’s caught early. The disease can take one of several courses, but they all start with fever, chills and weakness. If you’re having those symptoms, hie thee hence and get thee to a doctor.

Pueblo County’s health department did not respond to a request for more information about its case, including about its patient’s prognosis. In data CDPHE provided to The Sun, the agency listed the Pueblo case — the lone case of plague discovered in the state so far this year — under a column for patients who were infected but survived.

Look, we’re not saying that it’s awesome there’s plague floating around in Colorado. Just that this news isn’t exactly something to be rocked by.

If you’re concerned about your risk, especially if you live in a rural area, here’s your plague-prevention playbook, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

Summer in Colorado is the season for West Nile virus, which is spread by the bite of a mosquito. This mosquito, though, is from a 2019 file photo from Utah, so it’s probably not one you have to worry about. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

It wasn’t just plague that made news last week. Colorado also confirmed its first human case of tularemia for the year. And we’re also into hantavirus and West Nile season.

To recap:

All these diseases pop off in the summer months because the bugs and animals that carry them are most active in summer.

West Nile is the biggest threat here — 1,697 hospitalizations last year and 229 deaths last year. Bug spray with DEET is your friend in prevention, as well as avoiding marshy areas where West Nile-carrying mosquitoes like to hang out.

There were 11 cases of tularemia last year, and some recent years have seen more than a dozen cases. Antibiotics are the name of the game in treatment. It can be fatal, but only one person has died from tularemia in the past decade in Colorado.

To avoid tularemia, practice a combo pack of just generally good health behaviors: Cook meat all the way through, don’t handle wild animals, don’t drink untreated water, use bug repellant. And this, per JeffCo’s health department: “Do not mow over dead animals.” Eww.

Hantavirus is one you want to avoid as much as possible. There have been 43 cases in Colorado since 2013 and 16 deaths — giving it a 37% mortality rate, which is a good bit higher than plague.

For prevention, be careful when cleaning up areas where you discover rodent droppings. Wear gloves and a mask. Use a disinfectant spray or bleach solution. Spray the droppings. Walk away for 5 minutes to let it soak in. Then wipe it up with paper towels and throw everything away. Wash your hands twice — once before taking off your gloves and once after.

Let’s all get through this summer without contracting a horrible, weird disease, yes?

The U.S. produces a lot of nuclear power by raw numbers, but as a percentage it’s far more important to other countries. (Source: Ember climate and energy analysts, reprinted with permission.)

A family friend visiting from Australia this week asked, “Does Colorado have any nuclear?” Aside from how charming it always is to hear Aussies pronounce words like “nuclear,” taking much of the sting from the ominous word, one question led to another.

We knew Colorado decommissioned our only nuclear power plant by 1992, Xcel Energy’s troubled Fort St. Vrain plant. (“Troubled” and “nuclear plant” are usually redundant.) We’re old enough to have reported on that. But how does the U.S. stack up with nuclear compared to the rest of the world?

As you can see from this chart by Ember, we do produce a lot of raw nuclear power, by volume. But it’s only about 19% of the overall U.S. electrical grid. Worldwide, that percentage drops further to 10% of available power.

What the chart shows is that it’s far more important to some individual countries. France, Finland, Ukraine — as we’ve seen in terrifying news reports of Russian military threats — even pristine Switzerland. All rely on nuclear that’s deeply embedded in their economies.

Will we ever see another nuke built in the U.S.? Bill Gates and friends are trying, as close as Wyoming. Color us extremely skeptical that the perpetual promises of “new, cheaper, safer designs” will come to pass.

Heat? Hurricanes? Plagues? Toxic gas? Apologies for the above. If we’re still friends after this, we appreciate you more than you know. Next week’s got to be better, right?

*ducks whatever’s coming*

— Michael & John

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

How to move a hospital

John Ingold and Michael Booth — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 19:46:30 +0000

Howdy, Colorado, and welcome to a holiday-week edition of The Temperature, where this week we are covering the whos, whats, whens, wheres, whys, hows and cows of health and climate news.

Here’s a fun if obvious fact: We are in peak season for fireworks injuries. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, two-thirds of all fireworks injuries in the United States last year occurred in the weeks surrounding July Fourth. Last year also saw 9,700 people treated in emergency rooms for fireworks injuries and eight deaths.

We say this not to put a damper on your holiday plans, but as a friendly, caring reminder: Sparkle safely this week. Your extremities will thank you.

Now, let’s launch — carefully! — into the news this week like a Roman candle. Boom, here we go.

A view of the entrance atrium at the new Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge. (John Ingold, The Colorado Sun)

The art is hung. The toilets flush. The X-ray machines are (mostly) assembled.

One month from today, Intermountain Health’s Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge will shut down its current location and move 3 miles west to a brand new facility, the first major hospital relocation in Colorado in years.

At 6 a.m. Aug. 3, the current location — at West 38th Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard — will stop accepting new patients. A fleet of about 20 ambulances will begin running loops transporting patients already in the hospital to the new campus, which is just off Interstate 70 near the interchange with Colorado 58. The hospital is expecting to move about 180 patients, in a choreography that will be timed down to the minute.

The conductor leading this dance will be Casey Bogenschutz, whose title — director of strategic initiatives — severely undersells both the strategy and initiative the job requires.

On a recent day, Bogenschutz led The Sun on a tour of the new hospital, weaving through a maze of corridors and rooms, some with signage still TBD. The new facility has 226 patient rooms, roughly the same as the current hospital. That’s 226 rooms that need to be stocked, beds to be positioned, television and electronic white boards — for displaying information to patients — to be connected.

A view of the current Lutheran Medical Center in Wheat Ridge. (John Ingold, The Colorado Sun)

Outside each patient room there currently hangs a list attached with blue painter’s tape of all the items needing to be placed inside. Bed, check. Toilet paper, check.

The rooms, themselves, are a significant upgrade over the current hospital’s. For one, they have a nifty sliding supply cabinet that nurses can pull out to restock from the hallway without disturbing patients. But that feature serves another purpose: If the patient inside the room has a nasty, contagious bug, it keeps staff from having to load up on protective gear just to refill the tissue boxes.

The innovation is one sign of COVID’s fingerprints on the new hospital. Here’s another: Every room can be converted into a critical-care room if needed.

“An outcome of the pandemic is we need the flexibility to take care of really sick patients everywhere,” Bogenschutz said.

The facility has also been designed with other modern afflictions in mind. Doors connect all the rooms for trauma patients, allowing a doctor treating people from a mass-casualty incident such as a mass shooting to move quickly from patient to patient.

More than that, Bogenschutz said the new hospital has been organized for efficiency. Scanners are positioned nearby the patients who will need them. The room numbering is orderly and intuitive, allowing a nurse to know exactly where they are in the hospital at any time. There’s an organized flow as patients move from one treatment area to the next.

This, Bogenschutz said, is the best argument for building a new hospital, instead of simply renovating the old one.

“It doesn’t have the adjacencies that are required in the industry,” she said of the current hospital. “You make it work, but when you upgrade you can build things the way you want them.”

Look for more on the big move in the coming days on ColoradoSun.com.

As Denver rolls out composting green bins to more neighborhoods, the city now more than ever needs residents to sort their waste properly. A new state law could help by requiring accurate labeling of truly compostable utensils. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

Is it safe to compost everything again?

Colorado’s recycling-minded residents who have previously reveled in the right to toss forks, plates and bags in their composting bin are hearing rumblings of good news this week. But a new state law is not a complete game-changer, recycling advocates warn, until the composting companies are fully on board with the changes and consumers are more diligent about sorting.

On July 1, a new Colorado law went into effect saying utensils that claim to be compostable — made of cornstarch base or other green compounds that decompose — must be certified by a third party and labeled as such on Colorado store shelves. The idea is to reassure companies that handle city-collected compost bins that everything in the bins is in fact biodegradable and can be safely mixed into the compost-cooking piles doing their magic at the handling complexes.

Previously, consumers have done such a poor job keeping never-degrade plastics and dangerous glass out of composting bins that the compost companies rejected loads and changed the rules of what they would take. Plastic bags were gumming up the wheels of machinery, broken glass made dirt piles unsafe, and too much plastic and coated paper was never breaking down.

The city of Denver now tells residents with green composting bins that only food and yard waste can go in, no more tossing paper plates and napkins and pizza boxes and hoping for the best.

The state law, Senate Bill 253 from 2023, doesn’t tell Denver or other cities how to handle their stuff. But it does give them room to change their rules back to being more consumer-friendly, said Kelly Leviker of CoPIRG, a major nonprofit promoter of recycling.

“This law should make it quite clear to folks what is compostable and what is not compostable,” Leviker said. “And so hopefully this will start to lay the groundwork for local industrial composters to, once again, start accepting more compostable goods.”

One part of the rules went into effect Jan. 1, and the rest this week, Leviker said. The labeling requirement says old-style plastics are not allowed to use the compostable or biodegradable tags. Truly compostable materials will have green coloring in the packaging and be marked in a way that a composter can be confident if they see those goods mixed into their loads.

How does the average Colorado resident have any control over what a national packaging company does?

“If we find those (mislabeled) goods in Colorado, then you can go to the state of Colorado’s website and you can report them, and they will not be able to be sold in Colorado,” Leviker said.

Sounds intriguing! We’ll have more on the new composting rules, and Denver’s reaction to them, in the next week at ColoradoSun.com.

Click the image for an interactive version of the chart. (Graphic by John Ingold, The Colorado Sun)

One of the delights of this job is that it allows you to really tunnel down into the rabbit holes that your brain wants to fall into anyway, which is how I came to find myself on the website of the USDA Economic Research Service after writing the aforementioned story on bird flu in dairy cattle while sitting in a Starbucks and watching the baristas go through gallon after gallon of milk and then Googling to learn that the average Starbucks store can use as much as 35 gallons of milk per day and there are about 500 Starbucks stores in Colorado, which means those stores require roughly 2,500 dairy cattle just to keep them in the froth each year, the size of one entire large dairy, and, omigosh, how is that sustainable and is the agricultural system about to buckle under the weight of all those cows and SHOULD I HAVE GOTTEN OAT MILK IN MY LATTE INSTEAD?!?

And then I discovered something really interesting.

The chart above shows two fascinatingly diverging trends. On the one hand, the United States actually has a lot fewer dairy cattle than it did decades ago — about 20% less than in 1970. On the other hand, those cows are producing a lot more milk — average milk production per cow has increased nearly 150% since 1970.

The USDA studied this and concluded that the increase is happening most especially in cows that are in large, nonorganic dairies, which, because of industry consolidation, a much higher percentage of cows are. Better selective breeding, better equipment, better feed and better production workflow all contribute to this astonishing rise in a cow’s ability to produce milk.

On top of that, my anxiety that latte-loving Americans are driving an increase in dairy consumption was misplaced. Don’t blame the ’Bucks. It’s all about cheese.

Consumption of fluid milk is declining in the United States (though consumption by adults in non-dairy beverages like tea and coffee is up). But per capita cheese consumption is higher than it’s been in at least 20 years.

So there’s a snapshot into the world of milk production. Soy cheese, anyone?

Welp, here I am finishing up this newsletter while sitting in another Starbucks drinking another dairy latte. Habits are hard to break, but I now know to spare a thought for the cows and farmers who make my Wednesday morning routine possible.

Thank you for letting us be part of your Wednesday routine. We just appreciate the heck out of you.

Have a good Fourth, and we’ll see you back here next week.

— John & Michael

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Wrong dragonfly!

The science-minded folks at Butterfly Pavilion made a rare mistake when they told us last week what kind of dragonfly they are breeding in-house to help restock a rare Colorado species. An astute reader (thank you!) pointed out the difference, and the pavilion was eager to correct the science: The pavilion is helping to revive the Hudsonian emerald dragonfly, a native of Colorado and other western states. The Hine’s emerald dragonfly mentioned last week is actually a Midwestern flier, centered on Illinois. The Midwestern version needs help, too, though, as U.S. Fish and Wildlife considers it among the “most endangered dragonflies in the U.S.” Good luck, all dragonflies! Eat those West Nile mosquitoes!

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Are the butterflies OK?

Michael Booth and John Ingold — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 18:01:08 +0000

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.

A bee visits a stand of wildflowers along the Blue River near Frisco on July 30, 2021. (Andy Colwell, Special to The Colorado Sun)

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.

Wind turbines in Elbert County near Matheson. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

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.

A social-distancing sign is pictured on an open T-Mobile store front door in Arvada in January 2021. (Andy Colwell, Special to The Colorado Sun)

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.”

NOAA/NWS

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.

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

—

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

How we died in 2023

John Ingold and Michael Booth — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 17:15:41 +0000

Greetings, Temp readers, and happy Juneteenth on this unseasonably, blissfully cool Wednesday (across the eastern half of the state, at least).

The heat wave that is baking New England and other parts of the Eastern Seaboard today is a reminder that climate change will find you, no matter where you live. And that’s going to have wide-ranging economic implications. As one headline this week put it, “The climate is the economy.”

So what’s that going to mean for Colorado, specifically? On July 9, our very own Michael Booth will be moderating a free, virtual panel on how climate change is shaking the insurance industry and what lawmakers and regulators intend to do about it.

And if you’re interested in stimulating panel discussions among thoughtful experts moderated by witty journalists, then be sure to register for Tuesday’s panel on how Coloradans are working to keep people with severe mental illness from falling through the cracks. The discussion will be led by The Sun’s Tatiana Flowers, and will also be free and virtual.

You can learn more and register for both panels on our events page.

All right, we packed this sucker full of news this week, so let’s get to it.

The Colorado Department of Public Health building is seen on Wednesday, August 11, 2021, in Glendale. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun)

44,862

The number of Coloradans who died last year

Cancer reclaimed the top spot as Colorado’s No.1 killer last year, according to finalized numbers released this month by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

In 2023, 8,411 Coloradans died from what are known in vital statistics records as “malignant neoplasms.” Heart disease, the second-leading cause, claimed 8,071 lives.

Those two causes far exceed any other cause of death in Colorado. Cancer has been No. 1 for most recent years, but heart disease held the top spot in 2021 and 2022.

Here’s the full top 10:

For the first time since it appeared in Colorado, COVID-19 didn’t crack the top 10 causes of death last year, though it was close. With 626 deaths in 2023, COVID was the 12th-leading cause of death. (In 2021, it was the third-leading cause.)

That reflects the waning severity of the pandemic. For comparison, influenza and pneumonia combined last year killed 371 people, ranking 18th, so COVID is still very much a threat, especially to older populations.

The causes and categories in this list follow the methodology of the National Center for Health Statistics, though some of the causes are a bit of a mashup. Accidents, for instance, encompasses everything from car crashes to falls to unintentional drug overdoses. Lumping them together like that can obscure some of the underlying trends.

Accidental deaths declined last year, but drug overdose deaths were up — to 1,865, of which 1,097 involved fentanyl. Motor vehicle accidents (785 deaths) and falls (1,064 deaths) were down.

Other notable causes of death: Suicides (1,290 deaths) remained almost exactly the same as in 2022, while homicides (366) dropped by nearly 50.

Overall, 44,862 Coloradans died last year. (The figure includes people who lived here but died elsewhere and not people who died here but lived elsewhere.) That’s roughly 2,000 fewer deaths than in 2022, and it’s nearly 3,500 fewer deaths than in 2021, Colorado’s deadliest year on record.

Relative to population size, Colorado’s death rate fell to something closer to pre-pandemic levels. The age-adjusted death rate was 681.7 deaths per every 100,000 population in 2023. The three years before that had seen age-adjusted death rates in the 700s. In 2019, the year before the pandemic, the age-adjusted rate was 635.9.

You can find all this data and much more in an easy-to-use dashboard on CDPHE’s Colorado Health Information Dataset page.

Cows exit the milking stalls of a dairy near Fort Morgan on June 17, 2021. (Eric Lubbers, The Colorado Sun)

The number of dairy herds in Colorado with confirmed outbreaks of bird flu

The number of outbreaks of avian influenza among Colorado dairy herds has reached double digits, and the pace of new outbreaks being identified is accelerating.

State and federal agriculture officials have confirmed 12 outbreaks among dairy herds in Colorado. The two most recent were confirmed Tuesday, and eight of the 12 outbreaks were confirmed in June.

AnneMarie Harper, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said state health officials have monitored or are currently monitoring more than 100 people for possible exposure to bird flu. Harper said “fewer than five” of those people have been tested for avian influenza after experiencing flu-like symptoms. None of those tests came back positive.

The new outbreaks come amid increasing alarm and criticism over the county’s inability to contain the spread of this latest strain of H5N1 bird flu.

The virus has been confirmed to have infected only four people in the United States — including three who contracted the virus following contact with infected cows — and there has been no documented instance of person-to-person transmission. But worry is growing that the virus could mutate into something much more capable of spreading to and among humans the longer it moves unchecked across the animal kingdom. That could lead to another deadly global pandemic.

CDPHE is working to provide personal protective equipment to help shield dairy workers across the state from exposure. But participation in the program so far is low.

Harper said the state is providing PPE to all dairies with outbreaks identified so far. CDPHE also has a program where dairies can order PPE, such as goggles, face shields, masks and gloves, from the state for free. As of last week, eight dairies had taken advantage of the program.

That makes roughly 20 dairies receiving protective equipment for their workers from the state. Colorado has more than 100 dairies total.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, after arriving at Union Station on a demonstration train before signing a surface transportation infrastructure development bill for a passenger rail system on May 16. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)]

Colorado has seen big momentum supporting new public transit investment this year, even as public support for RTD erodes with every 10 mph light rail trip. The legislature created a new $3 fee on car rentals to raise nearly $60 million a year for transit projects. Late in 2023, Colorado’s proposed Front Range Passenger Rail got $500,000 in federal study money that also placed the concept at the front of the line for future federal construction money.

But Front Range Rail officials learned this spring just how extensive their studies must be before qualifying for big federal dollars. They not only need a proposed service plan, but also a detailed environmental impact study. A federal infusion and lots of other funding sources will be needed for the multi-billion dollar passenger project from Denver to Longmont, Boulder and eventually Fort Collins, Colorado Springs and Pueblo.

Front Range officials had talked of a sales tax vote in the 13-county district as early as this fall to start raising actual construction money. Then the study demands piled up, RTD’s awful publicity may have complicated a pro-train campaign this fall, and other sales tax and school bond issues started to crowd the ballots.

So we asked Front Range Passenger Rail spokesperson Nancy Burke for an update:

The Colorado Sun: Has the FRPR board formally decided to not seek a tax election in 2024?

Nancy Burke: The board decided at the May 31 board meeting to continue planning and service modeling for the launch of intercity passenger rail service from Fort Collins to Pueblo, to include completion of the formal service development plan, before seeking voter approval of sales tax funding in the district’s 13 counties in 2026.

Sun: What were the main considerations in deciding not to seek a vote this year?

Burke: The board wanted to ensure they had time to work toward the service development plan completion, which will include additional service and financial modeling … and that takes more time. They also wanted to look at state funding opportunities that were recently created through the legislature and look at opportunities to leverage resources and create a plan to work together with partners along the northwest rail from Denver to Boulder and up to Fort Collins.

There are opportunities to work together that may provide economies of scale and the board wanted to ensure when they come to voters for a sales tax ask they have done all they can to be fiscal stewards and offer a thorough well-studied plan to ensure the voters know exactly what they are getting.

Sun: How long will the NEPA environmental impact statement take?

Burke: Good question! We are working to expedite the NEPA study and working with partners to see how this can be accomplished.

See more of the Front Range Passenger Rail responses later this week at ColoradoSun.com.

Are the kids maybe, actually, sort of all right?

Last week, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment released the results of the latest Healthy Kids Colorado Survey. The HKCS is the gold standard for tracking trends in mental and behavioral health among the state’s youth. And the big takeaways were largely positive.

In its news release, CDPHE highlighted improvements in teen mental health. More high schoolers say their stress level feels manageable most days. Far fewer report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 26% compared with 40% in the pandemic-era 2021 survey. Fewer teens also reported contemplating or attempting suicide in the prior year.

But there was another trend that stood out. In the first state in the country to allow legal recreational cannabis sales to adults, youth marijuana use in Colorado is going down.

The chart above tells one part of that story: Fewer than 13% of Colorado’s high schoolers last year reported using marijuana at least once in the previous 30 days. That is the lowest percentage the survey has found since at least 2013 — the year before recreational pot shops opened in Colorado.

19.7%

The percentage of Colorado high school students who reported using marijuana at least once in the prior 30 days in 2013

12.8%

The percentage of Colorado high school students who reported using marijuana at least once in the prior 30 days in 2023

The percentage of high schoolers who reported ever using marijuana — 26.3% — is 10 percentage points below 2013 levels. The percent who say marijuana is easy to get is 14 percentage points below 2013’s number.

And perceptions of disapproval of marijuana use are going up. More than 70% of Colorado high school students said they think it is wrong for someone of their same age to use cannabis — 10 percentage points higher than in 2013. More than 89% say they think their parents or guardians would disapprove of them using marijuana.

Advocates for cannabis legalization were quick to credit the policy’s impact for the shift.

“Colorado continues to be proof that regulating cannabis works,” Chuck Smith, the board president for Colorado Leads, a cannabis industry group, said in a statement.

Opponents of legalization would point out that not all schools participate in the HKCS. The 2023 survey saw participation from 344 schools and more than 120,000 students, but there were notable gaps in some areas of the state where large numbers of districts or students opted out of the survey. So while the survey is big, it may not be as comprehensive as possible.

But the trends around cannabis follow those for other risky behaviors.

Fewer teens are binge drinking in Colorado. Vaping is down. And fewer high schoolers are having sex — about 45% of 18 year olds in high school report having ever had sex, the first time that datapoint has come in below 50% since at least 2013.

The decline in cannabis use among high schoolers in Colorado also fits with a similar decline nationally. In the most recent federal data available, 15.8% of high schoolers nationally reported using marijuana at least once in the previous 30 days. Those numbers are from 2021, though, so they are not a direct comparison to Colorado’s newest numbers.

Amazingly, these apparent trends don’t seem to have changed teens’ own attitudes about what they think is happening.

When asked whether they believe half or more of the students in their grade level used marijuana, 51% of high schoolers said they did. That’s a significant increase over the 2021 survey.

So is this evidence that a lot of teens are lying in the survey about their marijuana use? Or is it evidence of a different truth, as timeless as it is catchy: It’s hip to be square.

If you clicked that last link, then you got a bit of Huey Lewis. And if you read all the way to the bottom, then you got The News. Sounds like a pretty good combo.

Thanks for riding with us this week. We always enjoy the journey and hope you do, too.

— John & Michael

The Colorado Sun is part of The Trust Project. Read our policies.

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

Dear diary: You’ll never believe what happened on my Boulder commute

Michael Booth and John Ingold — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 16:52:10 +0000

That late evening sometime between May 15 and June 15, when your roommate heard the first hints of hail pounding on the roof and kicked you out the screen door and you were torn between throwing blankets over the tomato plants or getting the least-bad car from the curb into the safety of the garage, which you should have done at 4 p.m. but forgot, that’s when you became a true Coloradan.

That scramble has long been a late-spring/early-summer ritual on the Front Range, which is regularly pummeled by hundred million-dollar damage hail storms that almost make you feel sorry for new car dealers and their acreage of vulnerable car tops.

But with each insurance renewal, the hail rituals become a reminder of the proximity of climate change. Perhaps your mountain condo HOA’s insurance premiums doubled, or worse. Maybe you’re paying $300 more per car each year as auto insurers try to keep up with damage payments. It’s possible you’ve been canceled from any insurance offers if you live in a wildland-urban interface increasingly exposed to droughts and wildfires.

We’re here to hear your complaints, your fears and your details. We’re getting ready to host a panel with some top insurance experts who will face your challenging questions about how climate change is hitting consumers hard in the form of premiums. It’s one of the first areas of the economy where everyday consumers are feeling the true impact of the planet’s warming. We’ve got the state insurance commissioner, the state trade group’s chief, and a national consumer voice. Join us for the live airing of the panel July 9.

In the meantime, send us your ideas, questions@ColoradoSun.com, and your premium invoices, and we’ll put them in front of the experts.

On to the news — thanks for joining us.

Boulder residents have been filling out daily travel diaries for 30 years in an effort to reduce single-occupancy vehicle trips; here’s the trend. (City of Boulder)

It’s taken a long, slow drumbeat to convince Boulder residents to give up their American birthright of single-occupancy car trips, in favor of buses or bicycles. The challenge is documented in thousands of diary entries across more than 30 years, as Boulder leaders seek evidence that their climate change goals are achievable.

So what secrets are revealed in this year’s diary unveilings?

The city continues to make good progress slowing the use of one person/one car. Single-occupancy trips are down to about 35% of all travel, from 44% in 1990 when the diary collections began. Nearly 18% of trips are now on bikes, scooters or e-bikes, double from 9% in 1990.

But it’s not enough, by Boulder’s own standards.

Reaching the city’s climate and clean energy goals means getting to only 20% of local trips by people driving alone in cars in 2030, and a few factors are complicating things. The pandemic hugely disrupted public transit services across the country, and ridership hasn’t recovered in Boulder or much of anywhere else.

Transit agencies had to cut back on the number of routes and their frequency; fewer employers are paying for EcoPasses for employees; and teleworking is still high. In fact, the portion of residents now teleworking on the day they were assigned to fill out a diary is up to nearly 25%, from only 8% in 2009.

Teleworking is good for the climate goals, right? Fewer single commuters on the road. Except that those homebound workers are still jumping in their cars for errands. Daily vehicle miles traveled for the 1,000-odd diary writers last year did not change from the year before.

Here’s how the pie splits up for a whole year of the travel diaries of just under 1,000 Boulder residents.

Because 1,000 people have been filling out the detailed diaries for decades now, they also serve as an anthropologist’s dream database on modern culture. One out of five respondents received a home package delivery on the day they were assigned to make an entry, and 38% of those said the delivery replaced their own trip in a vehicle.

Those numbers may be helping hold down more rapid growth of vehicle miles traveled. In theory, home deliveries can be better for the environment if they employ a computer-programmed, efficient route using the battery-powered vans that Amazon and other companies are fast acquiring.

Boulder says the diary entries point city leaders toward a redoubling of work to reduce single-occupancy driving. That includes more ways to support restoring public transit to pre-COVID levels, working with large employers on progressive options, and further smoothing the way for so-called “micro-mobility,” like those bikes and scooters.

Stay tuned. The secrets of the Boulder diaries won’t stop.

Did we use this photo just to get a magnificent view of Crested Butte? Yes, we did. But it’s also true that a groundwater study included this area! (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)

25%

Groundwater contribution to streams in the East River Basin in Colorado

In 2021, Upper Basin states, including Colorado, saw 80% of their normal snowpack. But once spring runoff started, they only saw 30% of the average flows in their streams and rivers. What gives?

It’s a central question for scientists around the overstressed Colorado River Basin, where streams and rivers provide water for 40 million people. They’re looking at precipitation, evaporation, thirsty soils, warming temperatures and more. Rosemary Carroll, a research professor of hydrology at the Desert Research Institute in Nevada, decided to look below the surface.

“One of the areas that was really not well understood is groundwater in these mountain systems — how important is it?” said Carroll, the lead researcher on a groundwater study published May 23 in the academic journal, Nature Water.

Groundwater is stored in the cracks in rock and spaces between soil and sand, forming aquifers. Some of that water can eventually reach the surface and join streams and rivers. From there, it can eventually reach reservoirs or flow through tunnels, canals, ditches and pipes to supply homes, farms and businesses.

In mountainous areas, most of the water in streams comes from snowmelt. Without a lot of data, it’s been assumed that groundwater is not really a huge player.

That’s not the case, Carroll said.

The research team looked at the East River Basin northeast of Crested Butte and found that on average, 25% of the streamflow in the basin comes from groundwater. It acts like a buffer in dry years, she said. Without it, late summer and winter flows would fall and streams would go dry.

Then Carroll cranked up the temperature. By modeling future warming, the scientists found that groundwater storage would fall to the lowest known levels after the first extremely dry year and fail to recover even after multiple wet periods. That would impact water supplies on the surface, Carroll said.

Scientists need to account for groundwater in their research on the Colorado River Basin, Carroll said. Otherwise, their results will always be rosier than reality. Stay tuned for more at ColoradoSun.com about the role of groundwater in a warming river basin.

Global energy watchers believe China may be nearing a turning point on slowing carbon dioxide growth, if it’s not already there. (Source: Lauri Myllyvrta for Carbon Brief, with permission)

When people despair about controlling the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere anytime soon, China is often their worry-prompt. To continue its massive, rapid industrialization and urbanization, China is constantly adding new fossil fuel sources for energy, from coal-fired power plants to diesel trucks and buses. Right?

Energy analyst Lauri Myllyvrta, writing for Carbon Brief, has been watching for the chance to offer a different take. And last month, they found it: a one-month drop in China’s carbon output, after a long stretch of growth. Those cheap solar panels China is dumping on the West are also making a big change at home, with new energy now generated more by far from solar, wind and clean sources than new fossil fuel burners.

It might not be the final turnaround, Myllyvrta says, but it’s the sign of things to come. And a bit of hope.

Thanks for joining us for commuting, water and other vital news this week. Remember the upside of the Avs’ and Nuggets’ early playoff exits: You can stay outside in the late sunshine and ignore what look like Panthers and Celtics finals sweeps. See you next week!

— Michael & John

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

The tiniest of new hearts, in a bittersweet success

John Ingold and Michael Booth — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 17:59:20 +0000

Hey there, Colorado, and welcome to another edition of The Temperature, where this past week I was reminded why local journalism is so important.

I was reading a story in The Washington Post — fine, lovely publication, no shade — about “recycling myths.” Their top myth? That greasy pizza boxes aren’t recyclable. “Yes, they are,” The Post declared.

Is this true? I asked fellow Temperature-er Michael Booth. Denver’s recycling guidelines say no pizza boxes with grease showing on the outside. Longmont tells residents to rip the box in half and recycle only the nongreasy side. The primary compost-making company recently said greasy boxes were ruining the clean-compost stream, and discouraged it in the green bins.

“It varies,” Mike told me.

See, the problem with reading only national news is that the nation isn’t a homogenous place with the same rules and resources everywhere. What happens in your local community has an enormous impact on your life — so being informed about what’s happening close to home is vitally important.

You’re a Sun member, so you get this — and thank you for that! But in this season of our political discontents, maybe tell a friend, too?

And if you’re still scratching your head about recycling rules — I know I am — be sure to get your tickets for SunFest, where Mike will be hosting a panel discussing exactly this topic, wrapped in a fun game show format. It’s going to be such a kick that you may start thinking the box is the best part of the pizza order.

Now, onto the news.

The exterior of Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora. (John Ingold, The Colorado Sun)

Only the sickest of the sick among the heart patients at Children’s Hospital Colorado will get a transplant. That’s because — and this a good thing — there aren’t that many children’s hearts to offer as transplants for other children.

But it means the Aurora hospital’s doctors and nurses can spend months or even years using medications to keep a child with a defective heart alive until they receive a heart transplant. Some kids die while they wait.

More parents than not whose children die are willing to donate their organs, said Dr. Melanie Everitt, a pediatric cardiologist and director of Children’s heart transplant program.

“Most families would do it,” she said. “At any one time, we have about 20 patients waiting for transplants. If you had unlimited hearts, it’s quite possible that more children would be listed as well. Since you don’t, it really ends up being the sickest children who have no other option.”

Children’s does 15-20 heart transplants each year, totaling more than 500 since the hospital’s heart transplant program began in the 1980s. The program is now among the top 5 nationally in terms of patient volume. It requires a huge team, and every transplant requires two surgeons — one to remove the organ from the donor and fly with it back to Colorado, and another to place it in the child who needs it.

We recently met one of those children with a new heart, a gift she received after another family’s tragedy. The family of a 2-year-old boy who died in New Mexico gave his heart to a sweet-faced toddler named Willow. The girl whose own heart had been barely working last week was running around her back yard in a diaper trying to keep up with her brothers.

Read more about Willow’s transplant in an upcoming article in The Sun, including about how East Coast children’s hospitals said Willow was too sick to get a transplant and how her parents and brothers packed up and moved to Colorado “on a hope and a prayer” that she would get a new heart here.

A cattle feedlot near Kersey in 2009. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)

The Colorado Livestock Association is firing back at environmental groups over their portrayal of concentrated animal farms, saying a new lawsuit perpetuates false or misleading accusations about what gets regulated, and how things really look around the state.

Special interests, the cattle trade group says, are using their right to litigate and demands for “excessive” regulation to “impose their beliefs on others and force them into doing what they want,” says Zach Riley, CEO of the livestock group. The groups attacking Colorado’s large animal farm permit system, who have now added a lawsuit to their tactics, are out to get rid of all concentrated feeding operations, which they refer to as “factory farms,” Riley said.

The livestock association isn’t just a target of the criticism, it is also a key legal player. The influential agriculture group formally intervened to defend Colorado’s permitting system when Food and Water Watch and the Center for Biological Diversity challenged it in administrative law court. Now the groups have escalated the permit-writing fight into state district court based in Larimer County, as their next legal opportunity for further challenges.

The watchdog groups’ main contention, supported so far by the administrative law judge who ruled in their favor, is that Colorado is not requiring enough monitoring of fresh water sources near large animal farms. The tons of manure, urine and other runoff may taint water sources with destructive nitrogen and other chemicals, and the state will never know, they say.

Colorado writes some of the strictest requirements into its concentrated animal farm permits, Riley responds. Colorado feedlot and dairy operators already spend tens of thousands of dollars a year fulfilling their permit conditions. (Colorado has gone with a “general” permit that covers more than 100 operations, as part of its state enforcement of the federal Clean Water Act. Some states choose to let the EPA do the permitting.)

Farm operators do monitor their wells, Riley said. Requiring even one additional monitoring well could cost operators $30,000 or more.

The administrative law judge agreed with the environmental groups that Colorado’s permit should be rewritten to include more water monitoring by the farms. Colorado health department chief Jill Hunsaker Ryan then took her legal right to overrule the administrative court. That’s when the environmental groups escalated the fight to district court.

Colorado’s current permit requires manure holding ponds to be lined and periodically checked, Riley said. State health department specialists “conduct regular check-ins and inspections to ensure compliance, all the way down to the weeds growing near banks of lagoons to ensure that they are dealt with so as to never compromise the lagoon liner integrity,” he said.

The environmental groups like to point to similar cases they have won in other states, Riley noted. “Idaho had nothing like this in place and comparing that situation to Colorado is like comparing an apple to a hammer.”

The livestock association will continue to support state health department officials as they fight the permit lawsuit at the district court level, and if it reaches higher appellate levels, Riley said.

“Soliciting an emotional response is a tactic employed by groups like the plaintiffs who didn’t get their way the first time and didn’t bend the world to their will,” Riley said. “So, they venue-shop until they drain the resources and force animal agriculture out. These environmentalists are behaving like insolent children.”

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Click the image to go to an interactive version of this chart. (Graphic by John Ingold, The Colorado Sun)

Colorado’s Prescription Drug Affordability Board meets this week to decide what to do with another high-cost medicine.

The drug in the spotlight this time is Stelara, which treats autoimmune conditions like plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. In this sense, it has company. Four of Colorado’s nine most expensive drugs are for autoimmune diseases.

The chart above shows the most expensive drugs in Colorado in 2021 in terms of the total amount spent on medical claims. You’ll notice one drug — Humira, which treats rheumatoid arthritis, another autoimmune condition — is on there twice. That’s because Humira, like many drugs, comes in multiple forms, in this case as an autoinjector pen or as a pre-filled syringe. Colorado patients and insurers spend a lot per year on both.

That fact provides insight into why drug affordability boards across the country have taken so much time in doing their work. (Lawmakers created the Colorado board in 2021, and it is still reviewing its first batch of drugs, though it is farther along in that work than any other state’s board.)

There are a lot of different ways for drugs to be unaffordable. The chart above looks at the total spending, regardless of how many patients take the drug. Slice the data a different way and the list changes.

A drug called Takhzyro, which treats angioedema, is the most expensive on a per-patient, per-year basis: an average of $394,235. But the total spending on it per year is only a little over $16 million because just a few dozen people in Colorado use it.

The anti-seizure drug Sabril is the most expensive if you look at what the state says patients have to pay out-of-pocket: an average of $23,313 per year. But, again, the number of patients is small and changes in insurance coverage or manufacturer financial assistance programs could affect each patient’s cost significantly.

Even Humira may arguably not be as expensive as it appears. The Prescription Drug Affordability Board, or PDAB, declined to include it in its first round of reviews — despite its enormous systemwide price tag — because there are similar drugs that may be available at lower prices.

This data all comes from the Center for Improving Value in Health Care, which analyzes millions of Colorado medical claims per year. But CIVHC doesn’t get ALL the medical claims, meaning its numbers are ultimately incomplete — though they are more complete than any other data source.

The state collects all this info on a big data dashboard that you can play around with to learn more about drug costs.

This week’s PDAB meeting, which is virtual, is on Friday at 10 a.m. The board may vote on whether to declare Stelara unaffordable, which would trigger a monthslong process of deciding whether the board should set a price cap on it.

Colorado’s PDAB became the first in the country to look at setting a price cap when it declared the drug Enbrel unaffordable earlier this year. That decision, though, is now the subject of a lawsuit.

You can register to watch Friday’s meeting on the PDAB website.

Thanks for reading to the end, and thank you, again, for supporting local journalism. We say this a lot, but please know that we sincerely mean it: We literally couldn’t do this without you.

So celebrate yourself today by ordering out for pizza. And once you’ve had the joy of recycling the box — or maybe not! — you might even want to grab a slice to eat.

Till next time, friends.

— John & Michael

Notice something wrong? The Colorado Sun has an ethical responsibility to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.

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