By Sandy Bianchi
The Keystone XL Pipeline, which will carry tar sands through the U.S. heartland from Canada to the gulf, will make Colorado’s summer heat wave worse.
Tar sands, sand saturated with black, dense, viscous petroleum, have been called the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fossil fuel on the planet. The Sierra Club says turning tar into oil is three times more carbon intensive than conventional oil production. NASA’s leading climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen, says that tar sands development and the resulting greenhouse gases would mean “game over for the planet.”
As a gardener and Colorado native, I have noticed that summer and winter temperatures are warmer now than in past decades. The National Weather Service reports that June 2012 was the hottest June on record since 1872. In the last 140 years, Denver has had 83 days of 100-plus degree temperatures and 13 of them (16 percent) occurred last year. In the past, Colorado had minus 20 degree temperatures in the winter. We haven’t experienced that since 1990. Read more…