More Warming Predictions

Rocky Mountain Park Under Siege

By Richard Martin, 7-26-06

	Snowpack decreases: a depressing trend.

We're headed up to Grand Lake tomorrow to meet up with some friends and go hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park. We'll have kids with us from age 5 to age 16, and it's a good thing they're seeing the splendors of the Park now, because according to a new report from the Louisville-based Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Council, the snowpeaks, alpine tundra, glaciers and tarns will not be there too much longer.

Released yesterday, the report, "Losing Ground: Western National Parks Threatened by Climate Disruption," details the effects on 12 western national parks of global warming, and says that along with Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Grand Teton national parks, Rocky Mountain and Mesa Verde in Colorado will be among the most severely affected of the crown jewels of American wilderness.

We've become accustomed to dire predictions of the consequences of climate change on natural and man-made systems, and this report hits particularly hard because it details threats that will very likely change the very nature of the West. The 14ers in RMNP will lose their snow-caps, while the nation's largest expanse of alpine tundra will be greatly reduced or will disappear altogether.

"Glaciers are melting away in Glacier, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Olympic, and Yosemite national parks," writes the report's lead authors, Stephen Saunders and Tom Easley. "Joshua Tree National Park may well lose its namesake tree, and Saguaro National Park could lose saguaros."

The report does append a list of actions individuals can take to slow and eventually halt worldwide climate change, but they are depressingly familiar and inconsequential in view of the magnitude of the forces at work: check your tire pressure monthly; pass Amendment 37, requiring Colorado's two investor-owned utilities to derive more of their power from renewables, in the November election; use compact fluorescent light bulbs. It's hard not to think that such measures are too little too late.

Meanwhile, the water of Grand Lake will still be bone-chilling this weekend, and there will still be snow on Longs Peak. That'll have to do, for now.

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