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Perhaps an old-timer can recall a more splendid Colorado fall, although I don't see how you could improve on this one. No tree-snapping early wet blizzards, no savage winds, no bone-chilling cold spells. Just gloriously warm days under azure skies that make it criminal to stay indoors.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to indulge in unfettered
enjoyment of an unseasonable clemency. Twinges of
apprehension gnaw at you, since this pleasant autumn might
be a result of the dreaded global greenhouse
effect.
What happens inside a greenhouse is fairly simple. Energy, in the form of sunlight, passes through the glass. Once the light is inside, some energy becomes infrared radiation, which has a longer wavelength than visible light. On that account, the infrared radiation cannot escape through the glass.
Energy accumulates and the greenhouse keeps getting hotter, until somebody opens the vents so that the excess energy can escape.
On a global scale, carbon dioxide works like glass. It
allows visible light to enter, but blocks infrared rays
from escaping. The more oil and coal that we burn, the more
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and thus, the more heat
that gets trapped by our greenhouse.
And there isn't
anybody standing outside to open a world-class vent.
Many scientists believe that this explains why summers keep getting hotter and dryer in the Midwest, why African deserts are growing, and why one can walk around comfortably without a coat at midnight in late October at 7,034 feet above sea level.
If the greenhouse effect continues, though, that last figure will change. A general warming of the earth would melt the polar ice caps, and the added water would raise the level of the ocean by about 300 feet.
Not only would hypsometry get complicated as Denver became the Hundred-Yards-Short-of-a-Mile High City, but plenty of people would be looking for new homes. The 18 million people of greater New York live below 300 feet. So do 4 million Bostonians, 6 million Philadelphians, most of the 13 million in the Los Angeles complex -- as nearly as I can figure, about 130 million Americans live in places that would be under water if the oceans rose by 300 feet.
Since all of Colorado would remain high and dry (our lowest spot would still be more than 3,000 feet above the sea), we should prosper mightily. Those forlorn 35-acre lots in the San Luis Valley, now inhabited only by tumbleweeds and ravens, would ignite bidding wars that started at six figures. No more HUD fire-sale auctions in Denver; every dollar from in flooded Manhattan and saturated LA would be chasing Colorado real estate. Our historic major industry, the selling of land at inflated prices, would resume with a vengeance.
Granted, if this year is a harbinger, our summers would be a bit sodden, but we'd still be able to promote a salubrious autumn climate, along with relatively mild winters.
This warming trend promises unprecedented prosperity for Colorado, but there's a problem. If we don't have brutal winters, we won't have snow for our skiers. Even the artificial stuff requires some cooperation from Mother Nature, in the form of frosty temperatures.
So while normal people enjoy the comfortable weather, our ski-resort moguls must be chugging Malox as they fret about the ominous possibility of a winter that not only doesn't have snow, but doesn't even get cold.
However, it could be that this is no global greenhouse effect, but merely a climatic cycle connected to election years.
In 1976 there was a presidential election, and there was also so little snow that year that Vail imported Utes to dance for it -- with no discernible results. Another election in 1980, and that winter you saw sagebrush poking up beneath the lifts in Breckenridge.
We did get a load of snow in 1984, but you could
reasonably expect 1984
to be an aberration. We're
back to normal in 1988. Experts are saying that a crisis
looms, just as they told us of an energy crisis
in
1976 and a deficit crisis
in 1980. No one appears to
know what the frightening future holds, but even at that,
it's easy to predict one thing: the snow jobs
we get
this year will come from the politicians, not the sky.
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