All Things Environment

[Typical Lax Dad]

Our strength and ingenuity when undivided is amazing. Solving world-wide environmental problems, eliminating diseases and more. Of course, haters gonna hate.

The Ozone Layer: Thirty years on, what is the Montreal Protocol doing to protect the ozone?

The Montreal Protocol to protect the Earth’s ozone layer is to date the only United Nations environmental agreement to be ratified by every country in the world. It is also one of the most successful. With the parties to the Protocol having phased out 98 per cent of their ozone-depleting substances, they saved an estimated two million people from skin cancer every year. [...] It is expected that the ozone layer will return to pre-1980s levels by the middle of the century

TMP was one helluva a money maker for industry, primarily Dupont....who was playing 3D chess long before the TMP. Hell, some say they started it.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25073103
https://eng.ucmerced.edu/people/awester ... nts/DuPont
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/cli ... ther-53610

[Farfromgeneva]

Report from NY Fed on oil

https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary ... .pdf?la=en

[youthathletics]

Nice to hear our DoE secretary has no clue what the US consumes daily in oil. Peter Principal on display.

[MDlaxfan76]

Nice to hear our DoE secretary has no clue what the US consumes daily in oil. Peter Principal on display.

reference?

[youthathletics]

Nice to hear our DoE secretary has no clue what the US consumes daily in oil. Peter Principal on display.

reference?

From her lips: https://twitter.com/themarketdog/status ... 19044?s=21

[youthathletics]

Neat technology....vertical farming: https://www.inceptivemind.com/plenty-ai ... rNsGHMBysE

[Typical Lax Dad]

Neat technology....vertical farming: https://www.inceptivemind.com/plenty-ai ... rNsGHMBysE

Thanks for posting that.

[PizzaSnake]

Neat technology....vertical farming: https://www.inceptivemind.com/plenty-ai ... rNsGHMBysE

Thanks for posting that.

If you think that is neat, check this alchemy:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... d-growing/

“ In agricultural applications, LED lights are used in ways that seem to border on alchemy, changing how plants grow, when they flower, how they taste and even their levels of vitamins and antioxidants. The lights can also prolong their shelf life.

“People haven’t begun to think about the real impact of what we are doing,” says Zelkind, who is using light recipes to grow, for example, two types of basil from the same plant: sweeter ones for the grocery store and more piquant versions for chefs.”

[Typical Lax Dad]

Neat technology....vertical farming: https://www.inceptivemind.com/plenty-ai ... rNsGHMBysE

Thanks for posting that.

If you think that is neat, check this alchemy:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics ... d-growing/

“ In agricultural applications, LED lights are used in ways that seem to border on alchemy, changing how plants grow, when they flower, how they taste and even their levels of vitamins and antioxidants. The lights can also prolong their shelf life.

“People haven’t begun to think about the real impact of what we are doing,” says Zelkind, who is using light recipes to grow, for example, two types of basil from the same plant: sweeter ones for the grocery store and more piquant versions for chefs.”

Hopefully we can save ourselves. Did you read The Sixth Extinction?

[MDlaxfan76]

Nice to hear our DoE secretary has no clue what the US consumes daily in oil. Peter Principal on display.

reference?

From her lips: https://twitter.com/themarketdog/status ... 19044?s=21

That's an entirely false premise. She was asked a question requiring a factual specific number (but with no time bound) and rather than giving an incorrect number, she demurred that she didn't have that specific #. She doesn't respond that the questioner, who had home worked the specific answer already, was mistaken, she allowed the premise of the argument as to the # of days of supply being released from the strategic reserve.

In no way is her answer a "fail".

Now if she had said a significantly and provably incorrect answer, different issue.

And different sources provide different #'s, it's not actually known exactly, they are estimates.

Did the questioner want last year's rate or this year's?
Presumably he meant the current rate.

Indeed, as it turns out, the questioner was actually incorrect with his stat. In 2020, a number of sources say the daily usage averaged 18.19 million barrels of petroleum a day (the basis of his statement of 18 million), but that was depressed usage rates during the pandemic, the current rate of usage is very likely considerably higher, at least 10%...and that's the real problem. Much more demand. The Energy Information Administration says the daily rate was 20.7 million barrels a day in September.

https://www.khou.com/article/news/local ... 8cbf1c3834

But we don't actually know these #'s exactly (they are best estimates), what we do know is that there's considerably higher demand than in 2020, even at these much higher prices.

On the other hand, the questioner's point was correct, the 50 million barrels being released from the 600 million US reserve is only a couple of days or so of usage by the US and even smaller with worldwide usage. It's indeed going to have only a small effect.

What does make a lot of sense though, and demonstrates real 'competence', is that this release was coordinated with a bunch of other countries doing the same thing in coordination.

But hey, this is what the right wing calls "incompetence", when they have no bloody clue themselves.

And it remains puzzling to me that when gas prices are half what Europeans pay, we whine about it as if the sky is falling.

Don't get me wrong, paying the high prices instead of the super low ones we had in the middle of the pandemic does feel like a shock, but the notion that the US government is in charge of oil and gas prices, coming from the right, is very perplexing. What do they want, socialism? Nationalizing, gov't ownership, of the oil and gas industry? Or maybe price controls? (how did that work in the '70's???).

[youthathletics]

Nice to hear our DoE secretary has no clue what the US consumes daily in oil. Peter Principal on display.

reference?

From her lips: https://twitter.com/themarketdog/status ... 19044?s=21

That's an entirely false premise. She was asked a question requiring a factual specific number (but with no time bound) and rather than giving an incorrect number, she demurred that she didn't have that specific #. She doesn't respond that the questioner, who had home worked the specific answer already, was mistaken, she allowed the premise of the argument as to the # of days of supply being released from the strategic reserve.

In no way is her answer a "fail".

Now if she had said a significantly and provably incorrect answer, different issue.

And different sources provide different #'s, it's not actually known exactly, they are estimates.

Did the questioner want last year's rate or this year's?
Presumably he meant the current rate.

Indeed, as it turns out, the questioner was actually incorrect with his stat. In 2020, a number of sources say the daily usage averaged 18.19 million barrels of petroleum a day (the basis of his statement of 18 million), but that was depressed usage rates during the pandemic, the current rate of usage is very likely considerably higher, at least 10%...and that's the real problem. Much more demand. The Energy Information Administration says the daily rate was 20.7 million barrels a day in September.

https://www.khou.com/article/news/local ... 8cbf1c3834

But we don't actually know these #'s exactly (they are best estimates), what we do know is that there's considerably higher demand than in 2020, even at these much higher prices.

On the other hand, the questioner's point was correct, the 50 million barrels being released from the 600 million US reserve is only a couple of days or so of usage by the US and even smaller with worldwide usage. It's indeed going to have only a small effect.

What does make a lot of sense though, and demonstrates real 'competence', is that this release was coordinated with a bunch of other countries doing the same thing in coordination.

But hey, this is what the right wing calls "incompetence", when they have no bloody clue themselves.

And it remains puzzling to me that when gas prices are half what Europeans pay, we whine about it as if the sky is falling.

Don't get me wrong, paying the high prices instead of the super low ones we had in the middle of the pandemic does feel like a shock, but the notion that the US government is in charge of oil and gas prices, coming from the right, is very perplexing. What do they want, socialism? Nationalizing, gov't ownership, of the oil and gas industry? Or maybe price controls? (how did that work in the '70's???).

So your argument is that she should have known the exact count down to the barrel? He then replies with some say around 18mm, not 18,500,345 barrels.

And yes.....you are correct, none of us knew that 'exact' answer.....but we'd certainly expect our Sec of DoE to know within a reasonable margin of error.

[MDlaxfan76]

Nice to hear our DoE secretary has no clue what the US consumes daily in oil. Peter Principal on display.

reference?

From her lips: https://twitter.com/themarketdog/status ... 19044?s=21

That's an entirely false premise. She was asked a question requiring a factual specific number (but with no time bound) and rather than giving an incorrect number, she demurred that she didn't have that specific #. She doesn't respond that the questioner, who had home worked the specific answer already, was mistaken, she allowed the premise of the argument as to the # of days of supply being released from the strategic reserve.

In no way is her answer a "fail".

Now if she had said a significantly and provably incorrect answer, different issue.

And different sources provide different #'s, it's not actually known exactly, they are estimates.

Did the questioner want last year's rate or this year's?
Presumably he meant the current rate.

Indeed, as it turns out, the questioner was actually incorrect with his stat. In 2020, a number of sources say the daily usage averaged 18.19 million barrels of petroleum a day (the basis of his statement of 18 million), but that was depressed usage rates during the pandemic, the current rate of usage is very likely considerably higher, at least 10%...and that's the real problem. Much more demand. The Energy Information Administration says the daily rate was 20.7 million barrels a day in September.

https://www.khou.com/article/news/local ... 8cbf1c3834

But we don't actually know these #'s exactly (they are best estimates), what we do know is that there's considerably higher demand than in 2020, even at these much higher prices.

On the other hand, the questioner's point was correct, the 50 million barrels being released from the 600 million US reserve is only a couple of days or so of usage by the US and even smaller with worldwide usage. It's indeed going to have only a small effect.

What does make a lot of sense though, and demonstrates real 'competence', is that this release was coordinated with a bunch of other countries doing the same thing in coordination.

But hey, this is what the right wing calls "incompetence", when they have no bloody clue themselves.

And it remains puzzling to me that when gas prices are half what Europeans pay, we whine about it as if the sky is falling.

Don't get me wrong, paying the high prices instead of the super low ones we had in the middle of the pandemic does feel like a shock, but the notion that the US government is in charge of oil and gas prices, coming from the right, is very perplexing. What do they want, socialism? Nationalizing, gov't ownership, of the oil and gas industry? Or maybe price controls? (how did that work in the '70's???).

So your argument is that she should have known the exact count down to the barrel? He then replies with some say around 18mm, not 18,500,345 barrels.

And yes.....you are correct, none of us knew that 'exact' answer.....but we'd certainly expect our Sec of DoE to know within a reasonable margin of error.

Last year's, this year's, September, October, right now?

It's not merely a matter of precision, it's a matter of timing...and the issue is not how much we in the US use daily, but that demand is up significantly, worldwide, over where it had normalized a year ago. Oil wells had been capped (it costs to keep them flowing at a loss), oil exploration had frozen (can't make $ at year ago prices), all sorts of supply constriction given how low prices had gotten. Takes time to ramp back up, and OPEC and Russia etc enjoys the current prices so aren't feeling the same way about current prices that we are.

If he'd simply asked whether it would be fair to say that the release of 50 million barrels represented roughly 3 days of US usage, do you think she would have disagreed? Nope, she nodded her head. But why does # of days of US usage even matter, when we're dealing with a worldwide supply issue? It doesn't.

Or if he'd asked her whether the Administration thought this action would have a material effect at the pump prices, did she have a coherent answer? Yup.

Interestingly, Biden said yesterday that supplies have increased significantly over the last month, but that prices haven't come down. He says oil companies are making excess profits, opportunistically, and he's calling for regulatory action.

Seems to me that the US gov't has limited tools to impact, and they're at least turning some of the dials on what they have. May help on the margin, so certainly worth doing.

But, I don't expect normalization of prices until worldwide supplies catch up and the major producers are pretty darn happy with where we are now...In the longer term, the point is to move away from oil (and other carbon) for as many energy uses as we can.

[Farfromgeneva]

Neat technology....vertical farming: https://www.inceptivemind.com/plenty-ai ... rNsGHMBysE

Weed cultivators seem to have known about this for years.

[Farfromgeneva]

Nice to hear our DoE secretary has no clue what the US consumes daily in oil. Peter Principal on display.

reference?

From her lips: https://twitter.com/themarketdog/status ... 19044?s=21

That's an entirely false premise. She was asked a question requiring a factual specific number (but with no time bound) and rather than giving an incorrect number, she demurred that she didn't have that specific #. She doesn't respond that the questioner, who had home worked the specific answer already, was mistaken, she allowed the premise of the argument as to the # of days of supply being released from the strategic reserve.

In no way is her answer a "fail".

Now if she had said a significantly and provably incorrect answer, different issue.

And different sources provide different #'s, it's not actually known exactly, they are estimates.

Did the questioner want last year's rate or this year's?
Presumably he meant the current rate.

Indeed, as it turns out, the questioner was actually incorrect with his stat. In 2020, a number of sources say the daily usage averaged 18.19 million barrels of petroleum a day (the basis of his statement of 18 million), but that was depressed usage rates during the pandemic, the current rate of usage is very likely considerably higher, at least 10%...and that's the real problem. Much more demand. The Energy Information Administration says the daily rate was 20.7 million barrels a day in September.

https://www.khou.com/article/news/local ... 8cbf1c3834

But we don't actually know these #'s exactly (they are best estimates), what we do know is that there's considerably higher demand than in 2020, even at these much higher prices.

On the other hand, the questioner's point was correct, the 50 million barrels being released from the 600 million US reserve is only a couple of days or so of usage by the US and even smaller with worldwide usage. It's indeed going to have only a small effect.

What does make a lot of sense though, and demonstrates real 'competence', is that this release was coordinated with a bunch of other countries doing the same thing in coordination.

But hey, this is what the right wing calls "incompetence", when they have no bloody clue themselves.

And it remains puzzling to me that when gas prices are half what Europeans pay, we whine about it as if the sky is falling.

Don't get me wrong, paying the high prices instead of the super low ones we had in the middle of the pandemic does feel like a shock, but the notion that the US government is in charge of oil and gas prices, coming from the right, is very perplexing. What do they want, socialism? Nationalizing, gov't ownership, of the oil and gas industry? Or maybe price controls? (how did that work in the '70's???).

So your argument is that she should have known the exact count down to the barrel? He then replies with some say around 18mm, not 18,500,345 barrels.

And yes.....you are correct, none of us knew that 'exact' answer.....but we'd certainly expect our Sec of DoE to know within a reasonable margin of error.

Last year's, this year's, September, October, right now?

It's not merely a matter of precision, it's a matter of timing...and the issue is not how much we in the US use daily, but that demand is up significantly, worldwide, over where it had normalized a year ago. Oil wells had been capped (it costs to keep them flowing at a loss), oil exploration had frozen (can't make $ at year ago prices), all sorts of supply constriction given how low prices had gotten. Takes time to ramp back up, and OPEC and Russia etc enjoys the current prices so aren't feeling the same way about current prices that we are.

If he'd simply asked whether it would be fair to say that the release of 50 million barrels represented roughly 3 days of US usage, do you think she would have disagreed? Nope, she nodded her head. But why does # of days of US usage even matter, when we're dealing with a worldwide supply issue? It doesn't.

Or if he'd asked her whether the Administration thought this action would have a material effect at the pump prices, did she have a coherent answer? Yup.

Interestingly, Biden said yesterday that supplies have increased significantly over the last month, but that prices haven't come down. He says oil companies are making excess profits, opportunistically, and he's calling for regulatory action.

Seems to me that the US gov't has limited tools to impact, and they're at least turning some of the dials on what they have. May help on the margin, so certainly worth doing.

But, I don't expect normalization of prices until worldwide supplies catch up and the major producers are pretty darn happy with where we are now...In the longer term, the point is to move away from oil (and other carbon) for as many energy uses as we can.

More importantly where does it settle as Covid accelerated some reduction in remote work and the impact it will have in commuting, especially in horizontally developed fast growing cities in the SE and SW.

[Farfromgeneva]

Ethanol has always been problematic. At least since we did it using corn as the input to protect sugar interests.

As American Gasoline Prices Soar, Some Blame Ethanol
Prices for the biofuel have surged, rekindling a debate about whether it’s contributing to pain at the pump

Corn for biofuels was being harvested next to an ethanol-production facility in Milton, Wis. Ethanol prices have surged to their highest level in a decade.
PHOTO: TANNEN MAURY/SHUTTERSTOCK
By Christopher M. Matthews
Nov. 24, 2021 10:59 am ET

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Ethanol prices have skyrocketed to their highest level in a decade, contributing to surging U.S. gasoline prices as oil refiners pay more for the biofuel they are required to blend with their products.

The price spike is adding grist to a yearslong political debate over the federal ethanol blending mandate, known as the Renewable Fuel Standard. Politicians from oil-and-gas states have sought to repeal the requirement, calling it ineffective and expensive, while corn-state politicians have defended it, arguing it has added to U.S. fuel supplies and decreased consumer costs.

Since the Renewable Fuel Standard, or RFS, became law in 2005, ethanol has traded at around the same price as unblended gasoline, or at a discount to it. The two have diverged this year as ethanol has increased about 157% to $3.42 a gallon in 2021, while unblended gasoline is up about 61% to $2.28 a gallon, according to FactSet data.


The price of the finished U.S. gasoline consumers buy, which includes ethanol and other additives, is up about 62% this year, the highest levels since 2014. It was about $3.40 a gallon on average Wednesday.

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Now, lobbyists for the refining industry are seizing on the recent ethanol-price jumps and urging the Biden administration to lower the amount of the biofuel they are required to blend with their products, arguing it will tamp down gasoline prices. Supporters of the biofuel industry argue the opposite is true, and are warning the administration against relaxing the requirements.

Most analysts agree that the primary causes of rising fuel prices are increased energy demand, spurred by an uptick in global economic activity, and oil production that hasn’t kept pace. But the cost of complying with the RFS and other regulations is currently adding nearly 20 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline in some parts of the country, according to some analysts.


The White House is under pressure to respond forcefully to public concerns about mounting fuel costs.
PHOTO: JIM WATSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
“There is a cost to environmental compliance,” said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston. “The cost of that compliance is being passed through to the consumer.”

Mr. Lipow said that the last time gasoline was around its current price in 2014, the cost of complying with the RFS added less than 3 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline, but now adds around 15 cents. Compliance with state-level environmental regulations, particularly those in California, are adding an additional 4 cents to nationwide gas prices, he said.


Fuel demand and traders piling into commodities as a hedge against inflation have pushed ethanol prices to record levels. Daily production of ethanol in the U.S. hit a record level of 1.11 million barrels a day in October, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but has been unable to keep up with fuel demand as many drivers return to the road. Agricultural prices more broadly have risen on the back of a snarled supply chain and higher input costs for crops.

The White House is under pressure to respond forcefully to public concerns about mounting fuel costs. The U.S. and five other countries said Tuesday they will tap their national strategic petroleum reserves in an attempt to bring down gasoline prices, a move some analysts say will provide only short-term relief. Last week, President Biden called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether oil-and-gas companies are participating in illegal conduct aimed at keeping gasoline prices high.


Gas prices in Beverly Hills, Calif. The price of the finished U.S. gasoline consumers buy, which includes ethanol and other additives, is up about 62% this year, the highest levels since 2014.
PHOTO: DAMIAN DOVARGANES/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chet Thompson, president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represents refiners, said releasing reserves wouldn’t address factors increasing pain at the pump, including higher ethanol prices.

“A good place to start would be right-sizing RFS mandates, which have a substantial impact on fuel costs and have contributed to the shuttering of six refineries amid the pandemic,” Mr. Thompson said in a statement.

Under the RFS, refiners must blend certain volumes of ethanol into gasoline, set annually by the Environmental Protection Agency, or buy credits from refiners who have blended more than the required amount. Typically, gasoline is required to be around 10% ethanol, but the EPA has delayed decisions on annual volume requirements for 2021 and 2022.

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Why a Small Dutch Earthquake Is Having a Big Impact on Gas Prices
Why a Small Dutch Earthquake Is Having a Big Impact on Gas Prices
In 2012, the Netherlands experienced a 3.6 magnitude earthquake. It was caused by one of the world’s largest gas fields, known as Groningen, and it set off a chain of events that’s contributing to today’s sky-high energy prices. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains. Illustration: Sebastian Vega
Geoff Cooper, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, which represents ethanol producers, said it is absurd to argue ethanol is adding to higher fuel costs based on irregular market conditions. As recently as September, ethanol and unblended gasoline were trading around the same prices, according to FactSet data. Research has shown that the biofuel generally doesn’t increase gasoline prices, he said.

“Refiners are always looking for an opportunity to scapegoat the program,” Mr. Cooper said.


A group of small refiners has recently argued to the White House that they will go bankrupt if the Biden administration doesn’t roll back blending requirements, further exacerbating soaring gasoline prices, said people familiar with the matter. Some of the companies have slowed their purchases of blending compliance credits, amassing billions of dollars in regulatory obligations that will come due in March when credits must be turned into the EPA for the previous year.

“They’re really rolling the dice by ignoring their compliance obligations under the RFS, thinking they will get bailed out by the administration,” said Mr. Cooper.

The American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers has argued there is a scarcity of credits and that the administration should grant petitions for relief from the RFS made by small refiners for 2019 and 2020 blending volumes. The Trump administration didn’t issue a decision on those relief petitions, and the Biden administration has further delayed decisions on them.

Write to Christopher M. Matthews at [email protected]

[Farfromgeneva]

Biden administration approves second major offshore wind project
Rebecca Falconer
Rebecca Falconer
A bird flies over a wind turbine at a wind farm near Highway 12 in Rio Vista, California, U.S., on Tuesday, March 30
Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Image
The Biden administration approved Wednesday plans for a major offshore wind farm to supply power to New York.

Why it matters: The approval for the installation of a dozen turbines near Rhode Island marks a major step in the administration's goal of reaching 30 gigawatts of offshore wind-generating capacity in U.S. waters by 2030, powering more than 10 million homes.

Officials see offshore wind as a key tool to help meet the White House its target of 100% carbon-free power by 2035, as part of a wider commitment to combating climate change.
Details: The 130-megawatt South Fork Wind project will be the first wind farm to supply power to New York, transmitting power to Long Island, the Washington Post notes.

The project will "create about 340 jobs and provide enough power for about 70,000 homes," per an Interior Department statement.
The big picture: The green light for the South Fork Wind project marks the second commercial-scale offshore wind farm approved by the Biden administration after the Vineyard Wind, which is under construction off the Massachusetts coast.

The Biden administration plans to identify and lease federal waters along seven coastal areas to offshore wind power developers by 2025.
Yes, but: Officials have to overcome conservationists' worries about the wind farms' effect on endangered wales, people in the fishing industry's concerns about their catch and coastal homeowner trepidations about their sea views, per WashPost.

Meanwhile, a $1.75 trillion social spending and climate bill passed by House Democrats earlier this month, which includes over $300 billion in clean energy tax incentives for projects such as the erection of wind turbines, faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

Changes to the bill are likely, with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) among those expressing concern at some aspects of the measure, Axios' Ben Geman writes.
What they're saying: Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement there's "no time to waste in cultivating and investing in a clean energy economy that can sustain us for generations."

"Just one year ago, there were no large-scale offshore wind projects approved in the federal waters of the United States. Today there are two, with several more on the horizon," she added.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said in a statement that the state is "facing the challenges of climate change head-on" with such action.
"Our nation-leading climate and offshore wind goals demand bold action and moving South Fork Wind forward brings us closer to a cleaner and greener future," she said.
Editor's note: This article has been updated with comment from Hochul.

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- ... 180964255/

[Farfromgeneva]

Yup

[jhu72]

Sequoia trees in peril.

[seacoaster]

Pretty interesting story in the Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... imate-lab/

GOTHIC, Colo. — As world leaders gathered across the globe this month to discuss a climate crisis that is rapidly heating the Earth, Billy Barr, 71, paused outside his mountainside cabin to measure snow.

His tools were simple, the same he’d used since the 1970s. A wooden ruler plunged into white flakes accumulating on his snow board — an old freezer door affixed to legs of plastic piping and wood — showed two inches. A section of snow that he slid into a metal bucket and hung from a scale a few paces away told him it was about 10 percent water, which did not surprise him. For years, that number hovered around 6 percent, but snow here has gotten wetter.

“One year could easily be a fluke. I mean, weather is weather, it changes all the time. But all of a sudden, we’ve had five years in a row,” said Barr, dingy face mask dangling over his white beard. “So that’s starting to get significant.”

These measurements would be a few more data points in nearly five decades of records Barr has kept since leaving urban New Jersey to become the sole year-round resident of this abandoned silver mining town nearly 10,000 feet high in the Rockies. Back then, he wrote his observations — temperatures, snow, the sight of a gray jay or the tracks of a red fox — in small round script in steno notepads, to keep busy in a place he came to be alone.

“Cloudy all A.M.,” he wrote on Nov. 4, 1973. “7¾” snow. 5⅜” presently on ground by night.”

Along the way, Barr became an unwitting chronicler of climate change, the amiable keeper of an analog data set that would eventually inform researchers’ papers on hummingbird migration and marmot hibernation. And he served as a winter pioneer in a mountaintop location whose snowpack, which feeds the Colorado River, is now the focus of urgent attention and scientific inquiry as the Western United States dries up.

It is no coincidence Barr logs his data up the hill from the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, a field station that comes alive each summer with researchers studying a rainbow of alpine wildflowers and animals, but which has long shut down when the snow comes. Barr, a part-time accountant at the lab, always stayed put, stocking his freezer, stacking firewood, readying his notebooks and waxing skis he put up to 800 miles on per winter.

But as he enters his 50th winter in Gothic, change has come, and not just in shorter snow seasons and higher temperatures. All that skiing has left Barr’s legs in severe pain, and though he is planning hip replacements, he worries this might be his last winter here. And for the first time, Gothic is hosting winter researchers — a skeleton staff for a two-year, multimillion-dollar project using radar, weather balloons, lasers and other high-tech equipment to better predict how rain and snow ends up as water in the Colorado River Basin.

The company might have bothered Barr years ago, but he doesn’t relish the frozen solitude so much anymore. He is, though, determined to keep gathering his data. He says he feels an obligation — to the records themselves, and the precise way he has kept them since the early ’70s.

“The thing is, nowadays, there’s mountain weather stations all over the place,” said Barr, who last winter logged just 200 miles on his skis. “But there aren’t any from then.”

Barr arrived in Gothic in 1972 as a Rutgers undergraduate helping on a water chemistry project. He stayed until the end of the year, then came permanently the following summer. He’d had terrible luck with girls back home and was miserable, he said. In the mountains, he felt relaxed — even though home was an uninsulated mining shack with a kerosene lamp and a sleeping bag.

“I was from an inner city. I’d never been on skis,” Barr said. “I had no idea what I was doing.”

But he figured it out. Then, winter residence at the base of the 12,631-foot Gothic Mountain meant occasionally skiing five miles to the paved road, where he’d hitch a ride to Crested Butte, a nearby town, for supplies. In the 1980s, he built himself a more comfortable cabin.

Barr did odd jobs at the lab: dishes, plumbing, helping in the library. He fought fires on a hotshot crew. Eventually, he became the lab’s accountant and business manager. He’d always liked numbers; as a kid, he counted gas stations on family trips.

That’s what inspired his records, not some grand scientific ambition. Over time, Barr found he liked comparing one year to others.

While Barr’s extended focus on winter in Gothic is unique, long-term research is one of the lab’s summer specialties. A marmot study has been running since 1962. David Inouye, a University of Maryland biologist, began his study of the timing and abundance of wildflower blooming in 1973. Yet although he knew Barr, it wasn’t until the 1990s that Inouye got wind of the accountant’s handwritten records.

“It turns out that what really sets the clock for all the phenology out there, in terms of flowering and animal activity, is when the snow melts. And Billy had this wonderful data set on not only when does it melt, but when does it start and how does it change from day to day,” Inouye said.

In 2000, Inouye listed Barr as a co-author on a paper about birds and marmots in the Colorado Rockies, which showed, Inouye said, “first, that the climate is changing, and second, that it’s having an effect on the plants and animals out there.” In 2012, Barr was a co-author on a paper by Inouye and others that predicted broad-tailed hummingbirds could by 2033 arrive after the flowering of a key nectar source, the glacier lily, which has bloomed earlier over time because of climate change.

After filling 10 notebooks with his records, Barr now organizes them in Excel and publishes them on his website. Researchers regularly ask him for data, he said, and he always obliges.

“I would say it’s because I care about others and want to help them,” Barr said. “But it’s mostly because I’ve never had a social life, so what else do I have to do?”

But Barr rolls his eyes at the idea that he is a hermit, and at the notion that he valiantly braves whiteout winters. He is gregarious and self-deprecating — a “70-year-old, 5-foot-8-inch, 125-pound superhero,” he jokes.

His cabin is basic and messy, but powered by a plethora of solar panels. Starting at 3:30 p.m. each day, Barr does chores, logs data on his computer and eats dinner — a premade packet of Indian food, salad he’s grown in his greenhouse and Newman-O’s cookies.

Evening is for uplifting films in his carpeted movie room — these days, streamed by one of seven services he subscribes to. Barr’s favorite movie is “The Princess Bride.” (He is often asked about “The Shining,” which he has no intention of seeing: “Never horror.”)

On a recent afternoon, as snow slid from the roof past his window, Barr sat at his computer, scrolling through decades of numbers. Next to him was his current notebook, used only for animal sightings, which he has never found the energy to enter into spreadsheets. Today, it showed, he had spotted a Steller’s jay and a crow.

In the numbers, he points out patterns. Nearly half the record-low temperatures came in his first decade here, and more than half the record highs occurred in the past one. The years between 1974 and 2000 averaged 10 more days with snow on the ground than the years since. The number of consecutive days when temperatures stayed below freezing has plummeted.

“Back in the ’70s, there were winters where we had well over 100 days in a row where it didn’t get [above] freezing. Last winter, the most was nine,” Barr said. “It doesn’t take much to break that — it could have been 200 days with one in between. But still, there’s a trend there.”

In newspapers, Barr devours wedding stories and typically avoids the nastiness of politics. But he does pay attention to climate news, and he worries. “I really think we’re in a load of trouble,” he said. “And we don’t have much time for this.”

The East River, an important watershed for the Colorado River, snakes toward Crested Butte, Colo. (Chet Strange for The Washington Post).
Down the hill from Barr’s cabin and outside the lab is a new recognition of that: eight white trailers forming the core of the Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL), a massive federally funded effort that relies on dozens of instruments measuring precipitation, wind, aerosols, clouds, radiation and more. Much of the equipment arrived in September after deployment on a ship in the Arctic, where it was part of an expedition documenting climate change.

It is in Gothic now because climate change in this spot has enormous implications but is not fully understood. Snowmelt here eventually flows to the Colorado River — a key and declining water source for 40 million people in the West.

The campaign builds on an existing study of the East River watershed headed by Ken Williams, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist who is co-leading SAIL. He chose to work here in part, he said, because the area’s diversity — in vegetation, elevation, geology — is representative of mountain watersheds across the West. The lab’s wealth of long-term observations was also a draw — including Barr’s, he said.

“If you’re in the business of trying to understand how ecosystems function now and in the future, you have to have a long record of data against which to compare one year to the next,” Williams said.

But the new project is aimed at the future, gathering an unprecedented array of data that scientists hope will help them model how much water will flow out of here, into creeks and the bedrock below, and out of other Western watersheds.

A weather station at the Crested Butte ski resort, installed by the SAIL research program at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, will help accurately forecast winter precipitation. (Chet Strange for The Washington Post)

Barr, whose office windows at the lab overlook the trailers, watches this with interest, marveling at the laser a researcher told him can measure the size of snowflakes. He is sure the conditions in Gothic will be less arduous than the Arctic. “It’ll be shoveling snow more than anything else,” said Barr, who has offered some wisdom to project staff.

“He actually freezes [eggs] … he scrambles them and puts them in ice trays,” said James McMahan, one site operator who will spend much of the winter in a Gothic cabin.

Over time, Barr has added more complex equipment to his cabin-side weather station that can take remote measurements if he’s not around.

If Barr can’t stay, “there’s a good chance the lab will ask its caretakers to pick up some of the things that can’t be measured so easily,” said Inouye. “I think the lab appreciates how valuable Billy’s observations have been, and how important it will be to keep them going.”

For now, Barr intends to remain. He just put in a new wood stove. He is considering subscribing to Hulu so he can watch “Happiest Season,” a holiday movie starring Kristen Stewart and Daniel Levy. He is witnessing snow fall here for the 50th year straight.

“My stuff has basically become useless other than the fact that it goes back a good ways, and it’s got easy-to-measure information that we can continue,” Barr said. “I just want to keep it going. It is interesting — it is, I think. And it’s helpful.”