The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached 399.72 parts per million (ppm) and is likely to pass the symbolically important 400ppm level for the first time in the next few days….”I wish it weren’t true but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400ppm level without losing a beat. At this pace we’ll hit 450ppm within a few decades,” said Ralph Keeling, a geologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography which operates the Hawaiian observatory.

TO READ THE STORY CLICK ON THE IMAGE

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/apr/29/global-carbon-dioxide-levels

Work continues on the $10 million Colorado River Elevated Bikeway. NOTE: That’s the same cottonwood in all four photos, the “Leaning Tree.” The ‘before’ top image was taken from the upstream side.

(updated photo courtesy of MOAB SUN NEWS)

For the most recent information on construction,  please follow this link to a story by the MOAB SUN NEWS: 

An Excerpt:

Let’s get dense. If we take all the atoms inside you, all roughly 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them, and squeeze away all the space inside, then, :

“Remove all the space within the atoms making up the human body, and every person that’s ever lived would fit inside a baseball.”

That’s a very tight fit. So tight that in real life, it couldn’t happen. It’s not physically possible. Atoms won’t crunch that close. But people, it seems, are willing to try. In the last century, all over the planet, billions of us have moved from villages and farms to squeeze into tighter and tighter, ever denser spaces …

Click the image to read more:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/04/08/176565424/the-big-squeeze-can-cities-save-the-earth

Click the image below to see downtown Reno, Nevada from then (1944) and Now:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/04/01/herb-ringers-american-west-reno-nevada/

Excerpt:

A new and controversial frontier in mining is opening up as a British firm joins a growing rush to exploit minerals in the depths of the oceans…UK Seabed Resources is a subsidiary of the British arm of Lockheed Martin. It has plans for a major prospecting operation in the Pacific. The company says surveys have revealed huge numbers of so-called nodules – small lumps of rock rich in valuable metals – lying on the ocean floor south of Hawaii and west of Mexico…

Click the image below to read this and other harbingers of doom:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/04/01/the-bulletin-board-of-doom-9/

Excerpt:

Rock Springs, Wyoming – 2006. This was the first place I ever spent the night with Elko. We had each had a loaded day. I had started out in Winnemucca. He had arrived from another dimension or another galaxy, possibly both. After all the trials of the day, we just wanted to hunker down and get to know each other. I had planned to sack out in the new boom town of Green River, Wyoming but due to said oil boom, every last motel room in town was booked. The one place I found that wasn’t booked not only wanted an exorbitant rate for their filthy room, but they would not allow dogs. The desk clerk looked out her dirty window, somehow saw through the tinted glass of my Toyota Tacoma’s cab and spotted Elko standing triumphantly on top of the ice chest, upon which she turned to me and said “We can’t take your little friend.” I asked her if she knew of any other places in town with rooms and she was kind enough space a second of her busy time and say “About 7 miles down the highway, there’s a place at the exit. Try them.” I could tell a long story about that first night and the kindly old woman who welcomed us at the Springs Motel, but I’ll do that some other time.

Click the image below to see the rest of Paul’s photos:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/04/01/vlachos-views-photos-and-captions-by-paul-vlachos-6/

Excerpt:

The numbers are in. Moab is growing. Judging by the sound of circular saws and hammers echoing around town these days commercial and residential construction projects valued at over $19 million are underway. Moab will add 300 hotel rooms over the next two years, yet another condo complex, road widening and parking improvements throughout Arches and a bicycle trail along the river. Remember these headlines from last year? Coming soon; a dinosaur theme park, a sports complex and a new USU campus. And let’s not forget the thousands of acres of your public lands the BLM is leasing off to energy companies as fast as contracts can be drawn up and signed. Proposals are being passed through a rubber stamp approval process for expanded uranium and potash mining, oil wells, natural gas fracking operations, pipelines, tar sands mining, helium extraction and everyone’s favorite – the Green River nuke plant…

Click the image below to read the rest of Doug’s article:

http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/2013/04/01/grand-plans-new-moab-update-april-2013-by-doug-tree/