RMI national study highlights cold winter states with opportunities to convert millions of furnaces to renewable energy heating.

These 12 months were the hottest in Colorado's recorded history. Statewide temperatures during this period climbed 4.5 degrees above the 1991-2020 average. It was 2 degrees warmer than the next hottest water year on record, which was 1934 — the heart of the Dust Bowl era. 

“It was ridiculously warm,” said Allie Mazurek, engagement climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center. “This water year far outdid anything else that we've seen in recorded history for Colorado. It wasn't just our warmest on record, it was warmest on record by a substantial margin.”

Case in point: Temperatures rose above average nearly 80% of the time during the water year. More than half of those days were at least 5 degrees warmer than normal, and more than a quarter skyrocketed to 10 degrees above the norm. December, February, March and August all set new monthly records for heat, with July and September logging their second-hottest averages. Colorado experienced seven heat waves — a period of consecutive days with unusually high temperatures. That’s two more than the state’s ever had in one year.

These statistics reference climate data from 1991-2020. Climatologists often track present-day data against averages from the 30-year period ending with the most recently completed decade for an apples-to-apples comparison. Over a longer timeline, the contrast is even more pronounced: On average, Colorado was 6.1 degrees hotter over the past 12 months than it was the entire 20th century.

“This water year was really extreme,” Mazurek said, even for Colorado’s changing climate, which has been steadily warming in recent decades. However, she added, “I don't think we should think about this as being our new normal. Yes, we should continue to expect our temperatures to warm, but … this year will still stand out, I think, in the next couple of decades.” 

ResourceInsights: "Sulfur and the emerging food crisis," by Kurt Cobb. 

"In the densely interconnected web of global production, sulfur sits in the middle as the basis for sulfuric acid, a chemical that finds wide application in industry including for improving octane in gasoline; as raw material for detergents, resins, dyes+ explosives; for the "pickling" of metals, that is, the removal of oxidation from the surface; as an electrolyte in lead-acid batteries; as a laboratory reagent, that is, a chemical used for analysis + synthesis of chemicals; plus for the production of phosphate fertilizer, an essential plant nutrient critical to obtaining high yields in today's industrial agricultural system."

"Before the outbreak of the Iran war, 24 percent of the world's supply of sulfur passed through the Strait of Hormuz." Sulfur price at the start of the Iran conflict was approximately $500 per metric ton for sulfur originating from the the Middle East, whereas it now sits above $800. "Some customers paid more than $1,000 in June for Canadian-origin sulfur, a record." 

"High prices are threatening worldwide phosphate fertilizer supplies which depend on sulfuric acid for their production." In fact, 50% of all sulfuric acid is used to make fertilizers, 42.5% to make phosphate fertilizer and 7.5% to make ammonium sulfate (a source of nitrogen). 'Finally, sulfur is an important soil nutrient by itself.'

'Emerging world food crisis is in large part the result of a dramatic reduction in the availability sulfur, nitrogen fertilizer + natural gas (source of most nitrogen fertilizer) from Persian Gulf countries—which are, of course, currently embroiled in the Iran war.' When Iran seized control of the Strait of Hormuz...not only were shipments of oil seriously curtailed, but also other key materials including helium + aluminum.

"Producers of phosphate fertilizers are struggling to afford the sulfuric acid they need...because they are unable to pass the increased costs on to farmers who are already reeling from soaring prices for diesel and nitrogen fertilizers." For further context, the fertilizer + fuel price hikes are coming just as we head into what is expected to be possibly the worst El Niño ever recorded.

From where I sit, there is always, always a climate angle.

Across the West, the lithium boom is on a collision course with climate-driven declines in rivers and aquifers. Federal data shows that almost all proposed or developing lithium projects are in counties where risk of drought is expected to rise sharply—much more so than in most of the nation. Nearly six in 10 are in places where drought is projected to cause some of the most severe impacts. 

A recent study concludes that most lithium mining areas won’t have enough water by mid-century to meet the industry’s demands. 

“Those regions are already water-stressed,” said co-author Jennifer Dunn, director of the Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience at Northwestern University. Adding lithium mining onto them without reducing water consumption across the board will make it extremely challenging for those mines to operate in the near future, not to mention meeting everyone’s water needs, she said. “As engineers, we can think of some technology solutions to cut water consumption, but the engineering is not going to get you over the hump in this case. It really has to be a local discussion about how we want to use water.”

Water regulators and farmers in Colorado’s San Luis Valley are in a lose-lose situation.

Either they adopt a plan to aggressively manage the use of groundwater from their rapidly declining aquifer, likely forcing a contraction of the local agricultural economy, or continue overpumping and further lower the water table, which will likely force mass shutoffs of well water in the future.

“It’s really draconian,” Colorado state Sen. Cleave Simpson, a fourth-generation valley farmer and general manager of the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, said in an interview in March. “I don’t know how my community is going to survive.”

But Simpson sees no other option.

as a group of youth aged 15-25 is there something that we can actually do that will make an impact? or should we just sit there and watch the world burn cuz there's almost nothing we can do?

Ranchers, conservative legal scholars, and former Republican EPA chiefs are siding against oil companies. Here's why.

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in the case on Monday. The court’s decision could have huge ramifications for efforts to hold companies accountable for deceiving the public about the dangers of burning fossil fuels — and the larger question of who pays for the costs of adapting to a hotter world. Oil majors have pulled out all the stops to stymie the dozens of climate lawsuits that local and state governments have brought against them, with billions and billions of dollars on the line. With a conservative-dominated Supreme Court and the Trump administration’s Department of Justice as a powerful ally, oil companies saw their chance to stop these suits, said Alejandro Camacho, a professor at UCLA School of Law.

That calculus changed slightly this week when Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, a strong conservative with financial holdings in oil companies, recused himself from the case. His withdrawal makes it harder for oil companies to get at least five justices — a majority of the court — on their side.

The city and county of Boulder, Colorado, originally sued Suncor and Exxon Mobil in 2018. The lawsuit slowly wound its way through the court system. Oil companies tried to dismiss it or move it to federal court, a more industry-friendly venue, but Boulder won at every stage. In May 2025, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that the case should proceed in state courts.

Much of the support for Boulder and the oil companies falls along familiar, partisan lines. Republican states and business associations tend to side with the oil companies; Democratic states and environmental advocates typically back Boulder. A watchdog organization found that 25 of the 38 briefs filed to the Supreme Court in support of Exxon and Suncor were written by groups with financial ties to the fossil fuel industry or foundations opposing climate science and regulation. But Colorado ranchers aren’t the only surprising source of support for Boulder’s case — some conservative thinkers are challenging oil companies’ arguments.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has recused himself from a landmark climate lawsuit pitting Boulder against major oil companies, the court announced in a letter Monday.

In a 2018 complaint, the city and county of Boulder argued that the oil giants ExxonMobil and Suncor deceived consumers of the harms of burning fossil fuels, and that they should share the costs of adapting to the escalating toll of climate disasters, such as floods and wildfires. 

Alito does not own Suncor or ExxonMobil stock. But he does own thousands of dollars in investments in the oil companies ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66, according to a report released earlier this month from the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog, and Alito’s own 2025 financial disclosures.

Alito has batted down previous calls to recuse himself from the case earlier this year. A Supreme Court spokesperson also told NBC News in May that he had inadvertently recused himself in 2023, when Suncor and Exxon unsuccessfully asked the Court to review the case. 

“Justice Alito’s recusal from Suncor v. Boulder is the right decision, and one he should have made from the start,” said Consumer Watchdog organizing director Alexandra Nagy in a statement. 

“The public should not have to wonder whether a justice’s personal investments could benefit from a ruling that shields the fossil-fuel industry from liability,” she added.

A new residential development south of Denver is the testing ground for an unusual partnership that could transform home heating and cooling across the country.

Dandelion Energy, a geothermal startup, and Lennar, one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, recently completed construction of nearly 100 homes at the base of Colorado’s Front Range, each equipped with its own ground-source heat pump. The systems use less electricity than even the most efficient air-source heat pumps, potentially helping Colorado meet its climate goals while reducing peak energy demand and eliminating the need for new gas pipelines.

Ground-source heat pumps draw on steady temperatures belowground to help heat and cool buildings. However, the projects’ custom designs and drilling requirements—homes typically require one or more boreholes drilled several hundred feet deep—are pricey. Drilling alone often costs more than $10,000.

Dandelion, a company that got its start at X—a “moonshot” research and development subsidiary of Alphabet, Google’s parent company—says it can complete geothermal heating and cooling projects twice as fast and at half the cost of similar installations.