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Roses and Thorns

A thorn goes to the pinheads inconsiderate enough to vandalize the Wintersculpt creations on the Mill Street Mall. Talented people have committed hours to working in the cold, using their skills to make something beautiful and amusing for the community to enjoy, and some people can’t leave their paws off the ice sculptures? Most teams opted to delay their sculpting, disrupting their schedules so they wouldn’t have to leave their works-in-progress overnight. Should we be thankful no one (yet) has knocked over the Kidsculpt entires?

Roses go to Aspen Skiing Co.’s employee-supported Environment Foundation, which gave $35,000 to the Conservation Colorado Education Fund and $15,000 to Western Resource Advocates. Both organizations support new air-quality rules that will reduce methane emissions from natural-gas extraction, and this money will go toward funding their noble mission.



Thorns to Maurice Emmer and Sheldon Fingerman for their simplistic arguments — as presented in letters to the Aspen newspapers last week — against global warming based on severe cold snaps covering much of North America. Anyone who does even a moderate amount of digging into the science of climate change understands that the effect of a warming planet doesn’t mean every place will be warmer and drier every day. More research is showing that global warming will produce more climate extremes — an area could have a drought for a decade followed by a year of raging downpours. If Emmer and Fingerman are so certain global warming is a hoax and issues such as rising ocean levels are fabricated, we dare them to invest their long-term family holdings in beachfront property in Miami.