September 29, 2025 03:07 PM UTC

Where Is Gabe Evans Pulling These Crazy Numbers?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Greeley Tribune’s Tyler Duncan reports, it’s another case of America’s Most Vulnerable Incumbent™ Rep. Gabe Evans making an astonishing claim that left us momentarily speechless:

“Energy security is national security,” Evans said. “Energy security fuels our economy, which fuels our ability to manufacture and make things. That fuels our position as the global leader in a lot of these technologies and a lot of other technologies that require energy.”

Colorado remains the fourth-largest oil-producing state, accounting for 4% of the U.S. total crude oil output, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Weld County is responsible for 80% of the state’s production…

According to a state report from October 2024, 60% of Colorado’s air pollution originates from the oil and gas industry, with 45% of that coming from Weld County alone.

Evans dismissed the concern, saying that 70% of the detected emissions in Weld County originate from outside Colorado, specifically Canada and China. [Pols emphasis]

Full stop. While it’s a common claim among defenders of the oil and gas industry that a percentage of air pollution local regulators attempt to control flows in from outside the state and even the country, we’ve never heard it suggested that a majority of Front Range air pollution comes from “Canada and China,” let alone 70%–and certainly not in a county responsible for a disproportionate amount of the total air pollution we all experience. One estimate of the sources of ground-level ozone pollution estimates that somewhere between 1 and 5 parts per billion (ppb) of that pollution may originate out of state. For perspective, a high ozone day in Colorado is declared at 70 ppb.

This of course would not be the first time Gabe Evans has made stuff up, and it would be easy for us to write this off similarly–but we want to give anyone with an interest in defending Rep. Evans’ honesty the opportunity to explain how what Evans could possibly be right about this. Is there some interpretation of the facts possible in which it is accurate to claim that 70% of the air pollution detected in Weld County comes from Canada and China? Even counting our now-annual summer wildfire smoke, this appears implausible by orders of magnitude.

We’re being as fair as we can. Make it make sense.