Earth
To raise awareness about overpopulation, the Center for Biological Diversity will distribute both information about the issue and free condoms inside packages with images of endangered species on them.
The campaign will begin shortly before Valentine's Day. And, in case there's any confusion, the condoms are for use by humans, not the critters.
The first e-mail from the group went to my junk mail folder, along with the ads for instant credit, stimulating pharmaceuticals and come-ons for Web sites that my employer blocks.
I e-mailed the Center for Biological Diversity: "Are you kidding?"
Continue reading "Condoms in endangered species packages? Are they kidding?" »
Air quality improvement and the prevalence of frequent ear infections in children.pdf
A UCLA study connects improving air quality with a downturn in frequent ear infections among children in the United States.
But the study had a second conclusion that might surprise some people: Childhood respiratory allergy did not seem to be associated with air quality improvements.
I've heard many health experts talk about the possible connection between allergies and pollution. I haven't read many studies that looked at the possible link.
The National Park Service is starting work on the environmental assessment of rehabilitating 27 miles of Tioga Road.
As many motorists will tell you, the view is unbelievable on this Yosemite National Park road. It is the longest trans-Sierra road. But it does need some help on the western end.
For those who don't know it well, Tioga is the route to picturesque Tuolumne Meadows and access to many of the prettiest high Sierra trails. From the western side of the Sierra it takes you to Highway 395.
Public scoping for the rehabilitation work will begin Thursday and run through March 5. An EA will be available for public review in fall 2010. Construction is expected to begin in summer/fall 2012 and to be completed by summer/fall 2016.
The public is encouraged to comment online. That link appears to be broken right now.
Until it is fixed, use snail mail: Superintendent, Yosemite National Park,
Tioga Road Rehabilitation (Big Oak Flat Road to May Lake Road) PO Box 577 Yosemite, CA 95389. Faxed comments may be sent to:
(209) 379-1294.
PG&E hydrographer Henry French reports snow courses on the Kings River watershed are running about 116% of average for this time of year.
Last year, the same snow courses showed 66% of average. What a difference five storms makes in January.
The PG&E snow courses are between 7,000 and 10,500 feet in elevation. The utility's hydroelectric projects on the Kings River will have a good year if the storms keep coming. The drought isn't over yet.
There will be three hearings on the proposed new ozone standard -- one in Virginia, one in Houston and one in Sacramento.
No hearings will be held in the nation's two most ozone-troubled places, the San Joaquin Valley and the South Coast Air Basin. Between the two, there were more than 200 ozone violations last year.
No two air basins outside of California even come close to that total. Yet, Valley and Southern California residents will have to drive for hours to speak with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The meeting will be from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Four Points by Sheraton at Sacramento International Airport, 4900 Duckhorn Drive.
There was a Bee story Wednesday about an Interior Department announcement that made it seem as though west San Joaquin Valley farmers would get an additional 350,000 to 400,000 acre-feet of water this year.
As the story said, that's a false impression. The announcement was a commitment from the federal government to make room in San Luis Reservoir for water that west-side farmers already have purchased.
This commitment has been renewed annually for at least 15 years. This was the earliest commitment in memory, and that was the significant point.
Just for the record, the largest west-side customer on the federal project is Westlands Water District.
Westlands farmers saved a total 270,000 acre-feet of water from last year for use in 2010.
Of this, 115,000 acre-feet is Central Valley Project water that will be rescheduled for use from 2009 to 2010, and 155,000 acre-feet is water purchased from many sources by Westlands and stored in San Luis Reservoir.
What a difference El Nino makes.
At this point in a dry January 2009, the Valley had 20 bad-air days, as soot and other fine particle pollution violated federal standards.
This month, there have been only nine bad days.
A series of El Nino-enhanced storms scoured the pollution out of the Valley's bowl last week. Unsettled weather followed and prevented violations so far this week.
Generally, when there is stormy weather in winter, the air is cleaner. And the views of the Sierra are memorable.
Right now, the federal pumps at the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta are extracting water at less than a third of the rate that they would if not for threatened fish species.
This is what rubs farmers the wrong way about the U.S. Endangered Species Act. At a time when storms are pouring huge amounts of water through the delta, pumping still is limited.
Less pumping, less water is stored in San Luis Reservoir for summer irrigation. So shortages probably will happen.
On the other side of the discussion, the winter-run salmon problems are real, and so is the ban on commercial salmon fishing.
Wlldlife officials are trying to prevent the delta flow from changing directions when the pumps are cranked up, drawing migrating salmon into the pumps.
A four-year study of hazing food-thieving black bears in Sequoia National Park offered this conclusion:
"Shooting bears with rubber slugs from a 12-gauge shotgun was found to be slightly more effective than any other method."
This may sound a little silly, but it is no fun being confronted by a black bear that has learned about human food and insists on having yours.
An article on the study is in the January issue of The Journal of Wildlife Management. The research, conducted between June 2002 and September 2005, recorded 1,050 events of aversive conditioning on more than 150 bears.
Most events involved 36 identified bears that had become "food-conditioned" -- meaning they prefer your peanut butter sandwich to almost anything they find in nature.
The study looked at other methods of running off bears, such as pepper spray, chasing and projectiles, such as throwing rocks or launching rocks with slingshots.
According to the press release, the study noted that in areas where bears require access to critical habitats, it may be best to seasonally exclude people rather than bears.
The Northern Sierra has been battered with snowstorms over the last three days and the snowpack up there has jumped from about 70% of average a week ago to 102% now.
If the snowpack melted in the Northern Sierra today, 16 inches of water would come rushing down the river canyons. Fresno's entire season is less than 12 inches.
But to get an average year, the snowpack has to be somewhere around 28 to 30 inches of water content in the north. The snowpack needs a lot more in the next seven weeks.
Is your lawn a villain in the global climate change problem? The question sounds crazy, since your lawn actually absorbs carbon dioxide -- a greenhouse gas.
But mowing, fertilizing, leaf-blowing and other lawn maintenance create a lot of greenhouse gas. A University of California, Irvine, study suggests the activities create four times more greenhouse gas than the lawn absorbs.
The emissions include nitrous oxide released from soil after fertilization. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that's 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
"Lawns look great -- they're nice and green and healthy, and they're photosynthesizing a lot of organic carbon," said Amy Townsend-Small, Earth system science postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study. "But the carbon-storing benefits of lawns are counteracted by fuel consumption."
The study will be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
A few meteorologists are suggesting Fresno might get a third or more of its winter rainfall in just a few days next week.
After three years of drought, it sounds pretty good. And if the rest of the state gets a similar dump, it will be good. With reservoirs low, there probably would not be major flooding.
It sounds too good to be true. At the same time, if it does it happen, it will not be convenient.
Less than an inch of rain in a single day can leave parts of the San Joaquin Valley flooded. Creeks overflow. Intersections get swamped. Traffic gets snarled. Be prepared to go slow.
In the Sierra, the meteorologists are talking about 10 to 20 feet of snow. This could be the end of the three-year drought.
Butterfly species are in decline in California, says a University of California, Davis, professor who has been studying this insect for 35 years.
The professor, Arthur Shapiro, says climate change and development are taking their toll on butterflies at sea level, though the insects are not losing ground as quickly in the mountains.
At the tree line in high elevations, butterfly diversity is actually going up as the lower-elevation species flee the warming climate, according to Shapiro. But higher-elevation butterflies have no where else to go -- so they are perishing.
The new analysis is scheduled to be published online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Shapiro's co-authors include three other UC Davis researchers and two former Shapiro graduate students, including lead analyst Matthew Forister, now an assistant professor of biology at the University of Nevada, Reno.
High Country News, based in Coloroado, is the latest publication to dissect Westlands Water District and the problems at the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Many newspapers, magazines and television shows have looked closely at Westlands in the last 25 years. This one was balanced, focusing squarely on politics.
The story connects the west San Joaquin Valley district to everything from the attempt to take down the Endangered Species Act to the surreal Sean Hannity broadcast last September.
There is history and scientific background, as well as several Westlands board members who were quoted about the realities of farming on the west side.
The story missed the best biographical material on Westlands general manager Tom Birmingham, who was featured throughout. But it is a powerful piece, well worth the read.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today proposed to lower the ozone threshold again -- advocating a number between 60 and 70 parts per billion.
Ozone is a corrosive gas that makes up the majority of summertime smog. The San Joaquin Valley and the South Coast Air Basin are the two biggest offenders of the standard.
In 2008, EPA adopted a 75 parts per billion threshold, which was higher than its own panel of scientists advised.
Now, if the standard is lowered to 70 or below, it will be as tough or tougher than the California ozone standard. Nationwide, the stringent standard will cost tens of billions of dollars to achieve over the next two decades.
The Valley has a 2024 deadline to achieve an older standard. It probably would have to file a new cleanup plan by 2013 or 2014.
Federal scientists are starting to use the word "strong" in their latest discussion of El Nino. That's a loaded six-letter word in California.
The last time there was a strong El Nino, Fresno had more than 20 inches of rainfall. It was 1997-1998. The strongest El Nino recorded in the last several decades was in 1982-1983. Fresno had a record 23.57 inches.
But there also was a strong El Nino in 1991 during a drought. People might remember that one for the "miracle March" when Fresno received 7.24 inches of rain. But the city's total was only 9.77 inches that year.
Will storms soon chase away the drizzle and fog? The odds seem to be shifting that way.
There were 24 bad-air days in January last year, meaning somewhere in the Valley the air was beyond the federal health threshold for tiny bits of soot and chemicals.
The Valley violated that standard on four of the first five days in 2010.
The tiny specks are called PM-2.5, and we're right in the middle of the season. December and January are the worst months.
PM-2.5 is considered more dangerous than summertime ozone. And the particles in wood smoke are dangerous, researchers are finding.
For weather watchers, the winter dry time has arrived. But it doesn't necessarily mean the season will be dry.
Meteorologist and consultant Jan Null says the dry stretch is a regular feature of California weather:
"On almost as regular basis as the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano an extended period of dry weather likes to return to Northern and Central California in the middle of winter."
For the San Joaquin Valley, it sometimes means days of overcast, occasional drizzle, fog and afternoon sunshine in some places. And it means pollutants hang around in the moist air, often leading air officials to prohibit fireplace burning.
Null says even in California's record-setting 1982-1983 rainfall season, San Francisco had a three-week stretch of dry weather. And it started on Christmas eve.
Environmentalists say the fight will continue over the Grassland Bypass Project, which last month got federal approval for a 10-year extension allowing some farmers to send tainted irrigation drainage to the San Joaquin River.
These west Valley Farmers have been reducing the amount of drainage going into the river over the last 14 years. But they have not achieved the goal, which is totally eliminating it.
They say they need another 10 years to develop the water treatment facility needed. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation agreed, over environmentalists objections.
Environmentalists now plan to argue against the extension at the California Water Resources Control Board, which has not yet signed off on the project as part of its basin management plan.
Continue reading "Enviros continue to fight Grassland Bypass Project" »
Another farmer may be selling his irrigation water supply to Southern California for millions of dollars. And, again, it involves the Dudley Ridge Water District in Kings County.
The deal would involve the purchase of 884 acres of mostly stone fruit trees by Irvine Ranch Water District. The price would reportedly be $14.3 million, though it is not a done deal, say state officials.
The Irvine district would acquire access to 1,700 acre-feet of water from the State Water Project. One acre-foot -- 326,000 gallons -- would supply an average family for a year.
The other Dudley Ridge deal this year involved a Bay Area land and farming partnership called Sandridge Partners. The partnership agreed to sell $73 million worth of water rights to the Mojave Water Agency in San Bernardino County.
But, as far as the state Department of Water Resources is concerned, the Irvine deal has many hurdles to clear before it is finished.
An Irvine district official said an agreement has been signed, allowing the district to evaluate the potential purchase. If the deal is made, the land would still be farmed for a minimum of two years. Then a water transfer might be considered, the district official said.
The land is part of the Jackson Ranch, officials said. Both the farmer and the Irvine district are members of the State Water Project.
Irvine serves a population of 330,000 in Irvine and portions of Tustin, Lake Forest, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa, city of Orange and unincorporated Orange County.
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