#bay area climate

[moregraceful]

can we PLEASEEEEE talk about nico sturm's white boy swag PLEASE. like what was that. why were the sharks so intensely hiding his white boy swag. "oh we got him for his face offs" WHAT ABOUT HIS WHITE BOY SWAG. imagine if the sharks had not made a holiday music video we would not have never known about nico sturm's insane white boy swag. ik you all are consumed with thing1 and thing2 and also thing3 and thing4 but what was going on with nico sturm in that video, we need to discuss. why was he the only one giving it's big and i know what to do with it energy. ON THE SHARKS?? HELLO

ALSO. cody ceci can't rap nor should he ever again get his ass off the mic but he DID sound like an npr show host. he has the smooth tenor of a man telling me on all songs considered that this all-female octogenarian shoegaze quartet is going to be playing at hardly strictly bluegrass this year. or like a guy who was an overnight host for a classical music station. he's telling me he's got gershwin to accompany me through the cold winter night. he's signing off with an instrumental version of "st. james infirmary" at 6am. he calls his listeners his "lovers" and gets away with it bc the only people who listen to overnight classic music stations are lonely old men and particularly unwell college students. ohhhh cody ceci you're wasted as a dman you should be romancing old men

[remembertheplunge]

I attended the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley today.

I listened to 3 different panels of authors discussing their books and writing.

One said that in her writing group, they don’t just criticize another’s work. The group discuses the positive aspects of a writing piece. They then ask the writer who composed it what issue areas they, the writer, would like to discuss.

I like that approach. The group doesn’t shut the writer down through attacking the work. They help the writer explore areas of concern and thus creat an environment of expansion.

Another writer said talent is not enough . You must also have persistence.

And, I think that 3 of the authors said that an inspiring Author for them was James Baldwin. His writings were featured in the 2016 film “I am not your Negro” a great movie I highly recommend.

[thechembow]

Hi Sharon - the "smoke" has been awful in San Jose this week - we have been forced to have indoor lunch time at my school 2 days this week (kids can't be outside at lunch) due to the "Bay Area Air Quality Management" District's "Spare the Air" alert. I've been wondering if it really was smoke - I've had several students say they can smell it. I haven't been able to, but I really can see it up close, things look foggy even a few yards away. How can we tell if it is smoke or just DOR?

It would be great to see a photo if you have one. From the news footage I've seen, the air looks very similar to how it was in LA in the 80s and 90s when they used to call the DOR "smog." I saw a report in which people in the Bay Area were still walking their dogs and enjoying their normal routines, and one lady even said this was nothing compared with actual wildfires she had lived through in Lake Tahoe.

For people new to the science of orgonomy, lingering air pollution is caused by positively ionizing radiation mostly from cell tower arrays throughout cities, which causes stagnation and inhibits the earth from removing the pollution. Air pollution from cars, wildfires, and other sources is naturally cleaned from the atmosphere by the upward movement of orgone energy, which the earth constantly generates naturally. When an energy shift takes place in which the atmospheric energy transmutes, the DOR goes through several phases. I explain the different looks of DOR in this recent post.

With that said, there could have been smoke involved in the air pollution and DOR would hold it in. However, because of the widespread neutralization of cell towers in the Bay Area, it would be transmuting, which gives it the hazy whitish look. If there was smoke, it was most likely from unreported local prescribed burns (there is no way the fire up north from a month ago is still burning after being repeatedly rained on). This is how they do it in Southern California and many other places. They create smoke nearby, and then tell us that it's coming from a fire in the wrong direction of the wind some several hundred miles away from us. The post I referenced also shows this smoky looking DOR in our area in Southern California and explains their reporting tactics further.

Another possibility is that there was no smoke at all, just the usual air pollution from the city acted on by DOR in various stages of transmutation. The news also said it would be gone in a couple of days, coinciding with a rain storm moving into Northern California. As you know, once DOR transmutes, the OR not only lifts air pollution, but also promotes rainfall through the negative ionization of the atmosphere, which allows hydrogen bonds to form between water molecules. The news always confounds cause and effect to obscure the true science of weather and climate, orgonomy.

Remember also that since you didn't smell smoke, and you are an aware orgonite gifter, the ones who did smell it may have just been mind controlled by their smartphones to perceive the AI's digital reality rather than what's real. Mind control is also a huge part of the atmospheric problems on earth, because the mind creates our reality and people are manipulated through negative media combined with the mind control signal of their phones to create a negative world. But in reality, orgone energy is much stronger than DOR and one orgonite gifter can undo the damage of a million negative minds!

A multi-dimensional question gets a multi-dimensional answer! Hope this helps your understanding, and thanks for the thought provoking question! Keep on towerbusting!

[raginggrannies]

[strike-debt-bay-area]

Book group, Saturday, July 27: The Path to a Livable Future

We'll meet by video at 5pm PDT on July 27, discussing The Path to a Livable Future: A New Politics to Fight Climate Change, Racism, and the Next Pandemic, by Stan Cox. Join us! Email strike.debt.bay.area@gmail.com for the link.

"Above all, he shows that a healthy, just, sustainable future is possible if we reduce our ecological footprint and share the earth's gifts equitably. For this we need to organize, resist, imagine, and forge another path together."--Vandana Shiva

[johnsonsinsulation]

Insulation for California Homes - Everything You Need To Know

This blog post has everything you need to know about insulation installation, types of insulation, recommended R-values, and more. With practical tips and clear explanations, this blog empowers homeowners to make informed decisions that enhance comfort and energy efficiency in their homes.

[midpenmedia]

New episode! Diving deep into climate change.

Our latest episode of Make it Real, tackles the pressing issue of climate change! We explore research findings, innovative solutions, and interesting stories

Tune in to learn more and discover how YOU can make a difference!

[fhear]

Pres. Biden announces $600M climate initiative during Bay Area visit

[reasonsforhope]

"Many people know about the Yellowstone wolf miracle. After wolves were reintroduced to the national park in the mid-1990s, streamside bushes that had been grazed to stubble by out-of-control elk populations started bouncing back. Streambank erosion decreased. Creatures such as songbirds that favor greenery along creeks returned. Nearby aspens flourished.

While there is debate about how much of this stemmed from the wolves shrinking the elk population and how much was a subtle shift in elk behavior, the overall change was dramatic. People were captivated by the idea that a single charismatic predator’s return could ripple through an entire ecosystem. The result was trumpeted in publications such as National Geographic.

But have you heard about the sea otters and the salt marshes? Probably not.

It turns out these sleek coastal mammals, hunted nearly to extinction for their plush pelts, can play a wolf-like role in rapidly disappearing salt marshes, according to new research. The findings highlight the transformative power of a top predator, and the potential ecosystem benefits from their return.

“It begs the question: In how many other ecosystems worldwide could the reintroduction of a former top predator yield similar benefits?” said Brian Silliman, a Duke University ecologist involved in the research.

The work focused on Elk Slough, a tidal estuary at the edge of California’s Monterey Bay. The salt marsh lining the slough’s banks has been shrinking for decades. Between 1956 and 2003, the area lost 50% of its salt marshes.

Such tidal marshes are critical to keeping shorelines from eroding into the sea, and they are in decline around the world. The damage is often blamed on a combination of human’s altering coastal water flows, rising seas and nutrient pollution that weakens the roots of marsh plants.

But in Elk Slough, a return of sea otters hinted that their earlier disappearance might have been a factor as well. As many as 300,000 sea otters once swam in the coastal waters of western North America, from Baja California north to the Aleutian Islands. But a fur trade begun by Europeans in the 1700s nearly wiped out the animals, reducing their numbers to just a few thousand by the early 1900s. Southern sea otters, which lived on the California coast, were thought to be extinct until a handful were found in the early 1900s.

In the late 1900s, conservation organizations and government agencies embarked on an effort to revive the southern sea otters, which remain protected under the Endangered Species Act. In Monterey Bay, the Monterey Bay Aquarium selected Elk Slough as a prime place to release orphaned young sea otters taken in by the aquarium.

As the otter numbers grew, the dynamics within the salt marsh changed. Between 2008 and 2018, erosion of tidal creeks in the estuary fell by around 70% as otter numbers recovered from just 11 animals to nearly 120 following a population crash tied to an intense El Niño climate cycle.

While suggestive, those results are hardly bulletproof evidence of a link between otters and erosion. Nor does it explain how that might work.

To get a more detailed picture, the researchers visited 5 small tidal creeks feeding into the main slough. At each one, they enclosed some of the marsh with fencing to keep out otters, while other spots were left open. Over three years, they monitored the diverging fates of the different patches.

The results showed that otter presence made a dramatic difference in the condition of the marsh. They also helped illuminate why this was happening. It comes down to the otters’ appetite for small burrowing crabs that live in the marsh.

Adult otters need to eat around 25% of their body weight every day to endure the cold Pacific Ocean waters, the equivalent of 20 to 25 pounds. And crabs are one of their favorite meals. After three years, crab densities were 68% higher in fenced areas beyond the reach of otters. The number of crab burrows was also higher. At the same time, marsh grasses inside the fences fared worse, with 48% less mass of leaves and stems and 15% less root mass, a critical feature for capturing sediment that could otherwise wash away, the scientists reported in late January in Nature.

The results point to the crabs as a culprit in the decline of the marshes, as they excavate their holes and feed on the plant roots. It also shows the returning otters’ potential as a marsh savior, even in the face of rising sea levels and continued pollution. In tidal creeks with high numbers of otters, creek erosion was just 5 centimeters per year, 69% lower than in creeks with fewer otters and a far cry from earlier erosion of as much as 30 centimeters per year.  

“The return of the sea otters didn’t reverse the losses, but it did slow them to a point that these systems could restabilize despite all the other pressures they are subject to,” said Brent Hughes, a biology professor at Sonoma State University and former postdoctoral researcher in Silliman’s Duke lab.

The findings raise the question of whether other coastal ecosystems might benefit from a return of top predators. The scientists note that a number of these places were once filled with such toothy creatures as bears, crocodiles, sharks, wolves, lions and dolphins. Sea otters are still largely absent along much of the West Coast.

As people wrestle to hold back the seas and revive their ailing coasts, a predator revival could offer relatively cheap and effective assistance. “It would cost millions of dollars for humans to rebuild these creek banks and restore these marshes,” Silliman said of Elk Slough. “The sea otters are stabilizing them for free in exchange for an all-you-can-eat crab feast.”"

-via Anthropocene Magazine, February 7, 2024

[montereybayaquarium]

The beauty of the monastery kelp forest

We get by with the help of our fronds! Sea-riously! A new study by Monterey Bay Aquarium scientists found that denser kelp forests can better handle serious stressors like sweltering seawaters!

The study looked at kelp forests before, during, and after an extreme marine heatwave that hit west coast waters from 2014-2016. It found that denser and more sheltered forests, and the animals living in these forests, fared better against the extreme heat. These persistent forests were also able to keep hungry sea urchins from roaming around the reef and gobbling up the remaining kelp.

Another Aquarium study showed a certain species supports strong kelp forests by snacking on  sea urchins — you guessed it — sea otters!

You can dive deeper into this research here!

Healthy kelp forests not only provide homes for a wide range of marine life — they also absorb carbon dioxide — naturally pushing back against climate change (hurray photosynthesis!). 

Globally, kelp has been declining for a half-century and warming ocean temperatures present a serious threat to cold-water species like kelp. 

Studies like these help us understand what makes kelp forests strong, and how we can implement restoration efforts in areas with less kelp coverage.

[wwwdlabrie]

Is this California Mega Storm another sign of Climate Change /Global Warming? Watch DLabrie Music Video "HomeTree"

Is this California Mega Storm another sign of Climate Change /Global Warming? Watch DLabrie Music Video “HomeTree”

[joy-haver]

Life is getting harder, and so, we must get better at it.

Climate change and species extinction and ecosystem collapse are happening quickly. They are spiraling out of control. Even many Ecosystems that are supposed to be the most stable in their regions are facing decline. There are runaway effects, each thing that gets worse makes the next thing get worse faster, more disastrously. Each of these systems becomes less resilient the more of its redundancies are stripped away.

And yet, we can also have cascading effects. I am seeing controlled burns turn the plantation pines into savannas again, for the first time in 200 years, they are burning now, right now, where they would never have imagined to burn a year ago. I am seeing people talk about planting native plants. The nurseries here are selling out of them faster than they can restock. If you ask, they will say “This did not happen last year”. The foundations that have been being built by ecologists over the past half century, and maintained against brutal colonialism by indigenous peoples, are seeping out into the community. I see people talking about river cane, and pitcher plant, and planting paw paw and persimmon and sassafras and spice bush. These things are returning. Even now, in the worst drought in known history of my area, I see more butterflies than last year, because we have put in more of their host plants, their overwinters. We are learning. We are beginning. We are being born into a world of ecology; we are breaking the green wall of blur that defines our settler nonrelationship with nature. The irises are returning to Louisiana, the black bear too. The oysters are returning to Mobile Bay. I hear talk of gopher apples and river oats from the mouths of children. I see the return of the chinquapin, and her larger sister chestnut. It is slow but it is also so fast. It is growing at new trajectories, new rises. Each of these becomes it’s own advocate when planted in space and put in relationship.

We are not doomed. We must claw back from the brink. We must find each other and we must exchange seeds. We must learn to pull invasive species. We must win others over through earnestness and full bellies, through kindling the spark of ecological joy, and then we must show them the way. We must be learning the way ourselves in the meantime. We must teach the children the names we were not told, that were forgotten; how to recognize these friends.

When things are spiraling towards despair and death we must be that spiral towards life and utter utopia. We must build ourselves into full participants in our ecological systems.

As life gets harder, we must get better at it.

[transit-fag]

Here are my urban design predictions:

Detroit and Cleveland will make a comeback and start growing again, Gary will not

The outer suburbs of Miami and Houston will be some of the first cities in the US to start to decline due to the effects of climate change

Philadelphia will become more influential over the next 30 years.

Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Columbus, or Rochester will start building a proper light rail within 20 years

Chicago will get more expensive if they don't do housing reform

Seattle, Austin, and Minneapolis will continue to be national leaders on hosuing policy

The core of the Bay Area will start to shift to Oakland and Berkeley

Louisville will start losing population

Buffalo will expand the light rail

Portland will build the MAX tunnel

[thechembow]

Epic Rain for California the Week

Dec. 26, 2024

High orgone has fueled extreme rain in California this week, with a brief break on Christmas day. Rain and snow are returning in full force starting today and continuing through the weekend.

California has already had a blockbuster rainy season, with record breaking rains in late November, when many areas of Northern California received more than a foot of rain and the Sierras received several feet of snow. This was a sign of things to come this winter, which has just begun.

Rain & snow outlook for Thursday- Sunday from ABC News

A series of three storms have been drenching the Bay Area, with 2-5 inches of rain expected by Friday. There is even more to come over the weekend. The coast of Northern California, including Eureka, could receive 4-8 inches of rain in the next four days.

In Southern California, we had rain on Christmas Eve day and night. The storm has affected the northern half of the state much more. The recent gifting of Boise, ID, has had a big impact on the weather in the northern part of the US west. Northern California weather is now comparable with Oregon weather, as we continue to break down the rain suppression arrays and the weather normalizes throughout the west. Today's jet stream is fast moving, and steady from west to east.

Although downplayed in the weather forecasts, we may see a little rain in SoCal mountains over the weekend. We will need to fortify the southern orgonite grids even more, with another round of gifting needed in Las Vegas, about a third of which was gifted in 2017. The south is far higher in DOR than the north. The increased rain in the Bay Area, also a very high DOR environment, is encouraging for increasing rain in the south.

A possibility of rain in Central CA as the north continues to get soaked this Friday through Saturday

[tomatoluvr69]

But hey it’s cheaper than boulder or wherever the fuck by a long shot. For now. Until appalachia becomes bloated and swollen with the escapees from other parts of the nation who have the means to do so when their homes in Southern CA and FLA and Nola etc all try to kill them and they push all the people who have been living in appalachia for generations out of their homes during a huge climate based demographic shift. But thus is life I guess. Anyways I do think Pittsburgh, Detroit, Philadelphia, WV, western VA, Kentucky, eastern TN like Johnson City etc are going to shift away from being stigmatized and avoided within the broader nation to being an extremely sought after place to be over the remainder of the century because of climate change. LOL! I will no longer be living in appalachia at that point probably

re: LRB (and lots of cultural punchlines in general lol) It is kind of funny how ppl still think Pittsburgh PA is kind of an industrial shithole and it’s like sure. There’s some rusted stuff around. But it’s subject to the same exact homogeneous flattening of American culture found in every city. Like the vast majority of people just go to chipotle and watch the office reruns. And the air quality is kind of bad and there’s a ton of lead poisoning in children due to the infrastructure. And also a good third of the many hundreds of bridges have been found to be in dangerous disrepair putting thousands of lives in jeopardy every day and a big one did collapse a few years ago with cars and a bus on it. And there used to be a bridge by my house that had to have a second bridge under it to collect the giant chunks of concrete falling from the first bridge so they didn’t crush cars on the commuter highway below. And they have a report based on the toxicity of the rivers and how fucked you are if you go in them. But genuinely like they had to power wash all the sandstone buildings in the 90s to get the soot off them because they’d been turned black. But the soot hasnt returned! Because the steel mills closed decades ago! And now it’s just a city like everywhere except you’re going to get way more asthma than if you lived in colorado. But who cares. and the distinct local culture has vanished as it has everywhere in the nation and every city is inhospitable and isolating to its inhabitants due to the extremely skewed ratio of how extremely expensive it is to live there vs the hostile infrastructure and rewards you reap by doing so. Like you’re basically just gonna suffer in every city at this point but in Pittsburgh you’re like 0.00000001% more likely to be injured or killed in a bridge collapse by doing so.

[nostalgebraist]

Steve DeCanio, an ex-Berkeley activist now doing graduate work at M.I.T., is a good example of a legion of young radicals who know they have lost their influence but have no clear idea how to get it back again. “The alliance between hippies and political radicals is bound to break up,” he said in a recent letter. “There’s just too big a jump from the slogan of ‘Flower Power’ to the deadly realm of politics. Something has to give, and drugs are too ready-made as opiates of the people for the bastards (the police) to fail to take advantage of it.” Decanio spent three months in various Bay Area jails as a result of his civil rights activities and now he is lying low for a while, waiting for an opening. “I’m spending an amazing amount of time studying,” he wrote. “It’s mainly because I’m scared; three months on the bottom of humanity’s trash heap got to me worse than it’s healthy to admit. The country is going to hell, the left is going to pot, but not me. I still want to figure out a way to win.”

Re-reading Hunter S. Thompson's 1967 article about Haight-Ashbury, I thought: "huh, this guy sounds like he's going places. I wonder whether he ever did 'figure out a way to win'?"

So I web searched his name, and ... huh!

My current research interests include Artificial Intelligence, philosophy of the social sciences, and the economics of climate change. Several years ago I examined the consequences of computational limits for economics and social theory in Limits of Economic and Social Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).  Over the course of my academic career I have worked in the fields of global environmental protection, the theory of the firm, and economic history.  I have written about both the contributions and misuse of economics for long-run policy issues such as climate change and stratospheric ozone layer protection.  An earlier book, Economic Models of Climate Change: A Critique (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), discussed the problems with conventional general equilibrium models applied to climate policy. From 1986 to 1987 I served as Senior Staff Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. I have been a member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Economic Options Panel, which reviewed the economic aspects of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, and I served as Co-Chair of the Montreal Protocol’s Agricultural Economics Task Force of the Technical and Economics Assessment Panel. I participated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, and was a recipient of the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007. In 1996 I was honored with a Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award, and in 2007 a “Best of the Best” Stratospheric Ozone Protection Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. I served as Director of the UCSB Washington Program from 2004 to 2009.

I don't know whether this successful academic career would count as "winning" by his own 1967 standards. But it was a pleasant surprise to find anything noteworthy about the guy at all, given that he was quoted as a non-public figure in a >50-year-old article.