Letters to the Editor: Gavin Newsom’s very presidential blunder on water
March 2, 2023
A biologist stands beside the bones of a dead Chinook salmon on the banks of the Sacramento River in Redding on Jan. 20. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Salmon don’t vote, make political contributions or confer with business interests nationally. They depend on our state leaders to protect them.
Newsom’s decision to cut river flows in favor of storage even after recent storms is a disappointing prioritization of profits for a few over the long-term needs of a declining natural resource that feeds Californians healthy protein.
Think about this as the next drought restrictions for Angelenos are imposed by the Colorado River negotiations, and remember that water is the other word for politics in our beloved state.
Carrie Chassin, Encino
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To the editor: Thanks to Skelton for his continued coverage of our water shortage, or what Newsom calls the “drought.”
The signs in the Central Valley that declared “food grows where water flows” became annoying when I realized they were talking about overseas almond lovers’ food. It was enough to make a guy become an “America firster.”
Having lived in California almost 60 years, and having driven north many times each year, I’ve watched the way agriculture has changed. The first few years after the 5 Freeway opened, one drove through desert in the San Joaquin Valley. Available water changed that.
But for me, the most remarkable change was the miles and miles of almond trees I increasingly began to pass. I’ve come to believe using so much water for nonessential cash crops is wasteful, and the salmon that depend on river flows aren’t the only creatures suffering.
Robert Von Bargen, Santa Monica
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To the editor: On behalf of the Southern California Water Coalition, I applaud Newsom’s swift action to keep more water in reservoirs by suspending a 1999 regulation temporarily.
We see this as a common-sense, prudent action to allow California to adapt in the face of changed climate conditions and severe pressure on the state’s other main source of supply, the Colorado River. Let’s hold on to this water now in case drier times are ahead.
That 1999 regulation, a fairly rigid rule tied to water-year type, was correctly suspended this February and March. It is incumbent on us all to support balanced, beneficial uses and time the release of water supplies to ensure we have the water that is needed for health and safety water for our urban communities, to sustain our economy and farms, and to protect our ecosystems and natural habitats.
Charles Wilson, Corona
The writer is executive director of the Southern California Water Coalition.
A sunken boat reemerges in September 2022 in Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada, after unprecedented drought. (David McNew/Getty Images)
Much of the Northern Hemisphere is struggling with drought or the threat of drought, as Europe experiences an unusually warm, precipitation-free winter and swaths of the American West remain mired in an epic megadrought.
But it’s not just those pockets feeling the pain in the U.S. Most of the Western United States is in some form of drought, with areas of extreme drought concentrated in the Great Plains and Texas. A 23-year megadrought has left the Southwest at the driest it is estimated to have ever been in 1,200 years, based on tree-ring data.
That’s very bad news for Texas cotton farmers. The New York Times recently reported that “2022 was a disaster for upland cotton in Texas,” leading to short supplies and high prices of tampons and cloth diapers, among other products. “In the biggest loss on record, Texas farmers abandoned 74 percent of their planted crops — nearly six million acres — because of heat and parched soil, hallmarks of a megadrought made worse by climate change,” the Times noted.
Even recent heavy storms in California haven’t brought the state out of drought, because the precipitation deficit is so big.
A car drives through a flooded road in Gilroy, Calif., in January. (Michael Ho Wai Lee/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“I want to be clear that these storms — and the likely rain and snow we may get over the next few weeks — did not, nor will they fully, end the drought, at least not yet,” Yana Garcia, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, said last Wednesday. “We’re in better shape than we were two months ago, but we’re not out of the woods.”
Just days earlier, Lake Powell, the second-largest U.S. reservoir, dropped to a new record low. Powell is created by a Colorado River dam along the Arizona-Utah border, and if the reservoir goes much lower, experts warn, water won’t be able to pass through it. Millions of people who rely on the Colorado would then lose access to their water supply.
“If you can’t get water out of the dam, it means everyone downstream doesn’t get water,” Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University, told USA Today. “That includes agriculture, cities like Los Angeles, San Diego and Phoenix.” The hydroelectric power plant for which the dam was constructed would also cease to function.
When the current 23-year megadrought plaguing the American West began, Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the largest U.S. reservoir, also on the Colorado — were 95% full. Now, they’re one-quarter full, according to Udall.
Logs and driftwood on Sept. 8, 2022, near Hite, Utah, remain where they settled when Lake Powell was at its highest-ever water level. (David McNew/Getty Images)
In order to prevent what one California official calls “a doomsday scenario,” the Department of the Interior will have to impose reductions in water allotments for downriver users.
Scientists say that the underlying conditions — growing demand for water and naturally occurring periodic drought — are being exacerbated by climate change. Warmer temperatures cause more water to evaporate, making both droughts and heavy precipitation more extreme. Climate change makes droughts “more frequent, longer, and more severe,” according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
“It’s unfortunate that the largely natural occurrence of a drought has coincided with this increasing warming due to greenhouse gases,” Flavio Lehner, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Cornell University, said. “That has brought everything to a head much earlier than people thought it would.”
In Europe, an unusually warm, dry winter has forced ski resorts in the Alps to close for lack of snow, and left the canals of Venice running dry in Italy. Some of the city’s iconic gondolas are stuck in the mud. Europe experienced its third-warmest January on record, France has seen a record dry spell of 31 days without rain, and the Alps have received less than half their normal snowfall so far this winter.
Last Wednesday, Britain’s National Drought Group warned that one hot, dry spell would return England to the severe drought conditions it endured last summer.
Low water levels at Baitings Reservoir on Aug. 12, 2022, reveal an ancient packhorse bridge amid a heatwave in the U.K. at Ripponden, West Yorkshire. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
The threat goes beyond tourism: A study published last month by researchers from Graz University of Technology in Austria warned that Europe’s drinking water supply has become “very precarious.” Much of Europe has been in a drought since 2018, and a review of satellite data of groundwater confirmed acute shortages in parts of France, Italy and Germany.
“A few years ago, I would never have imagined that water would be a problem here in Europe,” Torsten Mayer-Gürr, one of the researchers, said.
This development follows a summer of record-breaking heat waves and droughts that left thousands dead across the continent, as well as the worst wildfire season on record. Europe’s hot, dry summer coincided with acute droughts in the U.S. — even in normally wet regions like the Northeast — and in Asia. The dropping water levels revealed buried artifacts, including the wreckage of a German World War II warship in Serbia, dead bodies in Lake Mead and ancient Buddhist statues in China’s Yangtze River.
Last summer’s drought across the Northern Hemisphere was made 20 times more likely by climate change, according to an October 2022 study by World Weather Attribution, a group of international scientists who explore the link between global warming and the increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events it causes.
An emaciated cow stands at the bottom of a water pan that has been dried up for 4 months, in Iresteno, a town bordering Ethiopia, on Sept. 1, 2022. (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)
The worst impacts of ongoing drought are being felt in the Horn of Africa, where millions of residents in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are contending with food insecurity due to poor harvests. The region faces a forecast of a sixth consecutive low rainy season this spring.
Meanwhile, it’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and crop yields are being diminished by drought there as well. Argentina is a leading exporter of soy and corn, but its production is being drastically reduced this year as extremely high temperatures exacerbate a drought.
Climate scientists say that adaptation to climate change-related droughts is essential, including reducing water usage and building new infrastructure, like aquifers, to better manage water resources.
Are Cashews Actually Good for You? Registered Dietitians Share What You Need To Know
Emily Laurence – February 27, 2023
Find out how eating them regularly can impact your body.
Trying to get to the end of the debate about whether cashews are good for you can make you feel a little, well, nuts. Similar to potatoes and pickles, cashews are a food there’s a lot of confusion over when it comes to its health benefits (and even what it is—cashews are technically drupes, not nuts).
It’s time to put an end to the questioning. According to both registered dietitian Isabel Smith, RD, CDN and Foodtrainers founderLauren Slayton, MS, RD, cashews are definitely a nutrient-rich food and have many health benefits.
First things first: What does the nutritional breakdown of cashews look like? Here’s the breakdown per 1 oz of cashews, per the USDA.
Calories: 157
Fat: 12 g
Sodium: 3 mg
Potassium: 187 mg
Carbohydrates: 9 g
Protein: 9 g
7 Benefits of Eating Cashews, According to Dietitians
1. They provide the body with energy
Half a cup of cashews has roughly seven grams of protein—a key nutrient that provides the body with energy. So if you’re looking for a quick snack to help you push through an afternoon slump or to help your body recover after a workout, a handful of cashews can be a good one to go for.
2. Incorporating cashews into your meal will keep you feeling full longer
In addition to protein, both dietitians say that cashew nuts are a good source of unsaturated fats. Both protein and unsaturated fats are important for satiety. If you have a piece of toast for breakfast, you’ll likely find yourself hungry shortly after. But if you spread cashew butter on it, you’ll be full for longer thanks to these two key nutrients.
3. Cashews are good for your heart
The unsaturated fats in cashew nuts don’t just help with satiety; Smith and Slayton both say that they’re good for heart health too. Smith points to scientific studies showing that a diet that includes unsaturated fats is linked to lower inflammation, improved blood pressure and lower cholesterol.
If you want to incorporate cashew nuts into your diet with the intention of supporting your heart, Slayton says to make sure you stick with unsalted ones, which are lower in sodium.
There’s another way that cashew nuts support brain health. Slayton says that they contain selenium, a nutrient that’s linked to supporting memory and cognition. “Additionally, they contain phenolic acids that have protective brain benefits and may even decrease or prevent beta-amyloid plaques in the brain,” Smith says. “Plus, they contain different vitamins and minerals, all supporting brain health, including vitamin E, magnesium, copper, and zinc.” Add it to your list of brain-healthy foods, right along with salmon, eggs and berries!
6. They help prevent high levels of chronic inflammation
Many of the nutrients in cashew nuts—including their unsaturated fats and polyphenols (a type of antioxidant)—are linked to lowering chronic inflammation, which benefits the body as a whole. High levels of inflammation can lead to a wide range of health problems, including certain cancers, neurological decline and chronic pain, which is why it’s so beneficial to eat a diet rich in anti-inflammatory foods, including cashews.
7. Eating cashews supports digestive health
Slayton says that cashews contain two nutrients that are majorly good for digestion: fiber and magnesium. Fiber is important for adding bulk to stool and keeping the digestive system functioning properly while magnesium is linked to reducing constipation.
The exception to this is if you are sensitive to FODMAPs, foods that are tougher for the body to digest. Smith points out that cashews are a high-FODMAP food so anyone on a low-FODMAP diet should either avoid or minimize their consumption.
Tips for Integrating Cashews Into Your Diet
When shopping for cashew nuts, Slayton reiterates her advice about sticking to ones that are unsalted, which are lower in sodium. Smith adds that it’s also a good idea to avoid cashews that are roasted in oil, as the type of oil used tends to be inflammatory.
Smith also says to avoid bulk bins. “I know they are often more convenient and cheaper, but nuts in bulk bins are consistently exposed to air which can lead to them going bad and oxidizing before you even get to take them home,” she explains.
In terms of incorporating cashew nuts into your diet, there’s no shortage of ways to do so. Cashews can be enjoyed on their own or used as an ingredient in many dishes, including oatmeal, yogurt, stir-fry, chicken dishes and salads. “Cashews have a creamy quality. Soaked and blended cashews are good for plant-based dressings and dips,” Slayton recommends. This is why cashews are often used as the base for many vegan kinds of cheese. You can also find cashew butter at most grocery stores, which can taste delicious on toast, on sweet potatoes or paired with a banana.
However you decide to integrate cashew nuts into your life, your whole body will benefit. Consider the debate on whether or not they’re healthy officially settled.
As climate change alters Michigan forests, some work to see if and how the woods can adapt
Keith Matheny, Detroit Free Press – February 27, 2023
It’s as integral a part of Michigan’s fabric as its lakes and rivers: more than 20 million acres of forest land − the hickory and oak trees of southern Michigan giving way to forests of sugar maple, birch and evergreens that surround northbound travelers.
But a warming climate is harming and transforming the woods, with further, even more dramatic impacts projected by near the end of the century.
Michigan has perhaps the most exceptional forest makeup in North America, as boundaries of multiple forest types converge here: The vast boreal forest, its cold-hardy conifer trees stretching far into Canada, dips into the Upper Peninsula and northern Michigan. A diverse mixed zone then gives way to the great Eastern Broadleaf Forest across the central and southern Lower Peninsula, dominated by beech, maple, oak and hickory trees. Even the grassland prairies of the Plains states extend into far southwest Michigan.
It’s the changes happening first at these border zones that give Michigan a front-row seat to climate change impacts on the forest the rest of the 21st century.
Climate change carries a host of stresses for the woods. Milder winters are leading to earlier, longer growing seasons, often better news for invasive, undesirable shrubs and weeds than for desired tree species. Less-frigid winters also improve invasive insects’ survival, fueling a northward migration of problems such as emerald ash borer, hemlock wooly adelgid and beech bark disease, which is caused by an interaction between an insect and fungus. And the hotter, drier conditions many scientists predict in coming decades will leave the tree species dominating the far north struggling to adapt.
“We expect to see species range shifts − species at the southern edge of their ranges, those boreal-associated species like black spruce, quaking aspen and white birch, may lose suitable habitat in the state,” said Ryan Toot, a watershed forestry specialist with the U.S. Forest Service based in St. Paul, Minnesota.
That’s messing with one of Michigan’s most golden of gooses. The forest products industry provides 96,000 jobs and contributes $20 billion annually to Michigan’s economy, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. The north woods are a vital part of hunting, fishing and other tourism that brings in more than $20 billion more.
A view of Lake Michigan at the Clay Cliffs Natural Area in Leland on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022. (Photo: Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press)
University of Michigan forestry ecologist Peter Reich this month published the findings of a five-year study exposing seedling trees of the boreal and mixed hardwoods forest in northeastern Minnesota to increased temperatures and decreased summer rainfall — mimicking the projected warming and conditions under two different scenarios, one where considerable effort is made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change; another with more business-as-usual emissions. They found even the more modest emissions scenarios had a devastating effect on the young trees.
“The prognosis for the forest is not great,” said Reich, director of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Global Change Biology.
“It may be we are at a tipping point beyond which these northern species just can’t hack it. Nature is really resilient, but we are pushing it really far, maybe up to its boundaries.”
Reich has been experimenting in the boreal forest in northeastern Minnesota for 14 years, trying to better understand how oncoming climate change is going to influence the forest in the transition zone where colder and more temperate tree species converge.
“We see that many of these spruce and fir forests are doing poorly,” he said. “But temperature is changing, precipitation is changing, fire regimes are changing. There are more insects, we’ve changed management, there is rising CO2, there is changing ozone pollution — it’s hard to know which one of those is driving the change when you just observe forests.”
So Reich and his research team set out to control particular variables. They installed heat lamps and underground warming cables in outdoor plots, exposing nine species of seedlings to increased temperatures over the ambient weather: boreal species, including white spruce, balsam fir, jack pine and paper birch; and more temperate species, including white pine, red oak, burr oak, sugar maple and red maple.
Two levels of potential 21st-century climate warming were used: roughly 1.6 degrees Celsius (about 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit) and roughly 3.1 C (about 5.6 F) above ambient temperatures.
“Unfortunately, you’re going to get to either one (of those temperature increases) in any scenario that’s realistic,” Reich said.
“You can think of it as what we are going to get to in 40 or 50 years if we slow down climate change, versus if we don’t.”
On some seedling plots, the researchers also captured some of the summer rains, preventing the water from reaching the young trees’ roots, to simulate drier conditions that could be coming with later-century warming. Control plots were also planted, allowing seedlings of the same tree species to experience natural conditions.
The findings surprised Reich and his team. Even the more modest levels of warming had a big impact.
“Even the spruce and fir, which are the most boreal of the species, we thought they would do a little bit more poorly with 1.5 degrees Celsius warming — maybe 5% or 10% slower growth and 5% or 10% more mortality,” he said. “But fir in particular had 30% to 40% poorer growth and survival. Quite a dramatic change with what’s not really a very big temperature change.”
While more southerly tree species might one day expand their ranges northward to exploit where boreal species are failing, that’s not likely to be an orderly transition.
“What’s going to fill the gap are shrubs — either native shrubs or invasive shrubs, the buckthorns and honeysuckles of the world, expanding north,” Reich said.
“You might end up with a forest zone that for the next 50, 100, 150 years is kind of trashy — is neither economically nor ecologically what we want.
“You’re not going to get any two-by-fours out of buckthorn.”
The ‘climate change help desk’ for foresters
The U.S. Forest Service has been thinking about climate change’s impacts on the woods longer than most. It founded the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science in 2009, a collaborative effort among the service, universities, conservation organizations, the forest industry and landowners to develop adaptation strategies for the changing landscape.
“NIACS is like the climate change help desk, or a climate change phone-a-friend service, for land managers of all kinds, all across the Midwest and Northeast,” said Stephen Handler, a climate change specialist for NIACS based at the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station in Houghton.
“When we started at NIACS with this interest of educating people about climate change impacts and thinking about how to adapt, we were in front of a lot of critical audiences. And now, more often, it’s more like folks are drawing us in. Saying ‘We are ready to talk about this. We recognize things are shifting and we need to be agile and keep up with the change.’ “
The group provides the best, most recent available science to whoever asks: the timber industry, state natural resources agencies, parks managers, private landowners. It includes regional evaluations of which tree species are expected to adapt poorly to climate change, which are expected to do better and perhaps expand their ranges, and those in the middle. Through checklists, interested parties can conduct their own vulnerability assessments.
“They are making the choices for themselves, which we think is the appropriate way to go,” he said. “Because every land manager is going to have a different appetite for risk and a different set of values.”
Family and small private landowners account for about 54% of forest land ownership in Michigan. How climate change’s impacts on the woods are responded to is largely in the hands of individuals, families, companies and communities.
“You’re going to have a pretty diverse set of choices being made across the landscape − preservation in some areas, encouraging change in other areas, a lot of places in the middle,” Handler said. “That could be a strength.”
Is assisted migration part of the answer?
A great debate among those who care about the climate-changed forest is how much attention and effort should be spent on trying to maintain what exists in an area now and how much should be devoted to preparation for what may better fit future conditions.
NIACS climate adaptation specialist Madeline Baroli, founder of the Assisted Tree Range Expansion Project, pauses during planting in northwest Lower Michigan in the spring of 2020.
Madeline Baroli has her boots on the ground and her hands dirty, conducting a big experiment across northwest Lower Michigan to help clarify the answer. Baroli, a NIACS climate adaptation specialist, also founded the Assisted Tree Range Expansion Project, a community science experiment that started in 2020 from her postgraduate work with the Leelanau, Grand Traverse and Benzie county conservation districts.
“Really, it’s all about supporting the resilience of our forests by planting and monitoring certain select tree species that are projected to have future suitable habitat in this region,” she said.
The nuances can get controversial. In some parts of the country, transplants introducing new tree types generated backlash. Others are experimenting with the concept of assisted population migration — taking existing tree species in northern Michigan, such as white pine, but introducing the genetics of trees of that species grown in, say, Ohio or Kentucky, trees more adapted to a warmer climate.
Baroli’s focus, instead, is on what scientists call assisted range expansion, taking trees already in Michigan but whose range stops only partway up the Lower Peninsula, and planting them farther north.
“So we’re really just expanding that bubble, that range a little farther, to match what the projections from the U.S. Forest Service Climate Change Tree Atlas have modeled,” she said.
The six trees selected for the initial plantings were selected using those models and through conversations with local professional foresters and other natural resources professionals, she said. The first trees chosen for the project were shagbark hickory, tulip trees, sassafras, black tupelo, hackberry and swamp white oak.
Baroli noted that the trees already have some presence Up North, and would potentially be more established there were it not for the fragmentation of their range by highways and agriculture in the southern and mid-Lower Peninsula.
“That’s where I feel we really sort of owe it to the forest to lend a helping hand − because we’ve also altered the landscape in such a way that it limits natural range expansion,” she said.
The first plantings were in the spring of 2020 − just as COVID-19 began to disrupt life.
“We were doing our tree sale, selling the seedlings and trying to get the word out there,” she said. “Luckily, everybody was migrating online, and looking for socially distant things to do. So we really had a pretty successful first two seasons.”
Over 2020 and 2021, more than 2,000 trees were planted by individuals, community groups and families. Baroli did not yet have figures for plantings from this spring.
People are asked to report over time how the trees’ growth progresses.
“What I hope, what’s really important, is just keeping forests as forests,” Baroli said. “At the end of the day, we aren’t really in control of exactly what a forest is going to look like or be − we can’t be. The idea is to reduce that fragmentation … ensure the forests themselves have a chance to adapt, on their own with our help.”
Deer, disease amplifying tree threats
Visitors to the Leelanau Conservancy’s Palmer Woods, a natural area of more than 1,000 acres, have seen something different in recent years: Young trees with protective tubes around their trunks and a large, 35-acre portion of the preserve surrounded by a large wire fence.
It’s all efforts to curb what’s one of the biggest killers of young trees in the region: deer munching on them.
“A lot of the seedlings don’t really have the chance to get to the adult stage,” said Becky Hill, director of natural areas and preserves for the conservancy. “In some of the forests where we have heavy (deer) browsing, you see a lot of adult trees and a lot of seedlings, but not a lot of in-between trees.”
Becky Hill, Leelanau Conservancy’s Director of Natural Areas and Preserves checks on the growth of a sassafras tree in a protective tube at the Whaleback Natural Area in Leland on Wednesday, August 24, 2022. The Conservancy planted around 200 trees this past spring.
It’s a problem expected to worsen as the region further warms. Milder winters will allow more deer to survive, breed and then feed on the young trees.
“Foresters have a really keen eye on how that next generation of trees is coming in,” Baroli said. “Young trees are more sensitive to things than older trees. First off, the deer love them; they are great deer food. And we have a huge deer population.
“If they are eating those young trees, those young trees aren’t growing up into a future forest. And then if you just have older trees dying off, it’s a problem.”
Beech trees might be nearly doomed
Another pest devastating trees in the region is beech bark disease. A tiny insect called a scale wounds the tree by piercing its bark with sharp mouth parts and sucking out sap. A type of fungus can then enter and infect the tree, weakening it over years until mature trees, almost hollowed out, snap dead.
Milder winters predicted in future warming scenarios will allow more of the insects to survive and infect trees.
“It’s pretty much devasted the population of beech; we are expecting 99% (beech tree) die-off,” Baroli said.
A dead beech tree in the center at the Clay Cliffs Natural Area in Leland on Wednesday, August 24, 2022.White fuzzy scale insects on the trunk of a beech tree at the Clay Cliffs Natural Area in Leland on Wednesday, August 24, 2022.
Emerald ash borer is similarly killing millions of ash trees across Michigan.
The Leelanau Conservancy is using the unfortunate circumstance to adopt some of the NIACS’s recommended population migration trees prepared for a warmer climate.
“When we have a die-off where a lot of beech and ash have died, suddenly in our forest we might have a sunny opening,” Hill said. “There are certain species that really need more sunshine to get established − cherries, oaks, other types of species that thrive in those conditions. If we can help get them established, that succession of growth will happen over time.”
The conservancy also hopes to use new tree planting to combat the invasive autumn olive, a shrub “that just takes over fields to the point where you see these autumn olive forests,” she said.
“We’re hoping to get some species growing in there, to get established and maybe help shade out some of the invasive shrubs while creating good wildlife habitat.”
The changing climate is bringing ecological changes “so rapidly,” Hill said.
“It just feels like it’s harder,” she said. “You see the decline of bird species, insects, they are having a hard time keeping up with all of these drastic changes.”
The Michigan forest of 2100 − what will it look like?
Reich envisions a significantly transformed northern Michigan woods by century’s end.
“My hunch is by 2100, we’ll lose most of the spruce and fir,” he said. “We might lose some of the white cedar. The forests will be scrubbier and more open. They may still have a mix of species but will be less diverse … a few areas that are sandier and drier may even convert to grasslands.”
Those changes will have unpredictable impacts on animal habitat, the state’s timber industry and how people can use the forests for recreation.
And it may become a negative feedback loop, accelerating and worsening climate change. Forests take carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in soils and roots and their wood.
Leelanau Conservancy’s Palmer Woods Forest Reserve in Maple City on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022.
Peat forests, the wet fens prevalent in the Upper Peninsula, make up only 3% of the globe’s forest land but store 30% of soil carbon. A square meter of U.P. or Canadian peatland holds five times the carbon as a square meter of Amazon rainforest.
In a 2020 U.S. Forest Service study similar to Reich’s, peatlands were exposed to controlled, increased temperatures. The results showed the warming causes peatlands to release carbon faster than anticipated, converting them from carbon-storers to carbon-emitters.
“It could be a double-whammy; instead of helping slow climate change, they would be accelerating it,” Reich said.
Tree planting and assisted migration approaches can have some local benefits. But those are ultimately just Band-Aids, he said.
“In order to maintain the economic value of our forests, we do need to manage them to try to make them as resilient as possible in the face of these changes,” he said. “But there are real limits to how much we can do. There are vast forests out there — we don’t have the personnel or the money to try to thin all of the forests and replant them.
“We really need to work at the root cause of this problem, which is climate change.”
Extreme heat is a health crisis, Columbia experts say
Isabella O’Malley – February 27, 2023
Two firefighters watch for spot fires, Oct. 13, 2017, near Calistoga, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, file)Farmer Barry Evans examines the soil at a cotton crop he shredded and planted over with wheat, Oct. 3, 2022, in Kress, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, file)Fire crews work a wildfire on Sept. 1, 2022, near Dulzura, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, file)
The record-breaking heat Earth endured during the summer of 2022 will be repeated without a robust international effort to address climate change, a panel of scientists warned Monday.
Heat-related deaths, wildfires, extreme rainfall, and persistent drought are expected to become increasingly severe as both ocean and atmospheric temperatures continue to rise, the experts said. Even if all greenhouse gas emissions ceased today, Earth will continue to warm for several decades.
The presentation, “Earth Series Virtual: Blazing Temperatures, Broken Records,” featured a multidisciplinary panel of scientific experts from Columbia University.
Radley Horton, a research professor at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, stated that human-induced climate change has caused the global average atmospheric temperature to warm by about 2 degrees (1.1 degrees Celsius) in the last several decades.
“One of the key takeaways is that a little bit of change in global temperature has an enormous impact,” said Horton. Some of the main consequences include longer and more intense heat waves that are hitting increasingly larger areas.
Additionally, Horton said, certain climate models have underestimated just how extreme certain events can be, such as the European heat wave of 2022 and the Pacific Northwest heat wave of 2021.
“We are locked into a lot of additional climate hazards, there is no way around it,” said Horton.
Diana Hernandez, Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, is researching how certain vulnerabilities, such as medical conditions or access to energy, could be affected by changing climate domestically and internationally. The expected impacts include shade inequalities, urban heat islands, and inequitable access to energy-powered medical devices.
“The climate is changing, and we are not adapted to be able to deal with it from a health perspective,” said Cecilia Sorensen, a physician and associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the Columbia University Medical Center.
Sorensen noted that she and colleagues referred to summer as “trauma season” early in her career, even before she focused on the health impacts of climate change. “We used to get inundated with patients … people coming in with heart attacks and asthma exacerbations.”
Despite the foreboding climate projections, the panelists expressed hope that considerable strides can be made to minimize future climate impacts related to extreme heat.
Hernandez said a community-focused approach, especially with an emphasis on engagement that is inclusive, will be successful in implementing a wide range of climate adaptation strategies.
Sorenson said one solution that can be implemented by hospitals is developing emergency room protocols to treat a large influx of patients suffering from heat stroke or related conditions during extreme weather. Improved communications are also needed to increase awareness about the medical risks of extreme heat and how impacts can be prevented, she said.
“Within the problem lies the solution,” said Sorensen.
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During the month of January there were 367 encounters, more than the past 12 years of January totals combined, said Ryan Brissette in a press release for the Swanton border patrol.
The number of border patrol encounters in Swanton started to climb in July 2022. During the seven-month window through January 2023, there have been 2,070 instances of illegal crossings. In that same period, there were 258 the year prior and 225 the year before that.
Northern and Southern borders see uptick in rescues
The uptick is causing problems for officials, especially considering dangerously cold temperatures that have put border crossers’ and border control agents’ lives at risk. Brissette noted -4 degree temperatures and “life-saving aid” that was provided during encounters in Newport, Vermont, and Burke, New York.
“It cannot be stressed enough: not only is it unlawful to circumvent legal means of entry into the United States, but it is extremely dangerous, particularly in adverse weather conditions, which our Swanton Sector has in incredible abundance,” Swanton Sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert N. Garcia said in a press release.
The southern border has also seen an increase in rescues, as the U.S. places a renewed emphasis on rescuing migrants and historically high numbers of immigrants seek asylum at U.S. borders.
5,336 migrants rescued at southern border in fiscal year 2020.
12,857 migrants rescued at southern border in fiscal year 2021.
22,014 migrants rescued at southern border in fiscal year 2022, which ended in September.
In fiscal 2021, agents at the southern border tallied 568 migrant deaths, the highest ever recorded.
Most of the deaths (219) were attributed to “environmental exposure-heat” as people trek through blazing terrain in Arizona and Texas. Agents also counted 86 deaths as “water-related” as migrants try to cross canals or the swift-moving Rio Grande, which divides the U.S. and Mexico.
Immigration advocates and experts believe the border death toll is much higher, and the federal system for death data long failed to include many border deaths.
There are no clear-cut answers as to why people are crossing as the circumstances differ for each person or group, said Steven Bansbach, a public affairs officer for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Many are being dropped off near the border by car and then proceeding across land on foot, he said.
https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/12838349/embed
Among the border crossers are family groups that include infants and children who are particularly vulnerable to the cold. Bansbach said many are crossing at night while cold and sleep deprived, all of which can be disorienting.
Looking at the countries of origin of encounters involving the border patrol in Swanton, a vast majority are from Mexico. Among the 1,513 encounters from October through January, 945 originated from Mexico.
“They may be trying to find a path of least resistance to enter into the U.S.,” Bansbach surmised. “And they may know there’s a conundrum at the southwest border and so they may find that the northern border they may sneak across to have a better advantage.”
Grass-powered gas to heat homes for the first time
Telegraph reporters – February 26, 2023
Green gas will be made from grass material using anaerobic digestion – Ecotricity
Grass-powered gas is set to heat thousands of homes for the first time in the coming weeks.
Green energy firm Ecotricity is expected to begin supplying 5,300 homes from its plant near Reading in April.
Research has estimated that the grass biogas can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 90 per cent.
It is hoped the scheme can be scaled up to supply fuel to more homes around the country.
The £11 million mill uses bacteria to break down grasses and herbs, which absorb carbon dioxide while growing, in an anaerobic digester.
This produces biogas which is then “scrubbed” to remove some carbon dioxide and upgraded to biomethane for use in the gas network.
An organic fertiliser, which is intended to help grow more grass, is also produced.
Hopes for expansion
Homes in Berkshire will be supplied through the distribution company Southern Gas Networks.
Ecotricity owner Dale Vince hopes to expand across the country, building mills which minimise the use of fossil fuels while avoiding damage to the environment, and boost energy security.
Mr Vince, 61, said: “We are ready to go and once the gas supply company’s measuring and checking equipment is in place we expect to start in April.”
Green gas has previously been made from food waste or “high energy” crops such as maize, but both face sustainability issues and problems with a lack of scale.
Maize, for example, is fertiliser-hungry, attracts birds that struggle to survive in it, and is harvested around autumn, leaving topsoil run-off.
“Our mix of grass with herbs and clovers makes carbon neutral gas, pulling carbon out of the atmosphere,” said Mr Vince. “It’s a cycle of carbon rather than a net emission.
“When you burn fossil fuel it’s carbon from millions of years ago that gets released into the atmosphere.
“We’re buying the grass from farmers. Instead of them using it to grow for animals, they’re selling it to us.
“It’s better for farmers, they get a better price and more security because animal agriculture is a super marginal business. It only exists with massive subsidies.”
Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90pc
On average, the amount of grass being used initially could be cultivated every year from around 3,000 acres to provide over 48 million kWh of gas, while saving nearly 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions – but the ultimate goal is to expand on a national scale.
A report by Imperial College Consultants estimated the UK has 6.46 million hectares of suitable grassland not involved in food production, enough for 5,400 green gas mills to provide up to 236.5TWh – sufficient to heat 98.8 per cent of British homes if made energy efficient.
The research estimated that gas made from grass can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 90 per cent when compared to the current use of North Sea gas and synthetic fertilisers.
The report also said the Government’s national air source heat pump roll-out – its alternative plan for heating homes without carbon emissions – would cost six times as much as a green gas roll out and would not be possible in 20 per cent of British homes.
Asked about Ecotricity’s biomethane project, a Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesman said: “Initiatives like this show how the UK is leading in the development of innovations in green technologies that can help increase our energy security, tackle climate change and bring down people’s bills.”
Southern Gas Networks said: “We’ve partnered with Ecotricity to deliver a biomethane to grid project at a site in Farley Hill near Reading. The project will supply 5,300 nearby properties with renewable green gas for heat and power, helping to reduce each household’s annual carbon emissions by an equivalent of 2.2 tonnes.
“Our role is to commission the gas entry unit infrastructure at the plant. This equipment will measure the flow of gas into our network and ensure it meets the required specification. Approximately 700m3 of biomethane-powered renewable energy will be injected into our local intermediate pressure network every hour.”
A National Gas Transmission spokesman: “Biomethane will play an important supporting role in the journey to Britain achieving net zero.”
In a California Town, Farmworkers Start From Scratch After Surprise Flood
Soumya Karlamangla and Viviana Hinojos – February 26, 2023
A teacher holds class on a playground at Planada Elementary School because classrooms in the building were flooded, in Planada, Calif. on Feb. 14, 2023. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times)
PLANADA, Calif. — Until the floodwaters came, until they rushed in and destroyed nearly everything, the little white house had been Cecilia Birrueta’s dream.
She and her husband bought the two-bedroom fixer-upper 13 years ago, their reward for decades of working minimum-wage jobs, first cleaning houses in Los Angeles and now milking cows and harvesting pistachios in California’s Central Valley.
The couple replaced the weathered wooden floors, installed a new stove and kitchen sink, and repainted the living room walls a warm burgundy. Here, they raised their three children, the oldest now at the University of California, Davis. They enjoyed tomatoes, peaches and figs from neighbors who worked on the nearby farms.
Birrueta and her husband felt content. Until last month. Until the floodwaters came.
A brutal set of atmospheric rivers in California unleashed a disaster in Planada, an agricultural community of 4,000 residents in the flatlands about an hour west of Yosemite National Park. During one storm in early January, a creek just outside of town burst through old farm levees and sent muddy water gushing into the streets.
For several days, the entire town looked like a lagoon. Weeks after record-breaking storms wreaked havoc across California and killed at least 21 people, some of the hardest-hit communities are still struggling to recover.
The flood ruined the two cars owned by Birrueta and her family and destroyed most of their clothes. The walls with the burgundy paint that she had carefully picked out had rotted through. Their house may need to be demolished.
Birrueta, her husband and their 14-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter had to move into a camp that typically houses migrant farmworkers, who arrive each spring with few belongings and the hope of building a life like the Birruetas had. There, 41 families from Planada are staying in long beige cabins and relying on space heaters for warmth because the camps lack furnaces.
“We came as immigrants, we started with nothing,” said Birrueta, 40, who was born in Mexico. “We bought a place of our own that we thought would be safe for our kids, and then we lost it. We lost everything.”
Nine miles east of Merced in California’s agricultural heartland, Planada’s wide streets are dotted with bungalows and lead to a central park shaded by towering spruce and elm trees. Less than 2 square miles, Planada was created in 1911 to be an idyllic, planned farming community — its name means “plain” in Spanish, a nod to its fertile, low-lying lands — but was eventually abandoned by its Los Angeles developers.
The quiet town, surrounded by almond orchards and cornfields, has since become a desirable place for farmworkers to settle with their families. When California farmworkers marched through Planada last summer on their way to the state Capitol in Sacramento, hundreds of children lined the streets to cheer them on.
The recent floods dealt a painful blow to a community in which more than one-third of households are impoverished. Planada is more than 90% Latino and overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking. Roughly one-fourth of the residents are estimated to be immigrants living in the country illegally, making them ineligible for some forms of disaster relief.
Agricultural workers in California are often on the front lines of catastrophes. They worked during the early, uncertain days of the COVID-19 pandemic, have endured record heat waves and toiled in the smoke-choked air that gets trapped in the Central Valley during wildfires.
During the recent floods, tens of thousands of farmworkers most likely lost wages because of water damage to California’s crops, compounding their already precarious financial situations, said Antonio De Loera-Brust, a spokesperson for the United Farm Workers of America.
“The very workers who put food on our table are getting hot meals from the Salvation Army,” said De Loera-Brust. “Whether California is on fire or underwater, the farmworkers are always losing.”
On a recent morning in Planada, huge piles of furniture were stacked more than 6 feet high along the curb, as if standing guard in front of each home. Once cherished possessions had become trash: A child’s tricycle. A green velvet armchair. An engraved wooden crib.
When Birrueta returned to her home after evacuating Jan. 9, it had a sour smell inside, she said. A floral rug in her daughter’s room that had once been white and blue appeared black after being caked in mud. The girl rushed to grab her soaked toys, some of them recent Christmas gifts. Birrueta had to wrest them from her hands. They threw away her pink wooden dollhouse, a Build-a-Bear she called Rambo, her beloved collection of Dr. Seuss books.
“I don’t really know how to talk to my kids about it,” Birrueta said, choking up.
Birrueta applied for relief from the Federal Emergency Management Agency but has yet to hear back. Although Planada is in a flood zone, most homeowners said they couldn’t afford to pay thousands of dollars for flood insurance. Besides, they said, so many years of severe heat and drought made wildfires seem a much greater concern than a deluge.
Maria Figueroa, a FEMA spokesperson, said the agency would provide, at most, $41,000 per flooded household. The funds are intended to jump-start recovery, not cover a full rebuild. “We’re not an insurance agency,” she said.
In 1910, Los Angeles real estate developer J. Harvey McCarthy decided Planada would be his “city beautiful,” a model community and an automobile stop along the road to Yosemite. “The town will be laid out similar to Paris,” The San Luis Obispo Daily Telegram reported at the time.
An infusion of money brought Planada a bank, hotel, school, church and its own newspaper, the Planada Enterprise, by the next year. But McCarthy eventually abandoned the community when he ran out of funds, leaving its settlers to pick up the pieces.
One thing wasn’t mentioned in advertisements for Planada: the floods. On Feb. 3, 1911, The Merced County Sun reported that during a 48-hour downpour, a creek overflowed its banks and that Planada was “under water.”
More than a century later, Maria Soto, 73, was sleeping when her grandson, who lives in the house behind hers, banged on her door around 2 a.m. A family member was driving a pickup truck through Planada to rescue their relatives, dozens of whom lived there.
Soto clambered onto the truck bed, and her feet dangled in the rising waters as they fled. When the engine stalled momentarily, she was frightened but didn’t tell anyone else that she didn’t know how to swim.
At her low-slung, peach-colored home, with an overgrown avocado tree out front and wind chimes hanging from the eaves, water breached the roof and poured down the walls.
Black patches of mold have begun to spread inside, so she is living at her daughter’s house next door while trying to scrape together money on her fixed income for the repairs.
“This is where I raised my children, and it’s always been dry,” said Soto, who in the late 1970s moved to Planada with her husband, who picked lettuce. “We weren’t prepared. No one was prepared.”
Disasters only exacerbate the health dangers that farmworkers face. Mold in flooded homes, for example, can prompt symptoms of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which are more common in low-income communities. Farmworkers often battle pesticide exposure and, even in good times, can only afford substandard housing.
“A small community like Planada, that has so many low-wage workers, you can only imagine the extent to which these problems were already existing,” said Edward Flores, an associate professor of sociology at University of California Merced and who co-wrote a new study revealing California farmworkers’ poor living conditions.
The flood’s impacts extend beyond inundated homes. Planada Elementary School lost 4,000 books as well as student desks, beanbag chairs and rugs. Hundreds of students had to be relocated to a nearby middle school.
“We were doing a really good job recovering from COVID,” said José L. González, superintendent of the Planada Elementary School District. “This just feels like we’re cut off at the knees again.”
Another major storm arrived this past week in California, bringing rain and snow, but Planada residents have been spared from further disaster.
Birrueta used to tuck sentimental items into suitcases that she stored in her son’s closet. Old photographs of relatives in Mexico, including of her father, who recently died. Socks she crocheted for her children when they were newborns. Pictures of her oldest daughter’s birthday celebrations, from an era before iPhones.
The floodwaters drenched those suitcases and everything inside. Still, Birrueta said she was grateful because her family safely escaped the floods and that they have a roof over their heads, albeit temporarily. Families can stay in the migrant camps until March 15, after which the county may provide other lodging.
Birrueta and her husband plan to rebuild their home in Planada.
“We started with nothing,” she said. “So in a way, we know how to start over again.”
Officials plan to shoot 150 cattle from the sky Thursday. An 11th-hour lawsuit hopes to stop it.
Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY – February 24, 2023
Less than 24 hours before bullets are set to fly, a group of animal activists including the Humane Farming Association hopes an 11th-hour lawsuit stops the planned aerial slaughter of 150 cattle in New Mexico.
During a federally-approved, three day-event set to start Thursday, the U.S. Forest Service plans to shoot feral cattle from a helicopter roaming a southwestern area of the state.
The federal agency announced its decision on Feb. 16, explaining feral cattle on the 560,000-acre Gila Wilderness Area “pose a significant threat to public safety and natural resources.”
Opponents including The New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association (NMCGA) this week asked a judge to grant a temporary restraining order to stop the mass killing. A hearing on the scheduled slaughter is set for Wednesday morning, court records show.
Federal officials are set to start shooting feral cattle in the Gila Wilderness starting February 23, 2023. A lawsuit filed just two days before the scheduled slaughter hopes to stop it.
On Tuesday, the group jointly filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico against the Forest Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to prevent “the inhumane aerial gunning” of cattle.
“No matter what the Forest Service claims, this is unadulterated animal cruelty,” said Humane Farming Association National Director Bradley Miller. “These animals don’t take the shots standing still – they run in fear from the helicopter chasing them. These are not clean kills; the cattle experience horrifically slow deaths. Their orphaned calves are left to starve or be killed by predators.”
USA TODAY has reached out to the Forest Service and the USDA for comment.
The animals are to be shot within the Gila National Forest, a 3-million-acre reserve in New Mexico.
Last year, the NMCGA filed a temporary restraining order in an effort to stop the Forest Service’s plan to use aerial gunning to eliminate free-roaming cattle from the wilderness area, during which 65 cattle were shot at and killed from a helicopter. That legal effort was denied.
A stipulation resulting from last year’s lawsuit required that the agency provide the cattle growers and the public 75 days’ written notice before future shooting commenced, this year’s lawsuit alleges.
“Yet, this year, the Forest Service provided only one week’s notice,” according to a press release from the Humane Farming Association.
APHIS intends “to shoot as many as 150 cattle with high-powered rifles from a helicopter, leaving their carcasses strewn throughout New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness,” the new 31-page lawsuit reads. “Intervention is necessary to put an immediate stop to this unlawful, cruel, and environmentally harmful action, both now and in the future.”
Lawsuit claims violation of law
In the suit, the plaintiffs argue that, in addition to not complying with the 75-day notice, the Forest Service has no legal authority to carry out its aerial gunning plan, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs the process by which federal agencies develop and issue regulations.
“Shooting violates the APA because it is not authorized by statute or regulation, exceeds the Forest Service’s authority, and fails to follow the existing regulations for the removal of unauthorized cattle,” the suit continues.
In addition, plaintiffs argue that, by proceeding without first conducting an environmental review of the significant harms to the wilderness ecosystem, the Forest Service is violating the National Environmental Policy Act. Because the Forest Service intends to leave all 150 dead and dying cattle in the wilderness to decompose, the government will cause catastrophic pollution of the Gila River and impermissibly interfere with the natural feeding behaviors of native wildlife.
Natalie Neysa Alund covers trending news for USA TODAY.
U.S. Man’s Death Suggests Deadly Tick Virus Is Spreading to New Regions
Ed Cara – February 24, 2023
The Lone Star tick (Amblyomma americanum) is known to spread several infectious diseases, including the Heartland virus.
A rare but sometimes fatal tickborne infection may be expanding its range in the U.S., local and federal health officials warn in a report this week. They say that a case of Heartland virus led to a man’s death in 2021. The infection is thought to have been caught in either Virginia or Maryland—a region of the country where the virus hasn’t been spotted in humans until now.
The report was published online Thursday in Emerging Infectious Diseases by officials with the Virginia Department of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health, as well as doctors at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
The man was in his late 60s and visited an emergency room in November 2021 with symptoms of fever, diarrhea, aches, and general discomfort. He didn’t appear to have any tick bites, but given his symptoms and the fact that he spent time between two homes in rural Virginia and Maryland, his doctors suspected a tickborne infection and sent him home with antibiotics. Unfortunately, two days later, he returned to the ER with new symptoms, including confusion and unsteady gait, and he was then admitted to the hospital.
The man’s health continued to worsen, and he was soon sent to a specialized care center. Despite testing for various germs, doctors couldn’t find the source of his illness. He eventually developed hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, a rare but life-threatening condition in which the body’s white blood cells attack the organs. His lungs and liver started to fail, and he developed cardiac arrest. He was then placed in palliative care. Thirteen days after his symptoms began, he died.
Doctors still suspected that he had contracted an infection spread by insects or ticks. Given the possibility of an ongoing threat to the public, officials with the Virginia Department of Health launched an investigation. They sent blood samples to the CDC for more extensive testing and went to the man’s homes in eastern Maryland and central Virginia the following summer to collect ticks in the area. The CDC testing finally revealed that he was infected with the Heartland virus, and a subsequent autopsy determined that he had died from complications of the infection.
Heartland virus was discovered in 2009 by doctors at the Heartland Regional Medical Center in northwestern Missouri. It’s known to be spread by the Lone Star tick (Amblyomma americanum), which is commonly found throughout the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. Many known cases of Heartland virus have led to hospitalization and death, but it’s only been sporadically documented in humans. Around 50 cases have been reported in over a dozen states to date, including Kentucky, Indiana, and as far north as New York.
Maryland and Virginia are within the tick’s expected range, but this case of Heartland appears to be the first ever traced back to either state. Because of the larger tick population found at the man’s home in Virginia, the report authors believe he caught it there. Interestingly enough, they failed to find the virus inside ticks at either location. But that doesn’t rule out its presence in these areas, they wrote, particularly because the virus seems to circulate in ticks at very low levels. They further suspect that the man caught the infection from larval ticks, since adults typically become inactive by late October (when he was likely bit). That could also explain why he didn’t notice the initial bite, given their smaller size, and why doctors failed to find any evidence by the time he felt sick roughly two weeks later, since any bite could have healed by then.
Especially compared to much more common tickborne diseases like Lyme disease, Heartland virus is a very rare danger to humans. But it is possible that we’re missing many milder cases of Heartland or that these infections are misdiagnosed as other tickborne diseases because they tend to share common symptoms, the authors say. And thanks in part to climate change, ticks generally are expanding their distribution throughout the U.S., which will make all of the many diseases they carry a bigger threat to worry about.
“Because tick ranges are increasing overall, incidence of previously regional tickborne infections, such as [Heartland virus], likely will continue to increase,” they wrote.
