When the World was Orange

Five years ago we awoke to an orange sky::

distant wildfire smoke, cool fog, and still air combined to turn the sky orange. It was so dark that the automatic street lights were on at 10 a.m.

Chronicle photographer Jessica Christian captured the "otherworldly" mood that morning in the above view of the Bay Bridge from the Embarcadero.

I was thinking about what iconic locations I could visit that would give a sense of place while also showing this bizarre orange sky and how people were reacting to it.

I photographed my drive across the Bay Bridge, I got off at the first San Francisco exit and photographed the iconic view of the bridge from looking east on Harrison, then decided to head towards the Embarcadero. Remember, we were in the middle of a pandemic that kept us at least six feet apart at all times. The city had been eerily quiet for at least six months, so I remember the first thought I had wasn’t of the sky, but it was the surprise of being surrounded by so many strangers for the first time in a very long time. It felt like everybody came out of their offices or their houses to experience the strange sky, to ask each other what was going on. In a moment of some real fear, there was also community and I think we were all craving that. No one was looking at their phones, they were looking up.

I took this photo at 9:48 a.m. It took a little while for us to get answers as to why this was happening, but … this phenomenon was the result of multiple wildfires burning across California and (the Pacific Northwest) sending smoke hovering above a low-lying marine layer of fog where the sun cut through both, illuminating the sky orange. It only lasted a few hours, the orange glow illuminated only because of the low angle of the morning sun. It was something that had rarely happened before and would maybe never happen again.

The person in this photo is named Eli Harik. After I took the photo I asked for his name and we kind of just talked about how crazy this all was. When I first spotted him, I wasn’t sure if his mask was being used to protect him from the heavy wildfire smoke in the air or to protect him from COVID, which is just a wild thing to think about five years later. Later on, as the picture got more popular online, Eli had friends and family, reaching out to him after recognizing him. To this day, we follow each other on Instagram. The seagull in this photo is also notable. I wonder what was going through its head while it shared this moment looking at the sky with Eli.

Some environmental enthusiasts (alarmists is too strong a word) believed that this orange sky would be the first of many. We have not seen its like again.

Microplastics Knowledge Test

Our under-the-sink filter

Although environmentalists have been warning about the dangers of microplastics for over two decades, there is not yet scientifically valid proof of causation between the presence of microplastics and health problems. Nevertheless, last year we grew sufficiently alarmed that we installed a microplastics water filter under the kitchen sink.

The WSJ lists ten questions to test one's knowledge of microplastics. Your humble blogger guessed on all of them and only got the correct answer on three out of 10. I'd be disappointed, dear reader, if you don't do better.

The San Francisco Garter Snake

These baby San Francisco garters will be one foot long in
a year, when they will be released in SM County. (Chron)

With an estimated population of over one million, garter snakes are a common sight throughout the continental United States. However, one of the thirteen (13) subspecies--the San Francisco garter--is classified as endangered.

The San Francisco garter snake, with its brilliant hues of deep red and turquoise, is widely considered one of the most beautiful snakes in North America. It’s also one of the rarest, with maybe 2,000 living in the wild today, all in San Mateo County.

In a bid to ensure a future for the endangered snake, Bay Area scientists are teaming up on a first-ever effort to rear a captive colony of the colorful crawlers, with plans to start releasing the newborns and rebuilding their populations at local ponds and hillsides.

“If we don’t have more snakes out there, they could disappear in our lifetime,” said Rochelle Stiles, director of field conservation for the San Francisco Zoo and Gardens, where the captive group is being raised. “The snakes serve a very important role in the ecosystem.”

...The snakes have historically lived in wetlands and grasslands only in San Mateo County and northern Santa Cruz County. (They’ve never resided in their namesake city.) Much of their limited habitat has been developed for housing and farming while invasive predators, such as bullfrogs, have proliferated, all squeezing out the native reptile.

Also, the striking appearance of the snakes once made them a premium target of the illegal pet trade. The snakes are characterized by a wide, bluish dorsal stripe that stands in contrast to jet-black and reddish-orange stripes and a blue-greenish underbelly.

Their vivid coloring, unusual for North American snakes, is likely a defense mechanism, signaling to predators — falsely — that they’re venomous or poisonous. The San Francisco garter snake, like the many other types of garter snakes, is not a danger to people or pets.

The snake was listed as a federally endangered species in 1967, setting the stage for protections that have fallen short of securing its recovery.

Although the "San Francisco garter" only lives in San Mateo County, leave it to the City to hog the glory, as it often does, for goings-on in other parts of the Bay Area.

Blue News

Wild pigs near South San Jose (Mulligan/Merc)

Wild pigs are causing increasing damage, but one obvious solution--hunting and eating them--carries risks: [bold added]

A wildlife trapper in Monterey County made an unexpected discovery after capturing a series of wild pigs in March of this year. While processing the animals, the trapper found several with blue-tinged muscles and fat tissues. The bizarre discoloration is a result of exposure to diphacinone, an anticoagulant rodenticide that is often dyed to identify it as a poison, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

In an email to SFGATE, Fish and Wildlife pesticide investigations coordinator Ryan Bourbour said that the trapper observed the wild pigs eating directly from rodenticide bait stations. The scope of the contamination appears extensive across the southern part of Monterey County and along the Salinas River, according to KSBW-TV.

...While California banned diphacinone for most uses in January 2024, agricultural operations have exemptions due to their pest control needs. That loophole has broad ecologic implications. A 2018 statewide study found rodenticide residues in 8.3% of wild pig tissue samples — and in an alarming 83% of bear samples — mainly in animals frequenting agricultural zones. Wildlife officials warn that this contamination can ripple through the food chain, since wildlife can be inadvertently consuming poisoned prey.

After confirming the presence of diphacinone in the liver and stomach contents of wild pigs with blue tissues, Fish and Wildlife’s Wildlife Health Laboratory is advising hunters to not consume meat from any animals showing discoloration. Visible signs aren’t always reliable, however. “As demonstrated by findings of exposure in nongame animals, the discoloration is not always present and is not a reliable indicator of AR [anticoagulant rodenticide] residues in meat,” the 2018 study said.

Diphacinone is already in the food chain and we can't always trust visual inspection to reveal its presence through the tell-tale blue. Wild pig will be off our menu for the foreseeable future.

The Pigs are Out of Control

Wild pigs near South San Jose (Mulligan/Merc)

Wolves, mountain lions, coyotes, and bears are all encroaching on human habitats (some argue that we are encroaching on them), but wild pigs appear to be causing the most damage.

A steady increase in the population of wild pigs — a marauding, non-native animal that can grow sharp tusks and weigh 250 pounds or more — is causing growing problems for parks, water districts and homeowners across the Bay Area.

The hogs wallow in streams, dig up lawns and gardens, eat endangered plants and animals and occasionally charge at people. They carry diseases like swine fever and can spread pathogens like E. coli to crops in farm fields.

“We’ve seen the impacts increasing,” said Doug Bell, wildlife program manager at the East Bay Regional Park District in Oakland. “They are omnivores. They vacuum up California quail, Alameda whipsnakes and other wildlife. They eat everything. They’ll come in and destroy lawns and all your landscaping overnight. Sometimes people can be hurt by them. We had a hiker who was run over by a wild boar and injured her leg. A firefighter was knocked down by one in 2020. They can be frightening.”

Unlike other animals, the pigs don't have any defenders, and counties and agencies are allowing hunting and even paying to have the pigs killed.

The animals are legal for sport hunters to shoot, like deer or ducks. Last year, 3,327 wild pigs were reported killed by hunters in California, according to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

But their population keeps growing. Females can have up to two litters per year, with as many as 10 piglets per litter...

In December, East Bay Parks published a plan it compiled with other agencies to do more. The study showed that the animals, found commonly around Mount Diablo, Calaveras Reservoir and the Dublin Hills, would grow tenfold without a hunting and trapping program.

It recommended agencies work together to use drones with thermal imaging to track the pigs at night, fit some with GPS collars, put fencing around sensitive areas — although that can cost $20,000 a mile and block other wild animals — collect better data, and enlist the public’s help through a hotline or website to report sightings.

“We are trying to go from being reactive to proactive in the wider region,” Bell said.

In the South Bay, the Santa Clara Valley Water District in December signed a five-year, $125,000 contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to trap and kill wild pigs on land it owns at Anderson Reservoir and Coyote Ridge east of San Jose.

Perhaps some day there will be sufficient demand for wild pig meat to cause profit-seeking game hunters to keep the population at equilibrium. Control will require more than delicious dishes, however; California diners need to believe their food choices are saving the planet. Let the PR campaign begin.

California: Saved from the Disaster of its Own Policies

Gavin Newsom speaks against the Senate vote (WSJ)

It wasn't overlooked, but one action the Senate took this week received less attention than other items in the news--for example the "big, beautiful" tax bill and the White House visit of South African president Cyril Ramaphosa--but it was nevertheless highly important to the future of the auto and energy industries in the United States. [bold added]

The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to block California’s first-in-the-nation regulations that would ban the sale of new gasoline-powered passenger vehicles statewide in 2035, setting up a certain legal battle over the future of electric cars in the United States.

By a vote of 50-44, the Republican-led chamber voted to revoke permission that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration had given to California to set the rules.

In 2020 California banned the sale of new, gasoline-powered cars beginning in 2035. Because of California's influence as the wealthiest, most populous state, other states copied California's anti-fossil-fuel rules. Perhaps more importantly, automakers found it too costly to manufacture different models for the U.S. market and began offering only California-compliant models.

The Senate vote directed the Environmental Protection Agency to stop providing California a waiver, thereby negating California's ability to set its own environmental rules regarding gasoline-powered cars.

Your humble blogger has been opposed to California's fossil-fuel ban since 2021:

100% dependence on solar and wind power is nuts. Single sourcing of electricity and transportation systems should not be on notoriously unsteady renewable energy, especially during extreme weather events that knocked out power during the California wildfires and the Texas freeze.

Battery technology is improving rapidly, but it's not at the point where we can pull the plug on the oil and gas that run the vast majority of our cars and power plants. (For an example of how well government predicts construction of technologically advanced infrastructure, see California's high-speed rail fiasco.)

We have already seen the effects of the 2035 ban within California. Refineries that produce California's special blend of gasoline are closing because it is not worthwhile to repair or improve them. Maybe now refiners will reverse course.

California politicians won't admit it, but the Republican Senate may have saved California from the disaster of its own policies.

Tahoe: Becoming Clearer

Visibility (the Secchi depth) is decreasing (UC Davis)

The waters of Lake Tahoe are renowned for their clarity, but in recent decades murkiness has risen.

The "Secchi disk" is a measurement tool that has been used for over half a century:

The white frisbee is the most well-known and influential method of studying Lake Tahoe’s clarity. Called the Secchi disk, it has been used by UC Davis scientists to measure Lake Tahoe’s clarity since 1968. The method is simple: Scientists lower a 10-inch disk into the water, lean over the edge of the boat and mark the moment when it disappears into the blue and they can no longer see it. There are other ways to measure how far light penetrates into a lake and how clear the water is, Hampton said. However, the Secchi disk’s simplicity makes it universally understood and resonate with people in a meaningful way, and researchers use the Secchi disk to study clarity in lakes all over the world.

Despite the cloudy long-term trend, UC Davis researchers say that the lake has become clearer beginning three years ago: [bold added]

For the last five months of 2022, Lake Tahoe was the clearest it has been since the 1980s. That is due in part to a resurgence of the lake’s native zooplankton. They’ve provided a natural clean-up crew to help restore the lake’s famous blue waters.

The findings are reported in the “Lake Tahoe Clarity Report 2022,” released today from the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, or TERC, for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency...

The primary factors affecting lake clarity are the concentration of particles in a specific size range, such as silt and clay, and tiny phytoplankton, or algae. The phytoplankton Cyclotella, a single-celled alga, is in this size range and has impacted clarity in most years.

Zooplankton are small, microscopic animals. Some zooplankton, particularly Daphnia and Bosmina, are specialized to consume particles in that critical size range.

“Daphnia and Bosmina largely disappeared from the lake after they were grazed down following the introduction of the Mysis shrimp in the 1960s,” said Geoffrey Schladow, director of the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center. “In late 2021, the Mysis population unexpectedly crashed, and it took 12 months for the Daphnia and Bosmina to build up their numbers and start their natural cleansing.”

Other factors are known to influence year-to-year changes in clarity. These include the magnitude of the runoff, the warming of the lake surface and the depth to which the lake mixes in the previous winter. The report examined all these factors and concluded that only the change in the zooplankton community could account for the magnitude of this year’s change.

It was too lazy to attribute the trend toward lower water clarity to the usual suspects of runoff, pollution, wildfires, and global warming. The growth in Mysis shrimp may have been the reason because of the negative impact on zooplankton, while the 2021 "crash" in Mysis shrimp resulted in a resurgence in plankton that "cleansed" Lake Tahoe. The 2021 shrimp die-off is so far unexplained and needs to be researched for a satisfactory understanding of the Tahoe ecosystem.

What was once clear is now cloudy, buty your humble blogger is confident that it shall become clear again.

Greenpeace: the Sword Cuts both Ways

Greenpeace ships in 1976 (Wilson/SFGate)

As I entered the working world in the 1970's, the first non-religious, non-educational charity I donated to was Greenpeace. I agreed with its save-the-whales campaign and didn't see any compelling reason that whale-hunting benefited humanity, especially if it meant the extinction of a species.

A few years later I found that my donations had been redirected to Greenpeace's efforts to shut down nuclear power plants. I called, first to complain that their advertising was dishonest, then to ask that my donations be allocated solely to save-the-whales.

Instead of listening to my request, the Greenpeace person spoke about the dangers of nuclear power and why Greenpeace was right to prioritize stopping nuclear. I immediately ceased donations to Greenpeace. I had learned a valuable lesson about the fungibility of money and the trustworthiness of organizations, even those that are titularly non-profit.

Since then Greenpeace has expanded to embrace other leftist causes, most of which I do not support. Advocacy is one thing, but they've finally been spanked for crossing the line to property damage and blocking business operations. [bold added]

The environmental lobby Greenpeace is finally getting its just deserts after a North Dakota jury on Wednesday ordered it to pay $667 million in damages for its thuggish campaign last decade to block the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Pipeline company Energy Transfer LP provided compelling evidence during a three-week trial that Greenpeace defamed the company and abetted vandals. Its organizers trained protesters and even brought lockboxes they used to chain themselves to construction equipment. Protesters lobbed human feces and burning logs at security officers and vandalized construction equipment.

Greenpeace sought to get the pipeline’s financiers to pull out of the project by erroneously claiming the company’s “personnel deliberately desecrated documented burial grounds and other culturally important sites,” among other falsehoods. Energy Transfer said this malicious campaign delayed the pipeline’s construction and increased its costs by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Greenpeace’s defense? Not our fault since it didn’t expressly order the vandalism even if it did train protesters. But even Greenpeace USA’s then executive director boasted it had played a “massive role” in the protests. The jury agreed.

The judicial system is often used by leftists to halt activities that have been approved by the legislative and executive branches. The verdict against Greenpeace shows that the sword can cut both ways.

If You Walk on Four Legs It's OK

Last month we noted how coyotes were responsible for decapitating baby seals. No action is being taken against the culprits, although "coyotes are not threatened or endangered in California" and estimates of the population range between 250,000 and 750,000.

I suppose the killing of baby seals by coyotes is regarded as just the natural order of things. What is not part of the natural order is the killing of seals by humans.

The government is above anthropomorphizing seals to
get your sympathy (CA Fish & Wildlife--Bodega seals)

Headline: Authorities investigating sea lion beheading offer $20K in rewards

Federal authorities are offering a reward of up to $20,000 for information about who may have decapitated a sea lion that was found on a Bodega Bay beach on Christmas Day...

An eyewitness told law enforcement that they saw a man decapitate the dead sea lion using a black 8-inch knife, place the head in a clear plastic bag and then ride away on a black fat-tire e-bike, NOAA Fisheries Public Affairs officer Rachel Hager confirmed to SFGATE in an email. The suspect is described as being approximately 30 to 40 years old, dressed in all black.

Sea lions, like all marine mammals, are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which prohibits the harassment, hunting, capturing or killing of these animals. Violating the act can result in hefty fines and even jail time.

Despite their protections under federal law, California sea lions continue to face threats from human interactions. In October, a man in Monterey was caught on video whipping sea lions with caution tape, causing them to stampede down a ledge along the Monterey Bay Coastal Recreation Trail. The NOAA previously confirmed to SFGATE that it was investigating the incident for harassment.

Earlier that month, a 2-year-old sea lion was shot on Bolsa Chica State Beach in Orange County. The sea lion was taken to a rescue center, where it later succumbed to its injuries and died. NOAA spokesperson Michael Milstein previously confirmed to SFGATE that sea lion shootings are a regular occurrence in California, with an estimated 20 killed each year.

Your humble blogger could point out that the logical conclusion of the new hierarchy of values is that coyotes have more rights than human beings (who can't kill or even "harass" seals) or that seals have a greater right to life than human fetuses (whose killing is not a crime in California), but that would not change the mind of any one who subscribes to the new values.

Maybe we can agree that what's happened to English grammar is abominable? "An eyewitness told law enforcement that they" avoids using "he" or "she" but clearly can't be "they" because there's only one eyewitness. "They," however illogical and grating, was chosen to avoid the toxic masculinity of the "he" in traditional English.

By the way, I do agree that some action should be taken against the man who decapitated the seal, especially if he killed the animal. If it was dead already, then public exposure IMHO would be sufficient.

In the Furtherance of Their Own Goals

(Sarah Stierch via Flickr CC 2.0/SFGate)

The war against CO2 claims another sacrifice: 2,554 acres in the Mojave Desert plus the character of the nearby town of Boron (pop.2000). From SFGate reporter Sam Mauhay-Moore: [bold added]

On a warm October night last fall, I sat near a taxidermied bobcat and a trove of other historical Mojave memorabilia inside Boron’s treasured Twenty Mule Team Museum. A group of locals gathered there to discuss the Aratina Solar Project, which was just starting to make headway less than a mile from the town’s southern boundary.

“They’re just destroying this place,” Jerry Gallegos, longtime Boron resident and co-president of the museum, said at the meeting. “They’re plowing down 3,000 Joshua trees right now, taking chainsaws and cutting them down three at a time.”

Joshua tree in the Mojave (drcooke/Getty/SFGate)

The Aratina Solar Project has a footprint of 2,554 acres, of which 2,317 acres will be covered by solar panels. It "generate(s) up to 530 megawatt-alternating current (MW-AC) of renewable energy, including up to 600 megawatts of energy storage, on privately-owned land in unincorporated Kern County."

Fortunately there is a natural-gas power plant of similar capacity in Kern County that can be used for comparison.

The Elk Hills Power Plant (EHPP) is located on a 12-acre site within the Elk Hills Oil and Gas Field, in western Kern County, near the community of Tupman...EHPP is a nominal 550-megawatt (MW) combined-cycle, natural gas-fired, cogeneration power generating plant.

It's well beyond the scope of this post to rehash the traditional natural-gas vs. solar debate (carbon emissions vs. none, power-as-needed vs. intermittent capability). But we can note a vast difference that has not often been mentioned, namely, solar's 4-sq-mile destruction of the Mojave desert vs. less than 1/2 of one percent of that area for natural-gas power.

It would be wrong to declare that environmentalists are guilty of an apparent double standard when they are silent about natural habitats being destroyed in the furtherance of their own goals. They must have a good explanation.

CA Water: Following the Rule Curve

February storms have dispelled concerns over a dry January: [bold added]

So much rain fell in the first week of February that California’s largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, near Redding, rose 22 feet. Shasta Lake is 34 miles long. The watershed at the state’s second-largest, Lake Oroville, in Butte County, has received 24 inches of rain in the past two weeks — five times the historical average — sending the reservoir level up 23 feet from Feb. 1 to Feb. 7.

And now a new atmospheric river storm is forecast to soak the Bay Area and the rest of the state Thursday and Friday...

The rain has been so plentiful that operators of the largest reservoirs have been increasing water releases in recent days to make space for the latest storm.

The outlet valves at Shasta Dam on Tuesday,
Feb. 11 (Merc/U.S. Bureau of Reclamation)

At Shasta Lake, federal dam operators have let out 60,000 cubic feet per second since Saturday through the outlet valves at the massive Shasta Dam. That’s 450,000 gallons a second, the equivalent of 40 Olympic swimming pools every minute.

It’s a delicate balancing act, experts say. If reservoirs fill to the top too quickly in big storms, large amounts of water are released down their spillways, causing flooding to homes and communities downstream. In extreme cases, water can overtop dams, causing a risk of failure.

Operators at most large dams in California rely on a manual called a “rule curve” that is set by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Evaluating decades of rainfall patterns, it recommends the highest level that each reservoir should be kept at every day, an amount that gradually increases later in the spring as winter storms dissipate.

“You are playing the odds,” [UC-Davis professor Jeff] Mount said. “What you are trying to do is balance the risk of not ending up with enough water in the spring against the risk of having too much in the winter, where you’ll get flooding.”

California is extremely lucky; says Professor Mount, "It’s unusual to get three wet years in a row.”

The men and women who operate our water infrastructure are doing an excellent job managing a complex system that is subject to both physical and manmade (make sure the fish get their share!) constraints.

Although funding was approved by the voters in 2014, it's a pity that, eleven years later, the Progressives who run the State haven't built any water storage to take advantage of the rain (the estimated completion date of the Sites reservoir is 2032).

Trump Effect is Alive in California, Too

There is no one definition of the Trump effect, but everyone pretty much knows what it means: the changes that people and organizations unilaterally make in anticipation--and now the reality--of Donald Trump becoming President in 2025.

Despite being the leading state of the new Trump resistance, even California is abandoning battles that it can't win. [bold added]

(Pnoto by Eric Gay/AP)

The California Air Resources Board announced last week that it’s continuing to improve the state’s air quality and reduce harmful pollutants with other programs but has withdrawn four requests it had submitted to the EPA, including one to phase out sales of new diesel-powered semitrailers and buses by 2036 in California.

...The board was anticipating pushback from the Trump administration for federal approval for stricter emissions regulations around semitrailers and locomotives. It also withdrew a rule that would have prevented locomotive engines older than 23 years from operating starting in 2030 while promoting zero-emissions technology to transport freight.

Because California is by far the most populous and wealthiest (measured by GDP) State in the Union, it can "export" its Progressive values by forcing businesses to comply with its requirements. For example, by forcing California diesel-truck operators to convert to all-electric, these operators are very likely to use these EV's in other states, because it's too expensive to maintain and operate two different kinds of equipment.

A Biden EPA would have agreed with the export of green values beyond California's borders, and a Trump EPA would not. California backed off without, as the saying goes, any shots being fired. There's a new sheriff in town.

Mange: the Last Straw

In California citizens with a license can hunt coyotes. However, the general rule is limited because firearms, including archery equipment, cannot be discharged within 150 yards of occupied structures. An exception to the exception is that an owner or his agent may hunt coyotes on the owner's property.

Coyote hunting may be further restricted by local ordinances. San Francisco, not surprisingly, bans coyote hunting and their trapping and relocating. Coyotes have been steadily encroaching on humans, and it would not be surprising if people who are worried about attacks on pets and children start pushing back.

Coyote with mange (Presidio Trust/Chronicle)

There's another reason to stay away from canis latrans:

Wildlife officials in San Francisco are warning that a rise in sarcoptic mange among local coyotes could pose a threat to domestic pets.

The highly contagious skin condition, caused by microscopic mites, can easily spread from coyotes to dogs, the Presidio Trust said in an advisory to residents. While rare, the disease could also affect humans.

Wildlife experts are advising pet owners to leash dogs and keep them away from wild animals and to report any sick or injured coyotes to authorities.

Your humble blogger senses that the pro-wildlife anti-urban branch of wokeness has peaked. The Santa Cruz wharf collapsed because repairs were not permitted during the nesting season of unendangered seagulls. Protection of the endangered delta smelt has been blamed by President-elect Trump for Los Angeles not having the water needed to fight fires. With their human advocates soon to be in retreat, wild coyotes' days appear to be numbered.

Santa Cruz Wharf

Debris from the partial collapse (CBS/YouTube)

The Santa Cruz Wharf experienced a partial collapse after being buffeted by large waves on December 23rd. Repairs had been planned since 2014 but were stymied by environmentalists to protect seagulls (who are not endangered): [bold added]

Strict permitting requirements and lengthy litigation by environmental activists have stalled efforts to fortify the pier that could have helped it withstand the storm, current and former city officials say.

At the center of the delays: seagulls.

It was for the benefit of the western gull, commonly known as the seagull, that the city of Santa Cruz delayed the most critical part of the repair work, installing new timber piles — the columns that hold up the wharf — until September, because gulls and another bird, the pigeon guillemot, make their nests in the wharf’s wooden beams.

The protections for the birds are imposed by the state Coastal Commission, from which the city must obtain a permit before it can do repairs. Most major construction — including replacing the piles — must take place between September and March to avoid the nesting season.

“Our work window is a very narrow six months over the winter time when we tend to have storms and big waves,” said Tony Elliott, director of Parks and Recreation, which oversees the wharf. “The wharf is a 110-year-old structure, and it requires a lot of work. … It takes more than six months out of the year to maintain it effectively.”

Neither the western gull nor the pigeon guillemot are endangered species, yet the Coastal Commission says federal and state laws protect their nesting areas.

One can see thousands of seagulls in San Francisco and down the Peninsula in Foster City. They swoop into the stands at the end of Giants games, looking for scraps. They are ubiquitous, far from endangered, and, frankly, hazardous to human and animal health. Somehow I think the seagulls will adapt if they couldn't nest at the Santa Cruz Wharf over several summers.

The blame for the wharf collapse rests squarely on the shoulders of the California Coastal Commission, which refused to modify its protection of the nesting areas of a species called by many as flying rats.

Property for the People

Federal land in Utah (Peery/AP/WSJ)

One of the first moves that a financially distressed company makes is to sell off unproductive assets to pay down its debt. Economist Thomas Sowell says that strategy should apply to the Federal government, which is not realizing revenue from its vast landholdings:

Some of that land—such as military bases—is used to house the government’s own operations. But the great majority of that land is not.

The rest of this government-owned land is so vast that there is little to compare it with—except whole countries. And not small countries like Belgium or Portugal. The amount of land owned by the National Park Service alone is larger than Italy. The land owned by the Fish and Wildlife Service is larger than Germany. The land owned by the Forest Service is larger than Britain and Spain combined. The land owned by the Bureau of Land Management is larger than Japan, North Korea, South Korea and the Philippines combined.

The idea of selling huge amounts of government-owned land is not new. Before the federal income tax was created in the early 20th century, land sales were sometimes a significant source of federal government income in the preceding two centuries. The prospect of large-scale land sales was considered during the Reagan administration, but the political opposition was too strong.

As of 2015, government-owned lands were valued at $1.8 trillion by the Commerce Department.

$1.8 trillion, even if adjusted higher from 2015 to current dollars, will hardly put a dent in the national debt of $36 trillion. However, it would be a mistake to limit the financial analysis of government assets to market values equivalent to undeveloped land.

Once these assets are sold, no longer will they be drains on the Treasury for their maintenance and security but contributing value to the economy as sites for residences and businesses. And with future positive contributions come future taxes.

After all, the entire United States west of the Mississippi was once as useless as Federal land is today. If Federal lands were to be used to their full potential, who knows what marvels may ensue?

Squirrelly Behavior

Vole aka "meadow mouse" (Sonja Wild/UC Davis/SFGate)

Aa a beginning grade school reader in the 1950's my first reading material was the classic Golden Books. I moved on to the "Mother West Wind" series by Thornton W. Burgess (1874-1965), who populated the Green Meadows with over a dozen animal characters. My favorite was Danny Meadow Mouse, who frolicked with Jerry Muskrat, old Mr. Toad, Jimmy Skunk, and Chatterer the Squirrel.

A recent discovery revealed that Thornton W. Burgess' Green Meadows is red in tooth and claw, and we're not even talking about predators like coyotes and cougars: [bold added]

Squirrel eating vole (Sonja Wild/UC Davis/SFGate)

In June 2024, Jennifer E. Smith of the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire received a disturbing report from her research team conducting fieldwork at Briones Regional Park in Contra Costa County. It’s a sprawling expanse of grasslands and oak woodlands known for scenic trails, views of Mount Diablo and a thriving bird-watching scene. However, Smith’s students had documented something far more unsettling than a rare bird or damage on a trail: an unsettling description of a California ground squirrel actively hunting, killing and ripping apart the bodies of tiny California voles...

For squirrels observed consuming their kills immediately rather than carrying the carcass back to a den, the behavior followed a grimly methodical pattern. In every case, the squirrels “first removed the head of the vole” before pulling meat from the torso. They then “stripped fur from each of the body parts” before devouring the exposed flesh, organs and even cartilage, behavior that was reminiscent of a more seasoned predator.

The scientists speculate that a spike in the vole population induced the squirrels to switch to an easier, abundant source of protein. What was remarkable was how quickly the mainly granivorous ("relying primarily on seeds, grains and vegetation") squirrels became skilled predators.

Danny Meadow Mouse needs to be more careful about who he hangs out with.

Blessing of the Animals 2024

Today the church celebrated the Feast of St. Francis (the official Feast day is October 4th), who many regard as the greatest post-Biblical saint in the history of Christianity.

St. Francis turned his back on his family's wealth in favor of a lifetime of poverty and service. He is the patron saint of animals and the environment.

Pets and their owners came forward to be blessed at the altar. This afternoon, as we have for the past 20 years (interrupted by COVID in 2020 and 2021), the church set up a table at the Foster City Dog Park to say a prayer for pets and owners who came forward.

Included in St. Francis' legacy is the composing of the second most-recognized prayer in Christendom:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury,pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

It's An Honor, Really

P. kamalaharrisae (Balukjian photo)

Researcher Brad Balukjian of the California Academy of Sciences is an admirer of Kamala Harris and has named a bug after her:

Across the tree of life, approximately 18,000 new species are described by taxonomists every year. One of the perks of the work is getting to name them. My colleagues and I can have a lot of fun with it — there’s a genus of spiders named for the band ABBA and a wasp named after Jackie Chan.

Today, one of my naming decisions makes its official debut: a bright green, red, and yellow plant bug will now be known as Pseudoloxops kamalaharrisae.

Yes, I named a bug after our vice-president and yes, it is meant as a massive compliment.

Harris’ six-legged namesake is part of a remarkable radiation of closely related plant bugs endemic to the islands of Tahiti, where I did my Ph.D. research over a decade ago. Plant bugs are a type of true bug; although we colloquially call anything small and scurrying a “bug,” it’s actually a technical term, referring to insects in the suborder Heteroptera, which have mouths like a straw. While some plant bugs are agricultural pests, P. kamalaharrisae and its cousins hang out on brightly colored flowers all day slurping plant slushees and hoping to avoid detection by birds.

Brad Balukjian named the bug after Vice President Harris to honor her support of climate change policies (MAGA - "Making America Green Again").

Now she's even with Donald Trump, who has a blind amphibian bearing his name:

Dermophis donaldtrumpi (Abel Batista / Rainforest Trust)

The Dermophis donaldtrumpi, which was discovered in Panama, was named by the head of a company that had bid $25,000 (£19,800) at auction for the privilege.

The company said it wanted to raise awareness about climate change.

"[Dermophis donaldtrumpi] is particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change and is therefore in danger of becoming extinct as a direct result of its namesake's climate policies," said EnviroBuild co-founder Aidan Bell in a statement.

The small, blind, creature is a type of caecilian that primarily lives underground, and Mr Bell drew an unflattering comparison between its behaviour and Mr Trump's.

"Burrowing [his] head underground helps Donald Trump when avoiding scientific consensus on anthropomorphic climate change," he wrote.

Politics infests everything, even the naming of newly discovered species.

Microsoft Sees the Light

The Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979 single-handedly killed the nuclear power industry in the U.S. After Three Mile Island construction on nuclear power plants halted, and existing plants were decommissioned.

Today nuclear energy is undergoing something of a renaissance. Many green-energy advocates are realizing that ambitious carbon-free energy goals cannot be met by wind and solar power, let alone be "on all the time" when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing.

Many tech companies, including the largest and most well-known, joined the alternative energy marching band, IMHO, because it was easy to, since their fortunes weren't tied to fossil fuels like legacy manufacturing and transportation companies.

After 2020, as the race to acquire electricity for artificial-intelligence data centers accelerated, the virtue signalling dampened down.

Big Tech needed power, and ESG (environmental, social, governance) projects did nothing to help and even inhibited that objective.

Three Mile Island will be renamed the Crane Clean Energy Center (WSJ)

In a sign that the worm has turned, Three Mile Island, the bête noire of fission haters, is being revived to power Microsoft's data centers.

A deal between Constellation Energy and Microsoft will restart Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, the site of the country’s worst nuclear accident, to help power the tech giant’s growing artificial intelligence ambitions.

Under the agreement, Constellation would revive the plant’s undamaged reactor, which was too costly to run and closed in 2019, and sell the power to Microsoft. The plan signals the gargantuan amount of power needed for data centers for AI, along with the tech industry’s thirst for a carbon-free, round-the-clock electricity source needed to meet climate goals.

Constellation expects to spend around $1.6 billion to restart the reactor by early 2028. Microsoft has signed a 20-year power-purchase agreement with Constellation, the companies said Friday. The deal would help Microsoft pair its 24-7 electricity use with a matching source of nearby clean power generation.

It's nice to know that one of our most successful companies is able to discard green-power fantasies when the virtue-signalling impedes basic objectives.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.---1 Cor 13:11

Literally Unsettled Science

"What caused an odd cascade of vibrations to ripple across the globe for nine days?" [bold added]

Using classified seafloor maps from the Danish military, a global network of seismic sensors used to detect earthquakes, drone video of debris washed high up on a remote rock face in eastern Greenland and other evidence, researchers finally pieced together the strange sequence of events.

It started when seismic sensors at monitoring stations around the world detected a signal in September 2023 that looked nothing like the squiggles made by earthquakes. This signal oscillated at 90-second intervals and continued for days. Most seismic events weaken quickly...

[Geologic scientist Kristian] Svennevig assembled an earth-science detective squad of 68 experts who, with seismic recordings, satellite images, field measurements, drone video and computer simulations, reconstructed what happened. The evidence revealed that 33 million cubic yards of rock and ice—the volume of 10,000 Olympic-size swimming pools—had plunged into the Dickson Fjord in eastern Greenland, triggering a tsunami.

The massive wave crested at 650 feet above the water’s surface, throwing debris onto a nearby rock face. It settled down to 25 feet, but over the next nine days, it sloshed from one side of the fjord to the other, striking the sides with enough force to move the walls, creating the seismic signal that propagated around the planet, Svennevig said.

The landslide was caused by a melting glacier below the mountaintop, according to the study, and Svennevig said scientists are reconsidering the kinds of natural disasters that are now possible in a warming Arctic environment.

Before and after photos of the landslide site. Søren Rysgaard; Danish Army/Joint Arctic Command

The continental crust ranges between 22 and 40 miles, and the oceanic crust from 4 to 6 miles. The troposphere, where life resides, is 7 miles above the crust, and the stratosphere is 31 miles above. Despite the advances in environmental science, it took a year to determine that the 9 days of powerful vibrations were caused by a landslide in Greenland. Our knowledge of the 50 miles of crust and atmosphere is demonstrably incomplete. Just imagine how much we don't know about our home planet, which has a diameter of nearly 8,000 miles.