California farmers resign themselves to drought – ‘We’re having to go deeper and deeper. They say we’re tapping water millions of years old.’

By Rory Carroll 7 March 2015 Fresno, California (the Guardian) – Kim Hammond does not want responsibility for her neighbours’ livelihoods, or for the crops which stretch in all directions as far as the eye can see, or for the earth itself in this corner of California. But these days, her little bungalow office in […]

California waits anxiously for a ‘Miracle March’ or ‘Awesome April’ to offset the worst snowpack season on record in parts of the Sierra Nevada

By Bob Henson  27 February 2015 (Wunderground.com) – Californians are watching anxiously to see if a “Miracle March” or “Awesome April” salvages the worst snowpack season on record thus far in parts of the Sierra Nevada. Snow that piles up across the mountain range from autumn through spring furnishes more than 60% of the state’s […]

If you think that California is dry now, wait until mid-century – ‘We haven’t seen anything like this since at least the 1400s’

By Eric Holthaus12 February 2015 (Slate) – When it comes to drought in the West, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. That’s the conclusion from a new study that links an increasing risk of decades-long drought episodes in the western United States to human-induced climate change. The study predicts drought severity outside the bounds of what’s […]

Warmer, drier climate altering California forests statewide

By Robert Sanders20 January 2015 BERKELEY – Historical California vegetation data that more than once dodged the dumpster have now proved their true value, documenting that a changing forest structure seen in the Sierra Nevada has actually happened statewide over the past 90 years. A team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, UC […]

Hundreds of illicit oil wastewater pits found in Kern County, California – ‘The state doesn’t seem to be willing to put the protection of groundwater and water quality ahead of the oil industry’

By Julie Cart26 February 2015 (Los Angeles Times) – Water officials in Kern County discovered that oil producers have been dumping chemical-laden wastewater into hundreds of unlined pits that are operating without proper permits. Inspections completed this week by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board revealed the existence of more than 300 previously […]

More U.S. measles cases in January 2015 than in 9 of the last 14 years

2 February 2015 (CDC) – From January 1 to January 30, 2015, 102 people from 14 states were reported to have measles*. Most of these cases are part of a large, ongoing multi-state outbreak linked to an amusement park [Disneyland] in California. On January 23, 2015, CDC issued a Health Advisory to notify public health […]

Bird carcasses along Pacific shore baffle biologists – ‘My God, there were so many of them’

By Javier Panzar 2 January 2014 (Los Angeles Times) – The carcasses of thousands of small birds called Cassin’s auklets have been washing ashore over the last few months from Northern California up to the north coast of Washington. Scientists along the Pacific Coast have been trying to determine what is causing the large die-off […]

Dr. Jeff Masters: Top ten weather stories of 2014

By Dr. Jeff Masters23 December 2014 (wunderground.com) –  #1: Earth Likely Had Its Warmest Year on Record The year 2014 has made it very apparent that global warming has not stopped, as the year-to-date-period January – November 2014 was Earth’s warmest such period since record keeping began in 1880, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data […]

Global warming and the record 2014 California drought

By Michael Mann8 December 2014 (Huffington Post) – Just a couple months ago, I critiqued a pair of studies that disputed any linkage between human-caused climate change and the exceptional 2014 California drought. Now comes yet another study (“Causes and Predictability of the 2011-14 California Drought”) with the imprimatur of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric […]

Photo gallery: Unarmed people of color killed by U.S. police, 1999-2014

By Rich Juzwiak and Aleksander Chan8 December 2014 (Gawker) – On Wednesday, after the announcement that NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo would not be indicted for killing Eric Garner, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund Twitter posted a series of tweets naming 76 men and women who were killed in police custody since the 1999 death of […]

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