Badlands Journal
Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice
Successful polluters the world around agree: You just can't trust a government you don't own.
The avalanche of data will help scientists create a 3D model of atmospheric rivers and the factors that govern their rainfall, such as aerosols and dust in the atmosphere. The results will also help to improve current forecast models, Ralph said. And the new data will refine climate models that predict how global warming will affect atmospheric rivers.
This article is a curious excuse for journalism because, although Valley congressmen "pressure(s) both sides in ports dispute," only one side is given a line in the story:
On Thursday, citing the higher costs entailed by holiday and weekend wage rates, the Pacific Maritime Association said it would suspend vessel operations through Monday. The association’s leaders contend longshoremen have been engaged in deliberate work slowdowns.
Sing it, Elvis!
We found this recent column on the California drought by Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, an acclaimed academic and Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, (1) and heir to a farm in Fresno County, to be unusually wide of the mark, even by his standards. Hanson is a writer that people interested in rural California read. We often agree with his facts yet end up mystified by the opinions he "derives" from them. Nevertheless, he is one of ours, so we remain interested.
The new Farm Bill, nothing less than the final triumph of finance, insurance and real estate special interests over government in yet another real estate deal -- agriculture, severs all connections between agriculture and actual husbandry. It's no accident that almond and pistachio orchards are being planted in record numbers.
The latest news (below) on the Ferrari Ranch development project near Atwater made us ask once again if this was truly a whole New Day of such blinding light that it should wipe our memory as clean as a virus destroys computer files.
But, not quite ...
The truth, Shields said, is there’s simply very little water in the Stanislaus River system — with or without the new rules protecting fish. -- Alex Breitler, Stockton Record, Feb. 24, 2015.
California has only five weeks left of the wet season and needs more than the modest storm that just passed through. That was like shooting spit wads at an elephant. -- Mark Grossi, Fresno Bee, Feb. 24, 2015