News from around the Ojai Valley Thomas Fire dilemma: Stay or go? Residents, fire officials rethink evacuations Published: Friday, 22 March 2019 08:48 Photo provided by CAPS Media Firefighters try to save a house during the Thomas Fire. Kit Stolz, special to the Ojai Valley News On the night of Dec. 4, 2017, fueledContinue reading “Flee or stay and defend? Rethinking evacuation from wildfire”
Category Archives: the land
“a very strange argument” for global warming
From David Wallace-Wells’ just published The Uninhabitable Earth: “Over the last few years, as the planet’s own environmental rhythms have seemed to grow more fatalistic, skeptics have found themselves arguing not that climate change isn’t happening, since extreme weather has made that undeniable, but that its causes are unclear — suggesting that the changes weContinue reading ““a very strange argument” for global warming”
Precipitous insect decline: collapse of nature?
This week a Dutch cartoonist with beauty dramatized a horrifying new study warning of “the collapse of nature.” Yes, that statement seems extreme, but the art contextualizes it as form of suicide. Or even worse, as a form of ecocide-suicide. First our species exterminates the insects, and then their decline unravels nature. The study, freely available fromContinue reading “Precipitous insect decline: collapse of nature?”
A wild perspective on the government shutdown
My name is Randy, and I’m the raccoon resident of the dumpster enclosure at Yellowstone National Park’s Bridge Bay Campground. The park rangers refer to me as a “nuisance raccoon.” I’ve lost my fear of humans and ability to forage for natural food like fruits and nuts, the stuff that non-nuisance raccoons eat. ImagineContinue reading “A wild perspective on the government shutdown”
Eating the Thomas Fire (sort of)
A little over a year ago the Thomas Fire, powered by the strongest Santa Ana winds in memory, roared through Upper Ojai on its way to surrounding all of Ojai, rampaging into Santa Barbara county, killing two people, destroying 1,000 structures, and burning over 200,000 acres of land. The fire visited our property on theContinue reading “Eating the Thomas Fire (sort of)”
Climate change hits ag in Ventura County
Proud to have published this story recently in a prominent Ventura County publication. With the help of Ben Hatchett of the Desert Research Institute, we showed I think that avocados, though now a substantial part of Ventura County agriculture, will in the not-too-distant future be a much more risky proposition…but that other crops, such asContinue reading “Climate change hits ag in Ventura County”
Thomas Fire (one year ago tonight)
The Thomas Fire began about five miles from our home near Thomas Aquinas College near Santa Paula on the night of December 4, 2017, a date Upper Ojai will never forget. In a bad twist of fate documented in my story in the Santa Barbara Independent a couple of weeks later, an electric transformer atContinue reading “Thomas Fire (one year ago tonight)”
Black Friday climate assessment: Katherine Hayhoe vs. Donald Trump on The World
The extraordinary Fourth National Climate Assessment, released by thirteen federal agencies coordinated by the US Global Change Research Program, established by Congress decades ago, came out last Friday. On the day after Thanksgiving, the notorious Black Friday. For some reason. Ironically, if this excellent interview and breaking news segment on the assessment on The WorldContinue reading “Black Friday climate assessment: Katherine Hayhoe vs. Donald Trump on The World”
From a new record by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, paired with a “Silly Symphony” video by a fan (apparently). For a rainy day…
a poem from the late Paradise
Please Excuse the Smoke Awakenings [from a Paradise resident and poet named Krystalynn Martin] November 16, 2018 A poem I wrote the other night while grieving the loss of my hometown of Paradise: I’m sorry – Please excuse the smoke. It’s just the dreams and hopes of 27 thousand yesterdays. It’s just the minuscule evidence ofContinue reading “a poem from the late Paradise”
Kit Stolz 