On Friday, Ventura County got some good news. Although Los Angeles is allowing Newhall Ranch to develop an entire new city on the outskirts of Santa Clarita, the Nature Conservancy bought 377 acres  of habitat for endangered species along the Santa Clara River near Piru Creek from a mining company for less than $600,000.   

"Not only is the acreage good, but the amount of river they’ve captured is quite long," said Ron Bottorff, chairman of Friends of the Santa Clara River, a nonprofit group working to restore habitat on 230 acres farther downstream. "That’s what we want to see: the river flood plain and the surrounding terraced lands protected."

Also good news is the passage of a ten billion dollar water bill in the Senate that includes over seventy million towards the taking down of Matilija Dam, the white elephant outside Ojai. Amazingly, the consensus that this dam should be taken down has held. No lawsuits have been filed to stop it since the environmental review was published last fall. (The fact that the dam is all but useless for flood control, irrigation, or anything else helps, no doubt.) It’s also interesting that Ventura County’s congressman, Elton Gallegly, has actively pursued the funding for this environmentally-minded project, despite complaints of taxpayer groups of "pork."

"This is the first step of a long and involved process that will unfold over several years before Matilija Dam has been deconstructed," said Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Thousand Oaks, who worked for the project’s inclusion in the water bill.

According to an editorial in the Arizona Republic, seven people in Phoenix have died in the last two days of a vicious heat wave, with record-breaking temps topping 116 degrees.

The editorial adds:   

"…there’s something else that’s eerie and ominous about this heat wave. Sunday’s storm notwithstanding, the monsoon – a seasonal shift in wind patterns that we count on for midsummer rain and heat relief – is mysteriously absent.

The average monsoon starts on July 7, but we’re now pushing toward a record-late commencement of what’s expected, in any event, to be a drier than average season."

Metereologists expect the monsoon to arrive this weekend. For the sake of Phoenix and the entire southwest, let’s hope they’re right.

What follows is a long, thoughtful, detail-packed excerpt from Jared Diamond’s epochal "Collapse." This particular excerpt concerns the actions of a Chevron subsidiary in a Papua New Guinea, a part of the world close to Diamond’s heart, since he worked there as an ornithologist decades ago.

In a nutshell, Diamond suggests that–at least in this example–that Chevron is an environmental hero. We might have to see it to believe it, but thanks to the miracle of the printed word–and the Internet–here we can:

(from Jared Diamond’s "Collapse," the "Big Business and the Environment" chapter, pp442-446)

Diamond first briefly discusses seeing a horror of an oil field in Indonesian New Guinea in l986. In contrast…

"My second experience was of the Kutubu oil filed that a subsidiary of the large international oil company Chevron Corp. operated in the Kikori River watershed of Papua New Guinea… The environment in the Kikori River watershed is sensitive and difficult to work in because of frequent landslides, much limestone karst terrain, and one of the highest recorded rainfalls in the world (on the average, 430 inches per year, and up to 14 inches per day). In l993 Chevron engaged World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to prepare a large-scale integrated conservation and development project for the whole watershed. Chevron’s expectation was that WWF would be effective at minimizing environmental damage, lobbying the Papua New Guinea government for environmental protection, serving as a credible partner in the eyes of environmental activist groups, benefiting local communities economically, and attracting World Bank funding for local community projects. From l998 to 2003 I made four visits of one month each to the oil fields and watershed as a consultant to WWF. I was allowed freedom to travel throughout the area in a WWF vvehicle and to interview Chevron employees privately."

"As my airplane flight from Papua New Guinea’s capital of Port Moresby droned on towards the field’s main airstrip at Moro and was approaching its scheduled arrival time, I looked out the airplane window for some signs of the oil field infrastructure I expected to see looming up. I became increasingly puzzled still to be seeing only an uninterrupted expanse of rainforest stretching between the horizons. Finally, I spotted a road, but it was only a thin cleared line ten yards broad through the rainforest, in many places overhung with trees growing on either side–a bird-watcher’s dream. The main practical difficulty in rainforest bird studies is that it’s hard to see birds inside the forest itself, and the best opportunities to observe them are from narrow trails where one can watch the forest from the side. Here was such a trail over 100 miles long, from the highest oil field at an altitude of nearly 6,000 feet on Mt. Moran down to the coast. On the following day, when I began walking along that pencil line of a road during my surveys, I found birds routinely flying across it, and mammals, lizards, snakes, and frogs hopping, running, or crawling across it. It turned out that the road had been designed to be just broad enough for two vehicles to pass safely in opposite directions. Initially, the seismic exploration platforms and exploration oil wells had been put in without construction of any access roads at all, and had been serviced instead just by helicopter and on foot."

"My next surprise came when my plane landed at Chevron’s Moro airstrip, and again later when I flew out. Although I had already gone through baggage inspection by the Papa New Guinea Customs Department upon my arrival in the country, on both arrival and departure at Chevron’s airstrip I had to open all my bags for further inspections more thorough than on any other occasion I had experienced except when I flew to Israel’s Tel Aviv airport. What were those inspectors looking for? On the flight in, the articles absolutely prohibited were firearms or hunting equipment of any sort, drugs, and alcohol; on the flight out, animals or plants or their feathers or parts that might be smuggled. Violations of those rules results in immediate automatic expulsion from company premises, as a WWF secretary innocently but foolishly carrying a package for someone else discovered to her misfortune (because the package turned out to contain drugs)."

"A further surprise came the next morning, after I had walked out on the road before dawn to bird-watch and returned a few hours later. The camp safety representative summoned me to his office and told me that I had already been reported for two violations of Chevron regulations, which I was not to repeat. First, I had been noticed stepping several feet out into the roadway to observe a bird. that posed the hazard that a vehicle might hit me, or that in swerving to avoid hitting me it might crash into an oil pipeline at the side of the road and cause an oil spill. From now on, I should please stay off the road while bird-watching. Second, I had been seen bird-watching while not wearing a protective helmet, but this whole area was a hardhat area; at this point the officer gave me a hardhat, which I should henceforth please wear for my own safety while bird-watching, e.g., in case a tree fell."

"That was an introduction to Chevron’s extreme concern, constantly instilled in its employees, about safety and environmental protection. I have never observed an oil spill on any of my four visits, but I do read the reports posted each month on Chevron bulletin boards about incidents and near-incidents, which are the concern of the safety representative who travels around by plane or truck to investigate each. Out of interest, I recorded the full list of fourteen incidents from March 2003. The most serious near-incidents requiring scrutiny and review of safety procedures in that month were a truck backed into a stop sign, another truck was reported with its emergency brake improperly set, a package of chemicals lacked the correct paperwork, and gas was found leaking from a compressor needle valve."

"My remaining surprise came in the course of bird-watching. New Guinea has many bird and mammal species whose presence and abundance are sensitive indicators of human disturbance, because they are either large and hunted for their meat, hunted for their spectacular plumage, or else confined to the interior of undisturbed forests and absent from modified secondary habitats. They include tree kangaroos (New Guinea’s largest native mammals); cassowaries, hornbills,  and large pigeons (New Guinea’s largest birds); birds of paradise, and Pesquet’s Parrot and other colorful parrots…and hundreds of species of the forest interior. When I began bird-watching in the Kutubu area, I anticipated that my mail goal would be to determine how much less numerous these species were inside the area of Chevron’s oil fields, facilities, and pipeline than outside it."

"Instead, I discovered to my astonishment that these species are much more numerous inside the Chevron area than anywhere else that I have visited on the island of New Guinea except for a few remote uninhabited areas. The only place that I have seen tree kangaroos in the wild in Papua New Guinea, in my forty years there, is within a few miles of Chevron camps; elsewhere, they are the first mammal to become shot out by hunters, and those few surviving learn to be active only at night, but I saw them active during the day in the Kutubu area. Pesquet’s Parrot, the New Guinea Harpy Eagle, birds of paradise, hornbills, and large pigeons are common in the immediate vicinity of the oil camps, and I have seen Pesquet’s Parrots perching on the camp communications towers. That’s because there is an absolute prohibition against Chevron employees and contractions hunting any animal or fishing by any means in the project area, and because the forest is intact. The birds and animals sense that and become tame. In effect, the Kutubu oil field functions as by far the largest and most rigorously controlled national park in Papua New Guinea."

In September 2002, California officials confirmed U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates of 33,000 fish killed in the Klamath River by diseases caused by low water flows mandated by Federal officials. Thanks to the scandal now slowly enveloping Karl Rove, we now have a pretty fair idea why (LA TImes — registration required).

In early 2002, Rove personally addressed the 50 most-senior employees of the Interior Department at a retreat in West Virginia. He showed them a slide presentation summarizing presidential polling and key races. Then, from the podium, he mentioned upcoming Interior Department decisions that could influence the midterm elections.

At the time, Rove noted that Oregon’s incumbent Sen. Gordon H. Smith, a Republican, faced a difficult reelection. The Interior Department was then questioning whether to allow drought-stricken farmers to pull more water from Oregon’s Klamath River, endangering the state’s salmon population.

Farmers are a critical part of the Oregon GOP base.

An inspector general’s report subsequently concluded there was no inappropriate pressure on the decision makers in the Klamath case. But the controversial decision to release water to farmers resulted in the largest fish kill in the West and still angers Indian fishermen and environmentalists. Smith won reelection.

Southern California had a strangely wet winter this year. Even the experts are scratching their heads about it. Usually heavy rains correspond to the ocean current pattern known as El Nino. Not this year, as the irrepressible Bill Patzert of JPL explains:

"This season was what I call ‘La Nada,’ " Patzert said. "El Niño and La Niña tend to give structure to climate, but La Nada is like a teenager, without structure. The jet stream was on steroids, with wild fluctuations north and south."

What does it mean for the future? Not even the experts can say. The last time this pattern was recorded, Patzert says in the L.A. Times (registration required) was 1889-90.

About a quarter-century ago, fueled by a great deal of blather from the White House, this nation became aware of an economic concept known as the Laffer curve. This impressive-sounding concept became famous, though its usefulness turned out to be political, not practical. David Stockman, the White House budget director at the time, explained it this way:

"[T]he whole California gang had taken [the Laffer curve] literally (and primitively). The way they talked, they seemed to expect that once the supply-side tax cut was in effect, additional revenue would start to fall, manna-like, from the heavens. Since January, I had been explaining that there is no literal Laffer curve."

A proven scientific curve of much greater import that got no attention at the time, even though it had been verified decades earlier, is the Keeling curve. It’s still not well known.

The scientist who discovered the phenomenon that this curve depicts, Charles Keeling, of Scripps Institute of Oceanography, died last week in relative–and undeserved–obscurity. Undeserved because his work brings to our attention perhaps the single greatest challenge our species faces today. Undeserved, too, because unlike the Laffer curve, the Keeling curve has been fully verified by countless meticulous measurements around the globe since it was first published nearly fifty years ago. It’s not controversial, and for it Keeling was given a National Medal of Science in 2002 by President Bush.

The Keeling curve plots the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Take a look (above) and you’ll see a curious squiggling up down, year in and year out. What could explain this three-percent seasonal variation in the amount of CO2 in our air?

In an address to the American Philosophical Society in l969, Keeling suggested that "perhaps it was the result of plants on land growing more rapidly…as a result of "fertilization" caused by higher concentrations of atmospheric CO2, an unusual idea at the time."

This turned out to be the case. It’s an astonishing thing. No one, not even Keeling, expected that the growth of the plants around us could have such a dramatic seasonal effect on the composition of our air…but it does.

Read Keeling’s "environmental autobiography" and a couple of other facts stand out.

First, it’s charming to discover that what led Keeling to his monumental discovery–and proof of the steadily rising percentage of heat-trapping gasses in our atmosphere–was the desire to camp out along the California coast. He had no grand agenda. As he remarks wryly of his younger self: "At the age of 27, the prospect of spending more time at Big Sur State Park to take suites of air and water samples…didn’t seem objectionable, even if I had to get out of a sleeping bag several times in the night.:"

Second, although the percentage of CO2 in the air was not a political issue in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, or even most of the 80’s, Keeling and his handful of backers still had to fight tooth and claw to keep the measuring program (centered in the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii) funded. They suffered numerous cut-backs and near-cancellations. "I learned a lesson that environmental time-series programs have no particular priority in the funding world, even if their main value lies in maintaing long-term continuity of measurements," Keeling wrote.

Third, back in l969, Keeling’s scientific mentor, Roger Revelle of the President’s Science Adisory Council, found a simple way to encapsulate the enormity of our experiment in atmospheric chemistry. As Keeling puts it: "Revelle…was struck by the fact that the human race was returning to the air a significant part of the carbon that had been slowly extracted by plants and buried in sediments during a half billions years of Earth history. He thought that measurable, perhaps even marked, changes in climate might occur from an increasing greenhouse effect."

Keeling adds:   

I too pondered the significance of returning a half billion years of carbon to the air…