Drought hits Central America: as predicted?

Four years ago an eminent climate researcher named Michael Oppenheimer at Princeton published a study predicting that climate change would increase the chance of a devastating drought hitting Mexico. He warned that it could drive farmers from their fields and send them across the border looking for work. 

a new study published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences appears to establish a coming (and possibly a present) link between global warming and illegal immigration from Mexico,..the study led by atmospheric science Prof. Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University and co-written by scientists from China’s Shanghai University and the U.S. Treasury Department, the more global warming dries out farms and water supplies in Mexico, the more Mexicans will head to this country.

The Oppenheimer study predicts anywhere between 1.4 million and 6.7 million current Mexican farmers and farmworkers will emigrate north between now and 2080 solely because their farmlands become too parched to produce.

I actually reported that story from the American Geophysical Union that year (although I can't seem to find it on this site — perhaps I forgot to post it). Regardless, it comes to mind as I read this item from Reuters today:

A severe drought has ravaged crops in Central America, and as many as 2.8 million people are struggling to feed themselves, the United Nations World Food Program said Friday. The drought, which is also affecting South America, has been particularly hard on southern Guatemala, northern Honduras and western El Salvador. Guatemala declared a state of emergency after 256,000 families lost their crops. Farmers growing peas, green beans and broccoli estimate that they will lose 30 to 40 percent of their crops. Jesús Samayoa, a farmer in Jutiapa, Guatemala, said, “I am 60 years old, and this is the first time I have seen a crisis like this.”

Perhaps it's time to follow up with Prof. Oppenheimer. Although the child immigration crisis of last month seemed driven more by gang violence and threats of murder than drought, one has to wonder if there could be a connection, given that most of the immigrants were coming from Honduras and Guatemala.  

Record CA drought hits illegal pot grows

From a story in last week's Ojai Valley News:

Three years ago, local narcotics officers eradicated about 168,000 marijuana plants from Ventura County's backcountry.

This year, they've found much less — closer to 100,000.

So is that good news or bad?

Neither, say law enforcement officials. California's historic drought is drying up more than just lakes and reservoirs, it's draining the creeks and aquifers far upstream — the ones that marijuana growers utilize to water their gardens, which often contain thousands of plants.

"We had one up in Coyote Creek … and half of the grow was abandoned," said Sgt. Mike Horne of the Ventura County Sheriff's Office (VCSO) Narcotics Bureau. "They're just running out of water." In another grow near the Ortega Trail, he added, "When we went to cut it, it was gone — the reservoir had dried up."

Arguably this is burying the lede. It's not a question of good news or bad news. It's simpler — the drought is devastating everyone, even the illegal farmers ready and willing to cut corners.We may recall the Biblical words from Matthew: the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. Here's a new version: the drought hits the law-abiding farmers and the unlawful farmer alike.

More detail from Misty Volaski, editor of the paper, below the fold, with a pic from a back country grow in Rose Valley busted last month.  

RoseValleygrow

Backcountry grows, Horne said, often utilize hundreds and even thousands of feet of irrigation lines. Growers will find a canyon with water in it, build a reservoir, and let gravity pump water through the irrigation tubes to the gardens. The fact that hundreds of thousands of gallons of water are diverted from their natural course is troublesome enough, Horne said, but "then they take those reservoirs and throw in Miracle Grow" and other fertilizers. The result? "That stuff soaks into the ground, into our water table," he pointed out. "Everything from Rose Valley south, all that drains to the Ventura River." 

Most of the fertilizers found at these illegal gardens contain nitrogen, which helps the plants grow but also pollutes the watershed and other sensitive wildlife habitats. According to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board (LARWQCB), nitrogen is one of the chief pollutants in the Ventura River Watershed, for which the board is developing new water quality rules. It promotes the growth of algae, which creates fluctuations in dissolved oxygen levels and can kill or seriously affect wildlife. 

LARWQCB is compelling livestock and horse owners to keep manure — which has high levels of nitrogen — out of the Ventura River Watershed. It's also issuing new mandates to the Ojai Valley Sanitation District's treatment facility on Highway 33.

A 64-page report on the Ventura River Watershed from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mentions livestock, horses and the treatment plant more than a dozen times, but never mentions illegal marijuana cultivation as a potential source of nitrogen pollution.

According to Horne, at a garden with about 3,000 plants, it's not unusual to find six to eight 40-pound bags of nitrogen-laden fertilizers. "And they're all over the ranchers for using too much nitrogen in orchards, but they need to look at people growing dope up in the canyon, too," he pointed out. "These guys aren't using a tablespoon (of fertilizer) a week, they're using a cup."

Beyond water issues, there is no shortage of other environmental concerns. Poisons are often spread around the garden sites to discourage rats, rabbits, deer and other wildlife from eating up the profits. During VCSO garden eradication and reclamation efforts, dead animals are common. Some are shot to be eaten; others are shot to protect crops; still others are consuming the poisons. Officials don't take the carcasses as evidence, however, so exact numbers and causes of death are unknown.

Pesticides are also being used and are having similar effects. "There are some things (pesticides) they're bringing in from Mexico that are illegal here," said Horne of the growers. "It's bad stuff …They say don't touch this stuff, it's like nerve gas, it's so concentrated."

The combination of the pesticides, poisons and growers' bullets are also taking a toll on wildlife. VCSO officers have found two dead bears in Matilija Canyon this year alone. Though it's difficult to be sure, Horne and his team believe they were killed by growers, due to their proximity to gardens found in the area.  

"Bears are a real problem (for growers). They can demolish the camps," Horne explained.

Trash and food smells attract bears and other wildlife to the site, as well. "At a typical grow site, they might have three guys in it," Horne said. "Imagine how much trash is accumulated if they're living there from March to September."  Tents, sleeping bags, cook stoves, large propane tanks, food, human waste, all that trash — cleanup is a "monumental task," Horne explained, one that wouldn't be possible without state and federal grants.

And the threat to wildlife stretches farther than the boundaries of a garden and camp. Horne said he's been on eradications of other grows in the Sespe Wilderness — not far away from the California Condor Sanctuary where humans are prohibited. 

Then, of course, there are concerns about who's reaping the benefits of these grows. "Almost 0 percent of plants in big outdoor grows in the national forest have anything to do with medical marijuana," Horne said. "It's not Johnny Headshop who has his 10 plants to fix his headaches or to party with his buddies. These are big trafficking organizations financed or belonging to Mexican drug cartels. The people doing this are not just involved in marijuana, they're involved in cocaine, smuggling, methamphetamine, human smuggling. This is just another way to make money." 

A man recently arrested at a grow site confessed that he was a migrant worker and had been picking grapes for $60 a day. "But when they hire you as a (marijuana) trimmer, you can make $160 to $200 a day," Horne said. And the penalty for getting caught? "For their first offense, they'll get 180 days in jail … for a lot of people, it's worth the risk."

Neil Young: Meet Stephen Harper (of Canada)

Early this year Neil Young toured Canada as part of anti tar-sands effort, allying himself with the First Nations groups who accuse Canada of ruining their ancestral lands. This prompted an angry response from Stephen Harper, the climate change denying and oil promoting Prime Minister.

And a cute cartoon…

Neilyoungandoil

What rock star action in the U.S. could provoke a reaction from a U.S. President? Any?

IPCC report leaked: global warming a disaster of poverty

Seth Borenstein of the AP leads the national press in reporting on a leaked IPCC report starkly warning that global warming will give us a poorer, sicker, more violent world.

And he puts the language of the report itself front and center:

"Throughout the 21st century, climate change impacts will slow down economic growth and poverty reduction, further erode food security and trigger new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger," the report says. "Climate change will exacerbate poverty in low- and lower-middle income countries and create new poverty pockets in upper-middle to high-income countries with increasing inequality."

The warnings pull no punches:

The report says scientists have high confidence especially in what it calls certain "key risks":

—People dying from warming- and sea rise-related flooding, especially in big cities.

—Famine because of temperature and rain changes, especially for poorer nations.

—Farmers going broke because of lack of water.

—Infrastructure failures because of extreme weather.

—Dangerous and deadly heat waves worsening.

—Certain land and marine ecosystems failing.

Reminds me of a tweet today, that actually comes to us from deep in the past:

Mobydick

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

 

 

 

 

 

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The natural art of the High Sierra: James McGrew

Yosemite Blog, as a sort of note to encourage us all to apply for the High Sierra Camp lottery, features the young artist/wilderness guide James McGrew, who has been going to these inexhaustible mountains since the age of four, and seems to have gained a pretty good understanding, as seen in his painting:

Sunrise-impressions-oil-on-linen-9x12

This depicts meadows below the High Sierra Camp at Sunrise, on a ridge not too far from Lake Tenaya, tend to dry out in the summer…which in this picture gives them an autumnal glow. Boy does this make me wish I could see the artist in action which he apparently makes possible on the trail sometimes. 

 

For 3000th post, free tangerine candy!

This is my 3000th post on this blog, and to commemorate the occasion and thank readers for their interest, I'd like to give away some top-notch Page tangerines, air dried by yours truly, which IMHO are the best trail treats ever. Better even than chocolate, beause a) they don't melt, b) they're lighter, and c) with luck in drying, they shatter delightfully like light candy in the mouth. These have no perservatives, no added sugar, nothing but tangerines, with can be consumed whole. Here's a pic:

1-DSC00876

If you don't know me by now, this is a sincere no strings attached offer — I won't use or sell or give away or in any way take advantage if you send me your name and address. Heck, I'll take a risk by putting down my actual email address: kitstolz@gmail.com, to show that. 

My one ulterior motivation is to see if others like these tangerines as much as I do — if so, I may try to sell them next year when the Page tangerine season comes around again. Let me say that these are way way better than the flat dusty version Trader Joe's sells. 

Please write me for some free tangerine candy! You'll like it I bet. 

Honduran child refugees: What Woody Guthrie would say

American journalism has begun to catch up with the news about child and young adult refugees from Central America, about 57,000 of whom have tried to find a new life in the U.S. this year, in many many cases to escape murder and terrorization by the the gangs who dominate their neighborhoods. 

An excellent story in the LA TImes this week on the subject began this way:

By the time Isaias Sosa turned 14, he'd already seen 15 bullet-riddled bodies laid out in his neighborhood of Cabañas, one of the most violent in this tropical metropolis. He rarely ventured outside his grandmother's home, fortified with a wrought iron gate and concertina wire.

But what pushed him to act was the death of his pregnant cousin, who was gunned down in 2012 by street gang members at the neighborhood gym. Sosa loaded a backpack, pocketed $500 from his mother's purse, memorized his aunt's phone number in Washington state and headed for southern Mexico, where he joined others riding north on top of one of the freight trains known as La Bestia, or the Beast.

Crossing the Rio Grande into Texas, Sosa was apprehended almost immediately by Border Patrol agents as he desperately searched for water.

After a second unsuccessful attempt to enter the U.S. last fall, he now spends most of his days cooped up at home, dreaming of returning yet again.

"Everywhere here is dangerous," he said. "There is no security. They kill people all the time."

"It's a sin to be young in Honduras."

Last month a deeply informed New York Times story on the wave of young people from these regions found kids leaving these different countries for largely different reasons. From Honduras, they left to avoid being murdered. 

“Basically, the places these people are coming from are the places with the highest homicide rates,” said Manuel Orozco, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based research group. “The parents see gang membership around the corner. Once your child is forced to join, the chances of being killed or going to prison is pretty high. Why wait until that happens?”

A confluence of factors, including discounted rates charged by smugglers for families, helped ignite the boom, he said. Children are killed for refusing to join gangs, over vendettas against their parents, or because they are caught up in gang disputes. Many activists here suggest they are also murdered by police officers willing to clean up the streets by any means possible.

The trauma makes the hatred shown to these youngsters all the more painful to bear.

A friend named Rain Perry, a classy singer/songwriter, for her wonderful monthly semi-improvisational Song Game, rewrote Woody's classic on the same subject, Deportee, for today, and touchingly so. I'll post the full lyrics below, for the curious, but here's the chorus and a concluding verse, which just kill me. 

Is this the best way we can secure our borders?
Is this the best way we can fight the drug war?
Screaming at children who have crawled through the desert
In a country build by…refugees.

Fleeing the streets of my Chamelecon
Was like jumping from the window of a building in flames
They're sending the first ones back to Honduras
All I can think is to try it again 

[I'll also post or link to a basic recording of her singing her version of Woody's "Deportee," backed by JB White.]

And, in tribute to Woody Guthrie in his 102nd year, here is a page of Woody's notes. Jeff Tweedy of Wilco fame, who was part of the Mermaid Avenue group that put to music some of the many songs Guthrie never finished, told NPR that being allowed to go through his diary and notes was like being allowed to touch a sacred historical object, comparable to the Declaration of Independence.

Woodyguthrienotebook
 

https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js

 Here are Rain Perry's full lyrics to the song — and here's her site.
 
My father would take me to the Rio Bermejo
In the beautiful forests of El Merendon

But seven young schoolgirls were found there last winter
Face down in the water with their backpacks still on

San Pedro Sula is no place for children
We flash our headlights to show we belong on our street
My brother’s wife Linda was shot on the sidewalk
Spray paint on my door – I took my daughters with me

Hasta Pronto Abuelo y Tia Lucia
I’m coming back home with my little familia
From this overfilled room near the Mexican border

On a big chartered airplane we are returnees
We slept in the churches — we slept under buses
My little girl brave holding my hand
600 miles till we’re crossing the border
A door in the distance like a lake in the sand

“Send them back with birth control”
“When they jump the fence, they’re breaking the law”
“mi casa no es su casa”
“Return to Sender” were the signs that we saw

Chorus

Fleeing the streets of my Chamelecon
Was like jumping from the window of a building in flame
They’re sending the first ones back to Honduras
And all I can think of is to try it again

Is this the best way we can secure our borders?
Is this the best we can fight the drug war?Screaming at children who have traveled the desert
In a country that was built by refugees

chorus

Uncorking catastrophic climate change? Tom Toles

As usual, Tom Toles finds a funny way to dramatize a disaster: a methane explosion in Siberia. 

Methanesiberia

Which raises the question: Well, how dangerous is the methane that is emerging from the Arctic? Is it just blowing holes in the permafrost, or does it presage global atmospheric doom?

It's not a small volume of methane, after all, and we know that methane in the short term is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2– about 30x more potent, to be exact. So the concept of a "methane time bomb" that will set off the greatly feared runaway global warming seems plausible at a glance. 

But look closer, says RealClimate, with lots and lots of data. (From last week.) They conclude: 

…the future of Earth’s climate in this century and beyond will be determined mostly by the fossil fuel industry, and not by Arctic methane. We should keep our eyes on the ball.