UC Berkeley wants to mow down urban forest

We’ll begin with the opening of a stunning report from Randy Shaw at California Progress Report:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is moving to chop down 22,000 trees in Berkeley’s historic Strawberry and Claremont Canyons and over 60,000 more in Oakland. This destructive plan is rapidly moving forward with little publicity, and FEMA cleverly scheduled its three public meetings for mid and late May while UC Berkeley students were in finals or gone for the summer.

UC Berkeley has applied for the grant to destroy the bucolic Strawberry and Claremont Canyon areas, claiming that the trees pose a fire hazard. The school has no plans to replant, and instead will cover 20% of the area in wood chips two feet deep. And it will pour between 700 and 1400 gallons of herbicide to prevent re-sprouting, including the highly toxic herbicide, Roundup. People are mobilizing against this outrageous proposal, which UC Berkeley has done its best to keep secret.

Read the rest.

The massive deforesting operation in one of the East Bay’s most scenic areas is part of a FEMA project officially entitled “East Bay Hills Hazardous Fire Risk Reduction.”

Targets of the chainsaws will be non-native trees, especially eucalyptus.

Details from the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement [posted here]:

UCB submitted two grant applications under the PDM [Pre-Disaster Mitigation — esnl] program: one for a 56.3-acre area designated Strawberry Canyon-PDM in this EIS and one for a 42.8-acre area designated Claremont-PDM. To reduce the potential for these areas to support and spread wildfires, UCB proposes to eliminate eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and other non-native trees that promote the spread of wildfire. Oak and bay trees and other native vegetation present under the larger non-native trees would be preserved and encouraged to expand.

The environmental review did consider alternatives, including a required “no action” version in which existing management practices would continue. Here’s the relevant portion for the UC Berkeley land:

UCB would continue annual removal of grass and light, flashy fuels (such as twigs, needles, and grasses that ignite and burn rapidly) from UCB roadsides, UCB turnouts, and within 100 feet of UCB structures and adjacent private residences. UCB would also work to maintain the strategic areas where fuel reduction projects have been completed during the past 10 years to ensure eradication of target species of vegetation that have already been removed. UCB would continue to pursue fuel reduction within 30 feet of private and public structures to create defensible space in accordance with its 2020 Hill Area Fire Fuel Management Program.

And some more details from the environmental statement focusing on the Berkeley part of the project:

The UCB grant application includes two project areas in which approximately 22,000 non-native trees would be cut down, including all eucalyptus, Monterey pine, and acacia trees. The goal is to reduce the amount of fuel in the project areas by allowing the forest to convert from a eucalyptus-dominated, non-native forest to a native forest of California bay laurel, oak, big-leaf maple, California buckeye, California hazelnut, and other native tree and shrub species currently present beneath the eucalyptus and other non-native trees. The native species would provide less fuel to potential wildfires than the non-native species currently provide.

Felled trees up to approximately 24 inches in diameter at breast height (DBH) would be cut up into chips 1 to 4 inches long and the chips would be spread on up to 20% of each site to a maximum depth of 24 inches. UCB expects the chips to largely decompose within 5 years.

Branches from trees greater than 24 inches DBH would be cut up and scattered on the site (lopped and scattered). The trunks of these trees would typically be cut into 20- to 30-foot lengths. Some tree trunks would be placed to help control sediment and erosion or support wildlife habitat. Some tree trunks may be moved to an adjacent portion of the hillside or shipped for use as fuel, a source of paper pulp, or horse bedding.

Three temporary access roads are anticipated to be required for the proposed Claremont-PDM project. The three roads would be 12 feet wide and total approximately 2,600 feet long.

Completion of the initial vegetation reduction work is expected to require up to 40 weeks spread over 2 to 3 years. Maintenance would continue for up to 10 years after initial tree cutting.

The last chance for spoken public comments will come tomorrow [Saturday] morning in Oakland, with a hearing scheduled for 10 a.m. to noon at the Claremont Middle School, 5750 College Avenue.

Written comments will be received until 17 June at the following places:

• At the project website.
• By email at EBH-EIS-FEMA-RIX@fema.dhs.gov
• By snail mail sent to P.O. Box 72379, Oakland, CA 94612-8579
• And by fax at 510-627-7147

Project opponents have created their own website here.

And here, from the environmental statement, is the site of the proposed action in Strawberry Canyon:

 

A bad week for the nuclear power cabal

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the ongoing controversy over Southern California’s San Onofre nuclear power plant, a reminder that nuclear industry woes aren’t confined to California.

First, a report of the latest shutdown, this time on the East Coast. John Murawski of the Raleigh News & Observer reports:

Duke Energy Progress shut down the Shearon Harris nuclear plant in Wake County on Wednesday after the company discovered that the reactor vessel – which holds the plant’s nuclear fuel and contains the nuclear reaction – showed early indications of corrosion and cracking.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported Thursday morning that plant officials made the discovery earlier this week during a review of ultrasonic data that had been recorded in spring 2012.

The year-old data showed a one-quarter-inch flaw in the reactor vessel head, the term for the lid that is bolted on top of the vessel to maintain superheated water under high pressure.

Read the rest.

More from NBC News outlet WITN:

Duke Energy owns the Shearon Harris plant, which began operations in 1987.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the quarter inch crack was not all the way through the reactor wall and there’s no indication any radioactive material escaped.

The NRC says the plant was shut down so crews could repair the crack. It says there is no impact “to the health and safety of employees or the public.”

Read the rest.

And the problems aren’t confined to the coasts, either.

Problems in Michigan, cracks once again

From Henry Erb of NBC affiliate WOOD in Grand Rapids, Michigan:

Authorities say they’ve found the crack that led to “slightly radioactive water” spilling from the Palisades nuclear power plant into Lake Michigan.

The Covert Township plant was shut down May 5 after about 79 gallons of slightly radioactive spilled into a pond that flows into Lake Michigan. Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said the water did not pose a public health risk. The leak was in a 300,000-gallon tank used to hold water that floods and cools the nuclear reactor during refueling and in the event of a problem.

The problem was a half-inch crack in the welding around one of nine nozzles in the tank, authorities said Monday. Three of those have been replaced and every weld and every nozzle is now being checked. The entire bottom of the tank is also being checked.

Read the rest.

And here’s a report from WOOD featuring an interview with Congressional Rep. Fred Upton [R-St. Joseph]:

Perhaps we’re getting a signal. . .

Quote of the day: Words from a famous writer

When we first met Louis L’Amour in 1981, he was the best-selling writer in history, having written more books that had sold a million copies plus each than anyone who’d ever put ink to paper.

What follows is from our  profile of Louis for the 25 October 1982 Christian Science Monitor. The words as timelier than ever:

“We are using the resources of this planet far too rapidly. No one is thinking about the future. Our country has become too much a country of ‘now.’ We forget that no one ever truly ‘owns’ the land. We possess it in trust, to pass on to those who follow. And we should leave our trust better than we found it. That’s why I’ve always planted trees wherever I’ve lived.”

>snip<

“I remember a Jicarilla Apache I met in Colorado. He was looking for arrowheads. Whenever he found one, he would open a buckskin pouch he carried and sprinkle some of its contents on the ground where he had picked up the artifact. The pouch contained earth. He was giving back to the land something to replace what he had taken.

“That’s a highly symbolic gesture that should speak to us today. The earth is not something to be looted. It is to be cherished. Instead of looting the earth, we should rebuild, and leave it a better place for the next generation.”

And for a change of pace, clouds and an ocean

Thoughts have been in Paris of late, leading to these shots from 35,000 feet taken on our return from our last visit there.

Click on any image to enlarge:

2 February 2007, Nikon D200, ISO 500, 31 mm, 1/640 sec, f13

2 February 2007, Nikon D200, ISO 500, 50 mm, 1/1000 sec, f16

2 February 2007, Nikon D200, ISO 500, 46 mm, 1/1000 sec, f16

2 February 2007, Nikon D200, ISO 500, 50 mm, 1/1250 sec, f18

2 February 2007, Nikon D200, ISO 500, 40 mm, 1/1000 sec, f16

2 February 2007, Nikon D200, ISO 500, 52 mm, 1/1250 sec, f18

2 February 2007, Nikon D200, ISO 500, 70 mm, 1/1250 sec, f18

Quote of the day: A problem of incompatibility

From Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, quoted by Audrey Clark for VTDigger:

“We’re a small-group animal, both genetically and culturally. We have evolved to relate to groups of somewhere between 50 and 150 people,” he said. “And now suddenly we’re trying to live in a group not of 150 or 100 people, but of seven billion people, somewhat over seven billion people at the moment, and that is presenting us with a whole array of problems.”

Those problems include an inability to recognize gradual, large-scale changes in our environment as dangerous.

“Another thing that’s related to that, that’s presenting us with a whole array of problems, is that most of our evolution going on now is cultural evolution,” Ehrlich went on. “And the problem is cultural evolution has not gone on at the same rate in every area of human endeavor. Where has it gone on most rapidly? It’s gone on most rapidly in the area of technology.”

Headline of the day: They’re on to something!

From Spiegel:

Less Is More: Rogue Economists Champion Prosperity without Growth

Chart of the day: Economy or environment?

From Gallup, the latest annual poll results focusing on a question premised on a false dichotomy:

Headlines of the day: Pinnipeds to curmudgeons

First, the headline, from the Los Angeles Times:

‘Unusual mortality event’ is declared for the California sea lion

The federal designation comes after sickly sea lion pups have been found stranded on beaches from Santa Barbara to San Diego at rates exponentially higher than in years past

And then there’s this dramatic new sea lion discovery, via UC Santa Cruz:

Finally, there’s this, from the European Journal of Social Psychology [H/T to Metafilter]:

Refusing to apologize can have psychological benefits (and we issue no mea culpa for this research finding)

Headlines of the day: Forests, being eaten away

From Al Jazeera:

Ireland mulls selling forests to pay debt

Controversial new scheme is part of efforts to meet IMF demands to reduce debt

From the Washington Post:

China’s disposable chopstick addiction is destroying its forests

Chart of the day: The Great Global Land Grab

From BEHIND THE BRANDS: Food justice and the “Big 10” food and beverage companies, a new Oxfam report [PDF} on the power and politics of food. For more information, see this Oxfam website. Click on the image to enlarge.

Simply Ah-mazing: A fiery rain on the Sun

An amazing just-released video from NASA that offers both compelling imagery and a humbling reminder of our place in the scale of things. Click on the gear symbol, raise the quality level to 1080, then pop up to full screen for the full, majestic impact:

From NASA:

Eruptive events on the sun can be wildly different. Some come just with a solar flare, some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and some with complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun’s atmosphere, the corona.

On July 19, 2012, an eruption occurred on the sun that produced all three. A moderately powerful solar flare exploded on the sun’s lower right hand limb, sending out light and radiation. Next came a CME, which shot off to the right out into space. And then, the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays — a phenomenon known as coronal rain.

Over the course of the next day, hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, themselves, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms, which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface.

The footage in this video was collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s AIA instrument. SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds, and the movie plays at 30 frames per second, so each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time. The video covers 12:30 a.m. EDT to 10:00 p.m. EDT on July 19, 2012.
Music: “Thunderbolt” by Lars Leonhard, courtesy of artist.

Headines of the day: The wonders of nature

From the Brisbane [Australia] Times:

Mutant cane toads invade Gladstone

From Science News:

Sea slug carries disposable penis, plus spares

Video alert: The Rise of the ‘Biotechnosciences’

A critical debunking of the genomics craze from two different perspectives, by way of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce [RSA]:

The program notes:

Leading-edge bioscience promised so much — but did it really deliver? Renowned neuroscientist Steven Rose and sociologist Hilary Rose visit the RSA to tackle the claims of the bioscience industry head on.

Bear in mind that the same hype and promises of vast wealth tackled by the Roses is also at the core of UC Berkeley’s new direction as the self-designated scientific hub of the “green energy revolution,” premised on the use of genetically engineered microbes and plants to replace our addiction to fossil fuels.

Headline of the day: Call it a wonder of nature

From the Washington Post:

Albatross named Wisdom astounds scientists by producing chick at age 62

Quote of the day: Headed for the last Roundup?

From Farm Industry News, reporting on the infestation of half of America’s farms by so-called superweeds, plants with genetic resistance to the glyphosate, the weedkiller in Monsanto’s market-dominating Roundup:

The area of U.S. cropland infested with glyphosate-resistant weeds has expanded to 61.2 million acres in 2012, according to a survey conducted by Stratus Agri-Marketing.

Nearly half (49%) of all U.S. farmers interviewed reported that glyphosate-resistant weeds were present on their farm in 2012, up from 34% of farmers in 2011. The survey also indicates that the rate at which glyphosate-resistant weeds are spreading is gaining momentum, increasing 25% in 2011 and 51% in 2012.

The Stratus Glyphosate Resistance Tracking study is conducted annually. It’s now in its third year. In 2012, Stratus completed interviews with nearly 3,000 farmers during the summer and fall.

Read the rest.

Chemo Chronicles: From fug to fugue

Despite the nausea, constipation, and other sundry physical effects of the cancer chemotherapy we’re undergoing, we’d have to say the worst impact has been the creeping mental miasma.

Regular esnl readers have no doubt detected the results in the decline of frequency and depth of our posts, initially the result of the simple shock that comes from learning your body has turned on itself, followed by the physical shock of two surgeries.

Besides the loss of a cancerous bladder and prostate, we also find ourselves with a new means of draining our kidneys, thanks to the removal of a section of intestine and its reshaping into a conduct to carry urine from our surgically truncated uterers into a puckering pink urine-dripping extrusion [stoma] to the right of our navel.

There was pain after both surgeries [the first via catheter, the second by a large incision now commemorated in in a scar running betwixt navel to pubis, we stopped taking painkillers two days after leaving the hospital, leaving us an unwanted surplus of Percocets.

While the process of getting used to wearing what’s colorfully called an “urostomy bag” proved something of a trial, we managed to adapt to the stoma-drip-catching self-adhesive bags with the minimum of extra trips to the laundry.

But the biopsy showed the cancer, a rather rare micropapillary breed, had spread to at least one lymph node, and hence the four-month chemo regime, starting with our first double hit 8 January.

Of our three monthly sessions, the first is the real shit-kicker, a double dose of chemical cocktails administered over five hours. The nausea began on the second day, and lingered two more days, kept in relative check by another two-part chemical cocktail. Nine days of constipation began on the second day after the session, adding a whole new level of discomfort and ended only by a trip to the emergency room.

What still lingered was a peculiar sort of mental lethargy, a lingering mentational malady which allowed us to read a dozen hours a day but without the fuel to synthesize my responses into writing. Hence the decline in frequency of posting.

Our progeny and several friends had been urging us to get a medical marijuana letter, so we finally did, overcoming our natural inclination to add our name to yet another list.

So we became a member of a local medical marijuana club, and have now procured our first-ever California-legal weed. The only previous legal drugs we’d experienced had been our first dose of LSD in 1966, swallowed the night before it became illegal in Nevada, and hashish we bought at an Amsterdam coffee house in 2006 on the same trip where we bought a batch of just-plucked Psilocybin mushrooms procured from one of those now-closed Smart Shops legally offering both ’shrooms and live peyote cacti.

We mention this because we’re no strangers to cannabis, and we’ve done more than our share [1966-72] of psychedelics, with 2006 being our last experience of the latter.

We learned a lot about mind-altering drugs during our three-year service as scribe and block print carver for a Tantric Hindu artist and non-guru guru. The Tantrics and Shavites have developed a Prime Directive of cannabis use which we still follow: Never consume or ingest cannabis within three hours of eating. The reason is simple: Cannabis pulls blood into the brain, and when you consume while you’re digesting you create a conflict, with blood craved by the brain diverted to the digestive system, and leading to lethargy and sleepiness.

29 January 2013, Panasonic DMZ-ZS19, ISO 400, 12.5 mm, 1/50 sec, f5

With a chemo-sensitized gut, we followed the rules today, and the result has been a distinct lifting of the mental lethargy, using the fruits of our visit to the Berkeley club a block from Casa esnl: A free Rhino Pellet [a cinnamon cookie made with cannabis-infused butter], an oral nocturnal cannabis and essential oil tincture [left], and a pinch of hash to brighten up our minor remnant of some seven-year-old Humboldt homegrown.

Our stomach is calm, our energy and mood increased to the point we tackled some serious house cleaning/organizing, and we’ve also done more posts than usual.

Intimations of other benefits

We also bear in mind that a growing body of research indicates that a non-psychoactive component of cannabis inhibits growth in cancer cells.

As San Francisco Chronicle reporter Victoria Colliver wrote last 18 September:

A growing body of early research shows a compound found in marijuana – one that does not produce the plant’s psychotropic high – seems to have the ability to “turn off” the activity of a gene responsible for metastasis in breast and other types of cancers.

Two scientists at San Francisco’s California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute first released data five years ago that showed how this compound – called cannabidiol – reduced the aggressiveness of human breast cancer cells in the lab.

>snip<

“The preclinical trial data is very strong, and there’s no toxicity. There’s really a lot of research to move ahead with and to get people excited,” said Sean McAllister, who along with scientist Pierre Desprez, has been studying the active molecules in marijuana – called cannabinoids – as potent inhibitors of metastatic disease for the past decade.

Red the rest.

The National Cancer Institute website is less adulatory on its Cannabis and Cannabinoids web page, noting only this:

No clinical trials of Cannabis as a treatment for cancer in humans were identified in a PubMed search; however, a single small study of intratumoral injection of delta-9-THC in patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme reported potential antitumoral activity.

Donald Abrams, chief of oncology at UCSF physician said this to NBC News:

“If this plant were discovered in the Amazon today, scientists would be falling all over each other to be the first to bring it to market.”

And consider this, from the Science Updates blog of Cancer Research UK:

Through many detailed experiments, handily summarised in this recent article in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer, scientists have discovered that various cannabinoids (both natural and synthetic) have a wide range of effects in the lab, including:

• Triggering cell death, through a mechanism called apoptosis
• Stopping cells from dividing
• Preventing new blood vessels from growing into tumours
• Reducing the chances of cancer cells spreading through the body, by stopping cells from moving or invading neighbouring tissue
• Speeding up the cell’s internal ‘waste disposal machine’ – a process known as autophagy – which can lead to cell death

All these effects are thought to be caused by cannabinoids locking onto the CB1 and CB2 cannabinoid receptors. It also looks like cannabinoids can exert effects on cancer cells that don’t involve cannabinoid receptors, although it isn’t yet clear exactly what’s going on there.

Read the rest.

And go here [PDF] for a 2010 metareview of medical studies, including Multiple Sclerosis, chronic pain, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS, nausea, brain cancer, and more.

And another wrapup’s here.

The bottom line: Since we’re engaged in fighting cancer, we’ll take all the help we can get.

[Oh, and as for psilocybin, see here and here.]

Quote of the day: Not so great expectations

From James Howard Kunstler, writing at Clusterfuck Nation:

What’s obvious to me is what I have been fearing about this country for some time now: that all the disorders of our time would prompt a campaign to defend the status quo at all costs and to sustain the unsustainable. That is really the master wish behind all the political hijinks of the day, especially the pervasive accounting fraud in all high-order money matters. We see the comforts and conveniences of modernity slipping away and we’ll do anything to try to hang onto them, including lying to ourselves to such an immersive degree about what is really happening that we suppose we can manufacture a happy counter-reality. That’s at the heart of zero interest rate policies, and Federal Reserve manipulation of markets, and statistical misreporting from all the national agencies charged with adding things up. So, the Fed pumps its $90 billion-a-month and the Standard & Poor’s index inflates like an old tire while ten thousand more families get added to the food stamp rolls, and the banks sit on enough foreclosed property to fill the state of Indiana, and another 25-year-old college loan debt serf ODs on vodka and Xanax because he finally understands that even bankruptcy will not save him from perpetual penury.

Apparently, there are moments in history when nations just get lost. I maintain that things would go a whole lot better for us if we acknowledge what is actually going on, namely: a major shift of direction into economic contraction after 200-plus thrilling years of expanding energy resources and easy-to-get material riches. It’s in the nature of this world that things cycle and pulse, and we have entered a certain phase of the cycle that demands certain responses. We have to make the scale of human activities smaller, finer, simpler, and more rooted to the local particulars of place. We have to let go of WalMart and globalism and driving cars incessantly and attempting to manage the affairs of people half a world a way… and we just can’t imagine engaging with this endeavor. That is true poverty of imagination.

Read the rest.

Headline of the day: Pissing in our own well

From Pro Publica:

Message from Mexico: U.S. Is Polluting Water It May Someday Need to Drink

Quote of the day: Madness from the laboratory

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is one of the world’s leading research centers in nanotechnology, the fabrication of incredibly small particles of chemicals that behave in strange ways because of their very tiny size.

But there’s the potential for billions, even trillions in profits, so the rush to develop commercial applications surges forward, while concerns for the health of humans and the rest of the biosphere lag far behind.

From Heather Millar, writing in Orion magazine:

Some published research has shown that inhaled nanoparticles actually become more toxic as they get smaller. Nano–titanium dioxide, one of the most commonly used nanoparticles (Pop-Tarts, sunblock), has been shown to damage DNA in animals and prematurely corrode metals. Carbon nanotubes seem to penetrate lungs even more deeply than asbestos.

What little we know about the environmental effects of nanoparticles—and it isn’t very much—also raises some red flags. Nanoparticles from consumer products have been found in sewage wastewater, where they can inhibit bacteria that help break down the waste. They’ve been found to accumulate in plants and stunt their growth. Another study has shown that gold nanoparticles become more concentrated as they move up the food chain from plants to herbivores.

>snip<

As a society, we’ve been here before—releasing a “miracle technology” before its potential health and environmental ramifications are understood, let alone investigated. Remember how DDT was going to stamp out malaria and typhus and revolutionize agriculture? How asbestos was going to make buildings fireproof? How bisphenol A (BPA) would make plastics clear and nearly shatterproof? How methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) would make gasoline burn cleanly? How polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were going to make electrical networks safer? How genetically modified organisms (GMOs) were going to end hunger?

Read the rest.

Thursday night shaker above Berkeley Lab

UPDATE: A 1.8 aftershock with the same epicenter followed Friday at 4:59:17 p.m. measuring 1.8. Details here.

The epicenter was just above Grizzly Peak Boulevard at the eastern end of the Tilden Park golf course.

From the quake’s web page of the U.S. Geological website:

Magnitude	2.1
Date-Time	Friday, January 25, 2013 at 05:12:27 UTC Thursday, January 24, 2013 at 09:12:27 PM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location	37.885°N, 122.222°W
Depth	8.4 km (5.2 miles)
Region	SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, CALIFORNIA
Distances	4 km (2 miles) W (274°) from Orinda, CA 5 km (3 miles) ENE (72°) from Berkeley, CA 6 km (3 miles) ESE (115°) from Kensington, CA 10 km (6 miles) N (3°) from Oakland, CA
Location Uncertainty	horizontal +/- 0.2 km (0.1 miles); depth +/- 0.2 km (0.1 miles)
Parameters	Nph= 44, Dmin=0 km, Rmss=0.08 sec, Gp=