Results tagged “climate”

Los Angeles City Councilman Greig smith has brought up some legitimate points in the recent drought-related debates, but his most recent announcement about his scofflaw watering may be pushing it. Yesterday at a committee meeting, the Northwest Valley representative said he was challenging the current water laws by watering his lawn three times a week for 8 minutes. "And my grass is greener than it's ever been, and I bet I'm using less water," he said.

If you didn't know, Los Angeles is placed within quite a rare landscape, biologically speaking that is. There are only six Mediterranean Biomes in the world making up 2% of the world's land area and Southern California's coast and surrounding mountains are part of that. This is one of the reasons why congress in 1978 decided bring in the Santa Monica Mountains and the five northern Channel Islands into the Department of the Interior under the National Park Service. They were named the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and Channel Islands National Park.

As mentioned last week, a congressional subcommittee tomorrow will hold a hearing on the impact of climate change on National Parks in Twentynine Palms, CA. This is something that should be important to those living in the Los Angeles region because three major national parks units--Santa Monica Mountains, Channel Islands and Joshua Tree--are so close to millions of people.

On the heels of a state climate report that said California will have "less water and more frequent and intense wildfires, heat waves and bad-air days throughout this century," a congressional field hearing next week near Joshua Tree National Park will take on similar issues.

"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years," said Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, to NPR this week. Today, KCRW's To The Point looked into the issue further, even bringing up population problems as a contributor to causing the global climate change.

Los Angeles is in a drought. Without more rainfall, this city will be starting rationing very soon. New data was released today about our water shortage:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was named the villainous winner of the 2008 Heroes & Villains Face-Off in the just-released Holiday issue of Field & Stream magazine. His faults were closing state recreation areas in the midst of budget cuts while taking away funding for steelhead and salmon restorations. Then again, the magazine also named Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a hero for being an active hunter and fisherman.

Wednesday, a report from Cal State Fullerton told the health and economic risks of air pollution in Central and Southern California. And now this sobering news from a UC Berkely report, as told by the LA Times: "For the first time, the costs of global warming's projected effects in the nation's largest state have been quantified: About $2.5 trillion of real estate assets in California are at risk from extreme weather events, sea level rise and wildfires, with a projected annual price tag of between $300 million and $3.9 billion, according to a new report, "California Climate Risk and Response," written by UC Berkeley researchers Fredrich Kahrl and David Roland-Holst."

Today over at the Huffington Post, California Senator Barbara Boxer contributes her third post to the locally based blog and news site -- this time in an effort of advocacy: