I hope your 2016 is creative, happy, and full of love. I hope you win the Lotto (after me).
Happy New Year from Coyote Gulch
Day: January 1, 2016
#Snowpack news: Gallery of early January snowpack maps since 2011
Statewide snowpack map January 1, 2016 via the NRCS
Statewide snowpack map January 6, 2015 via the NRCS
Statewide snowpack as a percent of average January 2, 2014
Statewide snowpack map January 4, 2013 via the NRCS
Statewide snowpack map January 5, 2012 via the NRCS
Statewide snowpack map January 6, 2011 via the NRCS
#Snowpack news: 2015 puts Sierra Nevada-#ColoradoRiver Basin linkage in stark relief — John Fleck
If you care about Colorado River Basin water, it behooves you to pay attention to the snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada. It’s an entirely different watershed, but 2015 demonstrated how the interconnections in California’s plumbing have left the two inextricably linked.
The tl;dr version of two interrelated points below:
California’s drought has put pressure on the Colorado River, as Southern California turns east for more water to make up for shortfalls from the north. Despite California’s problems, the overall Colorado River Basin is holding up – able in a subpar year on the Colorado to deliver the extra water to L.A. and San Diego while ending the year with total reservoir storage unchanged from last year at this time. The system is in a tenuous but encouraging balance.
2015: The Year We Found Out #ExxonKnew — InsideClimate News
From InsideClimate News (David Hasemyer):
The lengthening list of Americans calling for more investigations of ExxonMobil Corp.’s behavior on climate change includes members of Congress, three presidential candidates, dozens of climate scientists and Glenda Poliner, a San Diego grandmother.
She was one of almost 9,000 people who signed a petition calling on California Attorney General Kamala Harris to investigate whether Exxon misled the public on global warming. Poliner, a schoolteacher who says she has a second grandchild on the way, included a note to Harris, a Democrat.
“I almost told my daughter to not have children because they would be facing a steadily deteriorating world because of the actions of companies such as ExxonMobil,” she said in the note. “These companies must be held accountable for their misdeeds. Please continue to do everything in your power to reverse this devastation.”
From the halls of Congress to the campaign trail to households across the nation, there is a roiling call for federal and state prosecutors to probe what Exxon knew about climate change and whether it broke consumer and shareholder protection laws in what it communicated to the public. Petitions and other public demands for investigations follow the publication of investigative stories by InsideClimate News and other news organizations that showed Exxon was at the forefront of global warming research decades ago until it launched campaigns to cast doubt on climate science and delay action.
Exxon is already the target of a probe by the state attorney general in New York, though the inquiry was opened months before the nationwide clamor for action began. Investigators for Democratic Attorney General Eric Schneiderman subpoenaed Exxon records last month spanning four decades of research findings and communications about climate change.
“We’re not just shouting this into the wind,” said R.L. Miller, president of the political advocacy group Climate Hawks Vote. Her organization called on U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and California’s Harris to open probes into Exxon.
