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Paid Consultants Threaten Beaches

By Orrin H. Pilkey
Durham

North Carolina’s beaches face a lot of problems, including overdevelopment, rising sea level, rapid erosion rates, and a paucity of beach-compatible sand for beach replenishment. But the biggest threat to our beaches may be coastal engineering consultants.

The Bower Seawall, proposed for the town of Gualala, along the Mendocino Co. coastline in Northern California, would have adversely impacted sensitive bird and fisheries resources as well as public access at the mouth of the Gualala River in order to protect the backside of a supermarket. Read the rest of this entry »

Changes Place LNG Projects on Back Burner

Nation’s Natural Gas Imports Likely to Decline, Experts Say

By Timm Herdt (Contact)
Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Ventura County Star

II

t was just two years ago that three consonants strung together — LNG — spelled out one of the most contentious fighting words on the Ventura County coast. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/us/16pelicans.html?_r=1
January 16, 2009

In Pelican Mystery, Weather Is a Suspect

By JESSE McKINLEY
FAIRFIELD, Calif. —What’s wrong with California’s pelicans?

More than 400 endangered California brown pelicans have been found dead or dying since late December, with disoriented and starving birds turning up on highways, in backyards, and even in the Arizona desert.

Now, though, after an investigation with all manner of sinister theories — from bird flu to poisoning by lingering fire retardant used to fight the region’s wildfires — California fish and game officials say they are closing in on a more usual suspect: Mother Nature.

According to a preliminary report to be released on Thursday, many of the birds now flooding West Coast animal hospitals and rescue centers were caught in a brutal snowstorm and cold snap on the Oregon-Washington border in mid-December, setting off an arduous and often life-threatening commute to warmer climes. Read the rest of this entry »

“Pelicans have been hammered over the years by oil spills, DDT, domoic acid, fishing line, gunshots, starvation and parasites — we’re expert at dealing with those problems,” said David Weeshoff, a volunteer at the San Pedro center. “But right now, we’re scratching our heads over the cause of this event. Not a good deal.”

The coastal birds have been seen on highways, runways and in backyards, and they share symptoms of disorientation, fatigue and bruising. The phenomenon is stumping experts.

Wildlife rescuers from San Diego to San Francisco suddenly are facing a distressing biological mystery: Disoriented and bruised California brown pelicans are landing on highways and airport runways and in farm fields, alleys and backyards miles from their normal coastal haunts.

In the last week, the big brown birds known for flying in formation over beaches have been reported wobbling across Culver Boulevard in Playa del Rey and on a Los Angeles International Airport runway. Two dead pelicans were found on the 110 Freeway. Elsewhere, one smacked into a car.

“We’ve ruled out starvation because there are plenty of fish in coastal waters right now,” said Jay Holcomb, executive director of the Northern California-based International Bird Rescue Research Center. “We’re seeking answers from all the experts we can find.”

Brown pelicans plunged to near zero population growth in the 1960s and ’70s because the pesticide DDT infiltrated their food in nesting grounds such as Anacapa Island, about 11 miles off Oxnard. DDT residues in fish the pelicans consumed were believed to have prevented the mothers from depositing calcium in the shells of their eggs, which caused them to break easily.

When DDT was banned in the United States in 1972, the species started to recover. In February, the Interior Department announced a proposal to remove brown pelicans from the national endangered species list.

More than 70,000 breeding pairs of pelicans inhabit California and Baja California, and total numbers have surged to about 620,000 birds along the West Coast, Gulf Coast and Latin and South America.

By Louis Shahagun @ the Los Angeles Times

Ed note: The article below, from the LA Times, has some great quotes. Finally, it appears the scientists are catching on to what beach advocates and seawall armoring opponents have known – and have been saying – for decades: oceanfront homeowners, generally wealthy sorts, are destroying California beaches because they’ve built to close to the shore, refuse to move back, insist on ruining public sandy beaches with seawalls to ’save’ their property, which doesn’t work, and, oh yeah, the seas are rising faster than we ever thought!

The best line in the piece has to go to Ken Ehrlich, attorney for the beachfronting bandits, who apparently doesn’t realize his quote makes his clients look like self-centered *#@holes. He says: “There is no hidden agenda here. The owners are trying to protect and widen the beach so these public access issues will go away.” Doesn’t Ehrlich realize the irony: his clients illegal seawalls are destroying the beach, thereby ridding them of that pesky public access issue altogther. Too bad it’ll also wreck havoc on their own houses as well.

‘Drowned beaches’ is also a powerful term describing the result of decades of poor coastal land use policies in California. Look for that to become familiar. Why not go one step further: These people are waterboarding Califorinia beaches!

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-beach31-2008dec31,0,7928541.story
From the Los Angeles Times
Malibu’s vanishing Broad Beach a sign of rising sea levels, experts say
As wealthy homeowners build sandbag walls and plan more extensive, costly measures, scientists say the ocean could eventually defeat all such efforts.
By Kenneth R. Weiss

December 31, 2008

Broad Beach has long been a scenic backdrop to Malibu’s public access wars. The tranquil rhythm of surf has been routinely shattered by security guards and sheriff’s deputies bouncing beachgoers who spread towels on the confusing mosaic of public and private sand.

Today, Broad Beach has shrunk into a narrow sliver of its former self. And like other skinny Malibu icons, its slenderness qualified the beach for a different kind of trend-setting role: How California will deal with rising sea levels.

Sandwiched between the advancing sea and coastal armor built to protect multimillion-dollar homes, the strip of sand is being swept away by waves and tides. Soon, oceanographers and coastal engineers contend, the rising ocean will eclipse the clash between the beach-going public and the private property owners: There will be no dry sand left to fight over.

“If the latest projections of sea level rise are right, you can kiss goodbye the idea of a white sandy beach,” said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. “You are going to be jumping off the sea wall onto the rocks below.”

The rise of sea levels, which have swelled about eight inches in the last century, are projected to accelerate with global warming.

A group of scientists this month once again elevated those projections, suggesting that a rise of up to two feet predicted last year by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change could easily double or more within the next century. The new numbers, outlined in a study commissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, take into account the latest data and observations of glacial and land ice melting, which send torrents of fresh water into the ocean.
Read the rest of this entry »

“I eat rejection like a sandwich. It makes me stronger”

“Tough times will always end. Tough men don’t.”

Bob Ragland

SURFING
In one place we came upon a large company of naked natives, of both sexes and all ages, amusing themselves with the national pastime of surf- bathing. Each heathen would paddle three or four hundred yards out to sea (taking a short board with him), then face the shore and wait for a particularly prodigious billow to come along; at the right moment he would fling his board upon its foamy crest and himself upon the board, and here he would come whizzing by like a bombshell! It did not seem that a lightning express-train could shoot along at a more hair-lifting speed. I tried surf-bathing once, subsequently, but made a failure of it. I got the board placed right, and at the right moment, too; but missed the connection myself. The board struck the shore in three-quarters of a second, without any cargo, and I struck the bottom about the same time, with a couple of barrels of water in me. None but natives ever master the art of surf-bathing thoroughly.

Roughing It

By Mark Twain

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can

learn to surf.”

-Swami Satchidananda

“The only function of ‘economic forecasting’ is to make astrology look respectable.”

-JOHN KENNTH GALBRAITH