California Free Press

From the LA Times

Industry is the leading contributor to global warming. Yet at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco this week, industry leaders are pledging to take charge and reign in planet-warming emissions. Are these promises merely branding, or do they constitute a meaningful shift? Los Angeles Times — Pushing the boundaries of what a single state can do. The Atlantic — Gov. Jerry Brown was hailed as a climate-change hero in San Francisco. Still, protesters demanded that Brown take a stronger stand against the expansion of oil production in California. Many were part of a group that has challenged Brown throughout the year for what they see as having too close a relationship with the oil industry. Los Angeles Times — Climate scientists warn that global emissions need to peak by 2020 if the planet is to dodge catastrophic warming. At the summit Thursday, 27 cities announced they have already met that goal, and their emissions are on the decline even as their economies are growing. Los Angeles Times — A conservative view: California is going to pay a price for this. Wall Street Journal

 

Progress in LA on Homelessness

From the Los Angeles Times:

With a cluster of trailers on a downtown parking lot, the city of Los Angeles is launching the first in a string of multimillion-dollar shelters designed to relieve hundreds of homeless people while sweeping away squalid street camps that threaten Mayor Eric Garcetti’s political legacy. The $2.4-million shelter is set to open Monday for 45 homeless people in the El Pueblo historic district, as part of the city’s A Bridge Home crisis housing project. Officials hope to open 15 of the facilities by mid-2019, with a boost from one-time state homeless aid that could bring the program’s budget to $75 million. Los Angeles Times

Homeless in California from the LA Times

Essential California Send to friend | Open in browser   Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Tuesday, Sept. 4, and here’s what’s happening across California:   TOP STORIES When Los Angeles City Council members vowed to back a minimum number of new homeless housing units in each of their districts, it was clear hitting those numbers was going to be easier in some parts of L.A. than in others. Months later, some council districts have neared or breezed past the number, while a handful remain far from that target. Councilmen Gil Cedillo, Jose Huizar and Curren Price, who represent districts covering downtown, parts of the Eastside and South L.A., have already exceeded the goal. Los Angeles Times — A dramatic photo essay on L.A. landmarks and the homeless. Where do you take visitors in Los Angeles? Wherever you go, you’re almost sure to encounter homeless people. They are fixtures at almost every landmark, part of the landscape that defines the urban expanse. Los Angeles Times   Joseph Fabozzi, 50, lives under lifeguard towers in Long Beach. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)   — Dealing with the issue of homeless encampments and the brush fire danger. Los Angeles Times — The struggle of having a job and being homeless. One of the hardest parts: Can you tell your boss? LAist — San Francisco is trying a new way to track its homeless population. San Francisco Chronicle

 

What Global Warming Portends for California

Heat waves will grow more severe and persistent, shortening the lives of thousands of Californians. Wildfires will burn more of the state’s forests. The ocean will rise higher and faster, exposing California to billions in damage along the coast. These are some of the threats California will face from climate change in coming decades, according to a new statewide assessment. The projections come as Californians contend with destructive wildfires, brutal heat spells and record ocean temperatures that scientists say have the fingerprints of global warming. Los Angeles Times

— California’s coastal water temperatures are breaking records as well. And that might be the cause of a massive fish die-off in Malibu. Warming water temperatures can alter the marine food chain in various ways — bringing about toxic algae that make crabs, for example, dangerous to eat. Researchers are also seeing more warm-water animals, like jellyfish and stingrays, off the coast. Los Angeles Times

California's Destructive Summer Brings Blunt Talk About Climate Change

From the LA Times:

by RONG-GONG LIN II and JAVIER PANZAR, AUG 05, 2018

Facing temperatures in the 90s, Guillermo Salazar of Reseda takes a break from mountain biking at San Vicente Mountain Park in Los Angeles last month. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

At Scripps Pier in San Diego, the surface water reached the highest temperature in 102 years of records, 78.8 degrees.

Palm Springs had its warmest July on record, with an average of 97.4 degrees. Death Valley experienced its hottest month on record, with the average temperature hitting 108.1. Park rangers said the heat was too much for some typically hardy birds that died in the broiling conditions.

Across California, the nighttime brought little relief, recording the highest minimum temperature statewide of any month since 1895, rising to 64.9.

California has been getting hotter for some time, but July was in a league of its own. The intense heat fueled fires across the state, from San Diego County to Redding, that have burned more than 1,000 homes and killed eight. It brought heat waves that overwhelmed electrical systems, leaving swaths of Los Angeles without power for days.

Moreover, the extreme conditions — capping years of trends heading in this direction — have caused scientists and policymakers to speak more openly and emphatically about what is causing this dramatic shift.

A decade ago, some scientists would warn against making broad conclusions linking an extraordinary heat wave to global warming. But the pace of heat records being broken in California in recent years is leading more scientists here to assertively link climate change to unrelenting heat that is only expected to worsen as humans continue putting greenhouse gases in the air.

“In the past, it would just be kind of once in a while — the odd year where you be really warm,” state climatologist Michael Anderson said.

But the last five years have been among the hottest in 124 years of record keeping, Anderson said.

“That’s definitely an indication that the world is warming, and things are starting to change,” said Anderson, who manages the California Department of Water Resources’ state climate program. “We’re starting to see things where it’s different. It’s setting the narrative of climate change.”

California Fires Directly Linked to Climate Change

From the LA Times:

Where There’s Heat, There’s Fire
In the past, scientists have been reluctant to cite climate change as a major factor in California’s worsening wildfires. Not anymore. Experts in the field say the connection between rising temperatures in California and tinder-dry vegetation is becoming impossible to ignore. “The temperatures have just been almost inexorably warmer all the time,” says UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, and fires “burn more intensely if the fuels are extremely dry.” The death and destruction this month has only added to California’s worst wildfire year on record, which has left dozens dead since October and more than 10,000 structures lost. Here is the latest.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Lyft and Uber Taking Business Away from Parking Lots and Valet Services

by John Lawrence

First taxis saw their business decrease do to ride sharing services. Now parking lots are empty. Why pay for parking when you can Uber or Lyft to the restaurant or event. Parking in cities has become a nightmare and you pay through the nose. For the same money or less you can have someone drive you there. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that Ace Parking, the San Diego-based parking giant, has seen a 50% drop in nightclub valet traffic and a 25% drop in restaurant valet traffic. These parking lot owners have made a fortune in the past. Now they're only too willing to sell out their asphalt lots to condo developers that will at least replace all the black top with something more commercially viable. That's why you see high rises sprouting from every parking lot in San Diego with more on the way.

The LA Times reports:

Proper Parking, based in Woodland Hills, has seen a 70% drop in nightclub valet traffic since it started six years ago, said Brandon Helfer, the company’s president. In addition, it has seen a 30% drop in restaurant traffic and a 25% drop at weddings.

“At some nightclubs, we used to park 60 or 70 cars per night,” Helfer said. “It got to the point where we were parking 10 to 20.”

Nightclubs and restaurants, once pillars of the industry, are no longer reliable sources of revenue, Helfer said. In the industry’s heyday, valet companies used to turn such a profit off the gigs, they would pay the venue owners for the right to operate there.

Now the roles have reversed. Those same venues often have to pay the parking companies if they want a valet presence out front.

Helfer’s company is far from the only one affected. Parking expert Casey Wagner, who hosts a National Parking Assn. webinar on the rise of the sharing economy, said the numbers point to ride-hailing services taking a big bite out of the parking, car rental and taxi industries.

Proper Parking — founded in 2012, the year Uber rolled out its services in Los Angeles — was born into a world already familiar with ride-hailing services. It’s openly confronting the change in the industry, finding new ways to profit off its parking services and changing the ones that fail.

So technology is changing the world very rapidly. The interesting thing is that no one has to have a college education to be an Uber or Lyft driver. Now in San Diego there is a third ride sharing service: Bounce. It remains to be seen whether they can compete with the other two. One thing is sure. Nobody need be picked up for drunk driving these days. Even if they drive their own car to the wedding or bar, they can always leave it parked there and Uber or Lyft home, coming back the next day to pick it up. Id they had ride shared in the first place, it wouild have saved them a trip!