NEWS
• Heritage Distilling Co. (HDC) is celebrating the
grand opening of its brand new Eugene facility 5 pm
Friday, Oct. 7, at 110 Madison Street with a ribbon
cutting, pipes and drums, blessing of the stills and
samples of HDC’s products.
• Community LendingWorks, a nonprofit Community
Development Financial Institution (CDFI) based in
Springfield, Salem and Oregon City, was awarded a
$500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Treasury’s
CDFI Fund. “The award will enable Community
LendingWorks to increase lending and investment
activity in low-income and economically distressed
communities across Oregon,” the nonprofit says.
• October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
“To promote awareness and prevention efforts, and to
foster widespread collaboration in creating safe
relationships and communities,” Womenspace says it
will be partnering with several local businesses
throughout the month, including Oct. 11 at The Bier Stein,
with 100 percent of the proceeds of a keg donated by
Falling Sky going to the Womenspace; Pints for a Cause
Oct. 13 at Ninkasi; Sweet Life Petite donates 20 percent
of daily sales Oct. 24; and Plank Town will donate 10
percent of daily sales Oct. 25. For additional information
about Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2016, please
contact Womenspace at 541-485-8232 or visit
womenspaceinc.org or womenspace/facebook.
LANE COUNTY AREA
SPRAY SCHEDULE
Oxbow Timber 1, 541-679-3322, plans to hire RRC
Forestry Roseburg Resources, 541-679-3311, to aerially
apply urea fertilizer to 2,655.2 acres south of Veneta and
west of Lorane in Lane and Douglas counties near the
North Sister, South Sister, Panther, Wolf, Jeff, Pheasant,
Shaw, Sweden, Fish and Beaver creeks and the Smith
River. See ODF notification 2016-781-11215, call Dan
Menk at 541-935-2283 with questions.
Compiled by Gary Hale, Forestland Dweller, 541-342-8332, forest-
landdwellers.org.
POLLUTION UPDATE
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
(DEQ) fined Shola Adeniji (doing business as Shola’s
Quality Plus Cleaners, located on Bailey Hill Road in
Eugene) $525 on Sept. 19 for failing to submit an annual
report for 2015 to DEQ. The report was due March 1,
2016, and according to DEQ, such reports “are an
important mechanism for DEQ to ensure that dry cleaners
are complying with Oregon’s waste minimization
regulations.” DEQ also noted in its cover letter to Adeniji
that “[s]olvents used for dry cleaning can be toxic and
therefore harmful to the public and the environment.”
DEQ sent reminder letters to Adeniji about the report in
March, April, May and June, followed by a warning letter
on June 17 and a pre-enforcement notice on July 12.
Doug Quirke/Oregon Clean Water Action Project
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
METEOROLOGIST ADDRESSES
CHEMTRAIL THEORIES
From chemtrails to contrails, LCC talk to discuss
climate science and pseudoscience
S
tanding on the sidewalk, you look up in the sky
and see a curious crosshatching of straight white
streaks. These are airplane contrails — clouds
formed when water vapor condenses and freezes
around small particles that exist in aircraft ex-
haust, according to NASA.
But to some in Eugene, these streaks are ominous
signs of government engineering, and they call them
“chemtrails.” Lane Community College Dean of Science
Paul Ruscher, who has a doctorate in atmospheric scienc-
es from Oregon State University, will debunk the chem-
trail conspiracy
in an Oct. 26
talk, “Chemtrails,
Climate Science
and Clickbait: A
Meteorologist’s
View of Pseudo-
science,” as part
of Earth Science
Week at LCC.
The idea for
his talk started
when he was
teaching climate
change and atmo-
spheric sciences
courses at LCC, Ruscher says. He would take students
outside and they showed a “tremendous interest in con-
trails,” with a number of them expressing the idea that
they thought they were geoengineered to modify the cli-
mate.
A number of recent letters to the editor in EW have
expressed similar ideas and related theories.
Ruscher will use science to move the discussion away
from chemtrails and into contrails, he says. When it
comes to global warming, he says, these airplane emis-
sions “work like greenhouse gases; they do warm the at-
mosphere.”
People are indeed seeing more contrails these days,
Ruscher says, as jets are able to fly higher into the atmo-
sphere and air traffic has increased. Also, he says, you
can predict when contrails will persist, depending on how
much water vapor there is in the atmosphere.
He refers those interested in participating in studying
this phenomenon to citizen-science projects such as the
The talk will use science
to move the discussion
away from chemtrails and
into contrails.
IT’S
ABOUT
TIME
BY D AV I D WA G N E R
10
October 6, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com
GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the
Environment) program, in which citizens can document
clouds and contrails in the interest of science.
Some chemtrail believers are concerned for the envi-
ronment, he says, while others are on the conspiracy side,
believing government poisoning is going on. But Ruscher
says he sees “very little appreciation for how human ac-
tivities can change what happens in the atmosphere.” And
Ruscher says that while cloud seeding to create rain hap-
pens in other areas of North America, it doesn’t happen in
the rainy Pacific Northwest.
Ruscher adds
that he also wants
to discuss the idea
of “climatoblivia,”
a concept he is
working on that
encompasses those
who are oblivious
to understanding
climate
change
because they think
it doesn’t directly
— PA U L R U S C H E R , L C C
affect them and
those who want to
wear blinders to
ignore it.
He points out that his talk and its focus on climate
change is particularly timely as Hurricane Matthew hits
the Caribbean and the European Parliament voted Oct. 4
to back the Paris accord to fight climate change. The Paris
agreement enters into force when at least 55 countries, rep-
resenting 55 percent of global emissions, have joined.
European Union approval pushes it over that threshold.
The U.S. and China already signed on. The accord seeks to
limit greenhouse gas emissions and keep global tempera-
ture increases “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahr-
enheit).
Ruscher says he hopes his talk will clear up some cli-
mate change misconceptions.
“Climate Science, Chemtrails and Clickbait: A Meteorologist’s View of Pseu-
doscience” is 7 pm Wednesday, Oct. 26, rescheduled from Oct. 13, at the Lane
Community College Downtown Campus, Room 112. The talk will be followed
by a Q&A. The event is free and open to the public. For more on GLOBE, go to
observer.globe.gov. Meanwhile, Eugene Citizens Against Geoengineering/Chem-
trails is holding a forum of its own to discuss “possible health hazards” 6 pm Oct.
20 at the Eugene Garden Club, 1645 High Street, also free and open to the public.
he equinox passing is reflected in
shorter days. The rate of change itself
changes. Change in day length is fastest
at equinox and slowest at solstice. The
day-to-day change at equinox is about 3
minutes a day but only 30 seconds a day at
winter solstice.
At the end of September, seeds of incense
cedar were scattered to the winds and now their
cones are raining down. The cones of incense
cedar decompose over winter and are gone by
spring.
The cones of Douglas fir, however, remain on
the trees long after seeds are shed and then rot
slowly after they finally fall to the ground. In late
summer many of them are cut down by squirrels
and hidden under logs until recovered later for a
meal.
T
The cone scales are chewed away to expose
the tender, nutritious seeds. Squirrels leave piles of
cone scales at the end of logs where they were
munched. The cones of true firs disintegrate from
top down. The scales and seeds fall separately, a
few at a time.
Long dry spells have caused bigleaf maple
leaves to dry and turn brown early. Bracken ferns
are getting brown on the roadsides and will
collapse after the first hard frost. The lady fern will
likewise keel over with a frost. Mosquito ferns on
Delta Ponds are turning deeper and deeper red as
temperatures dip to freezing. Sword fern, deer fern
and spleenwort are evergreen ferns. Spleenworts
are not common, so finding one is special.
David Wagner is a botanist who works in Eugene. He teaches
moss classes, leads nature walks and makes nature calendars.
Contact him directly at fernzenmosses@me.com.