LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — Lake County Animal Care and Control has a mix of adult dogs and puppies waiting to be adopted this week.
Dogs available for adoption this week include mixes of basset hound, German shepherd, hound, husky, Labrador retriever and pit bull.
Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.
The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online for information on visiting or adopting.
Female husky
This 2-year-old female husky has a short brown coat with white markings.
She is in kennel No. 11, ID No. LCAC-A-4269.
Male pit bull puppy
This 3-month-old male pit bull terrier has a short brown and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 24a, ID No. LCAC-A-4118.
‘Chief’
“Chief” is a 4-year-old male pit bull terrier with a brown and white coat.
He is in kennel No. 28, ID No. LCAC-A-4169.
‘Ruby’
“Ruby” is a 6-month-old female hound mix with a brindle coat.
She is in kennel No. 5, ID No. LCAC-A-3753.
Female pit bull
This 3-year-old female pit bull terrier has a fawn-colored coat.
She is in kennel No. 8, ID No. LCAC-A-4210.
‘Arlo’
“Arlo” is a 3-year-old male basset hound-Labrador retriever mix with a short brown coat.
He is in kennel No. 9, ID No. LCAC-A-4164.
Female Labrador retriever
This 3-month-old female Labrador retriever has a short black coat.
She is in kennel No. 13, ID No. LCAC-A-4162.
Male Labrador retriever
This 2-year-old male Labrador retriever has a short black coat.
He is in kennel No. 14, ID No. LCAC-A-4112.
Male Labrador retriever
This 3-month-old male Labrador retriever has a short black coat.
He is in kennel No. 15, ID No. LCAC-A-4163.
Male hound mix
This 2-year-old male hound mix has a short tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 20, ID No. LCAC-A-4176.
Female pit bull puppy
This 2-month-old female pit bull puppy has a short white and red coat.
She is in kennel No. 24b, ID No. LCAC-A-4121.
Male German shepherd
This 1-year-old male German shepherd has a short black and tan coat.
He is in kennel No. 33, ID No. LCAC-A-4204.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control has nearly 30 dogs waiting in its kennels for new families.
The City of Clearlake Animal Association also is seeking fosters for the animals waiting to be adopted.
Call the Clearlake Animal Control shelter at 707-273-9440, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to inquire about adoptions and schedule a visit to the shelter.
Visit Clearlake Animal Control on Facebook or on the city’s website.
The following dogs are available for adoption. New additions are at the top.
‘Athena’
“Athena” is a female American pit bull mix terrier with a short brindle coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 49934476.
‘Jack’
“Jack” is a 9-month-old male terrier mix with a short black and brindle coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50992658.
‘Molly’
“Molly” is a female Samoyed mix with a long white coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 50933031.
‘Paige’
“Paige” is a female American pit bull mix with a short brown coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 51194668.
‘Trike’
“Trike” is a male border collie-Australian shepherd mix with a black and white coat and blue eyes.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 51029972.
‘Zeus’
“Zeus” is a male Samoyed mix with a long white coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50933068.
‘Aoki’
“Aoki” is a male Siberian husky mix with a white coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50905477.
‘Babs’
“Babs” is a female Labrador retriever mix with a short black coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 49505856.
‘Baby’
“Baby” is a female American pit bull mix with a white coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 50933640.
‘Bruce’
“Bruce” is a 2-year-old American pit bull mix with a short gray coat with white markings.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50684304.
‘Buster’
“Buster” is a male pit bull mix with a short tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50762164.
‘Domino’
“Domino” is a male terrier mix with a short white coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50815541.
‘Eros’
“Eros” is a male Rottweiler mix with a short black and tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50754504.
‘Foxie’
“Foxie” is a female German shepherd with a red, black and white coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 49702845.
‘Goliath’
“Goliah” is a male Rottweiler mix with a short black and tan coat.
He is dog No. 50754509.
‘Hakuna’
“Hakuna” is a male shepherd mix with a tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50176912.
‘Herman’
“Herman” is a 7-year-old male American pit bull terrier mix with a brown coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 51236411.
‘Hondo’
“Hondo” is a male Alaskan husky mix with a buff coat.
He has been neutered.
He’s dog No. 50227693.
‘Little Boy’
“Little Boy” is a male American pit bull terrier mix with a short tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50075256.
‘Luciano’
“Luciano” is a male Siberian husky mix with a short black and white coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50596272.
‘Mamba’
“Mamba” is a male Siberian husky mix with a gray and cream-colored coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 49520569.
‘Matata’
“Matata” is male shepherd mix with a tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50176912.
‘Maya’
“Maya” is a female German shepherd with a black and tan coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 50428151.
‘Mikey’
“Mikey” is a male German shepherd mix with a short brown and tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 51012855.
‘Poppa’
“Poppa” is a 3-year-old male American pit bull terrier mix with a short red and white coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50773597.
‘Rascal’
“Rascal” is a male shepherd mix with a black and brown coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50806384.
‘Reese’
“Reese” is a female German Shepherd with a black and an coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 50884542.
‘Sadie’
“Sadie” is a female German shepherd mix with a black and tan coat.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 49802563.
‘Snowball’
“Snowball is a 1 and a half year old male American Staffordshire terrier mix with a short white coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 49159168.
‘Terry’
“Terry” is a handsome male shepherd mix with a short brindle coat.
He gets along with other dogs, including small ones, and enjoys toys. He also likes water, playing fetch and keep away.
Staff said he is now getting some training to help him build confidence.
He is dog No. 48443693.
‘Willie’
“Willie” is a male German shepherd mix with a black and tan coat.
He has been neutered.
He is dog No. 50596003.
‘Zeda’
“Zeda” is a female Labrador retriever mix.
She has been spayed.
She is dog No. 51108916.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake’s police chief is preparing to move on to his next big assignment.
Chief Andrew White has accepted a position with the Martinez Police Department.
The Martinez City Council is set to approve his new employment contract at its meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 16.
His first day on the job in Martinez will be Jan. 3. He succeeds Chief of Police Manjit Sappal who retired in March.
The news of White’s departure follows by two weeks Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin’s announcement that he will retire at year’s end.
White, 38, has been chief in Clearlake since July of 2018 after serving 16 years with Suisun City. He had been commander and second-in-charge at the Suisun City Police Department when he was hired to lead the Clearlake Police Department.
“It has been an honor leading the members of the police department to make Clearlake a cleaner, safer city,” White said in a Thursday statement from the city. “I am proud of the work the department, in partnership with the community, have done to improve our city — the city I have called home since moving here in 2018. Although my time here is coming to an end, I am confident the department is well positioned to build upon our successes and overcome any challenges that lie ahead.”
“I couldn’t be more proud of the impact Chief White has had on the city during his time here,” said City Manager Alan Flora. “His leadership has enabled our department to excel in a way that is critical to the ongoing transformation of Clearlake.”
White currently oversees a department with a $7 million budget that includes 24.5 sworn positions, as well as code enforcement and animal control staff.
The California Department of Finance’s latest population estimates put the city of Clearlake’s population at 16,500 residents, compared to 36,908 in Martinez, located in Contra Costa County.
The Martinez Police Department is reported to have 37 sworn officers and 15 full-time professional staff, with an annual operating budget of $12 million.
White’s annual salary with the Clearlake Police Department is $169,000. The proposed contract between White and the city of Martinez calls for White to be paid an annual salary of $238,771.46, or $19,897.62 per month, a nearly $70,000 increase over his Clearlake Police salary.
The new contract also gives him 25 days of vacation per year, with the opening balance of 80 hours; a standard sick rate accrual with an opening balance of 40 hours; holiday pay at the same rate as other employees; and he becomes eligible for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System 3% at age 55 retirement plan.
In his report for the Martinez City Council’s Nov. 16 meeting, acting City Manager Michael Chandler explained the “rigorous pre-screening process” that a select group of candidates went through, which included being interviewed by three separate panels of public safety executives, civil leaders and an internal staff panel consisting of the city of Martinez’s executive management team.
Chandler said he selected White for the police chief job, noting White impressed them at all stages of the interview process and met the bench marks of the city’s ideal candidate.
Creative solutions and collaboration
During his tenure with Clearlake, Chief White spearheaded what city officials called “a robust effort” to address crime and blight that incorporated community engagement, collaboration and creative problem solving that has seen crime drop to historic lows and significantly reduced blight.
He advanced a department culture of excellence, accountability and wellness that dramatically and positively impacted retention and recruitment, reducing turnover to historic lows and increased community satisfaction.
White also has overseen the building of the new animal shelter and upgraded animal control services in the city. An animal lover himself, he’s even fostered some dogs in his own home.
During his tenure, the city had to respond to disasters, including flooding in 2019 and the 2021 Cache fire that destroyed dozens of homes.
Then there was the challenge of COVID-19, the lengthy sheltering in place requirements it brought and the specific impact on the justice system — from jails to the courts — that affected law enforcement.
White’s important work wasn’t just limited to the city. He also collaborated with other agencies and local governments, offering increased assistance in times of need.
White’s first day on the job in Lake County found him at Lakeport City Hall, assisting staff there with the response to the Mendocino Complex fire, which has caused the entire city to be placed under mandatory evacuation.
During this past summer, the Clearlake and Lakeport city councils approved a supplemental law enforcement services agreement between the two cities’ police departments. That agreement allowed for Clearlake Police officers to help Lakeport Police with policing duties in the city while Lakeport dealt with short staffing.
White also did double duty as police chief and finance director from 2020 to 2021 as the city was recruiting a permanent finance director.
Flora said of White, “He will be deeply missed by the City Council, police department staff, the entire organization, community members, and me personally. However, I know that his efforts have positioned the department in a way that enables us to move forward and carry on the goals and efforts set into place. We know he will serve the community of Martinez with honor and integrity, and wish him and Charlotte our very best.”
White thanked everyone for their support, including the City Council, Flora, city and department staff, public safety partners and the community. “I will miss everyone, but I also look forward to hearing about the many great things that are to come in Clearlake!”
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Herman Daly had a flair for stating the obvious. When an economy creates more costs than benefits, he called it “uneconomic growth.” But you won’t find that conclusion in economics textbooks. Even suggesting that economic growth could cost more than it’s worth can be seen as economic heresy.
The renegade economist, known as the father of ecological economics and a leading architect of sustainable development, died on Oct. 28, 2022, at the age of 84. He spent his career questioning an economics disconnected from an environmental footing and moral compass.
In an age of climate chaos and economic crisis, his ideas that inspired a movement to live within our means are increasingly essential.
The seeds of an ecological economist
Herman Daly grew up in Beaumont, Texas, ground zero of the early 20th century oil boom. He witnessed the unprecedented growth and prosperity of the “gusher age” set against the poverty and deprivation that lingered after the Great Depression.
To Daly, as many young men then and since believed, economic growth was the solution to the world’s problems, especially in developing countries. To study economics in college and export the northern model to the global south was seen as a righteous path.
But Daly was a voracious reader, a side effect of having polio as a boy and missing out on the Texas football craze. Outside the confines of assigned textbooks, he found a history of economic thought steeped in rich philosophical debates on the function and purpose of the economy.
Unlike the precision of a market equilibrium sketched on the classroom blackboard, the real-world economy was messy and political, designed by those in power to choose winners and losers. He believed that economists should at least ask: Growth for whom, for what purpose and for how long?
Daly’s biggest realization came through reading marine biologist Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring,” and seeing her call to “come to terms with nature … to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature but of ourselves.” By then, he was working on a Ph.D. in Latin American development at Vanderbilt University and was already quite skeptical of the hyperindividualism baked into economic models. In Carson’s writing, the conflict between a growing economy and a fragile environment was blindingly clear.
After a fateful class with Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Daly’s conversion was complete. Georgescu-Roegen, a Romanian-born economist, dismissed the free market fairy tale of a pendulum swinging back and forth, effortlessly seeking a natural state of equilibrium. He argued that the economy was more like an hourglass, a one-way process converting valuable resources into useless waste.
Daly became convinced that economics should no longer prioritize the efficiency of this one-way process but instead focus on the “optimal” scale of an economy that the Earth can sustain. Just shy of his 30th birthday in 1968, while working as a visiting professor in the poverty-stricken Ceará region of northeastern Brazil, Daly published “On Economics as a Life Science.”
His sketches and tables of the economy as a metabolic process, entirely dependent on the biosphere as source for sustenance and sink for waste, were the road map for a revolution in economics.
Economics of a full world
Daly spent the rest of his career drawing boxes in circles. In what he called the “pre-analytical vision,” the economy – the box – was viewed as the “wholly owned subsidiary” of the environment, the circle.
When the economy is small relative to the containing environment, a focus on the efficiency of a growing system has merit. But Daly argued that in a “full world,” with an economy that outgrows its sustaining environment, the system is in danger of collapse.
While a professor at Louisiana State University in the 1970s, at the height of the U.S. environmental movement, Daly brought the box-in-circle framing to its logical conclusion in “Steady-State Economics.” Daly reasoned that growth and exploitation are prioritized in the competitive, pioneer stage of a young ecosystem. But with age comes a new focus on durability and cooperation. His steady-state model shifted the goal away from blind expansion of the economy and toward purposeful improvement of the human condition.
The international development community took notice. Following the United Nations’ 1987 publication of “Our Common Future,” which framed the goals of a “sustainable” development, Daly saw a window for development policy reform. He left the safety of tenure at LSU to join a rogue group of environmental scientists at the World Bank.
For the better part of six years, they worked to upend the reigning economic logic that treated “the Earth as if it were a business in liquidation.” He often butted heads with senior leadership, most famously with Larry Summers, the bank’s chief economist at the time, who publicly waved off Daly’s question of whether the size of a growing economy relative to a fixed ecosystem was of any importance. The future U.S. treasury secretary’s reply was short and dismissive: “That’s not the right way to look at it.”
But by the end of his tenure there, Daly and colleagues had successfully incorporated new environmental impact standards into all development loans and projects. And the international sustainability agenda they helped shape is now baked into the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals of 193 countries, “a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity.”
I knew Herman Daly for two decades as a co-author, mentor and teacher. He always made time for me and my students, most recently writing the foreword to my upcoming book, “The Progress Illusion: Reclaiming Our Future from the Fairytale of Economics.” I will be forever grateful for his inspiration and courage to, as he put it, “ask the naive, honest questions” and then not be “satisfied until I get the answers.”
Russia’s war on Ukraine has cast a shadow over this year’s United Nations climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where officials from around the world are discussing the costs of climate change and how to cut emissions that remain near record highs.
The war has dramatically disrupted energy markets the world over, leaving many countries vulnerable to price spikes amid supply shortages.
Europe, worried about keeping the heat on through winter, is outbidding poor countries for natural gas, even paying premiums to reroute tanker ships after Russia cut off most of its usual natural gas supply. Some countries are restarting coal-fired power plants. Others are looking for ways to expand fossil fuel production, including new projects in Africa.
But will the war and the economic turmoil prevent the world from meeting the Paris climate agreement’s long-term goals?
There are reasons to believe that this may not be the case.
The answer depends in part on how wealthy countries respond to a focus of this year’s climate conference: fulfilling their pledges in the Paris Agreement to provide support for low- and middle-income countries to build clean energy systems.
Europe speeds up clean energy plans
A key lesson many countries are taking away from the ongoing energy crisis is that, if anything, the transition to renewable energy must be pushed forward faster.
About 80% of the world’s energy is still from fossil sources. Global trade in coal, oil and natural gas has meant that even countries with their own energy supplies have felt some of the pain of exorbitant prices. In the U.S., for example, natural gas and electricity prices are higher than normal because they are increasingly tied to international markets, and the U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.
If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a wake-up call to accelerate the clean energy transition in wealthier countries, the situation is much more complex in developing countries.
Low-income countries are being hit hard by the impact of Russia’s war, not only by high energy costs, but also by decreases in grain and cooking oil exports. The more these countries are dependent on foreign oil and gas imports for their energy supply, the more they will be exposed to global market gyrations.
Renewable energy can reduce some of that exposure.
As part of the Paris Agreement, wealthy countries were supposed to make good on promises to make US$100 billion per year available for climate finance, but the actual amounts provided have fallen short.
A number of developing countries have their own fossil fuel resources, and some in Africa have been calling for increasing production, although not without pushback.
Without a strong alternative within local contexts for sustainable energy resources, and with wealthy countries scrambling for fossil fuels, developing countries will exploit fossil resources – just as the wealthiest countries have done for over a century. For example, Tanzania’s energy minister, January Makamba, told Bloomberg during the U.N. climate conference that his country expects to sign agreements with Shell and other oil majors for a $40 billion liquefied natural gas export project.
Encouraging developing countries to take on debt risk to invest in fossil fuel extraction for which the world will have no use would potentially do these countries a great disservice, taking advantage of them for short-term gain.
The world has made progress on emissions in recent years, and the worst warming projections from a decade ago seem to be highly unlikely now. But every tenth of a degree has an impact, and the current “business-as-usual” path still leads the planet toward warming levels with climate change costs that are hard to contemplate, especially for the most vulnerable countries. The outcomes from the climate conference will give an indication of whether the global community is willing to accelerate the transition.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — A jury on Thursday convicted a Clearlake Oaks woman of first-degree murder for the fatal July 2021 shooting of her ex-boyfriend.
Tammy Sue Grogan-Robinson, 58, is facing decades in prison following the verdict, handed down in Judge Andrew Blum’s courtroom on Thursday afternoon.
The six-man, six-woman jury decided the case at the end of deliberations that had begun on Thursday morning following a four-week trial, said Deputy District Attorney Rich Watson, who prosecuted the case.
Grogan-Robinson was found guilty of the killing of 56-year-old Charles Vernon McClelland of Rohnert Park, her on-again, off-again boyfriend of five years who the prosecution said she had planned to shoot after he rejected her attempts to get back together.
McClelland was shot at the Clearlake Oaks home he owned, part of which was rented to Grogan-Robinson, on the morning of July 7, 2021.
Grogan-Robinson told authorities that she killed McClelland after he sexually assaulted her at gunpoint. However, within weeks, those claims started to fall apart as the Lake County Sheriff’s Office conducted follow-up investigations.
“Charles McClelland did not sexually assault her,” Watson said.
“Not only did she kill him, she tried to smear his name in the worst way possible,” Watson added.
Grogan-Robinson took the stand during her trial, but her testimony did not appear to sway the jury, Watson said.
Watson said the jury convicted Grogan-Robinson of first-degree murder, finding to be true special allegations of intentionally discharging a firearm causing death, use of a handgun in committing the crime and inflicting great bodily injury or death.
She also was convicted on a second count of assault with a firearm, as well as a special allegation to that charge of committing great bodily injury on McClelland.
Watson said Grogan-Robinson is facing terms of 25 years to life for the first-degree murder conviction and 25 years to life for the gun use enhancement.
Sentencing will take place at 1:30 p.m. Monday, Dec. 12, in Judge Blum’s Department 3 courtroom at the Lakeport courthouse.
“Ms. Grogan Robinson is very disappointed in the outcome. She continues to maintain her innocence,” Mitchell Hauptman, Grogan-Robinson’s attorney, told Lake County News in a Thursday afternoon email.
Hauptman said an appeal of the verdict will “absolutely” be filed.
The facts of the case
Watson said McClelland had been married for 15 years, he and his wife grew apart and they divorced. He raised a son, now 21.
After his divorce, McClelland and Grogan-Robinson had dated on and off over the course of five years. Watson said McClelland had decided he wasn’t willing to commit to a long-term relationship with Grogan-Robinson and they broke up in March 2021.
However, Watson said Grogan-Robisnon was obsessed with McClelland, and while he made clear that he didn’t want to continue their relationship, she didn’t get the message.
That was borne out in the investigation, Watson said. “We went through 1,600 text messages between the two of them.”
While McClelland kept telling Grogan-Robinson that he wanted her to move on and be happy, she “was relentless,” Watson said, and continued to text him, sending messages including one wishing him a happy anniversary.
Ultimately, the prosecution argued that Grogan-Robinson killed McClelland because of her jealousy.
During the 2021 Independence Day weekend, McClelland came up to spend the weekend at the lake. Grogan-Robinson lived in the main house on his property and he used an apartment there as his vacation home, Watson said.
On that weekend, Watson said McClelland had friends with him. “When he gets there, she starts texting him, sending him salacious pictures.”
She continued to pursue McClelland over that weekend. Watson said McClelland’s friends went home on July 4, leaving Grogan-Robinson and McClelland alone at the home.
Watson said they started chatting, and he argued Grogan-Robinson was getting her hopes up that they would reunite.
They spent time together on July 5 and then on July 6 Grogan-Robinson, according to her trial testimony, said she fixed them dinner.
Watson said it was on that evening, McClelland’s last night alive, that the mood changed.
He said Grogan-Robinson became angry when she found out McClelland was texting his new girlfriend.
It was at that point that Grogan-Robinson started texting a male friend, Kenneth Hobbs, telling him that she was going to shoot McClelland in the face, according to testimony given at her November 2021 preliminary hearing. She later asked Hobbs to delete those texts.
Watson said Grogan-Robinson and Hobbs were texting from about 6:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. that evening. In those texts, Hobbs was trying to dissuade her from harming McClelland.
The next morning, July 7, Grogan-Robinson shot McClelland four times with her own 9 millimeter handgun, Watson said.
While Watson said he didn’t know exactly when the shooting occurred, he believes it was sometime between her first correspondence with her workplace, Adventist Health, at 6:39 a.m. and when she left her home at 7:45 a.m., which was shown on her door camera.
She later told Hobbs that McClelland had entered through her bedroom window at around midnight, that he struggled with her for her handgun, which was on the nightstand, that he had sexually assaulted her and she shot him, claims that the investigation would disprove.
Watson said Grogan-Robinson told investigators that she drove into Clearlake, made a couple of phone calls, including to Adventist Health, which directed her to Sutter Lakeside Hospital for the sexual assault exam. That’s where sheriff’s deputies first spoke with her.
Grogan-Robinson told investigators that after she shot McClelland, she smoked a cigarette and walked around the house, packed a bag, but didn’t call anyone to report the shooting or to ask for help for McClelland, Watson said.
“She just got in her car and left,” Watson said.
Watson said authorities immediately started a full sexual assault investigation which disproved Grogan-Robinson’s story.
“As the evidence started to come back, it showed that her story didn’t line up,” he said.
The DNA evidence excluded McClelland from having touched the grip of the handgun that she had claimed he held on her.
“This was an exclusion, which was huge for his name,” Watson said.
Watson said the DNA testing from the sexual assault testing and from McClelland’s autopsy showed that they had not had sex, and so he had not committed the sexual assault that she had claimed.
That matched the evidence reported to a deputy who, when collecting the sexual assault kit at Sutter Lakeside Hospital, was told by a nurse that there were no physical findings of sexual assault.
After the murder, Grogan-Robinson went to Missouri, where she has family. She was arrested there in August 2021 and extradited back to Lake County in September 2021. She has remained in custody since then.
She pleaded not guilty to McClelland’s killing in an October 2021 court appearance and in November 2021, following a preliminary hearing, Judge J. David Markham ordered her to stand trial for McClelland’s murder.
The trial
Watson said the trial began with jury selection on Oct. 19. The presentation of evidence began on Oct. 26.
Testimony at trial included the appearance of Dr. Bennet Omalu, who conducted the autopsy and concluded that McClelland died of the gunshot wounds and that his injuries were consistent with defensive wounds. Omalu is well-known for his work in studying concussion injuries in professional football players.
Also during the trial, Grogan-Robinson herself took the stand, giving her own version of events, Watson said.
While it’s uncommon for defendants in criminal prosecutions to testify during their trials, Watson said he wasn’t surprised when she took the stand.
“It was believed that she wanted to take the stand the whole time,” he said. “She wanted to tell her story.”
However, Watson said he didn’t think it helped her case. She showed no emotion whatsoever while giving her testimony.
Neither did her version of events appear to sway the jury.
During his cross examination of Grogan-Robinson, Watson asked her why she left McClelland to die while she smoked a cigarette. He said she denied doing that.
Rather, she testified that she caused injury to McClelland in the abdomen and in her experience as a surgical technician working in surgical rooms, she has seen people survive the same type of injury, Watson said.
Watson argued that her statements before and actions after killing McClelland showed her state of mind.
Following closing arguments, the jury got the case at 4 p.m. Wednesday. Watson said that rather than start deliberations then, the jury started fresh at 9 a.m.Thursday.
At 10 a.m. Thursday, the jury asked to review evidence in the form of video, including the interview the sheriff’s office conducted with Grogan-Robinson at the hospital and subsequent interviews.
Watson said altogether the jury watched about two hours of video before breaking for lunch at noon.
They came back and continued deliberations, and at 2 p.m. he got the notice that they had reached a verdict.
During the verdict reading, Grogan-Robinson again showed no emotion.
For the type of case it was, Watson said the verdict came quickly.
Regarding the decades of prison time Grogan-Robinson is potentially facing at next month’s sentencing, Watson said she needs to be held accountable.
As for McClelland, victimized both in his killing and in Grogan-Robinson’s attempt to destroy his reputation as a justification, “His name needs to be cleared, too,” Watson said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
BERKELEY, Calif. — Weather and climate modelers understand pretty well how seasonal winds and ocean currents affect El Niño patterns in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, impacting weather across the United States and sometimes worldwide.
But new computer simulations show that one driver of annual weather cycles in that region — in particular, a cold tongue of surface waters stretching westward along the equator from the coast of South America — has gone unrecognized: the changing distance between Earth and the sun.
The cold tongue, in turn, influences the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which impacts weather in California, much of North America, and often globally.
The Earth-sun distance slowly varies over the course of the year because Earth’s orbit is slightly elliptical. Currently, at its closest approach — perihelion — Earth is about 3 million miles closer to the sun than at its farthest point, or aphelion. As a result, sunlight is about 7% more intense at perihelion than at aphelion.
Research led by the University of California, Berkeley, demonstrates that the slight yearly change in our distance from the sun can have a large effect on the annual cycle of the cold tongue. This is distinct from the effect of Earth’s axial tilt on the seasons, which is currently understood to cause the annual cycle of the cold tongue.
Because the period of the annual cycle arising from the tilt and distance effects are slightly different, their combined effects vary over time, said lead researcher John Chiang, UC Berkeley professor of geography.
“The curious thing is that the annual cycle from the distance effect is slightly longer than that for tilt — around 25 minutes, currently — so over a span of about 11,000 years, the two annual cycles go from being in phase to out of phase, and the net seasonality undergoes a remarkable change, as a result,” Chiang said.
Chiang noted that the distance effect is already incorporated into climate models — though its effect on the equatorial Pacific was not recognized until now — and his findings will not alter weather predictions or climate projections. But the 22,000-year phase cycle may have had long-term, historical effects. Earth’s orbital precession is known to have affected the timing of the ice ages, for example.
The distance effect — and its 22,000-year variation — also may affect other weather systems on Earth. The ENSO, which also originates in the equatorial Pacific, is likely affected because its workings are closely tied to the seasonal cycle of the cold tongue.
“Theory tells us that the seasonal cycle of the cold tongue plays a key role in the development and termination of ENSO events,” said Alyssa Atwood, a former UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow who is now an assistant professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee. “Because of this, many of ENSO’s key characteristics are synced to the seasonal cycle.”
For example, ENSO events tend to peak during Northern Hemisphere winters, she said, and they don’t typically persist beyond northern or boreal spring months, which scientists refer to as the “spring predictability barrier.” Because of these linkages, it is reasonable to expect that the distance effect could also have a major impact on ENSO — something that should be examined in future studies.
“Very little attention has been paid to the cold tongue seasonal cycle because most people think it's solved. There's nothing interesting there,” Chiang said. “What this research shows is that it's not solved. There's still a mystery there. Our result also begs the question whether other regions on Earth may also have a significant distance effect contribution to their seasonal cycle.”
“We learn in science classes as early as grade school that the seasons are caused by the tilt of Earth’s axis,” added Anthony Broccoli of Rutgers University. “This is certainly true and has been well understood for centuries. Although the effect of the Earth-sun distance has also been recognized, our study indicates that this ‘distance effect’ may be a more important effect on climate than had been recognized previously.”
Chiang, Atwood, Broccoli and their colleagues reported their findings last week in the journal Nature.
Two distinct yearly cycles affect Pacific cold tongue
The main driver of global weather changes is seasonal change. Earth’s equator is tilted relative to its orbit around the sun, so the Northern and Southern hemispheres are illuminated differently. When the sun shines directly overhead in the north, it’s warmer in the north and colder in the south, and vice versa.
These yearly changes have major effects on the Pacific equatorial trade winds, which blow from southeast to northwest across the south and equatorial Pacific and push surface waters westward, causing upwelling of cold water along the equator that creates a tongue of cold surface water that stretches from Ecuador across the Pacific — almost one-quarter the circumference of the planet.
The yearly hemispheric changes in seasonal temperature alters the strength of the trades, and thus cause a yearly cycle in the temperature of the cold tongue. This, in turn, has a major influence on ENSO, which typically peaks during Northern Hemisphere winter.
The occurrence of El Niño — or its opposite, La Niña — helps determines whether California and the West Coast will have a wet or dry winter, but also whether the Midwest and parts of Asia will have rain or drought.
“In studying past climates, much effort has been dedicated to trying to understand if variability in the tropical Pacific Ocean — that is, the El Niño/La Niña cycle — has changed in the past,” Broccoli said. “We chose to focus instead on the yearly cycle of ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific cold tongue. Our study found that the timing of perihelion — that is, the point at which the earth is closest to the sun — has an important influence on climate in the tropical Pacific."
In 2015, Broccoli, co-director of the Rutgers Climate Institute, along with his then-graduate student Michael Erb, employed a computer climate model to show that the distance changes caused by Earth’s elliptical orbit dramatically altered the cold tongue yearly cycle. But climate modelers mostly ignored the result, Chiang said.
“Our field is focused on El Niño, and we thought that the seasonal cycle was solved. But then we realized that the result by Erb and Broccoli challenged this assumption,” he said.
Chiang and his colleagues, including Broccoli and Atwood, examined similar simulations using four different climate models and confirmed the result. But the team went further to show how the distance effect works.
Earth’s ‘marine’ and ‘continental’ hemispheres
The key distinction is that changes in the sun’s distance from Earth don’t affect the Northern and Southern hemispheres differently, which is what gives rise to the seasonal effect due to Earth’s axial tilt. Instead, they warm the eastern “continental hemisphere” dominated by the North and South American and African and Eurasian landmasses, more than it warms the Western Hemisphere — what he calls the marine hemisphere, because it is dominated by the Pacific Ocean.
“The traditional way of thinking about monsoons is that the Northern Hemisphere warms up relative to the Southern Hemisphere, generating winds onto land that bring monsoon rains,” Chiang said. “But here, we’re actually talking about east-west, not north-south, temperature differences that cause the winds. The distance effect is operating through the same mechanism as the seasonal monsoon rains, but the wind changes are coming from this east-west monsoon.”
The winds generated by this differential heating of the marine and continental hemispheres alter the yearly variation of the easterly trades in the western equatorial Pacific, and thereby the cold tongue.
“When Earth is closest to the sun, these winds are strong. In the offseason, when the sun is at its furthest, these winds become weak,” Chiang said. “Those wind changes are then propagated to the Eastern Pacific through the thermocline, and basically it drives an annual cycle of the cold tongue, as a result.”
Today, Chiang said, the distance effect on the cold tongue is about one-third the strength of the tilt effect, and they enhance one another, leading to a strong annual cycle of the cold tongue. About 6,000 years ago, they canceled one another, yielding a muted annual cycle of the cold tongue. In the past, when Earth’s orbit was more elliptical, the distance effect on the cold tongue would have been larger and could have led to a more complete cancellation when out of phase.
Though Chiang and his colleagues did not examine the effect of such a cancellation, this would potentially have had a worldwide effect on weather patterns.
Chiang emphasized that the distance effect on climate, while clear in climate model simulations, would not be evident from observations because it cannot be readily distinguished from the tilt effect.
“This study is purely model based. So, it is a prediction,” he said. “But this behavior is reproduced by a number of different models, at least four. And what we did in this study is to explain why this happens. And in the process, we've discovered another annual cycle of the cold tongue that's driven by Earth's eccentricity.”
Atwood noted that, unlike the robust changes to the cold tongue seasonal cycle, changes to ENSO tend to be model-dependent.
“While ENSO remains a challenge for climate models, we can look beyond climate model simulations to the paleoclimate record to investigate the connection between changes in the annual cycle of the cold tongue and ENSO in the past,” she said. “To date, paleoclimate records from the tropical Pacific have largely been interpreted in terms of past changes in ENSO, but our study underscores the need to separate changes in the cold tongue annual cycle from changes in ENSO.”
Chiang’s colleagues, in addition to Broccoli and Atwood, are Daniel Vimont of the University of Wisconsin in Madison; former UC Berkeley undergraduate Paul Nicknish, now a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; William Roberts of Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the United Kingdom; and Clay Tabor of the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Chiang conducted part of the research while on sabbatical at the Research Institute for Environmental Changes of the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan.
Robert Sanders writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
Preserving estate planning documents is important to their future implementation. The original documents need to be readily available, altogether and accessible when the time comes.
An original will needs to be preserved and be available to the named executor. In California, the law presumes that if the decedent’s original will was last in the decedent’s possession but is now lost that the will was revoked by the decedent. This is because a will can be revoked by the testator simply destroying the will (e.g., tearing it up). Thus, a copy of a will is a mere photocopy.
That said, a photocopy of a will can still be used to prove the will’s content when attached to a petition to probate a lost will; if the petitioner believes that the original was simply lost but not destroyed.
While an original trust should be preserved, a copy is nonetheless sufficient for its administration.
Typically, all estate planning documents are kept together in the one binder, which is kept in a safe location, like a bank safe.
Also, knowledge of the documents location and the access protocols should be given to persons who will need them. If a bank safe is used the account associated with the safe should be titled in the name of the trust.
It is important to keep an original power of attorney Unless the power of attorney itself says that a copy may be relied upon the same as the original, a person or a business may refuse to accept (honor) the copy and insist on seeing the original or a certified copy of the original power of attorney.
Obtaining a certified copy of a power of attorney, itself requires presenting the original power of attorney document either to a licensed attorney or a notary public for certification. The power of attorney is usually kept in the same binder as the will and trust.
Fortunately, copies of advanced health care directives and HIPAA releases (which allow confidential medical information to be disclosed) are treated the same as originals.
That said, a copy of one’s health care directive and HIPAA release should be given to one’s health care provider and to any hospital at time of admission. The original should be kept with one’s power of attorney.
If a deed (such as a trust transfer deed) was recorded with the county recorder’s office, a copy of the recorded deed can be obtained from the county. The original recorded deed (once returned by the recorder’s office) is typically kept, along with other asset title documents (e.g., an assignment to one’s trust), in the estate planning binder.
Having one’s affairs in order gives one peace of mind. Keeping one’s estate planning documents altogether in a single binder, stored in a safe location and known to and accessible when needed is usually the best approach.
Keeping electronic backup copies of the original documents in a separate location should also be seriously considered and used if appropriate.
The foregoing discussion is not legal advice.
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and 707-263-3235.
Veterans Day originated as “Armistice Day” on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end of World War I.
Congress passed a resolution in 1926 making it an annual observance, and it became a national holiday in 1938.
Sixteen years later, then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation changing the name to Veterans Day to honor all those who served their country during war or peacetime.
On this day, the nation honors military veterans — living and dead — with parades and other observances across the country and a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
The following facts are based on responses to U.S. Census Bureau surveys.
Veteran population
Did you know?
16.5 million The number of military veterans in the United States in 2021.
1.7 million The number of female veterans in the United States in 2021.
1.9% The percentage of veterans in 2021 who were Asian American. Additionally, 73.0% of veterans were non-Hispanic white; 8.2% Hispanic or Latino (of any race); 12.3% African American; 0.7% American Indian or Alaska Native; 0.2% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; and 2.7% were Some Other Race. (The numbers include only those reporting a single race.)
24.4% The percentage of veterans ages 75 and older in 2021. At the other end of the age spectrum, 8.2% of veterans were younger than age 35.
7.2% The percentage of veterans living in Lake County, California, as of 2020.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — The annual “Warm for the Winter” clothing drive for those in need is once again underway in Clearlake.
Warm for the Winter will distribute warm winter clothing once again at the Clearlake Rotary Club's annual Christmas community dinner from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 10, in the courtyard next to the dining hall at Burns Valley School, 3620 Pine St. in Clearlake.
Warm for the Winter is celebrating its 16th year of giving warm clothing to those in need.
The effort is driven solely by community members helping others in need.
Warm for the Winter started in 2006. Joyce Overton began the effort to collect sleeping bags and tents to help the homeless survive the winter weather.
As the years went on, Overton saw the need extended beyond the homeless, and it has since turned into a community giving program.
Overton takes no monetary donations but relies on donations of blankets, gloves, shoes, hats and any winter clothing, either new or used but in good repair and clean.
With the hardship of the pandemic, warm attire is in great demand this year, Overton said.
Donations are being collected until Dec. 7.
If you would like to make a monetary donation you may do that through the Clearlake Rotary Club and specify the Warm for the Winter program.
Donations can be dropped off from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday at the Highlands Senior Center, 3245 Bowers Road, Clearlake.
Overton thanked the community for its donations and support over the past 16 years.
For more information contact Overton at the Clearlake Senior Center, 707-994-3051, or text her at 707-350-2898.
For the first time in its eight years orbiting Mars, NASA’s MAVEN mission witnessed two different types of ultraviolet aurorae simultaneously, the result of solar storms that began on Aug. 27.
MAVEN — the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission — is the only asset at Mars able to observe the Sun’s activity and the response of the thin Martian atmosphere at the same time.
Real-time analysis and simulations of the solar eruptions from NASA’s Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office also allowed the MAVEN team to correctly predict when the developing solar storm would reach the Red Planet.
Accurate space weather forecasting is critical to help protect current missions and future human explorers at the Red Planet because unlike Earth, Mars lacks a global magnetic field to shield against the damaging radiation solar storms can bring.
It started with the Sun
On Aug. 27, an active region on the Sun produced a series of solar flares, which are intense bursts of radiation. The flare activity was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection, or CME, a massive explosion of gas and magnetic energy that leaves the Sun and propagates through space. This interplanetary CME impacted Mars a few days later.
This CME produced one of the brightest solar energetic particle, or SEP, events that the MAVEN spacecraft has ever observed. The SEPs that were accelerated ahead of the CME were observed at Mars by MAVEN’s SEP detector on Aug. 27.
In fact, many of MAVEN’s instruments were collectively able to measure the strength of the solar storm, including the Extreme Ultraviolet Monitor, the Magnetometer, the Solar Wind Ion Analyzer, and the Solar Wind Electron Analyzer.
“By utilizing space weather models of CME propagation, we determined when the structure would arrive and impact Mars,” said Christina Lee, a space physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, who is a member of the MAVEN mission team and is collaborating with the Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office scientists. “This allowed the MAVEN team to anticipate some exciting disturbances in Mars’ atmosphere from the impacts of the interplanetary CME and the associated SEPs.”
Catching the Martian light show
Particles unleashed by the solar storm bombarded Mars’ atmosphere, causing bright auroras at ultraviolet wavelengths. MAVEN’s Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument observed two types: diffuse aurora and proton aurora.
Part of the reason that this incredible duo was observed simultaneously came down to timing. Mars is at the end of dust storm season, which occurs every Mars year during its closest approach of the Sun.
These dust storms warm the atmosphere enough to allow water vapor to reach high altitudes, where it is broken up by solar ultraviolet radiation, releasing hydrogen atoms in the process. When the incoming solar wind hits all this extra hydrogen, the dayside of the planet lights up with ultraviolet emissions.
These “proton aurora” just happened to coincide with the arrival of even more dynamic energic particles that penetrated deeper into the atmosphere, creating diffuse aurora visible across the entire nightside.
Sumedha Gupta, a postdoctoral researcher with the IUVS team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder, first noticed the coincidence during her routine check of incoming data a few days after the event.
“I was so surprised to see proton aurora at the same time as diffuse aurora, because it had never happened before,” she said. “They’re both increasing with solar activity, so we hope it keeps happening!”
A sign of the storms to come
This light show is a sign of things to come for Mars and for the MAVEN team. The Sun is growing more and more active with events, such as flares and CMEs, as it approaches solar maximum in 2024-2025.
Solar maximum is when the height of solar activity peaks in the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle, meaning CMEs and SEPs are expected to increase in frequency and continue to impact Mars’ atmosphere.
“It’s exciting to still be observing ‘firsts’ like these simultaneous aurora so many years into the mission. We have so much to learn about the atmosphere and how solar storms affect the Red Planet,” said Shannon Curry, MAVEN’s principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley. “Our team cannot wait for the next few years of observing the most extreme conditions during the MAVEN mission’s lifetime.”
MAVEN’s principal investigator is based at the University of California, Berkeley, while NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the MAVEN mission. Lockheed Martin Space built the spacecraft and is responsible for mission operations. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California provides navigation and Deep Space Network support.
The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder is responsible for managing science operations and public outreach and communication.
Willow Reed is MAVEN Communications Lead for the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado Boulder.
On Thursday, Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-05) announced $9 million in new grant opportunities from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to advance research into wildfire prevention and post-fire restoration on federal lands.
The Joint Fire Science Program is accepting applications for grants to research innovative fuels treatments and post-fire rehabilitation efforts through Dec. 20, 2022, for fiscal year 2023.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is bringing much-needed support to communities across the country to increase the resilience of lands facing the threat of wildland fires and to better support federal wildland firefighters.
“The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is delivering much needed funding to assist our communities in combating the impact of climate change,” said Thompson. “As California remains on the front lines of the climate crisis, wildfires pose a significant risk and it remains a top priority to provide the funding we need to mitigate the risk of wildfires and protect our communities.”
“With increasing wildfire activity due to climate change, it is imperative we fund research to better understand how to manage fire prone landscapes now and into the future,” said Grant Beebe, Bureau of Land Management assistant director of fire and aviation, based at the National Interagency Fire Center. “The Joint Fire Science Program brings the science and management community together in a unique, collaborative manner so that research can be used to make sound decisions on the ground.”
This funding is in addition to $3.4 billion in wildfire suppression and mitigation included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
This includes investments such as:
• $600 million to increase federal firefighter salaries by up to $20,000/year and convert at least 1,000 seasonal firefighters to year-round positions. • $500 million for hazardous fuels mitigation. • $500 million for prescribed fires. • $500 million for communities to implement their community wildfire defense plan, a collaborative plan to address local hazards and risks from wildfire. • $500 million for developing control locations and installing fuel breaks. • $100 million for preplanning fire response workshops and workforce training. • $40 million for radio frequency interoperability and to create Reverse-911 systems. • $20 million for NOAA to create a satellite that rapidly detects fires in areas the federal government has financial responsibility. • $10 million to procure real-time wildfire detection and monitoring equipment in high-risk or post-burn areas.
Funding opportunities for wildland fire research priorities are posted on the Joint Fire Science Program’s website.
Thompson represents California’s Fifth Congressional District, which includes all or part of Contra Costa, Lake, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.