UCLA’s Tyger Campbell declares for NBA draft

• April 13, 2023

LOS ANGELES — UCLA guard Tyger Campbell has declared for the NBA draft, joining teammates Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Jaylen Clark who already made the move.

Campbell announced his decision Wednesday night on Instagram.

“I take a lot of pride in the success we have had, and that’s the result of a lot of hard work and commitment,” he wrote. “I’m graduating from UCLA and looking forward to the next step in my basketball career. With aspirations to play professionally, I am declaring for the NBA Draft.”

Campbell was a mainstay in Westwood for the past four seasons after missing his freshman year with a knee injury.

The senior from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, averaged 13.4 points, 5.0 assists and 2.6 rebounds while playing all 37 games this past season. Campbell led the Pac-12 in assist-to-turnover ratio (3.2) and also finished third in the nation in that category. He also led the league in free-throw percentage (85.6).

He finished second on the school’s all-time assists list with 655 and 10th in games played at 133.

Campbell earned first-team All-Pac-12 honors for three years and was an honorable mention this past season.

He helped the Bruins reach the Final Four in 2021 and the Sweet 16 in 2022 and again this year.

“This was an emotional last run for the two of us, as we both worked so hard together to make UCLA elite again,” Coach Mick Cronin said in a statement. “He has shown so much heart, hustle and grit in how he led this team and how he overcame a knee injury that wiped out his first season in Westwood. Tyger has so many great intangible qualities, but simply put, he is a winner. We know that Tyger has a long future in pro basketball, and I hope that I’m coaching long enough to hire him on my staff someday, as well.”

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Campbell and teammate David Singleton, who is out of eligibility, are set to compete in the Portsmouth Invitational this week, a pre-draft showcase in Virginia.

Jaquez, a senior, is headed to the draft after deciding to forgo an extra year of eligibility available because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Clark, a junior, has said he will enter the draft. However, he did not indicate whether he would hire an agent ahead of the June 22 draft or retain his remaining eligibility.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

​ Orange County Register 

California’s social equity programs are failing to help victims of the drug war

• April 13, 2023

Oakland became the first jurisdiction in America to include social equity goals in its cannabis regulations in 2017. Since then, social equity has been a popular project for marijuana legalization supporters in Southern California and across the country. Yet, despite the rapid proliferation of social equity initiatives in cities and states, these efforts have mostly failed to achieve their goals of improving the lives of people hurt by the government’s war on marijuana.

The government has harmed many Americans for decades by engaging in an unjust, discriminatory drug war. Former Nixon administration officials admitted they concocted the war on drugs to give them a pretext for harassing black Americans and hippies. Statistics confirm that black Americans were arrested disproportionately on drug charges even though black and white Americans use drugs at similar rates.

The drug war led to the arrest of millions of nonviolent Americans. The resulting criminal records impaired those citizens’ abilities to find employment and housing, attend colleges, and get business loans. Social equity advocates sought to redress some of these harms by creating a series of preferences or privileges for specific populations as part of state and local plans to legalize marijuana sales for adults. Some jurisdictions reserved cannabis business licenses for individuals who met some definition of a “social equity applicant.” Others dedicated a portion of cannabis tax revenues for grants to community-based nonprofits that promised to offer job training or other programs to victims of failed drug war policies.

In California, cities and counties are responsible for crafting their own social equity policies and can receive grants from the state if they do so. Los Angeles, Long Beach, Palm Springs, and San Diego are some of the localities that have received state grants. But policymakers failed to anticipate how these programs could be exploited by people who were never victims of the drug war. Most equity programs allow individuals to qualify based on having lived in neighborhoods where people were arrested even if they personally never suffered any consequences of the drug war. These grants to nonprofits can also be shifted to pay the salaries of officers and directors rather than the intended recipients.

In Los Angeles, corporate recruiters scoured low-income housing projects on the city’s south side, offering to pay as little as $7,000 to individuals to pose as frontmen on cannabis industry business license applications. These frontmen would not own or control these marijuana businesses, but their names could be used so others could gain privileged status as “social equity applicants.” In other variations of this arrangement, financiers paid frontmen modest salaries or granted them a small share of net profits to get social equity status for their projects.

These stories are ubiquitous. Yet, even if they worked as intended, social equity programs should be more capable of correcting government-caused injustices of the past. Not everyone arrested over the last several decades is interested in starting a legal cannabis business today. Moreover, since most jurisdictions limit the number of marijuana business licenses, it would be impossible for everyone arrested for marijuana crimes to get one. And existing social equity programs do little to deliver justice to most drug war victims.

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Social equity must be reimagined. Cities and states should make it easier for unlicensed cannabis providers to get licensed and legally sell marijuana. Barriers to entry, including high licensing fees and limits on the number of licenses, should be eliminated so entrepreneurs with modest means can enter the market and compete.

Furthermore, efforts at restorative justice should focus on targeting relief to all of the drug war’s victims. California has done well at expunging the criminal records of cannabis offenses that are no longer crimes. Now, California must ensure it removes regulatory barriers preventing people ensnared in the failed war on drugs from participating in the state’s legal marijuana market.

Geoffrey Lawrence is the research director at Reason Foundation and author of the new policy report, “Marijuana’s Social Equity Misfire.”

​ Orange County Register 

La Habra baseball scores on a balk for walk-off win over Fullerton

• April 13, 2023

LA HABRA — The Freeway League baseball contest between Fullerton and La Habra on Wednesday featured longtime rivals from neighboring cities in a battle for first place.

That set the stage for the drama that followed.

The game was a pitching duel between Fullerton starter George Papadatos and La Habra starter Jared Day and the intensity shown by both teams matched the importance of the contest.

The ending was a bit unexpected, however, as Ricardo Romero scored from third on a balk call with two outs in the bottom of the seventh to give the Highlanders a 1-0, walk-off victory at La Habra High.

FUHS at LHHS…bottom of the 7th inning…two outs…two on… 0-0 score…and it ends like this! We will take it! @fjuhsd @LHHSbaseball20 @coachJackBrooks @LaHabraHS @LHHSAthletics1 @OCSportsZone @ocvarsity @ocvarsityguy @SteveFryer @SGVNSports @James_Escarcega pic.twitter.com/DkQC31uwm0

— Steve Garcia (@PrincipalSteveG) April 13, 2023

Romero came in to pinch run for Izaiah Posada, who had led off the seventh with a single.

Romero reached second on an error, took third on a fielder’s choice and then scored on the balk.

The Highlanders (13-2-2, 4-1) and Indians (12-6, 4-1) are now tied for first place, and they will meet again Friday at Fullerton High. The winner will keep the top spot and the loser will drop to second.

“We’ll take it by all means,” La Habra coach Jack Brooks said. “But for these kids that competed at such a high level, it’s a little bit unfortunate.”

Papadatos and Day were both ejected after a play at first base in the bottom of the fifth.

Day was batting and hit a ground ball up the first base line that was fielded by first baseman Malachi Meni, who then tossed the ball to Papadatos who was covering the base.

There appeared to be some physical contact between the two players, which prompted the ejections.

Neither coach felt the players should have been ejected.

“There was probably some words exchanged and some shoulder bumping,” Brooks said. “In my opinion, no harm, no foul. They are emotional kids. It’s a league championship game. I wish the umpires would give a little bit more grace.”

Warnings had also been given to players earlier in the game because of some trash talking and heckling taking place.

“There was no ill will I don’t think on either side,” Fullerton coach Shaun Hill said. “I don’t think either of them should have been tossed. I think it was just high intensity.”

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Papadatos gave up one hit and two walks with three strikeouts over five innings.

Day allowed two hits and a walk with five strikeouts over five innings.

“It was a just a high-intensity game for a league championship,” Brooks said. “Both pitchers had thrown a heck of a game. It’s going to be a fun one for all the marbles on Friday. They are a great team. Their coach and I both have a lot of respect for each other.”

​ Orange County Register 

Ukrainian athletes at USC, CSUN try to stay strong, positive while war rages

• April 13, 2023

They’re homesick and sick with worry, stuck in a situation where the only recourse is to be a rock for their families, rock stars in their own orbits. To live well.

To try to be happy.

It’s an impossible mission, but Anastasiia Slivina, a rower at USC, and Yuliia Zhytelna, a tennis player at Cal State Northridge, they’re doing their best.

Because the home they’re pining for is Kyiv, Ukraine’s cosmopolitan capital, with all the history and culture and nature running through it, where their families are hunkered down, afraid but “staying strong,” as Slivina put it, “and believing in our win.”

Ukraine has been under siege since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, 2022, starting a bitter, bloody battle that’s become the largest land war in Europe since World War II.

Zhytelna’s parents and three of her four siblings are there, in Kyiv. So is Slivina’s 19-year-old brother, who isn’t permitted to leave Ukraine, and mother – a doctor who has earned an award from the government there for her work over the past year – who wouldn’t go without him.

Anastasiia Slivina posed for a photo with her brother, Konstantin, and her mother, Oksana, in Kyiv, before Russia invaded and the war began. (Photo courtesy Anastasiia Slivina)

They insist that Anastasiia and Yuliia stay put, out of harm’s way in Southern California, where they came to compete. To study journalism or international relations. To experience America.

Now, for now, there’s no going back.

“I miss home so badly!” said Zhytelna, the tennis player who hopped on a Zoom call recently wearing trendy round-rimmed eyeglasses. Her energy brightens a display; it’s easy to see why she’s won over coaches and teammates, professors and a retired pediatrician with whom she stays.

“I wanted to come back in December,” she said. “But my parents said, ‘Stay. Do your thing. You will come back when there’s not sirens and no missile danger and stuff like that.’”

“Yeah, my family says the same thing,” said Slivina, 22, the rower with long, expertly manicured fingernails. She’s someone who thinks deeply, her coach said, about every statement she makes, cognizant always of who and what she represents – especially, probably, on this Zoom with Zhytelna and a reporter.

“You never know,” Slivina continued, “where the missile’s gonna fall, and if it’s gonna fall on you those days that you’re there. Or whatever else can happen. But it’s actually very hard being here because there’s a thing, one of our sports (psychologists) told me, when you are safe but some of your loved ones are not …”

“Survivors syndrome?” Zhytelna offered.

That’s it. “Survivor guilt,” Slivina said.

“I have the same thing!” Zhytelna said.

“Technically, I’m safe,” Slivina explained. “I am fed, I’m warm, I’m a student, I wake up, I do my daily stuff. But there in my country, people are in full war. And you feel guilty and you feel like you would rather be there. And you feel like you’re not supposed to be happy.

“But my mom was like, ‘I know how you feel, but we are so, so happy that you are there and not here. You have to be strong and keep doing your thing. And someday in the future, you’ll do something for our country.’

“And I definitely will.”

AN ESCAPE, BUT NO ELIXIR

Part of what they’re doing now – despite their anxiety, or maybe, in some part, because of it? – is excelling at their sports.

A dedicated, stalwart trainer, Slivina is making good on those attributes that USC women’s rowing coach Josh Adam says got him to recruit her in the first place, including contributing to the Trojans’ season-opening 7-0 victory over UCLA last month.

USC women’s rowing coach Josh Adam said the Trojans have rallied around Ukrainian teammate Anastasiia Slivina, who he said has nonetheless made a “herculean effort” to make sure the team doesn’t know how much of what’s going on back home is actually affecting her. (Photo courtesy of USC Athletics)

And Zhytelna, after failing to crack the Matadors’ lineup last season as a redshirt freshman, is 12-4 in singles play and 12-5 in doubles, her turbulent relationship with tennis having taken a U-turn for the better.

Sports are many things. Entertainment. Distraction. Something to bond over. And sometimes an out-and-out outlet, like last month, after the video circulated of Oleksandr Matsievskyi, a Ukrainian prisoner of war, being executed by Russian soldiers.

The world saw the 42-year-old former electrician standing in a shallow ditch, calmly puffing on a cigarette, wearing fatigues but unarmed, a Ukrainian insignia on his sleeve and “Slava Ukraini” on his lips.

His final unflinching words – “Glory to Ukraine” – spread on Telegram and Twitter, ubiquitous and unavoidable for even Zhytelna, who’d weaned herself off graphic footage from home.

“Everyone saw it uncensored,” she said. “And it got me so angry. The next day, I was playing against Youngstown, and I was so angry. The poor girl, she just met me not in a good spot. I was really, really angry.”

Eliska Masarikova, Youngstown State’s No. 3 singles player, stood no chance: Zhytelna won, 6-0, 6-2.

Sports offer escape sometimes, sure, but they’re not an elixir. So last weekend, against Cal State Fullerton, Zhytelna found herself facing a Russian player and faltered, losing control of her emotions and the match, 0-6, 6-2, 6-3.

Yuliia Zhytelna from Ukraine has been the Cal State Northridge women’s tennis team’s winningest player this season, going 12-4 in singles and 12-5. (Photo courtesy Connor Clark /CSUN Athletic Communications)

“She was just a chicken with her head cut off, sort of the old Yuliia, being frustrated – and then you realized, ‘Look who’s across the net,’” said Gary Victor, who, in his 26 seasons leading the CSUN women’s tennis program, has helped players navigate all types of tragedy, but who hadn’t before had anyone with family living through war.

“It wasn’t a personal thing, but for Yuliia, anything connected to that part of the world right now is an open sore.”

Usually, though – 99% of the time, Victor said – Zhytelna doesn’t show signs of the toll the conflict is taking.

Similarly, Slivina “has been a very professional 90% of the time,” Adam said, “in terms of the herculean effort it takes to make sure the team doesn’t know how much of what’s going on back home is actually affecting her.”

‘LOVE AND CARE’

They’re aware, of course. They’ve shown “a lot of love and care,” said Slivina – “Stassie” to those teammates.

USC’s rowers wore shirts in support of Ukraine in-house. And the staff there made sure Slivina gets the summer classes she needs to maintain her scholarship before she returns for her fifth season – the NCAA’s bonus COVID season coming in clutch.

And last year at Northridge, teammate Magdalena Hedrzak helped the Zhytelna family find a place to stay for a while in her native Poland. Another tennis contact helped get Zhytelna’s younger sister safely into a tennis academy in France. And Yuliia leaned a lot on her doubles partner before she graduated, Ekaterina Repina understanding where she was coming from better than just about anyone, because Repina is Russian.

“Again,” Victor said, “out of the worst of humanity comes the best.”

“That’s what surprised me, that people cared, how much people care about me, specifically,” said Zhytelna, who found a home in Tarzana last summer with Nan Zaitlen, a 74-year-old Jewish woman whose parents survived the Holocaust.

Yuliia Zhytelna, left, has found a home away from home in Tarzana after Nan Zaitlen, a retired pediatrician, opened her house last summer to the Cal State Northridge tennis player from Ukraine. (Photo courtesy Nan Zaitlen)

“It is a very two-way street here,” Zaitlen said “In terms of what is done for each other. I really, really care about her because she’s very easy to care about, and she is very caring.

“And I keep telling her: I look forward to visiting her in Kyiv.”

Athletics also affords a platform and some recognition, including the CalHOPE Courage award, which recognizes California college athletes who’ve overcome stress and anxiety associated with adversity – an honor for which Slivina and Zhytelna were celebrated at an L.A. Kings game in February. Of course, Slivina makes it clear: “I never overcame anything.”

But she is learning to live with this harrowing reality, using Ukrainian literature and music as a salve for that open sore.

And like Zhytelna, she does interviews, in print, and on podcasts or television, speaking up on their nation’s behalf, reminding those around them going about their day-to-day business here about the day-to-day atrocities happening there.

‘THAT SITUATION’

If it’s not the Golden Rule, it’s an adjacent ordinance: You never know what someone’s going through, so be kind. But sometimes you can have an idea; sometimes you should know.

“It happens I feel like all the time, I meet someone and I tell them I’m from Ukraine, and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, is that situation still happening?’” Slivina said. “I feel like it’s just crazy that people ask that.”

That situation.

That situation that, in October, delivered a missile to the street over from Zhytelna’s, shattering the windows in her family home.

That situation that had Slivina’s brother warming food by candle this winter, the electricity out for long stretches.

That situation that’s made them miss birthdays. That’s altered their country so much that they know they won’t really recognize it when they return.

That situation that’s killed more than 42,000 people, injured at least 59,000 and displaced another 14 million. That threatens their loved ones daily.

A situation they’re fighting, like Sviatoslav Vakartšuk – the frontman of Slivina’s favorite band Okean Elzy, who regularly performs on the frontline – by whatever means are at their disposal. “As my machine gun,” the rocker said, “I’m using my guitar.”

Guitar or gun, racket or oar, they contend and they cope with a situation that, yes, is still happening.

​ Orange County Register 

Dodgers’ spring leadership question has faded away

• April 13, 2023

SAN FRANCISCO — The Dodgers have answered their leadership question – by not even asking it.

With Justin Turner departed for Boston, a popular question this spring centered on who would fill his leadership role in the Dodgers clubhouse. Manager Dave Roberts acknowledged that it was an issue on his mind as spring camp opened and that he might give “an easy nudging” to Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman to step forward and take greater leadership roles than they had in the past.

But once Roberts saw the dynamics of a clubhouse featuring veteran additions Jason Heyward, J.D. Martinez and David Peralta, he decided that wasn’t necessary.

“Once I got a chance to get to spring and see our guys together, I didn’t have that conversation. And I don’t think I needed to or still need to,” Roberts said. “I just felt that with the guys we brought in and seeing them assimilate I just feel that we have enough guys doing and saying the right thing. … To have Freddie and Mookie do something more than they’ve already done in the past, I just didn’t think it was necessary.”

Freeman did take the lead in organizing a team dinner when the Dodgers traveled to Arizona last week for the first road trip of the season and is mulling over arranging something on the day off between series in Chicago and Pittsburgh later this month.

“I’ve never been one to say, ‘You’re going to be a leader. I’m going to be a leader.’ That doesn’t make sense to me,” Freeman said. “I think it just naturally happens.”

Freeman said he has seen Betts taking more of a leadership role in his own way, particularly speaking up during hitters’ meetings and offering positive support.

“Yeah. I think if you talk to anybody in this organization, Mookie has taken that step which is awesome,” Freeman said. “I mean, he’s a superstar – not just in baseball, in every sport in this world, he can do it all. He’s a special person. He cares.

“He’s comfortable now. In life, it’s comfort. Once you get comfortable, you’re still the same person but you can do more. Mookie’s comfortable now.”

Betts shrugged off any suggestion that he has become more vocal – or that a new leader had to be identified.

“Nobody pays attention to who the leader is. We’re just playing,” Betts said. “I feel like me and Freddie aren’t very vocal leaders. We’re not top-step, screaming and cheering. We lead by example. We play the game hard, we play the game the right way, we play every day. That’s who we are. You can’t tell somebody to be rah-rah if that’s not who they are.

“Maybe (I’m speaking up more). It’s not on purpose, I will say that. It just kind of happens. My wife always tells me I’m just a leader and I don’t really realize it.”

WALK THIS WAY

The Dodgers went into Wednesday’s game leading the majors in walks drawn (65). They led the National League and finished second in the majors in walks each of the past two seasons.

But this year’s total is notable for the contributions of rookies Miguel Vargas and James Outman. Those two have combined to draw 21 of the walks, with Vargas (12) entering Wednesday tied with New York Mets outfielder Brandon Nimmo for the major-league lead.

“For me, just Vargas and Outman, to be able to take walks and have good at-bats, I think in some ironic way it’s kind of incentivizing the veteran players to have those same type of at-bats and take walks when they’re presented,” Roberts said.

So far this season, both Vargas and Outman have shown higher walk rates in the majors than they did during their minor-league careers.

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“It’s very positive that they’ve taken the free passes,” Roberts said. “That’s really good because guys always want to swing the bat, to get knocks. But to have the discipline to not chase, it shows a lot of maturity, which is something we bet on coming into the season.

“They’re both smart guys. I say that because when you’re a smart player you know that if you swing out of the strike zone you’re not going to have success. … Sometimes you have to take the walk instead of the 0 for 1. Those guys just really get it and understand that.”

UP NEXT

The Dodgers are off Thursday.

Cubs (LHP Justin Steele 1-0, 0.75 ERA) at Dodgers (RHP Noah Syndergaard, 0-1, 6.30 ERA), Friday, 7:10 p.m., SportsNet LA, 570 AM

​ Orange County Register 

UCLA team launches ocean carbon capture project at Port of Los Angeles

• April 13, 2023

Prof. Dante Simonetti stood on a 100-foot barge Wednesday morning, tethered close to shore just outside one of AltaSea’s massive warehouses at the Port of Los Angeles.

In one hand, Simonetti, who helps head up UCLA’s Institute for Carbon Management, held a copper block called an electrochemical reactor. When a jolt of electricity is applied to the device and ocean water passes through it, he explained, a chemical reaction turns any dissolved minerals from that seawater into powder-fine solids.

In Simonetti’s other hand, he held a small plastic container filled with powder-like bits of limestone and brucite created through this process.

The point of it all was locked inside that powder, where carbon dioxide that had once been absorbed and dissolved into the sea gets trapped, sequestered from our acidifying oceans and ever-warming atmosphere for more than 10,000 years.

Even better: Once there is less carbon dissolved within the ocean, physics tells us the ocean will naturally pull more carbon from the air. And if the ocean starts absorbing more of the carbon that humans can’t seem to stop churning out, that could potentially help us all avoid learning firsthand what more extreme climate change will do to our planet.

With that goal in mind, Simonetti and his team spent two years scaling up that handheld ocean carbon capture system, making it about one million times larger. On Wednesday, they showed off that first-of-its-kind system, with multiple large electrochemical reactors, water tanks and other equipment rigged up on a barge that in a previous life hauled cargo to remote villages in Alaska and the Arctic Circle.

Gaurav Sant, director of UCLA’s Institute for Carbon Management, said in about a week his team plans to launch a similar demonstration system in Singapore. Each shore-side pilot, which they’ve dubbed Project SeaChange, will be capable of drawing more than 40 tons of carbon from the air each year, removing up to 4.6 kilograms of carbon dioxide from each cubic meter of seawater processed.

As these demonstration projects come online, UCLA joins a small but growing group of startups working to address the climate crisis by using technology to remove carbon from the ocean so it will pull more carbon out of the air.

Last year, Pasadena-based Captura, which grew out of research at nearby CalTech, beat UCLA to the punch by launching a pilot ocean carbon capture system off the coast of Newport Beach, though it was a much smaller system, capable of drawing down just 1 ton of carbon each year. By June, Captura says it will launch a pilot that can scrub 100 tons of carbon a year, with plans in the works for a third system that should hit 1,000 tons.

Fenfang Wu, lead pilot engineer and lab manager of Captura, shows off the membrane contractor portion of a system that aims to remove 100 tons of carbon from the ocean each year. The pilot project is under construction at Captura’s laboratory in Pasadena, CA, on Wednesday, February 15, 2023. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Demand for such projects — if they prove feasible and cost effective — is nearly a lock. With global goals to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, most industries on the planet are facing intense pressure to reduce their carbon emissions. One of the most attractive ways for them to do that is to buy carbon offsets, where they can continue operating but pay to run programs that help reduce atmospheric carbon.

To date, most proposals to remove carbon from the atmosphere have focused on trying to scrub the greenhouse gas directly from the air. But that form of carbon capture is so far proving to be a pricey and underperforming endeavor. So the teams at UCLA and Captura are banking on selling carbon offset credits as they look to roll out industrial-scale ocean capture plants commercially in the next few years.

The UCLA team’s technology offers another potential benefit. Its process, which differs in a few elemental ways from Captura’s, also produces hydrogen as electrolysis breaks seawater down into its element parts. Hydrogen is another hot commodity in the modern green economy, with startups and major corporations working on ways to use hydrogen to power everything from airplanes to trucks to cement production. So in addition to selling carbon credits, the UCLA team’s spinoff business, Equatic, hopes to also sell hydrogen.

That hydrogen could be used to power the company’s carbon capture plants, too. The pilot project at AltaSea requires two megawatt hours of electricity for each ton of carbon dioxide removed from the sea, Sant said. The system is plugged into the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Green Power program, where its electricity is supplied from renewable sources. But as systems come online in other places, Sant said they could use hydrogen generated by the plant to supply some of the power needed to operate the system. He said some electricity would still be needed, though, so they’re looking to prioritize using renewable energy whenever possible, with the potential of someday using offshore wind turbines or solar systems as power sources.

If Equatic’s systems run entirely on renewable energy, that will not only make them better for the planet, but also make both the carbon credits it offers and the hydrogen it supplies even more valuable.

One other potential revenue point for UCLA’s team is the carbon-containing solids created during the process. Simonetti said that material could be used to replenish sand on beaches, or made into building materials such as cement. But much of it, he said, would likely be released back into the ocean due to the volume that will be created.

Still, the team insists its system will have “minimal to no effect” on the surrounding ecosystem, since they’re not putting anything in the sea that wasn’t already there.

“We design vessels that can rebalance our seawater to ensure that we have the same ion composition, pH, salinity, dissolved solids and other fundamental properties of seawater before we discharge,” Simonetti said.

They also have fine-mesh filters over their pumps, to keep aquatic life from being pulled into the system.

Regulators and private investors are demonstrating with their wallets that they’re optimistic about the potential of UCLA’s system. The company’s financing includes a $1 million grant from the Department of Energy, $1.5 million from Volkswagen’s settlement over an emissions cheating scandal, and a $21 million pledge from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

The Department of Energy has set financial targets — $100 a ton for carbon removal and $1 per kilo for hydrogen — to make them commercially viable. Sant didn’t share how those prices pencil out now, noting that pilot projects are always expensive. But he said he’s confident they’ll hit those targets quickly as they scale up.

While the pilot projects in L.A. and Singapore are set to run for six to nine months, Sant said his team already is designing industrial-scale plants capable of drawing down millions of tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year.

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that we’ll need to remove 10 to 20 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year, starting in 2050, to avoid hitting 2 degrees Celsius of warming. Thousands of large ocean carbon capture plants, at a cost of trillions of dollars, would be needed to hit that target.

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Of course, retrieving carbon from the ocean isn’t the only solution on the table, with billions in federal dollars being invested into proving various carbon removal systems. But Sant said the biggest limitation ahead isn’t just nailing the technology, but building them out at the scale and speed the climate crisis demands.

“That really is the fundamental metric that you’ve got to keep in mind,” he said. “It’s also probably the hardest one, because this is a scale of growth that is unprecedented.”

​ Orange County Register 

How baseball’s new rules are changing the game, and how they aren’t

• April 13, 2023

Around this time a year ago, complaints about the state of baseball were not limited to pedants, pundits, and old men yelling at clouds. The league-wide batting average by the end of April 2022 was .231. Mario Mendoza, the light-hitting infielder of the 1970s and 1980s whose name is synonymous with below-average hitting, batted .231 in 1981. To some, the game had changed beyond recognition.

As it often does, batting average crept up as the season progressed. By the end of the season, it reached .243, still the lowest over a full season since 1968. Then as now, Major League Baseball decided it was time to change the rules.

Batting average is about as helpful to diagnosing the balance between hitting and pitching as a digital thermometer is to diagnosing a sick patient: useful, but incomplete. It tells us a lot about the effectiveness of the new rules, but not everything.

Here are a few early observations about what’s changed, and what hasn’t:

1. Batters are being rewarded with more hits ― and not just lefties

The rise in batting average tells us two things. One is more obvious than the other.

By restricting where infielders can stand – both feet on the dirt, with two men on either side of second base – it only makes sense that more ground balls are getting through to the outfield. Sure enough, batting average on grounders was .249 through Tuesday, up from .241 a year ago.

Here’s where the numbers get interesting. Left-handed hitters have always been shifted more frequently than right-handed hitters. Yet right-handers’ batting average on grounders is up 13 points compared to last year, while lefties have gained only three points.

Where lefties hold the early advantage is on line drives: their batting average on liners has jumped 42 points (.628 to .670), compared to 20 points for righties (.633 to .653).

2. Home runs are surging, too

Here’s another one the new rules didn’t see coming: a year ago, one out of every 10 fly balls hit in April resulted in a home run. So far in 2023, the home-run-per-fly-ball rate is up to 12.7%.

MLB has attempted to standardize the physical properties of baseballs ever since home runs surged at record rates in 2017 and 2019. (Ironically, the league acknowledged using two different baseballs in 2021.) Even if no new rules were implemented this year, the question of how easily the ball carries would have been an important one to ask. The answer: pretty easily.

Isolated power, which subtracts batting average from slugging percentage, is tracking at its third-highest March/April rate since at least 2002. If the current HR/fly ball ratio holds, it will be the highest by the end of April in all but three recorded seasons (2017, 2019 and 2021).

Note that home run rates will need time to be judged fairly. Toronto’s Rogers Centre, which changed its dimensions over the winter, has hosted two games. Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg has hosted nine. But the percentage of hard-hit balls (grounders, line drives and fly balls included) is so far the third-highest ever recorded too. No matter where they stood, fielders might be having a harder time catching baseballs this year.

3. More stolen bases

Bigger bases, fewer pickoffs, less time to improvise on the mound: all of these initiatives were intended to increase stolen bases. To the surprise of no one, they’re working.

The rate of attempted steals per game (0.85 through Tuesday) is the highest since 2012, but still well below the heyday which MLB is unabashedly attempting to replicate. The league attempted 1.21 steals per game in 1987. What’s changed is the success rate: at 81.3%, the average thief in 2023 is now successful as often as Ichiro Suzuki was during his major league career. If anything, this might lead to more stolen bases as the season goes on, as teams get more daring on the basepaths and batting average on balls in play increases.

Philosophically, this might rub old-school fans the wrong way. After all, defensive shifts were not the norm until recently, so a rule that repositions two fielders on either side of second base is effectively restoring the game to a previous version of itself. Eighteen-inch bases and limits on pickoff attempts were never the norm. Rather than gently nudging the balance between offense and defense in one direction, these rules forcibly move the needle someplace it’s never been.

4. More double plays

One unintended consequence of the shifting rule to keep an eye on: 2.32% of all fielding chances this season have resulted in a double play, up from 2.25% in 2022. That’s a subtle change that anecdotally seems more pronounced in person.

It’s also somewhat counterintuitive. After all, if more ground balls are getting through the infield, shouldn’t it be harder for teams to turn double plays?

Two factors, I think, are working in the fielders’ favor. One is that if the balls are being hit harder – which they are – fielders should have more time to throw the ball around the infield on double-play attempts. The other is that if batting and on-base averages are up – which they are – there ought to be more runners on first base to double up. Expect that trend to be more pronounced as BABIP rises this summer.

5. True outcomes

Pitchers are still throwing harder than ever, and more breaking balls than ever, so perhaps it is unsurprising that strikeout rates are still sky-high. Through Tuesday, the strikeout rate was essentially unchanged from a year ago. The weird one: the league-wide walk rate is on pace to be the highest in April since 2010.

Combine those figures with the high home run rate, and baseball is still a game of “three true outcomes.” The rate of balls in play is essentially unchanged. What has changed is the difficulty in turning those batted balls into outs.

6. Time (and pace) of game

MLB boasted on its official Twitter account that 10 of the 13 games played Monday ended by 9:30 p.m. local time. Unless you’re a vampire, that’s good news.

You probably knew that the average time of a nine-inning game has fallen by nearly half an hour. Fortunately, Baseball Reference is tracking the more subtle pace-of-game metrics too: Through Tuesday, the average time between plate appearances is down 24 seconds and the average time between balls in play is down by 33 seconds. Thank you, pitch clock!

With all these quicker games, perhaps MLB can reconsider the “need” for an automatic runner on second base in extra innings.

​ Orange County Register 

Grand Prix of Long Beach: Jim Michaelian thrilled about Historic F1 races

• April 13, 2023

It doesn’t take much to get Jim Michaelian revved up this time of year, so it was no surprise to hear how excited he is about a couple of 20-minute Historic F1 Challenge races that will be among the support series for this weekend’s 48th running of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.

The Grand Prix of Long Beach began in 1975 with the Formula 5000 series as the main event. The next year it switched to Formula 1 and stayed that way until 1984 when it switched to Champ Car, which merged with IndyCar in 2008.

The Historic F1 Challenge races will be run Saturday at 11:20 a.m., the day before Sunday’s NTT IndyCar main event, and again on Sunday at 10:45 a.m. Best of all, most of the cars that will be on the grid were driven there decades ago.

“There’s 19 cars now and I think the last count it was like 15 actually ran here from ’76 to ’83, 15 out of the 19,” Michaelian said.

To say Michaelian is thrilled about this development is putting it mildly.

“First, the few of us who were around then, it’s a great chance to reminisce about the sights and the sounds of those cars on the circuit,” he said. “But I think more importantly, for those who didn’t have the opportunity, this is a chance for them to see and to hear the sounds of those engines.”

That alone is worth taking in the race, Michaelian intimated.

“There’s Cosworth’s V8’s, there’s a flat-twelve, there’s a V12,” he said of the engines. “I mean, those are totally different sounds than you’ll ever hear anymore. So it’s not only a look back, but it also is for many people a new experience.”

The IMSA Weathertech SportsCar Grand Prix is the main support race in Long Beach. It will last 100 minutes on Saturday. There is also the Porsche Carrera Cup, the Stadium Super Trucks and the Super Drift Challenge.

INDYCAR REPEAT?

Sebastien Bourdais won three Grand Prix of Long Beach main events from 2005-07, but there was not a repeat winner again until Alexander Rossi pulled it off in 2018 and 2019.

Josef Newgarden is the defending champion and he comes into this race off a victory at the Texas Motor Speedway for the second consecutive year.

Related links

Grand Prix of Long Beach: Graham Rahal still fighting for positive results
Grand Prix of Long Beach: Oh, baby, what a time it was for Josef Newgarden

​ Orange County Register