Interesting. Maybe a probe can be sent to Bakersfield and hopefully survive the heat and fumes long enough to compare the results. It's the only place I've ever heard of where someone started their car across the road from a refinery, and the atmosphere literally exploded, destroying both him and his car (true story). There's a reason it's called the armpit of the West.

All that is separated by a long anticline directly adjacent to the San Andreas Fault called Elkhorn Ridge, which geologically cleanly divides one of the biggest oil well forests in the US from what is perhaps the most uninhabited pristine natural grassland left in the State, thankfully oilless. It's also famous for periodic Superblooms so colorful they're easily seen from space; surreal at times, really. I prefer it slightly off season, and things somewhat less conspicuously spray painted for miles on end. Late fall is nice if one likes browns; but the constant wildfire smoke filtering in, along with sandstorms last year were quite uninviting, especially since that part of the world is the epicenter of Valley Fever, a really nasty lung fungal disease spread on blowing dust, not as statistically lethal as Covid, but with a far worse record of serious debilitation afterwards among those who do get infected. The Refuge was originally set up for the endangered tiny kit fox, a creature of small bushes and fond of kangaroo rats. About the size of a large house cat.