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Says the chair-bound idiot that has never loaded a couple of tons of rocks onto an SUV after a nice rockhounding trip.

Really? A couple of tons? I smell bullshit!

Cargo capacity of a model X is around 1900 lbs, that's people gear, and cargo. Most SUVs I searched are right around 2000, and again, that's people, gear, cargo, and fuel (where applicable). In order to get anywhere near "a couple of tons" capacity you need to get into a 3500 class pickup truck. Towing is a different story, but then we have to figure out how a couple of people hand loaded two tons of rocks onto a trailer. And if we somehow managed to convince a bunch of people how much "fun" that was, we have to figure out where we can go where we can remove two tons of rocks without getting arrested. (Hint, don't go to Arizona)

Ok, so actually on topic... Unless you are literally putting 250 pounds of material on your roof (which is well above what a standard roof rack is rated for) you're not going to affect the friction force.

I believe that you must stake a claim prior to commencing mining operations on land under control of the Bureau of Land Management. A three foot pile of rocks ought to do it - https://www.blm.gov/programs/e...

Deporting every single Muslim and those sympathetic to them. BLM supporters can join them.

whats wrong with the blm what did smoky bear touch you funny as a kid or something?...

Costs extra if you want the half acre to be roughly horizontal and have electricity and water to the site.

Nope, not at all. California is just a huge state, with TONS of cheap vacant land wide open once you get some distance away from the big cities.

In fact, last time I checked: "BLM California manages 15.2 million acres of public lands, nearly 15% of the state's land area." http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en.html

$12,500 - level lot:
MLS# SK13219448

$23,000 - larger lot, small house
MLS# 41325545

$25,500 - nice house, 1/4 acre
MLS# 21479131

$27,500 - needs work
MLS# DC12107035

$28,000 - large house - 1/3rd acre
MLS# 21481501

$29,900 - Good condition
MLS# DC13046621

And helium cannot be enriched or purified? Is it really better to let a (practically) non-renewable resource escape into space than save it for when it becomes economical to refine?

Emphasis mine

That's exactly what's been happening. Most of the natural gas extractors decided that as long as the government was selling helium at a very low price, it wasn't economical to collect it. AFAIK, Exxon-Mobil has one major site in Wyoming and that's about it (and it's currently down for "maintenance"). Of course, this is complete crap - they just don't want to be bothered.

Currently the BLM charges $84 per million cubic feet of crude helium (scroll halfway down the page or so). It takes ~27 cu.ft. of gas to make 1 liter of liquid. We get pretty good pricing and pay roughly $10/L of liquid helium. If we assume it costs $1 to purify and liquefy gas to make one liter, heck, if it costs $5 and the gas is only 50% pure, the "big 3" suppliers aren't losing any money and could easily pay more if the natural gas producers collected and sold the helium.

Go out in your yard. Pick up a feather. Is that feather from a hawk? Congrats you just committed a crime http://www.blm.gov/id/st/en/prog/blm_special_areas/birds_of_prey_nca/links/raptor_possession.html http://www.gpnc.org/raptors1.htm

A lot of people think that we are utterly dependent on burning oil for energy for our modern existence, but this is patently untrue. One example of potential independence is biodiesel. I own two diesels (a car and a truck) and I put biodiesel into them when I can, but it costs significantly more than petroleum diesel. This is due to the tax breaks given to Big Oil, and the fact that no one is paying for the major externality of burning petrofuels, carbon dioxide. The US government proved at Sandia NREL in the 1980s that producing biodiesel from algae grown in open raceway ponds was not only feasible, but that it should be profitable with diesel fuel retailing at $3/gallon.

We could easily replace our diesel fuel consumption with only a relatively small amount of land. Unfortunately, virtually all the land not already in use that is useful for this process is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management, and they have approved only a tiny portion of renewable energy projects proposed for BLM land even when it is shown to be beneficial. What chance is there to undertake a massive project like replacing a significant portion of our diesel consumption with biodiesel from algae?

Our own federal government has already shown that replacing diesel-based fossil fuels in transportation with algae is feasible, and it is likewise our own federal government that prevents any such projects going forward, largely through the Bureau of Land Management. Would anyone like a tax break on oil production, while we're here?

Actually, I think they've bee selling off the helium since 1996. http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/nm/programs/0/helium_docs.Par.80129.File.dat/pl104273.pdf

Last I checked the "free market" slowly ended between the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, and that's just fine with me. As far as letting the Chinese government hoard or restrict the sale of rare earths, that is clearly a government restriction of free trade, as there are no private companies independently choosing to do so. And in China, the notion of an independent company becomes muddied by the fact that the Chinese government is the principal shareholder of all "private" Chinese companies.

Of course the US does it as well, such as the stockpiling of the Strategic Oil Reserve, $11 billion of gold held by the US Treasury, and the massive tracts of public land that the government strategically leases for logging, mining, and grazing in accordance to its objectives to stabilize [manipulate] the commodities market.

www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/
fms.treas.gov/gold/current.html
http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en.html

I was going to mention the stockpiling of Helium, but it looks like the US has depleted an/or privatized it's National Helium Reserve.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve

The difference is that people will be held responsible if their camp fires get out of control: http://www.blm.gov/nm/st/en/prog/recreation/recreation_activities/camping.html Granted, this is for camping on land managed by the BLM, and I don't know how that works for land managed by other public entities. But at least on the BLM site, I didn't find anything for holding people responsible for fires started through indiscriminate gun use. Furthermore, if it can be shown that you willfully started a fire by pouring gasoline out somewhere and lighting it with a match, you will be charged with arson pretty much anywhere.

So the reason that people are kinda pissed off about this is that you can be held responsible for not keeping fires under control, except if you started the fire with a gun. Then, it's just carry on, and next time, please be more careful.

Can't believe I have to explain that to you.

Good thing we proved the technology as Sandia NREL in the 1980s; the conjecture was that the process would be profitable by the time diesel fuel reached $3/gallon, but nobody has spun it up yet. This is possibly due to the fact that the only place you can get enough suitable land cheap enough is managed by the BLM, and you can get permits to mine coal or drill for oil, but heaven help you if you want to build a renewable energy facility.

Dems run around throwing money at Wind (meh) and Solar PV (a waste of money).

Wind is a proven technology, although all these horizontal-axis wind turbines are stupid. Solar PV could pay back the energy cost of its production in 7 years in the 1970s, and can safely be assumed to be much better today. There really are things more important than money. Unfortunately, those in charge do not agree.

Those "in charge" are the people investing in the technology and hoping for a payback on their investment. Government funding of the energy infrastructure is small in the US. Investment money will not go into a technology with a 7-year payback when there is plenty of opportunity for supplying energy with a shorter payback.

Yet, the simple answer here is to not just support geothermal, but do it in a smart way.

Oh, so you mean, only do it on a small scale with heat pipes?

Most dry wells are ran down to about 10'K feet. Yet most heat is in the 10-20'K feet arena.

Most of the time, if you dig down to where it's really hot, you're going to be making a steam vent. And then you're going to bring up radioactives. We don't need a copy of The Geysers anywhere in the world, it's an ecological disaster.

With this approach, drilling companies bear the first half of the risk while gov. then helps in the second half.

Why should government help at all? All they need to do is stop hindering. Government is against green power anyway; otherwise we'd have not just strip mining on BLM land, but also solar plants and the like; numerous entities would like to build them there but are being stymied while clear cutting is A-OK.

Geothermal is not the answer. Solar would be far more useful, as it produces power when we need it most, and we have control over the pollution inherent to the process... which we do NOT have over geothermal.

The best sites for large scale solar are not necessarily on old strip mines. Nevada has lots of sun and old copper mines but I'm not sure how much is BLM. Here's a map of all the renewable projects the Nevada BLM knows about.

I'm looking at the text of the law at the Bureau of Land Management web site: PDF and I'm not seeing anything about a set price. There's a section about the Secretary of the Interior being able to set a price to recoup costs.

The USGS site here has PDFs of the prices. Looks like it started ~$1.70/m^3 in 1998 and has risen to ~$2.15/m^3.

If what the article stated is correct (DoI instructed to sell helium at a constant rate until it was done) then they'd be dumping the He on the market, depressing the price, and altering the market.

Can anyone comment more knowlegeably? Especially as to WHO is buying all that He?

The way I understand it, we privatized the US supply of helium back in 1996. We targeted selling 850 million scm by 2015, reserving 17 million scm for the federal government's reserve. The price has been set artificially low in order to get that 850 million scm sold off in time.

In other words, we're not approaching peak helium, we're stupidly, deliberately, actively rushing toward it.

http://www.agiweb.org/gap/legis106/helium.html
http://www.blm.gov/nm/st/en/prog/energy/helium/federal_helium_program.html
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=9860
https://twitter.com/timoreilly/statuses/17831735662

I agree that hunters use silencers however there is no need for them to go around public land with silencers fitted.

Plenty of hunting is done on public lands. Since you don't own the land (or pay for its use) it is actually more desirable to be quiet on public lands than at a private hunting location.

Wish I had the mod points to give you, but you appear to be correct -- I checked the BLM FAQ and it seems to indicate the same thing as well. BLM land is public land, and is administered on behalf of the Federal government.

lets go back millions of years.
alaska's north slope was at time 300 miles from the north pole and the climate was tropical: http://www.blm.gov/ak/st/en/prog/culture/dinosaurs.html
http://www.arcus.org/TREC/VBC/index.php?autocom=custom&page=arctic_dinosaurs
http://aprn.org/2007/08/24/dinosaur-excavations-underway-on-the-north-slope/
national geographic had a great special on this topic too.

Well, in that case...we need to stop sending all that tax money to the Federal govt., and start keeping it to ourselves to fund our needs and rebuilding zones.

And...one big help for LA, would to be to just take posession of all those nice oil rigs/drilling operations and leases for sure from the Federal govt. and keep all that lease and royalty money for ourselves, rather than having it go into the US general funds. With that, we could MORE than take care of our rebuilding problems.

Don't be so sure. Since 1984 Louisiana has been a beneficiary of Federal spending, receiving more than $1.20 per tax dollar contributed since 1988. Source http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html (Flash app linked. Base PDF available from http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/ftsbs-timeseries-20071016-.pdf). I'm not sure if the leases from oil rigs is accounted for in this research, but according to the state's DNR page (http://dnr.louisiana.gov/min/petlan/petlan.asp) there's a whole office division dedicated to tracking such leases. Further, according to the Federal Bureau of Land Management, http://www.blm.gov/natacq/pls98/98PL1-3.PDF, 744,782 acres (or only 2.6%) of Louisiana is Federally owned as of 1996. I don't imagine that changes much, so the relative age of the document shouldn't be of concern. Perhaps The Fed is hoarding the most lucrative part of the state... According to http://www.blm.gov/natacq/pls02/pls3-17_02.pdf, only 65,161 acres are in a "Producing" status. Huh. There are thirteen other states that have more Federal Lands in a Producing status...

Perhaps by upping the property taxes (5th lowest in the country), you could better cover the real cost of living there. http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/31.html

For what it's worth, I know full well that my state of residence (Alaska) is also a beneficiary of the Union, on parity with Louisiana.

Well, in that case...we need to stop sending all that tax money to the Federal govt., and start keeping it to ourselves to fund our needs and rebuilding zones.

And...one big help for LA, would to be to just take posession of all those nice oil rigs/drilling operations and leases for sure from the Federal govt. and keep all that lease and royalty money for ourselves, rather than having it go into the US general funds. With that, we could MORE than take care of our rebuilding problems.

Don't be so sure. Since 1984 Louisiana has been a beneficiary of Federal spending, receiving more than $1.20 per tax dollar contributed since 1988. Source http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/22685.html (Flash app linked. Base PDF available from http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/ftsbs-timeseries-20071016-.pdf). I'm not sure if the leases from oil rigs is accounted for in this research, but according to the state's DNR page (http://dnr.louisiana.gov/min/petlan/petlan.asp) there's a whole office division dedicated to tracking such leases. Further, according to the Federal Bureau of Land Management, http://www.blm.gov/natacq/pls98/98PL1-3.PDF, 744,782 acres (or only 2.6%) of Louisiana is Federally owned as of 1996. I don't imagine that changes much, so the relative age of the document shouldn't be of concern. Perhaps The Fed is hoarding the most lucrative part of the state... According to http://www.blm.gov/natacq/pls02/pls3-17_02.pdf, only 65,161 acres are in a "Producing" status. Huh. There are thirteen other states that have more Federal Lands in a Producing status...

Perhaps by upping the property taxes (5th lowest in the country), you could better cover the real cost of living there. http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/31.html

For what it's worth, I know full well that my state of residence (Alaska) is also a beneficiary of the Union, on parity with Louisiana.

From the BLM web page:

http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/energy/oil_and_gas.html

It wasn't too hard to find. Being on the main blm web page and all. To answer the question, the BLM does have quite an investment in selling leases for exploiting natural resources. Although, it doesn't explain why they wouldn't be interested in selling leases to exploit sunlight. Of course, we might find out that this was a directive from someone higher up in the administration.

I don't foresee many issues with local government in the middle of the desert.

I've got some BAD NEWS for you... Those long stretches of completely empty desert in the southwest... It's basically ALL managed by the BLM.

"BLM California manages 15.2 million acres of public lands, nearly 15% of the state's land area." http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en.html

"The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers nearly 48 million acres of public land in Nevada. BLM public lands make up about 67 percent of Nevada's land base." http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en.html

"BLM Arizona administers 12.2 million surface acres of public lands" http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en.html

"The BLM manages nearly 22.9 million acres of public lands in Utah, representing about 42 percent of the state." http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en.2.html

Colorado: "8.3 million acres of public lands in the State." http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/BLM_Information/newsroom/2008/blm_resource_advisory.html

In fact, just look at the BLM's official map: http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/national.Par.54506.Image.-1.-1.1.gif

It's pretty clear, the BLM manages most of the available land, pretty much everywhere that solar power would be practical (except Texas).

You can still do whatever you want with private land,

They addressed that in TFA. Private land is FAR more expensive.

I don't foresee many issues with local government in the middle of the desert.

I've got some BAD NEWS for you... Those long stretches of completely empty desert in the southwest... It's basically ALL managed by the BLM.

"BLM California manages 15.2 million acres of public lands, nearly 15% of the state's land area." http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en.html

"The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers nearly 48 million acres of public land in Nevada. BLM public lands make up about 67 percent of Nevada's land base." http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en.html

"BLM Arizona administers 12.2 million surface acres of public lands" http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en.html

"The BLM manages nearly 22.9 million acres of public lands in Utah, representing about 42 percent of the state." http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en.2.html

Colorado: "8.3 million acres of public lands in the State." http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/BLM_Information/newsroom/2008/blm_resource_advisory.html

In fact, just look at the BLM's official map: http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/national.Par.54506.Image.-1.-1.1.gif

It's pretty clear, the BLM manages most of the available land, pretty much everywhere that solar power would be practical (except Texas).

You can still do whatever you want with private land,

They addressed that in TFA. Private land is FAR more expensive.

I don't foresee many issues with local government in the middle of the desert.

I've got some BAD NEWS for you... Those long stretches of completely empty desert in the southwest... It's basically ALL managed by the BLM.

"BLM California manages 15.2 million acres of public lands, nearly 15% of the state's land area." http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en.html

"The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers nearly 48 million acres of public land in Nevada. BLM public lands make up about 67 percent of Nevada's land base." http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en.html

"BLM Arizona administers 12.2 million surface acres of public lands" http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en.html

"The BLM manages nearly 22.9 million acres of public lands in Utah, representing about 42 percent of the state." http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en.2.html

Colorado: "8.3 million acres of public lands in the State." http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/BLM_Information/newsroom/2008/blm_resource_advisory.html

In fact, just look at the BLM's official map: http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/national.Par.54506.Image.-1.-1.1.gif

It's pretty clear, the BLM manages most of the available land, pretty much everywhere that solar power would be practical (except Texas).

You can still do whatever you want with private land,

They addressed that in TFA. Private land is FAR more expensive.

I don't foresee many issues with local government in the middle of the desert.

I've got some BAD NEWS for you... Those long stretches of completely empty desert in the southwest... It's basically ALL managed by the BLM.

"BLM California manages 15.2 million acres of public lands, nearly 15% of the state's land area." http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en.html

"The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers nearly 48 million acres of public land in Nevada. BLM public lands make up about 67 percent of Nevada's land base." http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en.html

"BLM Arizona administers 12.2 million surface acres of public lands" http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en.html

"The BLM manages nearly 22.9 million acres of public lands in Utah, representing about 42 percent of the state." http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en.2.html

Colorado: "8.3 million acres of public lands in the State." http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/BLM_Information/newsroom/2008/blm_resource_advisory.html

In fact, just look at the BLM's official map: http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/national.Par.54506.Image.-1.-1.1.gif

It's pretty clear, the BLM manages most of the available land, pretty much everywhere that solar power would be practical (except Texas).

You can still do whatever you want with private land,

They addressed that in TFA. Private land is FAR more expensive.

I don't foresee many issues with local government in the middle of the desert.

I've got some BAD NEWS for you... Those long stretches of completely empty desert in the southwest... It's basically ALL managed by the BLM.

"BLM California manages 15.2 million acres of public lands, nearly 15% of the state's land area." http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en.html

"The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers nearly 48 million acres of public land in Nevada. BLM public lands make up about 67 percent of Nevada's land base." http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en.html

"BLM Arizona administers 12.2 million surface acres of public lands" http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en.html

"The BLM manages nearly 22.9 million acres of public lands in Utah, representing about 42 percent of the state." http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en.2.html

Colorado: "8.3 million acres of public lands in the State." http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/BLM_Information/newsroom/2008/blm_resource_advisory.html

In fact, just look at the BLM's official map: http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/national.Par.54506.Image.-1.-1.1.gif

It's pretty clear, the BLM manages most of the available land, pretty much everywhere that solar power would be practical (except Texas).

You can still do whatever you want with private land,

They addressed that in TFA. Private land is FAR more expensive.

I don't foresee many issues with local government in the middle of the desert.

I've got some BAD NEWS for you... Those long stretches of completely empty desert in the southwest... It's basically ALL managed by the BLM.

"BLM California manages 15.2 million acres of public lands, nearly 15% of the state's land area." http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en.html

"The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers nearly 48 million acres of public land in Nevada. BLM public lands make up about 67 percent of Nevada's land base." http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en.html

"BLM Arizona administers 12.2 million surface acres of public lands" http://www.blm.gov/az/st/en.html

"The BLM manages nearly 22.9 million acres of public lands in Utah, representing about 42 percent of the state." http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en.2.html

Colorado: "8.3 million acres of public lands in the State." http://www.blm.gov/co/st/en/BLM_Information/newsroom/2008/blm_resource_advisory.html

In fact, just look at the BLM's official map: http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/national.Par.54506.Image.-1.-1.1.gif

It's pretty clear, the BLM manages most of the available land, pretty much everywhere that solar power would be practical (except Texas).

You can still do whatever you want with private land,

They addressed that in TFA. Private land is FAR more expensive.

In the desert, you'd probably be better off going solar.

As for charging for tickets, BurningMan is legallly required to count the number of participants, and at its size it does have some unavoidable infrastructure costs. For example, local / state and federal law enforcement agencies have found the festival to be a cash cow, requiring ever larger per-participant payments each year.

Tickets also cover the bothersome necessity of reducing liability (the alternative is not having the event) and helping to keep out the 'girls gone wild' producers (the alternative is a lot less naked chicks, which would be a big disappointment to many Burners. A "Critical Tshirts" parade doesn't seems as interesting.) Tickets and vending bans both help stop the slackers who might otherwise just show up thinking "I can just buy what I need on the Playa..." That attitude towards preparation doesn't scale.

Well, perhaps people still try to homestead, but land certainly is not free for the taking, and hasn't been free for the taking since 1976.

As the BLM says, "Congress abolished homesteading in 1976 with passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, which made it national policy to retain the public lands in Federal ownership."

As for climate change, it is inevitable. There are fossils of large reptiles in Arctic Alaska, and evidence of vast, tropical forests in other parts of Alaska. Many of these were buried under thousands of feet of ice until recently (~9,000 years ago).

And polar bears spend time on land during the summer, and they can swim for many, many miles. They are very comfortable on the ocean, and are very well adapted to it.

-cp-

• DARPA is seeking to promote innovative technical approaches that will enable the autonomous operation of unmanned ground combat vehicles. In the future, such combat vehicles will operate over varied terrain without the benefit of road signs, pre-programmed routes, etc. Autonomous vehicles must navigate from point to point in an intelligent manner so as to avoid or accommodate obstacles and other impediments to the completion of their missions.

To insure that teams didn't pre-plan, there were these provisions in the original rules:

• The Route Definition Data File (RDDF) will be given to all Participants approximately two hours prior to the first Departure Signal at a pre-Challenge brief.
• Only commercially available data (maps, images, other cartographic products) may be downloaded to the autonomous or safety vehicles prior to the challenge. Use of GPS is acceptable.

Then, when the general route leaked from the Bureau of Land Management, preplanning got completely out of hand. Now teams could predrive much of the route or overfly it. And they did. Two teams had the route laser-scanned from aircraft. This produced a very detailed topo map, with an elevation point every 25cm or so, along with equally detailed aerial photos.

On top of this, DARPA increased the number of waypoints from 1000 or so to 5000 or so.

At this point, it started to look like a breadcrumb-following exercise.

CMU will manually plan the exact route in the two hours before the race with a team of people at workstations in a big trailer. So even the planning is mostly manual. Their vehicle really does have some autonomous navigation capability, but it only uses it if the route doesn't match the mapped path.

So that's the history. From true autonomy to connect-the-dots.

Up in Los Angeles, I have similar interests in what is going on. Here are some links...

Broad overview by the National forest Service

Excellent PDF of California, updated more than daily

Satellite imagery (Forest Service, very amazing)

More satellite imagery (NOAA, false colored with fires highlighted)

National Interagency Fire Centers wildfire reports

Interactive (zoomable) airspace restrictions map

And this is just the tip of the iceberg/what I happened to bookmark.

Anm

That thing has got to make some horrible sounds when squished.

I wouldn't want to run into a swarm of them migrating, like the Mormon Crickets in Idaho. More here, or here.

But serriously, I don't have them scanned in, but I took some pictures of the warnign signs on the highway because of the cricket migration. They cover the highway an inch think in places. IT makes the road too slick to drive at 65!

robi

(We could, of course, just tear up the permafrost and tundra with heavy equipment, but we take that extra effort to make environmental impact minimal. Bet Greenies don't hear about things like too often....)

If you force the rain to come down, NOW, RIGHT HERE, aren't you preventing the rain from falling on your neighbors? What if there is a drought and the neighbors need the rain?

1) What you speculate is akin to a well known phenomena called rain shadow deserts .

2) "stealing" is a strong word implying ownership. AFAIK issues of water distribution are murky in international law.
indeed, diverting a river can be considered casus-beli.

This certainly means that a country must consider international consequences of using such methods.

Nanotech doesn't play by the same rules as currently extant terrestrial biology.

They would probably do better if they did, after all terrestrial biology does a very good job of extracting the available energy & raw materials and turning it into new terrestrial biology.

Nanites could, in theory, do just that, by using raw materials in the air and the earth to reproduce.

Huh? What "theory" is going to free them from the need for an energy source? Are they powered by minature nuclear reactors then?

It all depends on (A) how they are programmed,

Ahh, then they will have nano-scale Pentium 8s with AI 2020 pre-installed on nano-scale terrabyte hard drives?

I mean if they are "going to be programmed" they need processors to run the programs, memory to hold the programs, and a power source and cooling system for the above. Even given quantum computing, it seems pretty unlikey you are going to pack all that into a little bit of goo that can also defend itself against a predatory nematode.

For more information you might try this FAQ at the Bureau of Land Management. I'll bet some of the folks there even read your friend's book.

Try learning something before you spout your opinions.