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Bill must think of the desert as an empty sandbox for him to play in, but there is a vibrant community already there in the plants and animals that have evolved to survive in the climate and terrain . Use the google, there's a website about it: https://www.desertusa.com/. What knowledge will be lost about the Anasazi and Sinagua people? I've walked on pre-Columbian trails where people migrated from the hot Colorado desert to the cool Laguna and Palomar mountains as the seasons changed.

"Maybe you just told them the wrong things."

No, I told the guy exactly the road conditions and how to get to me (Pass two campgrounds, take the second right pathway with a sign leading to the Geode beds, stay to the right at all times and you literally run into me as my vehcle is blocking the trail in its entirety.) The driver claimed their truck couldn't make it. Meanwhile, the police squad car that popped out to aid in rescue was just as low as my Ford Taurus and had ZERO problems on that road (just like my Taurus had zero problems on the road.)

Here's what the road looks like, THE ENTIRE WAY - http://www.desertusa.com/deser... and http://www.desertusa.com/deser...

I could handle that shit in a lowrider.

AAA couldn't handle something that simple

"Maybe you just told them the wrong things."

No, I told the guy exactly the road conditions and how to get to me (Pass two campgrounds, take the second right pathway with a sign leading to the Geode beds, stay to the right at all times and you literally run into me as my vehcle is blocking the trail in its entirety.) The driver claimed their truck couldn't make it. Meanwhile, the police squad car that popped out to aid in rescue was just as low as my Ford Taurus and had ZERO problems on that road (just like my Taurus had zero problems on the road.)

Here's what the road looks like, THE ENTIRE WAY - http://www.desertusa.com/deser... and http://www.desertusa.com/deser...

I could handle that shit in a lowrider.

AAA couldn't handle something that simple

Doesn't matter how much water they need. The nuclear plant produces more than enough power to pump water to any elevation on earth. You don't even NEED nuclear energy - some back-up generators will do that much.

You put the damned things above any projected flood level, with a margin of error to boot. If the river's highest recorded flood level was 20 feet, you put the frigging plant up at 50 feet, or more. If the highest recorded tsunami on the coastal plain was 15 feet, you make sure to build your plant well above that 15 foot elevation - say 30 feet, or better yet, 50 feet.

That means that you can't build in the Virginia Beach area? So what - just a few miles inland, you WILL find elevations that exceed 50 feet, very safe from any potential flooding.

Fukishima? You're telling me that they couldn't have pumped water a mile, or six miles, or even twenty miles inland, to some location where the reactors would have been safe from the tsunamis?

Imagine that. How do they get water in the Salton Sea for irrigation? Interesting read here - with the answer to my question in the very last paragraph.

http://www.desertusa.com/citie...

http://www.desertusa.com/sandh...

So stop complaining!

It's been repeated many times. Sinagua, without water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... The Anasazi: http://www.desertusa.com/ind1/... QED.

To state that would be spin if that was the stated intent. But it isn't. The stated intent is to make the enemy surrender, and not for psychological reasons but for obvious ones. Fight us and you will die. Make a move and you will die. Blink and you will die. Pretty clear-cut. No psychological effect required. Logic suffices.

It's only propaganda if it's not backed up by the utter inevitability of its coming true.

F'rinstance, this guy is using propaganda:

http://www.desertusa.com/mag99/july/papr/gophersnake.html

this guy is not:

http://www.desertusa.com/may96/du_rattle.html

As for whether any ship that moves will actually be attacked, well, Libya's not that big a place, and we're going to run out of ground targets pretty quick, and there's a lot of guys who will want to shoot something. First skipper to risk it will be an example for the rest, at the very least. Beyond that, someone will have to come up with hard intel showing that our side has run out of ammo and coffee before anyone can make a reasonable claim that there's a nonzero chance of surviving another attempt.

To state that would be spin if that was the stated intent. But it isn't. The stated intent is to make the enemy surrender, and not for psychological reasons but for obvious ones. Fight us and you will die. Make a move and you will die. Blink and you will die. Pretty clear-cut. No psychological effect required. Logic suffices.

It's only propaganda if it's not backed up by the utter inevitability of its coming true.

F'rinstance, this guy is using propaganda:

http://www.desertusa.com/mag99/july/papr/gophersnake.html

this guy is not:

http://www.desertusa.com/may96/du_rattle.html

As for whether any ship that moves will actually be attacked, well, Libya's not that big a place, and we're going to run out of ground targets pretty quick, and there's a lot of guys who will want to shoot something. First skipper to risk it will be an example for the rest, at the very least. Beyond that, someone will have to come up with hard intel showing that our side has run out of ammo and coffee before anyone can make a reasonable claim that there's a nonzero chance of surviving another attempt.

And the biggest mammal that gives problem is what mammal, humans.

Sorry but even if all of the mammals left your sand sea to re-vegetate in peace, it would still be a desert and sooner of later there will be a freak thunder-storm and vegetations that hadn't seen rain in years would go poof in a wildfire and two centuries of recovery would be gone in a matter of days!

William “Burro” Schmidt started in 1902 and spent 33 years digging his 2087-foot tunnel through solid rock on Copper Mountain. About all people could get as a reason was that it was a "shortcut."

http://www.desertusa.com/mag05/sep/tunnel.html

Heh, it IS a terrible analogy in many ways. For instance, every Scout should know how to build a solar still in an emergency.

However, the terrible design as described would eventually quit working, either the plate would heat up to ambient temperature or the water would cover it.

So, what would it cost to replace California's carbon point sources with 'renewable' (I know it costs energy to make these things) energy? I'll share my math, others can expand:

It says here that California in 2007 used 230,931 of 'non-renewable' energy. It says here that California's peak demand was 52,863 MW when total usage was 265,000 GWH (2002). Adjusting to the current levels, a 14% increase, we get a current peak of 60,264 MW.

So, if these solar plants can produce a combined 800MW, you'd need 75 of these projects to handle peak energy generation. If we factor in 10% for transmission losses, and another 14% increase over the next six years (while they get built) then you're looking at 94 of these projects, which is really two projects, so 188 plants, or by 2020, 214 plants, using 1,338 square miles of desert. That's only 5% of the Mojave Desert, ignoring mountains, ignoring environmentalist lawsuits preventing destruction of desert habitat, not thinking about what happens when Joshua trees want to grow up under solar panels (Monsanto Roundup?).

So, that's 18 plants a year to build. It's probably possible, though what that would cost in rare earth elements, and what would the construction of such project do to the market prices of those rare elements? I don't know, except to think it would be bad.

OK, so how about replacing natural gas, outside of electricity generation? Using the information from here it says that half of the natural gas is consumed for electricity generation, so we can double that part of the number for the total energy budget of electricity and natural gas. That increases the GWH total to 298,962 GWH, or a 29% increase. So, we're up to 276 solar projects.

So, how about converting all the motor vehicles to plug-ins? It says here that CA uses about 24 Billion gallons of transportation fuels a year. This calculator puts that at 3,032,000,000 GW, or if divided by the number of hours in the year, gives 345,881 GWH (TODO: check units?). So, add to our current total and multiply by 2.16 and get 596 solar projects, at 3725 square miles, or about 15% of the Mojave Desert, and 50 of these solar projects a year to get CA largely carbon-neutral by 2020.

Now, this is a bit of a simplification. This is meeting peak demand with current generation. There might be some opportunity for storage, though demand somewhat parallels light availability. What is the quoted efficiency, average (during what time period) or max? This doesn't count wind power as I don't know the rules of thumb for standby generation (I heard recently 90% standby needed to be in production for wind to account for variability and startup time). I'm assuming no new hydro will be built (probably safe). I'm assuming solar won't get more efficient (it will). I'm assuming the installed solar won't lose efficiency over time (it will). I don't know what the proper rule of thumb is for calculating demand based on time-of-day usage. etc. So, it's much complicated, but I wanted to understand what scope people were talking about when they advocate an all-solar solution.

I'm also counting nuclear as 'non-renewable' in this calculation as folks who want all-solar usually are anti-nuclear. If you factor in the existing nuclear generation it gets a bit better. If you wanted to power CA on all-nuclear instead you'd need about 300 reactors covering 22 square miles of land, if they're like the 1.6GW one they proposed in Fresno. Or you could use newer, safer technologies instead and clean up our existing nuclear waste by feeding stuff currently bound for Yucca Mountain into these reactors and

I knew about this back when I was a younger geek (guessing like 1984ish):

http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/dec/stories/water.h tml

Layne

A solar still produces water in the desert and uses no external energy source other than sunlight (there is plent of that in the desert)

Ummm, not sharpshooters, just normal hunters.

I've brought down an impala at 300 yards with a 60 year old Lee-Metford. (Standard sights .. no scope), and even though I have a military sharpshooting cert, I'm no great shakes.

My old man has the a standing silver and a prone bronze for full bore rifle shooting in the commonwealth games (1962 ... I think), and even he feels that he was not much competition for somone that either hit first time with a rifle, or didn't eat. (Like most settlers in the 19th century).

Yes, 1000 yards may be slightly exagerated, but I tell you what, I'll go get a nicely restored Savage 303, you go get a Colt 6 single action, we can start walking and shooting at each other from 1000 yards, and we'll see who drops first? :)

Take a look at:

http://www.desertusa.com/mag05/jul/myths.html

The point is that the only people gunslingers could realistically terrorise (as gunslingers) are other gunslingers ... anything else is typical hollywood miseducation.

The link above also concisely explains it, gunslingers then, just like car-hijackers today were infamouse not due to accuracy, but due to a disregard for human life.

If it's sunny, you don't even need a hand-cranked device. Improvised solar stills -- all you need is a couple of square meters of clear plastic sheet -- can easily yield a liter or more of water a day, even in the desert. With water around, as in New Orleans, more than that is easy.

See here for an improvised desert still, and here for a commerical inflatable one (it floats! handy in NOLA). (The latter site also offers a hand-cranked water maker that will make over a gallon an hour -- but it costs nearly $2K.)

Just a quick fact check shows your argument to be rather spurious.

25 000 acres ~ 100 km2 (http://www.google.se/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=2500 0+acres+to+square+kilometers&spell=1)

size of 4 biggest deserts in usa toghether 535 000 miles2(http://www.desertusa.com/glossary.html) ~1 400 000 km2

Toghether this means that you cam fit 14 000 of these plants in the US deserts. With 200 mw per plant, that gives 2800 gigawatt of electricity.
For comparison, the total energy production capacity in USA is 735 gigawatt (http://www.eece.ksu.edu/~pahwa/School/Element.htm l)

It's IS a very big project though, I give you that.

In free and open source software we do have a wild frontier - I think: It is just that the judges and lawmakers entrusted with the good and just governance of that territory seem to share the motivations, principles and insight of some of their earlier colleagues.

You don't sound like you've paid much attention to the articles. There are already killer bees in California. I've paid a little attention to this because I'm allergic to bee stings, live in Texas, and go camping from time to time. They didn't come from Texas, they came from Brazil. Texas is just one area they've travelled to.

Calling them killer bees is a little misleading. It's not like they are taking orders from Osama and go out looking to kill people/animals. But the will aggressively protect their hive, and they have killed people. They will also reproduce with domestic honey bees (which are nomally fairly mellow little guys), and the aggressive gene's are dominate, so soon the entire hive goes from being regular bees to being a strain of AHB's - Africanized Honey Bees.

The link below will give some useful information, including the fact that they were reported in California 10 years ago. They aren't overrunning Texas, or anywhere else, to the point where people can't live there. But it does have an effect on normal beekeeping, on agriculture, and on people who just happen to stumble into the wrong place without realizing they are there.

In the current context: If the genetically modified bees hadn't escaped in Brazil roughly 50 years ago, then they wouldn't be a problem. But they did, and now they've spread quite far, with signs that the problem will continue to get worse. It's better to plan ahead than to simply assume "There isn't any problem with this." I don't have a strong opinion about the genetically modified grass - but I wouldn't write it off as a non-problem without more information and testing, either.

http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/sep/stories/kbees.h tml

...and to change unsafe water to safe water, you can use a solar still, an inexpensive, no electricity setup.

It's not going to make lakes of potable water, but good in a pinch.

6:30? That means nothing in nowadays world!
WHAT TIMEZONE???

Hei.. if Americans were afraid of Killer bees before, they should have the rights to be afraid of nanotechnology as well.

The thing with storing the nuclear waste is the fact that we must store if for such a long time. Yucca Mountain in Neveda is intended to store the waste for 10,000 years. In geologic time, that isn't too significant, however a lot can still happen. I mean there was volcanic activity in the Mojave Desert 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.

The whole basin and range province is still somewhat tectonically active as well, undergoing extension. Who's to say that a new fault won't be created through Yucca Mountain, allowing underground springs to seep up into the storage area, contaminating the water supply?

Granted, there are many top scientists working on this project who know far more than this geology major, so my fears could possibly be unfounded. One even spoke at our school recently.

It still seems like we're doing a risky bet with mother nature, especially trying to construct a facility that will stand the "test of time." Even the Pyramids are only about 4,000 years old at the most.

Despite this, Nuclear Power itself is a fairly economical way to get mostly clean energy in my opinion. It's just a shame the the by products (as small as they are) are so dangerous and toxic.

"Red Storm". "Black Widow". All so masculine and male-centric. Couldn't you have "Project Doily" or "Operation Gingham Curtain"?

Doesn't the term "Black Widow" refer to either the poisonous female spider and/or a woman who marries and then kills men for financial gain?

Playing a bit loose with the facts, aren't we? The Anasazi and other southwest tribes collapsed because of a prolonged drought in the 12th and 13th centuries.

videophones have been around for a while in the UK and in other countries(seems to be broken?). The quality still isn't brilliant but Orange(I think) have started to offer Soccer highlights over the latest phones.

moon colonies, ok, we chose to put a space station up there first, and then realised it costs a lot of money for little (commercial or military) value. Moon colonies are sadly not as sexy as say a Mars colony, or even a Mars mission, which ESA has planned in 25 years, NASA tried and continues to test methods of producing enough food,air and water, other countries,notably India and China have planned Moon landings so we are going back. Space is unfortunately used as a pissing contest between nuclear neighbours, when this stops then some more science can get done(e.g. Hubble, Galileo, Beagle 2)

food in pills. You can get food in pills, just not the calories, vitamins will give you nearly all of the trace elements you need to live. Calories are a lot harder, to get 500 Calories into a pill means eating something with 40 times the energy concentration of sugar or twenty times the concentration of fats, I doubt the human body would have much success digesting such complicated food. You can however get protein and creatine supplements which are in tablet/powder form, and sugar sweets( those silly energy sweets which taste of really sour orange) have more calories than their equivalent weight in sugar. (The protein supplements also tend to taste bad and are fed to animals instead. )

cars that drive themselves; power steering has been around for a while, as has ABS and cruise control, that is about as much as the current laws will allow on the public roads. intelligent cars have been developed, which, when combined with other intelligent cars, are actually safe. It's the human drivers who freak out at the sight of a driverless car that's the problem :-)

jet packs; Jet packs appeared in Thunderball (James Bond). You can buy them if you have enough money, or you can build them if you want. They're not used much because, much like the Segway, there are easier and cheaper way of getting around.

moving sidewalk's are in most airports now, as well as some metro stations. There have also been "moving stairs" around for just as long.

This post brought to you by Google.com, paid for by Google For America, Inc.

C.S. Lewis had a term for this: "snobbery of chronology". We, as a people, have a tendency to forget that people everywhere, always, are blindingly clever, and that the only reason we have, for example, cell phones, is that we have had a continuous line of development rather than one interrupted by plague, mass migration, etc. Take a little while and study archaeo-astronomy and this becomes clear.

Easy:

http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/dec/stories/water.h tml


simple concept... evaporate water and condense the vapor... The output is clean.

Depends on how tall it was - the Saguaro cactus can grow to 50 feet tall.

Ummm, no, it's not. Phoenix isn't small compared to anywhere except New York.

Population of Phoenix : 1,210,420 (7th largest city in the U.S.)[source]

A lot is made of the fact that almost every culture has some version of the Noah myth. (There's an interesting exception, that I'll talk about in a moment.) But why is this suprising? Cultures from this period tended to grow up around small (a few thousand people) cities built in flood basins. The river was source of life -- it provided topsoil, transportation and food. It was often considered divine (the Latin word for "priest" originally meant "bridge-keeper").

But life on the river has its downside, as everybody who lives near one knows. One major flood, and there goes your urban center. Not cataclymisic if you're one river town in a bigger culture. But suppose that town contains your entire government, economic establishment, and cultural elite? Obviously, the River God has decided to mod your civilization down in a big way.

The exception is very interesting -- sub-Saharan Africans don't have a Noah myth. Which is hardly suprising. Altough the pre-colonial Africans did build a few cities none of them were on flood plains.

Other things can wipe out a small civilization too. It can outstrip its resources, be decimated by plague, or simply get sloppy about maintaining its source of wealth. We need to consider the mundane before we start worrying about the exotic.

There is another problem. The killer bee problem in the Americas was started when scientists tried to make honey bees more reilient to warm climates. They crossbred American honeybees, a rather benign form of bee that doesn't mind human presence, with African bees, which do. The bees seem to have picked up the wrong part of the mix, they became slightly more resistive to climatic change, and they became extremely fierce. Though not the result of Genetics, they illustrate some of the unexpected outcomes that breeding of non-native species can have with the local population. These hybrid bees have driven out local bees and proved to be more than just a nuisance to some people.

More info:
Killer bee attack in Mexico
AgNews on Killer Bees
Desertusa Attack of the "Killer Bees"
Fleming's Bee page