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One Third of California's Trees Are Dead (sfgate.com)
"There are about 21 million acres of trees spread across California's 18 national forests, and the latest figures show 7.7 million of them -- more than one-third -- are dead." An anonymous reader quotes the San Francisco Chronicle:
California's lingering drought has pushed the number of dead trees across the state past 100 million, an ecological event experts are calling dangerous and unprecedented in underlining the heightened risk of wildfires fueled by bone-dry forests. In its latest aerial survey released Friday, the U.S. Forest Service said 62 million trees have died this year in California, bringing the six-year total to more than 102 million.
Scientists blame five-plus years of drought on the increasing tree deaths -- tree "fatalities" increased by 100 percent in 2016 -- but the rate of their demise has been much faster than expected, increasing the risk of ecologically damaging erosion and wildfires even bigger than the largest blazes the state's seen this year.
An ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey says that on the bright side, this gives scientists a good chance to study how trees die.
Scientists blame five-plus years of drought on the increasing tree deaths -- tree "fatalities" increased by 100 percent in 2016 -- but the rate of their demise has been much faster than expected, increasing the risk of ecologically damaging erosion and wildfires even bigger than the largest blazes the state's seen this year.
An ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey says that on the bright side, this gives scientists a good chance to study how trees die.
This is what happens when you ignore the environment and call it "Chinese bullshit", maybe when Florida is underwater and California is a desert wasteland thel USA will take it seriously.
until then enjoy the fruits of your labor !
Next up: lung cancer causes smoking!
Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
Two thirds of them are alive. Just FYI.
I'm a little unclear here. Do you believe droughts are visited on states that vote Democrat?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
As long as Nestle is still getting their water, who cares if the trees gets theirs.
Do you believe droughts are visited on states that vote Democrat?
Doubtful. But the AC's post is still kinda funny.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Dead makes them lumber.
No, just that they're bad at water management.
See also: Flint, MI.
God killed my aunt.
How many trees are normally dead? There are lots of dead trees in any forest.
It's interesting that these reports are always released on rainy days (Which are pretty rare in SF actually)
Yes if you go up to Mt. Lassen it really probably is 1 in 3 trees. Certainly 1 in 10. If anything though, this is natural selection in progress; the only way to produce drought-resistant species is to have a serious drought, a big fire to clear out all the dead species, and then re-seed them with the drought resistant ones. If anything this is a good, big step forward for California over the long term in destroying the less viable/invasive species.
moox. for a new generation.
And He's coming for you, too.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Your aunt died of shame.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I am going to support them financially by buying as much almonds as I can.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I'll shut up if Trump will.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Heh, It won't be long before we know who's on the bombing run here. For sure it's a familiar little whiny troll who finally got some points.
I think this is only counting the trees still standing, they forgot to count the ones already logged.
You've been annoying and obnoxious since long before Trump became a media sensation.
What are they supposed to do, drink salt water ?
Most of the water for California comes from the Sierras from snow pack, or from the Colorado River (again, snow pack) not the ocean.
The last time I went to a forest, I didn't see man made irrigation watering the trees.
Which one?
brandelf -t FreeBSD
I don't believe that, but I can HOPE for it, right?
Captcha: impious
If anything though, this is natural selection in progress
Funny, that's what a lot of us were thinking when you elected Trump.
If you let Nestle pay just $524 to steal 36 million gallons water per year, drought may be the result, indeed.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-36161580
Seriously, they need to start desalinating ocean water and pumping it in-land 100-200 miles. If they did that, then the river water that they steal from truly needing states, can be better used by the ORIGINAL states, along with the trees in their areas.
Aunt that a shame.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Meh, Trumps war will cull the US herd of stupid agressives, war is necesary to cull the morons who believe the constant shouting of lies by the right wing. Been too long since WW2.
What are they supposed to do, drink salt water ?
Of course not. What they should do is build some nuclear power plants and desalinate the water. There is no shortage of water but it does take energy to make it suitable to drink or water crops. Any shortage of energy they have in California is self imposed. Their policies against nuclear power because of a mistaken association with nuclear weapons does fit my definition of being brain dead.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
They just need a hug. That should be no problem in California. ;)
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Pump roots out of the ground with gas and hot-liquid-mineral(s).
If I'm reading this correctly, then:
2016 - 62mil
2015 - 31mil
2010-14 - 9 mil
I'm not sure this is 'much faster than expected' so much as 'Holy Crap we have a problem'.
As a non-biologist I'd tend to assume that:
1. Fires are going to get ugly when all that new dead biomass starts to dry out in a year or so.
2. Mycorrhizal nets are going to be stunted, probably exacerbating the situation.
“It’s not beyond the pale to suggest that this is a pretty unprecedented event in at least recent history,”
Clearly, the state needs a visionary like you who irrigates his crops with sea water.
It's not entirely silly written backward like that. Trees transpire a lot of water from the ground into the air, where it later falls as rain downwind (or uphill, where it can then fall as rain (or snow, becoming snowpack) and feed rivers that flow back upwind, to repeat the cycle.)
Not enough to account for the drought, though. But nonzero nonetheless. B-)
Also, grass would do it far more than trees. (Grass evaporates six times as much water per acre as a lake surface - or swimming pools.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The FRANKENTRUMP monster declares that there is no global warming and that the dead trees are a conspiracy brought on by liberals and evil Hillary actually paid many tree to die just to embarrass Trumpenstein.
The summary doesn't mention it, but a huge factor is the bark beetle infestation going across California right now.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Southeastern forests in the US are being turned into pellets, shipped overseas to Europe, and burned in converted coal plants with objectively worse emissions than coal. The greens have the gall to classify this as "clean energy" and along with hydro it comprises the bulk of "renewable energy". Perhaps California can get in on the action; Japan needs to fuel all of its new coal plants, after shuttering their carbon-free nuclear fleet. The Pacific Ocean is a bit bigger, but advocates of "renewable energy" are rarely inconvenienced by facts, or concerned about actual ecological impact. All that matters is the "renewable" label, and closing nuclear plants which are reliably generating enormous amounts of genuinely clean energy. Addressing climate change is clearly not a priority for those who insist on excluding the most effective option above all else.
Maybe visit the massive pipelines piping water OUT of the Sierras. Ever hiked the Mojave ?
If you didn't divert 90% of your water to grow almonds everything would be fine.
Only in CA can an acre (a unit of area) be declared dead. I suppose they mean all the trees on those acres are dead, but who knows?
Well most populous areas of CA would be a desert wasteland if it were not for civil engineering. Maybe ought to let it revert it it's natural environment.
The dying trees are in areas with naturally occurring forests, in regions above 5,000ft elevation that have local water sources. In the North and the South.
There are invasive non-indigenous inspect species that are killing large swaths of California forest. Its not just drought problem.
It's weird how ther glossed over that fact
Which would serve the purposes of drinking water, but watering entire forests? Impractical doesn't even begin to describe it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There is no "pipeline out of the Sierras".
The California Aqueduct carries water out of the Delta and runs it down to So. Calif.
This was done a LONG time ago by Mulholland.
The folks in No. Calif don't really like it but the voting power is mostly in So. Calif.
There isn't much of a choice.
California agriculture uses 80% of the developed water supply. Almonds use 8% of that water supply.
Try googling about if you doubt the information.
More than 1% of nuclear power reactors have exploded. Welsh farmers were burying radioactive sheep 25 years after Wormwood. TMI release of Xenon didn't count because it's "chemically inert"
Trump has already lost to Russia and Belarus, what country can the US actually fight on par now? Moldova?
Never ever do some back-of-the-envelope calculations like the average rain fall of the whole of California being something like 500 mm rain per year, which means that the amount of water you have to desalinate to replace rain would be about 424,000 km times 1/2 meter, or about 212 cubic kilometers, which weigh about 212 billion metric tons. To evaporate 1 kg of water, you just need 2,26 Megajoule, and for 212 billion metric tons, it's just shy of 500 trillion Megajoule. Each year. Just to achieve that, you need 15 Terawatt of continuous power.
The largest nuclear power units ever being in use were the soviet RBMK-1500 reactors, which had 1500 MW output each (Tchernobyl used the smaller RBMK-1000). You would need 10,000 of the largest nuclear power plants ever built, just to replace the rain of California.
Be careful, because you just defined yourself as a troll.
Well, to clarify, they shouldn't build nuclear reactors and desalination plants. The geologically-more-stable midwest should build nuclear reactors, and then use that power to fuel coastal desalination plants. I've thought it reasonable that, if there are supposed security risks associated with nuclear reactors, then some of those fears could be assuaged by locating newer, LFTR or other breeder-style reactors inside the security perimeter of military installations, several major of which are conveniently located in the midwest.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Aqueduct
"The system delivers water from the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains to Los Angeles, California."
That sure SOUNDS like it's a pipeline out of the Sierras. (Cool gallery pics of it at the bottom)
And yes, I was being flippant about the Almonds (though you make my point with 80% of water supply, substitue almonds for agriculture and stop beind pedantic). My point still stands about reverse irrigating the trees. I'm honestly not sure how much of a point I have (percentage wise to various trees), that's a reasonable thing to dispute.
Try walking around if you doubt the information.
My guess is that satellites that do thermal imaging register dead trees different from live ones. Once images are captured, all sorts of data can be extracted from them, calibrate the images against a walked through acre (if needed) and suddenly *information*. Or you might think that "God only knows".
Only I can judge you.
Culling would only work if you sent them before they procreated. Chances are high that they'll already have offspring by the time they ship out. Also, it isn't the soldier who goes off to war that decides to start the war, he just needed a job in a fucked up economy. It is generally a group of old fat-fuck "elected" "leader" who votes for and approves our little adventures. Their kids are generally safe and starting a nice family in Virginia or some other nice place. BTW, the fucked up economy was courtesy of the same old fat fucks that decided to start a war.
Only I can judge you.
Those insects are taking root strongly because the trees have been under significant stress for years due to...
you guessed it: drought!
Only I can judge you.
I'm a little unclear here. Do you believe droughts are visited on states that vote Democrat?
It depends which Democrats we're talking about. Franklin Roosevelt was famed for building water-retention infrastructure, one effect of which was to make a dry California bloom. During the Seventies, the Democratic hierarchy kicked most of the normal people out of the party, leaving a remnant which is more famed for preventing water infrastructure from being built.
Result: the Dust Bowl is back.
If you think PopeRatzo is concerned about that value judgement, I suggest you reappraise your examination, since clearly he revels in being a gadfly.
And he's capable of genuine wit, unlike some of the more tedious ruminating pontificaters to be found here.
"Scientists blame five-plus years of drought on the increasing tree deaths"
The lack of water might be the ultimate cause of death, but the ROOT cause is that which causes the drought, and that is Manmade Climate Change.
When Slashdot runs clickbait and reprinted stories from ArsTechnica, and the trolls of the past decade are then dominant, it is noble to fight them by any means.
that would be because heat-stressed trees are much more vulnerable to bark-beetle infestation
Only I can judge you.
If I have to hear global warming without scientific evidence one more time...
http://saveie6.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Aqueduct
"The system delivers water from the Owens River in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains to Los Angeles, California."
I wrote more but Slashdot ate my homework. Or maybe this will duplicate. Either way, whatever.
It could be all the toxins in the geo-engineering going on.
http://naturalsociety.com/chem...
Well, the article does not tell us what percentage of trees are normally dead, or historical average. They just say a lot are dead and the rate has increased. So what is the difference on a historical basis? Seems like that would be good to relay in the article.
To evaporate 1 kg of water...
You don't typically evaporate water to desalinate. You just pump it through reverse osmosis filters. Much less energy (but still I doubt it's practical to replace California's rain that way).
B.S. You have been loud and stupid for years, regardless of Trump's verbosity.
Just wait until Trump's in the White House. Those trees will have so much water they'll get tired of it.
If you think PopeRatzo is concerned about that value judgement, I suggest you reappraise your examination, since clearly he revels in being a gadfly.
And he's capable of genuine wit, unlike some of the more tedious ruminating pontificaters to be found here.
He's a genuine half wit alright.
What this anti-drought liberal activists DON'T tell you is that 2/3rds of the tree deaths were SUICIDES. Typical liberal bias.
Reverse osmosis is perfectly acceptable price-wise for human-use water. It doesn't scale well to agricultural use, but then again we do have southern Texas and Florida as year-round growing regions.
You seem to be taking a very large bet that natural selection can work that quickly, and not over the millennia others might expect it to require. Trees, as opposed to shrubs, also take a fair while to grow, and they won't grow very fast is there isn't much water about.
And what do you do with all that salt? That's one of the problems with massive desalinization - you have LOTS of brine to deal with.
...set to continue posting articles with hyperbolic, fact optional, emotion engaging headlines.
So...The solution is to do nothing? Or go further and further out for water? Small Solutions (I really oughta trademark that) can give more time to find a bigger solution. Power from orbital satellites? Cheap fusion? Or maybe enough people die off to not need more water. Small solutions also get people used to the idea that there IS a problem, and maybe solvable. Or maybe we don't plant crops or build cities in places with no water?
Those insects are taking root strongly because the trees have been under significant stress for years due to... you guessed it: drought!
I recall insect problems from years before there were drought problems. I'm sure drought complicates things but things were not healthy before the drought.
Luke 4:24
You are welcome on my lawn.
Tequila!
Fuck you red state, CA sends far more to the feds than it receives. Red states all suck the federal tit.
Sell it to people in hard water areas for their water softeners.
-- sigs cause cancer.
Yes - agricultural water use accounts for about 75% of the water usage in Ca. However the trees aren't dying from rivers being sucked dry. They're dying from no rain.
..........FULL STOP.
I live in the California Sierras with 100' foot Pondarosa Pines in my backyard. I fly and drive all around. I'm seeing a few dead trees, but nothing like 1/3.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
God killed Antonin Scalia and Andrew Breitbart.
If that were true, it would almost be enough to make me believe in god.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Just wait until Trump's in the White House. Those trees will have so much water they'll get tired of it.
No, his solution will be to kill off more trees until there's enough water for the few remaining survivors. The rest of those trees were just losers!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
> Franklin Roosevelt was famed for building water-retention infrastructure
Uh, no.
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw...
> famed for preventing water infrastructure from being built.
In the last decade, that's been the republicans arguing against it..and the Dust Bowl is not related, so I dunno if you're out of cliches to make up or what.
Stop modding the parent up. Sheesh.
Hey now that's uncalled for; one can discuss climate change without resorting to hysterics without being labeled a trump supporter. I've actually been to the majority of the national forests in California this year so I feel entitled to my opinion and observations of the forests.
moox. for a new generation.
Dry rot affects 99% of the trees in california. Most of the state is somewhere between desert and chapparral with wooded areas past the bay and along the coast. Bugs come with that. Added trees artificially, just worsens the problem when sampling.
Fracking and oil well injection seems to have made the "geologically stable" midwest a thing of the past. Lots of earthquakes there now.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
The politicians (in Europe) declared wood pellets to be green renewable energy.
The "greens" think it's stupid.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
It's interesting that these reports are always released on rainy days (Which are pretty rare in SF actually)
As mentioned in the summary, the report was released on Friday.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/san-francisco/historic
No rain in SF that day, apparently. You were saying something?
Most people didn't "voted for hillary" or "voted for trump".
Was more or "voting to not get hillary in power vs voting to not get trump in power".
No, they believe in Free Speech for everyone. It's just that they are free to say whatever they want, and you are free to listen. It's the new right way.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Proposing desalinization in California the definition of being brain dead: no matter how many nuclear plants you build, it would create vastly more expensive water than the market is willing to buy. Nobody seriously thinks there's any shortage of fresh water in California -- it's a shortage of sufficiently cheap water in the desired places. The shortage of cheap water in desired places is because of issues that come up whenever we attempt to store or move water from one place to another -- it's impossible to get a diversion tunnel or a dam build for the past 30 years or so because of environmental concerns. If you want a rabid republican complaint that's not brain dead, the rational complaint would be about California's courts insisting on protection of certain fish species being more important than giving the farmers all the cheap water they want.
Personally I think the court's priorities are correct for the moment, because the water issues are not severe enough to seriously impair the state's agriculture -- if they ever are, we'll let the fish die, but at the moment there's no need to ruin ecosystems.
This space intentionally left blank
They already use a lot of the water they DO have on non-native water-wasteful crops. Using 'new water' for existing crops shouldn't beggar the imagination.
What ever technology you propose, this is the number you have to scale up to.
You mentioned LFTR which tells me you've seen something about them before. You should know that one big benefit of LFTR is that it can reach temperatures that are much higher than that of typical nuclear reactors, temperatures that make desalination much easier (and therefore cheaper) to do. Putting the LFTRs in the Midwest means that there is considerable distance between the reactors and the sea where we'd like to source the water, likely destroying the benefits of using LFTRs.
You should also know that LFTRs cannot melt down, at least not like solid fuel reactors. Putting them in an earthquake prone place like California should not be near the problem that it would be for solid fuel reactors. It should be considered in the design, for sure, but excluding nuclear reactors from California sounds to me to be beyond paranoia. I think we can figure out how to build LFTRs in California and gain the benefits that LFTRs can provide.
Also, I believe the security risks associated with nuclear power plants is overblown. Added to that LFTRs are useless for weapons even though it is a "breeder" style reactor. There are two kinds of breeders, fast spectrum uranium-plutonium cycle and thermal spectrum thorium-uranium cycle. The uranium used in the fast spectrum is U-235 and U-238, and the plutonium bred from it is Pu-239. U-235 and Pu-239 are potential fuels for weapons. LFTRs breed thorium into U-233. Thorium is useless for weapons, and a weapon from U-233 is only theoretical, people tried and failed to use U-233 in a weapon core. LFTRs are also problematic for weapon production because any uranium taken from it will be contaminated with U-232, U-234, and U-236, all of which are difficult to separate from U-235, are highly radioactive, and generally make the uranium undesirable for weapon use. LFTRs might contain some Pu-239 in the fuel but it will likewise be tainted with other Pu isotopes making it useless for weapons.
No doubt a LFTR power plant would be a target for sabotage or terrorism but no more than any other power plant. No need to require them to be placed only on military installations. They'd need security, that's for certain, just no more than a typical coal fired plant.
From what I've seen the biggest threat to nuclear power plants are the domestic eco-terrorist types. These people don't want to steal any nuclear weapon material, they just want to make a lot of noise to send some sort of message. The only message they are sending to me is that nuclear power would be much safer if they weren't trying to send a message about how unsafe they are.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
No, they believe in Free Speech for everyone...
...so long as the speakers aren't black, asian, latino, pacific islander, muslim, jewish, gay, work as a reporter, hold a passport, don't support the democrats, and make sure to praise trump every other paragraph, then yeah, I guess trump supporters support free speech...
The "Dust Bowl" is back because atmospheric patterns are shifting, leaving CA bone dry. Dams don't affect rainfall and snow pack.
~X~
If droughts were a regular feature in that part of the world, then THE FUCKING TREES WOULDN'T BE DYING FROM IT. They would have already evolved to deal with it. But species that are NATIVE to the afflicted regions are dying off IN DROVES. That means they are NOT adapted, which implies that such events are rare at best, hence why they are DYING.
No, it's not a good thing.
~X~
Obviously, they are. They may also be visited on other states, but that's not germane to this thread.
God's actually androgynous.
They followed the Left's definition: you're free to say anything we agree with.
Luke was a dipshit.
You're all fucking idiots.
Natural selection works through small increments.
When there is significant environmental change; there is no time for adaptation and things tend to die off.
So you are actually witnessing a very special event; not seen since the age of dinosaurs.
Please enjoy the show!
This one is called: The Anthropocene Extinction.
Chemtrail nutter detected.
'The transit of an air mass containing radioactive gas released from the Three Mile Island reactor was recorded in Albany, New York, by measuring xenon-133. These measurements provide an evaluation of Three Mile Island effluents to distances greater than 100 kilometers. Two independent techniques identified xenon-133 in ambient air at concentrations as high as 3900 picocuries per cubic meter. The local gamma-ray whole-body dose from the passing radioactivity amounted to 0.004 millirem, or 0.004 percent of the annual dose from natural sources.'
There you go. Sorry for the actual fact check, but yes, the release Xenon could have had the massive net effect of increasing your normal background radiation exposure by an extra 21 minutes over a year..
Truly horrific!
Oh, and you need to look up the meaning of the word 'exploded' because your definition seems rather... odd.
Not to mention your use of 'wormwood'? which I can only assume means you are a religious nutcase, and using that to refer to the BS biblical 'end of the world' scenarios such nutjobs seem to like to claim every little thing that happens is? If so you need to be more clear..
Not trying to troll here - but maybe the metrics are wrong?
Pro tip - The trees are the living ones.
The dead ones are no longer trees...
Maybe "dramatic increase in the wild firewood population in California" would be just as accurate without being alarmist?
In other words, you don't give a shit, because you don't feel it touches you personally, am I right? It is easy - or, probably the modern word is 'facile' - to pull the pocket-philosophy out; I can do that too: 3000 Americans were killed in the twin towers in New York? Well, that's just life. Your whole family was wiped out by MRSA? Well, that's just nature's way. How am I doing so far? I think it sounds stupid - it sounds like somebody who is too intellectually lazy to make an effort.
Geoengineering anyone?
Dams allowed Californians to store water to make dry periods survivable, besides making the all-desert southern half of the state inhabitable in the first place.
But it's true that if an exctended megadrought, like the one that wiped out the Sinagua and Anasazi in the 1400s, were to hit once again, the much larger population of today's California would have to fire up the nukes and desalinate on a massive scale. If we still had Democrats like Roosevelt, that would be doable.
To be fair, actually, most of the trees dying in California are not natives, at least not in that location. Most of the places with lots of pines on them now used to be full of something else. For instance, in Lake County, CA the land was covered with redwoods up to the ridgeline between here and hopland, and oaks thereafter. First, there was a lot of slash and burn to create cattle land. Then, the federal government paid $1 for each black walnut tree planted, as an inducement to the settlers to destroy the oaks that the natives depended on for food. The walnuts have never been an economic benefit to the region, although some people grafted a more desirable variety onto the stumps of some of their trees and have been able to make a little money.
Droughts are a regular feature in California, and the trees are dying from it because they are in areas where they're not supposed to be, and because redwoods dramatically alter climate, and they are missing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
TMI was a joke compared to Chernobyl and Fukushima.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I've actually been to the majority of the national forests in California this year so I feel entitled to my opinion and observations of the forests.
And I live in Kelseyville, pear capital of the USA, which is why I feel entitled to my opinion about pears. Because I've been near pears, clearly I am an expert on them and you should listen to what I say.
Actually, all I have to say about pears is that I've never successfully bought a pear pie at the festival because it is such amateur hour, but literally everything in Lake County is half-assed or less. You should see our "renaissance faire", ugh. I've only seen pictures because it looks like someone went to the spandex and polyster faire in AZ and brought the idea home.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Result: the Dust Bowl is back.
You haven't been reading those signs on the side of farmers' fields which say "CONGRESS CREATED THE DUST BOWL" have you? Because there is one and only one reason why farming equals dust bowl in California, and that is depletion of aquifers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Be careful, because you just defined yourself as a troll.
Be careful, you don't even know what "troll" means, son.
Here's a hint to head your next idiotic post off at the head: trolling is where you're saying things just to piss people off, usually something you don't even believe. But if your goal is to speak truths, guess what? You're going to piss people off. There's nothing wrong with treating some of the extra-special users of Slashdot who think they're the shit as canaries. There are definitely certain users on this site who get angry when you hit the mark. That doesn't mean you should stop aiming for it. That would be tyranny.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Trump supporters have a very, shall we say, mutable notion of free speech.
For example, they seem to believe that burning effigies of Obama hung from a noose before he even took office was accepting him as the president. If we were to become any more accepting of Trump by their standards, we'd have to vivisect a silicone model of him on the capitol steps.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Don't bring those negative vibes!
TMI was a joke compared to Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Not to mention that Fukushima is STILL HAPPENING. It melted down (which tepco knew but covered up for months) and water is known to be flowing out which means it's flowing into the ocean, and we have little to no idea how much radiation is being released.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My guess is that satellites that do thermal imaging register dead trees different from live ones.
The short answer is yes. Infrared imaging can be used to measure photosynthesis.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
the soul of California is dead.
So gods' will is shame? That would explain things...
Ezekiel 23:20
You don't have to replace all of it. I doubt the rainfall in the whole of California over the last few years was nil. You may be able to make up the difference.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Isn't the prevention and the stop of wildfires the reason why there are so many dead trees?
As a kid I used to learn that wildfires happen every x years on average, depending on the region. California is rather dry so a wildfire is bound to happen every x years. When the forest is burned down, all dead trees are recycled and the scorched earth is fertile ground to let a new forest grow. Humans prevent and stop wildfires and intervenes in the natural tree recycle system.
So instead of only pointing to the excessive use of water shouldn't they also point to the fact that wildfires aren't allowed to recycle dead material? What effect do regular wildfires have on the weather or even local climate or the ground water table (like less dead trees is more rain forest like behavior)?
Pretty sure the trees aren't going to pay up anyway.
If California wants to make sure it has enough water, then it needs to be proactive about it. They can move on multiple fronts; They can ban idiot crops like almonds (it takes about a gallon of water to grow a single almond), that take ridiculous amounts of water to produce and have little food value, they can desalinate, they can reduce consumption, they can recycle instead of dump, etc. They're doing some of this. Obviously they need to do more.
The market here should be the state; this is something that will affect the entire economy. Spread the cost via taxes. It's the sane thing to do.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The nucklehead president says there is no drought, so these people must be lying.
Let me just throw something in here; a regular feature of forests are periodic burns. Could it be since people have been fighting these burns that an imbalance has arisen that is also causing hard times for these forests? Not to mention planting trees that aren't normally found in these areas or maybe at the number they are since they've been nurtured by an outside force?
This is like how evolution is suffering as we keep people alive who would have normally have passed on due to flawed genetics in their pre-mating years.
And what do you do with all that salt? That's one of the problems with massive desalinization - you have LOTS of brine to deal with.
Duh, just throw it back in the sea.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Or Brawndo, It's got Electrolytes! It's what plants crave!
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Which was being run by a fiscal emergency manager appointed by a Republican governor [Snyder], backed by a Republican House and Senate, and overseen by a Michigan Department of Environmental Quality run by a Snyder hack [Wyant], where the state agency and not the city was responsible for the technical decisions and implementation of a switch to Flint river water (without adequate corrosion control).
Blaming democratic officials for the lead contamination is like blaming your wife for failing to dodge your fist.
YOU LIVE IN A DESERT!! UNDERSTAND THAT? YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!! NOTHING GROWS HERE! NOTHING'S GONNA GROW HERE! Come here, you see this? This is sand. You know what it's gonna be 100 years from now? IT'S GONNA BE SAND!! YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!
Time to offend someone
What do you define as the Midwest? Because N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan just said "hi."
Normally I'd add Missouri as well but there was one large earthquake there in early in US history.
It's not as if it has to happen on a schedule and it's a lot cheaper than nuclear. It has no exotic parts and no exotic materials that get into a drinking water supply, like radioisotopes.
Also you don't need specialist labor.
What does God need a transgender for, and where does he keep it?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
All the more reason to get serious about desalinating.
Some studies have highlighted the idea that the last 150 years or so in California have been unusually wet. It is unfortunate that Californians think what they've seen for their entire lifetimes is normal for the area, when the reality appears to be that is the aberration and that mega-droughts centuries long are actually the norm.
Yes, AGW/Climate Change is certainly having an impact, too, but a temporarily greened desert is still a desert.
Well, to clarify, they shouldn't build nuclear reactors and desalination plants. The geologically-more-stable midwest should build nuclear reactors, and then use that power to fuel coastal desalination plants.
After Enron's little stunt related to California's electrical power, good luck with getting anyone from Cali to go along with your idea.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You all wanted millionaires and billionaires to pay more taxes, and California has more than its fair share of those. I get it--if I was a billionaire, I'd probably like to live in an area of the country with socal's weather, too.
We could fix that problem by forcing some millionaires and billionaires to live in Mississippi, etc. You know, to even things out so that all the states have a fair share of millionaires and billionaires.
Pretty certain most of the issues surrounding Nuclear Power in CA have to do with, you know, fault lines. Not 'hippies'.
I know that's now what you read about in the 'news', because rational thinkers hardly ever make it there.
your opinion of people who call out your BS is of great concern to us.
In 2014, California paid in $369.2 B into federal revenues. And was the #1 "contributor". On the other hand it received $333.8B, and was the #1 "taker". While it was a net "contributor" that amount was $35.4B, and would hardly be missed in the overall federal budget if California's revenues and expenditures went away as a result of California's secession.
Or firewood
Well, now that farmers are feeding cows seaweed, this might actually be a reasonable suggestion, on a limited scale.
But it's true that if an exctended megadrought, like the one that wiped out the Sinagua and Anasazi in the 1400s, were to hit once again, the much larger population of today's California would have to fire up the nukes and desalinate on a massive scale. If we still had Democrats like Roosevelt, that would be doable.
You have the calculations on just how much desalination would have to be performed to replace the water missing via the drought situation? And if you are thinking about that massive amount of extraction by way of electrolysis, tell us what to do with the byproducts. Do the research to find out what you get besides salt.
It's so whacked that here on slashdot that the drought problem cure is just so easy. Build a bunch of nucs and use Seawater and problem solved!
Here are some extremely rough calculations to show the scale of what Slashdotters are proposing:
In order to get an inch of water over a square mile, we need 17.4 million gallons.
Cali has 163,696 square miles - obviously we wouldn't water the whole state, but if this is suppoesd to save trees, we have to water a lot of it.
That would be 2.8430904e+13 gallons of water - for one inch.
So lets take a paltry 25 inches of water per year Now we're up to 7.107726e+14 gallons of water from desalination. side note - I settled on 25 as a compromise since many areas will need more, and many less. It's still modest.
So all you have to do is build enough desalination plants to extract that amount of water to bring Cali up to a semi-arid climate. Then there's the water delivery system. The present one is constructed to bring water down, and the new one will have to do a whole lot of up.
I realize that we're in a post truth era where all problems can be solved easily, in a few sentences, but seriously does anyone think that we're up to that? Even with newer desalination methods, we're talking ridiculous amounts of effort.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
But if your goal is to speak truths, guess what? You're going to piss people off. There's nothing wrong with treating some of the extra-special users of Slashdot who think they're the shit as canaries. There are definitely certain users on this site who get angry when you hit the mark.
To the point where I consider people marking me as troll is validation of my statement's truth.
And if I can piss off people who are unencumbered by the thought process by forcing them to reply to the truth, that's a pretty good thing.
Would that be a white-hat troll?
Utterly ridiculous desalination by building nuclear plants along the coasts plan, and attempting to recreate the immense amount of water needed to restore Cali to semi arid status, complete ignorance of the byproducts - salt is the least of the problems there, is just beyond the pale. We're supposed to be smart people.
And then there is this weird meme of California people being all brain dead libtards.
That must be why they would be the sixth largest economy in the world if they were a separate country.
It's always great fun to see people trotting out their favorite boogeymen or pet projects for this sort of thing. The usual actors can be seen agitating for nuc power, the far right decides that the problem is because Libtards!, the Libertarians know for certain that it is onerous regulations.
And piss all, I'm stuck here with my useless numbers and calculations There are some problems that our post truth era, fact free solutions can't fix.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Not to mention that watering the forests to prevent them from dying and eventually burning would actually damage the ecosystem. Forest fires return nutrients to the soil, clears thick underbrush, and encourages diversity that helps the wildlife thrive. There was testing done for 40 years in Florida where 20+ acres of forest was watered and never cut back which resulted in destruction to the soil, unhealthy trees, and resulted in the disappearance of wildlife that found the area uninhabitable.
Funny. Flint happened after we voted all the Democrats out.
Utterly ridiculous desalination by building nuclear plants along the coasts plan, and attempting to recreate the immense amount of water needed to restore Cali to semi arid status, complete ignorance of the byproducts - salt is the least of the problems there, is just beyond the pale. We're supposed to be smart people.
Let's pump seawater inland using solar thermal heat pipes, and use it to grow algae for biofuel. Harvest the salt for commercial purposes. Return as much water to aquifers in the process. The waste from the algae-to-biofuel process is compost, so it's benevolent.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If droughts were a regular feature in that part of the world, then THE FUCKING TREES WOULDN'T BE DYING FROM IT. They would have already evolved to deal with it. But species that are NATIVE to the afflicted regions are dying off IN DROVES. That means they are NOT adapted, which implies that such events are rare at best, hence why they are DYING.
No, it's not a good thing.
The problem with that theory is that the tree mix in California is not what it historically used to be. California used to be mostly Black Oaks and other deciduous trees intermixed with some conifers - douglas firs, etc. At least, that was the case in the Sierra Nevada foothills and lower elevations. If you go there now, you'll rarely see any oak trees - they were all cut down in the 1800s. The conifers were blocked out by the oaks and, since oaks take up more space, there were fewer trees in the same land area. Without the competition for space, the conifers really took over as they grow much more quickly than an oak.
Good. Lots of small quakes means the energy that would be building for a major quake is being released.
Fracking may end up being one of the greatest things ever invented even after it becomes uneconomical to use it to extract oil.
Let's pump seawater inland using solar thermal heat pipes, and use it to grow algae for biofuel. Harvest the salt for commercial purposes. Return as much water to aquifers in the process. The waste from the algae-to-biofuel process is compost, so it's benevolent.
WAT! That's crazy talk!
Next thing you know you'll be agitatin for electric cars, solar cells and other brain-dead ideas.
The aquifer issue is a biggie in addition to the other ones http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs0690... Some places in California - as well as other places like Houston TX are sinking.
We have to face it, we need to come up with solutions. Or maybe precipitates.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You wouldn't replace rainfall, you'd just desalinate enough for drinking water. Couple that with no water for toilets or washing, and the population should go down to more sustainable levels in no time, so the water issue would cease to be a problem.
It's not a theory. It's a hypothesis. As much as I hate to nit pick it's bad nomenclature that makes Joe Sixpack feel that he has a leg to stand on about what is what in science with all kinds of crazy ideas because "it's just a theory."
The biggest threats to nuclear power plants have been human errors and natural disasters, eco-terrorists don't even come close...
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Nobody is talking of using desalination to save trees. The trees are just an excuse to build more mega irrigation infrastructure. But city people are tired of paying huge taxes to build expensive irrigation infrastructure so that mega rich farming corporations can get cheap water to grow export crops. And they justify all this spending by saying the cities may run out of drinking water. The cities are saying f u to the farm lobbyists in Sacramento. We are not paying for anymore mega irrigation infrastructure. If the drinking water situation gets bad we will desalinate for drinking water and let the farming corporations go to hell.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Stop blaming me for every shit that happens to you!
signed, God
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
SolyentGreen will be People.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
This is why I come to slashdot, for the insightful commentary by actual experts.
You are a tree doctor? Or what do you call them, tree surgeon?
Right?
Well, while technically possible, getting moisture out of that much hot air is very uneconomical.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you see a tree, let it have your pee.
Your link doesn't say that most of the corn is used for ethanol.
"Corn can be used for food as corn flour, cornmeal, hominy, grits or sweet corn. It can be used as animal feed to help fatten our hogs, chickens and cattle. And it can be turned into ethanol, high-fructose corn syrup or even bio-based plastics."
"Today’s corn crop is mainly used for biofuels (roughly 40 percent of U.S. corn is used for ethanol)"
Which means more is NOT used for biofuels. Moreover, biofuels was not what the tree huggers asked for: it was asked for by the farmers who grow corn. And the corn for biofuel doesn't have to be high quality, either.
CA doesn't grow any of those things in the desert.
You should visit N Cal sometime.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Well, the article does not tell us what percentage of trees are normally dead, or historical average.
Eh? If I told you two thirds of Americans were found dead this weekend, would you say, "Yes, but what percentage of Americans are normally dead? Like, on a historical basis."
A Democrat fiscal emergency manager.
You think Republicans are so stupid they would put themselves into a position of being responsible for Flint after the Democrats had fucked it beyond all repair?
There is a reason Flint needed an emergency manager. It's not because things were going well. The Republicans were smart about it and left it in the hands of the political party that had fucked it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Flint voted the democrats out? Liar.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Nobody is talking of using desalination to save trees.
Why do so many people say "Nobody is talking about X, when it's pretty obvious that a lot of people have been talking about X?
The trees are just an excuse to build more mega irrigation infrastructure.
Mega irrigation infrastructure has to have water to irrigate with. The closest possible water source is the Columbia River. Next up is the great lakes. The Colorado is already pretty well tapped out, and in use by the states it runs through. Well drilling is not only depleting the aquifer, but the land over it is subsiding.
TL;DR version - to build irrigation infrestructure you gotta have water.
But city people are tired of paying huge taxes to build expensive irrigation infrastructure so that mega rich farming corporations can get cheap water to grow export crops.
And that water is going to come from where? You are just reciting political screed, and I forgot to add the liberal "rich corporationz" battle cry to the "Too many Regulationz" whine of the libertarians, and the completely useless "Fucking libtards!" of the right wing.
You don't have the water to distribute. The whole crew of ya have no idea what you are talking about. There is no irrigation system that can be put in for the trees, no corporation or libertarian or god fearing social conservative cand make that happen because the water isn't there to use.
And they justify all this spending by saying the cities may run out of drinking water. The cities are saying f u to the farm lobbyists in Sacramento.
That's a completely different story, and is merely people adjusting to ground truth.
We are not paying for anymore mega irrigation infrastructure. If the drinking water situation gets bad we will desalinate for drinking water and let the farming corporations go to hell.
Power to the people oh yeah! You are trying to bring a complete different argument to this matter. Trees are the matter.
Trees are not often irrigated. Not are they often planted, other than silly water hungry ones like almond trees.
And most trees can handle short term water deficits pretty well. But like all other plants, they have a limit.
That limit has nothing to to with fatcat capitalists, or the southern flag wavers, or Libertarians, or leeburulls.
An't been enough rain, Aint been enough snow. The water that California gets from wells and th eColorado river and other out of state sources doesn't have anything to do with non-irrigated ttrees dying.
Plain and simple, Cali needs more precipitation, or is going to become more of a desert than it is now.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
In a few years - Godzilla.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Protip, this is why California is having so many fires.
Sensible logging would help reduce fires, but get rid of some of these dead trees.
But logging is a ZOMG NO NEVER from extreme environmentalists, so instead we have ever bigger fires. Nature will reduce the dead trees with fires if we don't with logging.
it's not the drought it is radiation. as if the memory of the prior droughts has been erased .. there were no mass deaths of plant life as I see here in Calif now. the oldest Oaks and Redwoods now dead are proof to me, we are being irradiated. it is in the air and in the rain. we are screwed.
slow death so no one notices. higher rates of cancer will surely be the result. it has affected new births of people and pets.
large scale infant deaths april 2011. dog's litters are small if they even have a litter. Go ahead and diss me it won't change a thing.
you need a " the walking dead trees" tv show.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The politicians (in Europe) declared wood pellets to be green renewable energy. The "greens" think it's stupid.
Yes, "greens" like Steve Goreham, Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of the book "The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism: Mankind and Climate Change Mania"
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/09/wood-burning-power-plants-misguided-climate-change-solution/
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The problem is that many global warming proponents have made it all but impossible to disagree with any part of their talking points without being shouted down as a denier.
I suppose 'not-real' could be considered gender ambiguous...
Interesting data. Nature does rain. Rain is evaporated water. California rain needs 15TW energy to happen. Modern humanity generates only about the same 15-20 TW amount of energy annually. California is a rather dry location on planet Earth. How much energy our planet needs for making rains happen worldwide? Where this energy comes from?
Unless it's diluted in some way, throwing that much salt into the waters off the California coast would fuck up coastal waters even more than decades of fertilizer runoff already has.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The energy comes from the sun.
With 5 hours a day of sunlight hitting the ocean it would take a patch about 300km square to provide enough energy to evaporate the water.
sqrt((((15 TW) * 5) / (1 KW)) * (1 (m^2))) = 273.861279 kilometres
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
I think the correct term is undocumented.
I'm a little unclear here. Do you believe droughts are visited on states that vote Democrat?
These trees can be burned in place of coal by the Kochs
California forests are tinderboxes. I think that when Trump has to help California with the next disasterous fire, he will still say, "Global warming is not man made!".
And when that fire erupts, look at the impact to the California agriculture industry.
After Trump/Federal Government complete the assisting of California, Florida will be in it's stormy season, and hen Arizona with it's drought.
Ahh, just love stupidity and political paybacks.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
What are they supposed to do, drink salt water ?
Most of the water for California comes from the Sierras from snow pack, or from the Colorado River (again, snow pack) not the ocean.
Israel developed very efficient desalination systems, enabling them to convert sea water to potable. California, from what I understand, has started to construct the Israeli desalination plants (under license). Israel makes its own potable water, and exports some to their enemies (eg. Jordan, Palestinians).
How is that for generosity.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Much of California(Cali) is great for growing plants. It's land is futile unlike a desert. What it doesn't get a lot of is rain, it depends on water shed from mountains, sometimes causing floods.
Most of Cali's water is coming from watershed not groundwater. This water rather than being allowed to flood, or head strait to the ocean, is being diverted, stored, and used differently, optimally. It can even grow better than the wetter states with more sunshine and great soil and milder winters.
As an old Cali native, let me enplane a little of what's happened.
The Good farming areas prosper and grow. Little of the farming land slowly turns into homes. Jobs happen, the bay area growth explodes as people move from across the country, the cost of living is skyrockets where people are willing to commute 1-2hr from the cheaper faming places. Those farming lands turn into suburbia even though they are built in flood zones. Then silicone valley happened and and the above happens times 10.
Faming still happens, but making use of less fertile land, further away from the riverbanks, as those area's became cities. Farming was already employing flood irrigation for much of the land anyways, so it's just more of it. The flood irrigation is practically a controlled simulation of the natural flooding that's suppose to happen.
Those Almonds that use so much water is where I grew up. I watched as areas that experience yearly flooding get turned into track homes from the 90's to the late 2000s faster than new schools could be built. This development wasn't just the valley, but further up the hills too. I even saw creeks turned into roadways, and springs capped with pipes leading out of them heading to who knows where.
There has been lots of turmoil from North Cali and South Cali, a lot because of water. but also because the people are so quite different. The big cities of LA/San Fran and their area vs the rest of Cali are very different too. I, and others I knew, where in favor of splitting Cali every time it came up. Much of southern Cali is desert, and is also where much of the population lives with their well watered lawns and swimming pools. Either pumping up the water or taking it from the north. I remember during the 70's when the north was under strict water usage "if it's yellow let it mellow if it's brown flush it down", but the south, where our water was sent, was not.
Think I've lost people, this long post was suppose to be about much of Cali is a great place for agriculture. It lacks rain through out the year, but that doesn't mean it's all desert and the way agriculture uses it is very much like how Cali naturally used it.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
The SF Chronicle has degraded from a real newspaper to a poorly edited regurgitation in many cases. This seems to be a case where the author of the piece didn't actually check their facts.
I believe the "third" quote is just an error:
"There are about 21 million acres of trees spread across Californiaâ(TM)s 18 national forests, and the latest figures show 7.7 million of them â" more than one-third â" are dead. "
This quote is linked-cited to their other paper site, sfchronicle, and that article does not give those same numbers.
The sfchronicle article links to this http://www.fs.fed.us/sites/default/files/DROUGHT_book-web-1-11-16.pdf
The New York Times version of the article does NOT make the same "third are dead" claim and it links to a USDA release:
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2016/11/0246.xml&contentidonly=true
That also does not make the "third are dead" claim.
As a non-professional forest person in California, the claim that a third of forested acres are "dead" or that a third of all trees are dead is demonstrably absurd.
I think someone slipped a digit somewhere and sfgate's editing is no longer good enough to trust anyone checked it. If anyone happens to see any original source making this claim, please let me know.
No matter how much water you put on a straw man, it's not going to grow into anything.
The first goal of any desalination program would be to supply drinking water to the human population. Okay, okay, and also to California's vast herd of lawyers.
Then we would consider the cost of adding enough desalinated water to underwrite whatever level of agricultural use we deem to be necessary. This would be decided area by area and crop by crop, as Californians would ask themselves questions like
1. Can we do without those water-intensive almonds? ,,,
2. If we plant varieties of corn, lettuce, etc. that have been bioengineered to need less water, will we fear-beswacked liberals deign to eat them, or will we have to sell them to the shriveled Republican enclaves that persist in places like Newport Beach?
Straw man alert. He never said he was an expert, only that he has an opinion and he has many recent observations.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Maybe so, but we've been in a drought condition since at least 2007.
Only I can judge you.
No matter how much water you put on a straw man, it's not going to grow into anything.
At what point di dyou start reading this thread. I'm not th eone who was trying to talk about all the Water California was going to have if they built nuc plants for desalinization.
The first goal of any desalination program would be to supply drinking water to the human population.
I don't even disagree with you if they end up needing desalininization for drinking water. Of course, the irrigation water will alomst certainly be all gone by that time, and it won't do a damn thing for the one third of California's trees that are dead now, and possibly more later.
Then we would consider the cost of adding enough desalinated water to underwrite whatever level of agricultural use we deem to be necessary. This would be decided area by area and crop by crop, as Californians would ask themselves questions like
1. Can we do without those water-intensive almonds?
Well, for what it's worth, it isn't likely that almonds would ever survive in a drip irrigation world. Because the cost of this desalinated water wouldn't remotely support them, and almost certainly not support the form of irrigation used now.
If I were to hazard a guess, California might implement the first large scale true factory farming system. It's a guess, but they probbly want to continue their dominance in producing food for the country, and controlling the water usage will be a lot easier if they can control the evaporation rate and side waste. Huge warehouse type buildings that might take advantage of the ample sunlight, but can recycle water might just be the long term solution to this problem.
If we plant varieties of corn, lettuce, etc. that have been bioengineered to need less water, will we fear-beswacked liberals deign to eat them, or will we have to sell them to the shriveled Republican enclaves that persist in places like Newport Beach?
Well, will the liberals eat the genetically modified foods? Because that's what you are talking about. But that gets us even further from the discussion of the effects of the long drought on the non-irrigated parts of the state.
Regardless, are you calling my numbers all wrong, or just declaring I'm using a straw man so you can strut around like a cock-a-hoop and relish your easy post truth type utterly simple rebuttal? I made a BOE, and really rough calculation of just how much water it would take to water the state back to semi-arid conditions. If you don't like them, knock off a few powers of ten, it's still close enough to impossible, and shows Cali's increasingly desperate water problem.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Thankfully, thanks to our leader President-elect Donald Trump, we now know that this is all a hoax caused by China to make us doubt in America's greatness.
What time frame are they talking.
If you go back to the 1850s when, according to Sam Clemens, a squirrel could go from Angel's Camp to the San Francisco Bay without ever having to touch the ground; it is much more than 75% of the trees in California that are dead.
If you are talking Southern California; when you overbuild in a desert removing the majority of the natural ground cover why are you surprised there are droughts?
NRRPT/RCT
Someone toss a clue bat. Desalinization is extremely inefficient. Natural evaporation condensing on a mountain range works a hell of a lot better... i.e. Oahu if you want a microclime small enough to tour in a day.
NRRPT/RCT
The trees are fine. All this talk about trees is because the Califronia taxpayers will not build new infrastructure for farmers. Now they are trying to convince us (using the trees) that its not really not their fault for farming water intensive cash crops like Almonds and that rather nature is doing them a bad one and we should feel sorry for them . Well we are not going to fall for it. The trees will survive or not survive - natural selection. If there are mega forest fires then the folks living on acres of beatifull land subsidized by the city folks will just have to move to the cities and deal with the traffic and the aggravation. We are not going to pay more taxes to fund their year round vacation lifestyle (tell me again what does a farmer do that a well trained chimp cant do in 40 days a year?)
**Life is too short to be serious**
The trees are fine. All this talk about trees is because the Califronia taxpayers will not build new infrastructure for farmers.
So you are telling me that the US Forest Service wants to build new irrigation projects for farmers. Here's the link to the actual forest service report. http://www.fs.fed.us/news/rele...
Here's photos of dead trees perhaps you'll claim photoshopped by the USDA? The Farmers? So they can implement the ultimate non-sequitur solution? http://www.fs.usda.gov/main/ca... So the warmer than normal temperatures and drought conditions have enabled bark beetles to infest and kill more trees, and you think this is a plot by farmers to build new irrigation projects that will have zero impact on the situation.
This is the logic that says - "Honey, the car broke down, so I'm buying a new furnace and computer."
What happens is the warmer and dryer conditions don't kill off the beetles, so they infest the trees and kill them. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn't do that. We have a similar issue near me with the Emerald ash borer, a beautiful green critter that has been devastating forests. As in miles of dead trees. http://ento.psu.edu/extension/... http://buffalonews.com/2016/06...
EAB isn't based on drought or temps, just accidentally introduced and no local predators. But no, the trees are not fine.Neither are teh ones in Cali. They're dead, Jim!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Eh? If I told you two thirds of Americans were found dead this weekend, would you say, "Yes, but what percentage of Americans are normally dead? Like, on a historical basis."
Well, that's a good question. There are many dead Americans, probably more than living. I would expect that the ratio of Americans who have died vs living ones is greater than 66%. But I'm not sure how that relates to my point.
Err, no. The scenario you describe would re-seed the area with more fire-tolerant strains of tree, not more drought tolerant ones. You want an extended drought during which only drought-tolerant saplings can mature, then sufficient normal-ish weather for that cohort of drought-tolerant trees to mature, then a fire which takes out the drought-tolerant and drought-susceptible trees at more-or less similar rates, after which the increased number of the drought-tolerant trees would dominate the seed load from which future generations will grow. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
mohammedists are cearly against free speech. read their book of intolerance.
post truth was invented by gwb or earlier. wmd etc.
and all the mainstream media whores complied.
because he did not whore himself to the weapons industry like clinton ?
yeah, you are a bankster-marxist.
Believe everything they see on TV wing nut detected.
Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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At least he doesn't want to use the water out of the toilet.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Your hypothesis doesn't appear to be supported by the evidence. The Forest Service webpage http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/... indicates that the areas of greatest die-off are in the mountains rather than in farmland.
Since my side didn't win, I'm not accepting the result of the election. The election was rigged anyway.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
They should water crops with the salt water, because everyone knows, electrolytes are good for you.
Learn to love Alaska
No, it would't. The amount of salt would be a drop in the ocean. The highest efficiency comes when you pump lots of salt water past and extract a small amount of the water. The "waste" water is no more salty than the regular variations in the salt levels. It would be so small a change that it would be undetectable.
Learn to love Alaska
Why is it that nobody ever considers using two things? Why not use some rainwater collection, river water, and desalinization to supplement the shortfall? No, we can't supplement the shortfall, we have to stop using groundwater and surface water completely, or it's not scalable. That doesn't make reverse osmosis a bad idea, it just makes you an idiot.
Learn to love Alaska
Your hypothesis doesn't appear to be supported by the evidence. The Forest Service webpage http://www.fs.usda.gov/detail/... indicates that the areas of greatest die-off are in the mountains rather than in farmland.
You are surprised to find that there are more pines in a pine forest than there are in the middle of a farm plot? Welcome to Slashdot, you should apply for an editor job.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hey now that's uncalled for; one can discuss climate change without resorting to hysterics without being labeled a trump supporter. I've actually been to the majority of the national forests in California this year so I feel entitled to my opinion and observations of the forests.
Straw man alert. He never said he was an expert, only that he has an opinion and he has many recent observations.
He implied that he had a useful opinion because he had been to a bunch of national forests. That depends very much on what he did while he was there. It takes more than visiting to have something useful to say.
One is certainly always entitled to one's own opinion. I, for one, feel everyone is entitled to my opinion. Of course, they are also entitled to pick it apart. If they're smarter than I am, I may learn something when that happens.
That used to happen here on Slashdot quite a bit, which is a big part of how I got hooked on the place. I love learning. Stop me when I'm wrong, but be damned sure I'm wrong. At that point, I will be fascinated.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Your response is inconsistent with your previous assertion. I conclude, therefore, that you're trolling.
Your response is inconsistent with your previous assertion.
Really? Why don't you point to the place in the narrative at which you lost track, so I can fix it for you and show you where you're moving the goalposts? I'm not going to play a guessing game. You could have become confused at any point.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And what do you do with all that salt? That's one of the problems with massive desalinization - you have LOTS of brine to deal with.
Duh, just throw it back in the sea.
But that will make the sea salty!
Blaming democratic officials for the lead contamination is like blaming your wife for failing to dodge your fist.
Well, if she knew what was good for her, she would have left him, therefore not being in the way of the fist in the first place. ;)
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?