Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
As long as Nestle is still getting their water, who cares if the trees gets theirs.
No, just that they're bad at water management.
See also: Flint, MI.
Ah, the old "It's not dead, it's just sleeping".
Let me guess, it also has a beautiful plumage?
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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
One of the things I love about retarded leftists is that they really do firmly believe that it's okay to just lie about their political opponents.
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.
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~