Heh, yep, that's one way to look at it... tho the truly blameworthy are well-tefloned by their status as environmentalists and defenders of nature, all with the best of motives and intent.
I've seen some photos of that era (not sure who took them) but having only seen today's overgrown forests, I was astonished at how yesteryear's forests (then entirely natural) consist of widely-scattered trees, mostly of middle maturity, with thick grass between and little or no brush in sight. Today's forest trees are crammed cheek-by-jowl, up to their armpits in brush, with little or no grass in sight. As I say above, if it weren't pine beetles, it would be some other opportunistic pest, regardless of the climate. (And as only relatively small parts of the forested U.S. has *ever* had extended -30 temps since the glaciers departed, that claim is just a red herring.)
Healthy forests need either regular fires or judicious logging. *Choose*.
But most of the areas worst affected by pine beetles have NEVER had winters with regular stretches at -30 degrees. Such extended low temps are historically confined primarily to high altitude and east of the Continental Divide. Even here in Montana, west of the Divide seldom sees extreme cold (in fact, some areas seldom dip below zero, and never have).
Forests evolved to be burned regularly. As Smokey the Bear halted most wildfires, logging replaced the regular clearing and thinning formerly handled by fire. But now we have neither fires nor logging. In SoCal forests, there are now five times as many trees as the available water can handle even in non-drought years, so they're ALL stressed. If it weren't pine beetles, it would be some other opportunistic pest.
A lawyer/judge friend once advised me that when a case regards a subject the public knows little or nothing about, it's easier to convince one ignorant person (judge) than 12 ignorant persons (jury).
I guess it says plenty for how well the troll-suppression system is working that having been a regular here (with around 16,000 posts) since 1998, I'd never even *heard* of "APK" before this little subthread.
That's a good idea, as it would make difficult the retaliatory gang-downmod.
OTOH, some of the troll children might then notice that they can't be swamped back under their bridge so easily, and then we'd be flooded in trash.
Maybe a better solution would be that every downmod costs you a karma point. So if you downmod, you'd better be prepared to help uplift the general tone of discussion, cuz otherwise it'll cost you.
There are so many targets that COULD be attacked, but haven't been (frex, every mall, Walmart, stadium, and university) that the existing attacks don't even amount to good statistical noise.
That's a great theory but in my experience it's not how aluminum oxidation works, at least if you add any moisture at all (and most of us don't live in a 100% dehumidified environment). I have a trailer with an aluminum skin that's actually become porous due to oxidation. I've seen the same happen with aluminum house siding. I've seen aluminum tools become pitted with age. And so on. I don't see why CDs would be immune to the effects of atmospheric moisture.
Alt-Keystone: build pipeline to just south of the border, ending at the nearest rail line. Build refineries there. Ship end products same as they'd have been shipped from wherever the original endpoint was to be. I don't know how that would work out economically, but as it stands we'll all die of old age before they make up our minds, so we might as well look at alternatives.
TFA to which you link says "however, it has also been suggested that this was due to unusually clear weather during the period."
When I lived in the desert, I regularly observed that over the course of a day that started off with a completely clear sky (the natural everyday state of the desert sky), by early-afternoon contrails from Burbank and LAX sufficed to create a high-altitude haze that covered most of the sky.
So I'd say rather that the "unusually clear weather" resulted from a lack of contrails.
Also there's the question of just exactly where they measured Arctic ice. Per some studies, the total mass is pretty much constant but it shifts around the pole (I'd bet this could be correlated with El Nino currents, now that I think of it), so you can measure it as increasing or decreasing if only you cherry-pick your locations.
Hell, if I picked this past winter as a trend (one unusually warm month, three with record-setting cold), I could demonstrate that we'll be deep in an ice age in less than five years. In fact, let's just use yesterday... it snowed in Bozeman.
"...thick deep rich soil, the kind you need for farming."
That describes the ideal situation, but as the world IS, that ideal exists mainly in riverbottoms and some formerly-glaciated areas, and not much anywhere else. Everywhere else, we use modern farming methods to improve production from soils our ancestors would have regarded with dismay. I'd make an educated guess (being an ag type myself) that probably 3/4ths of present-day cropland was naturally less than good, let alone great, prior to being put under the plow.
Further, the notion that we need to turn the tundra into purely cropland is itself ingenuous. It would be more efficient and more productive to turn it into grassland for seasonal grazing, as there are plenty of grasses that thrive in acid soil, and protein availability is the real boundary on human health (calories alone don't do it). More protein means more healthy people.
Anecdotally, the YouTube channel I've learned the most from (in this case, history of weapons) consists almost entirely of a guy standing there lecturing, and occasionally waving around a prop.
Anything is a contaminant if it's where it's not wanted. But I also have a hard time considering something required by plant life as a 'pollutant'... especially when some greenhouses deliberately increase the concentration to improve yields.
No fair! I moved back to MT from the SoCal desert a couple years ago, and I got reminded about the weather real quick:) I've got two older Ford pickups myself. They have keys. And the lights and wiper on the dash and the dimmer switch on the floor, where the gods intended.;)
BTW re your sig, the local EMTs set up in front of Costco a while back and trained folks all day long. Takes about 30 seconds to become proficient.
And what if just as your car swings off the road and passes that point of no return, the oncoming car brakes or swerves and gets out of what would have been your path had your smartcar not jumped over the edge. Now you've died for no gain at all.
See, you can't predict that sort of thing, unless all vehicles are obeying the same set of logic gates.
It occurs to me that this could also generate a new form of 'chicken', where the challenger is sure to win.
I'd say rather that Russian culture is not very different from the norm for large cultural groups throughout history, and that our 'enlightened' cultures in the West are a historical anomaly.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, yep, that's one way to look at it... tho the truly blameworthy are well-tefloned by their status as environmentalists and defenders of nature, all with the best of motives and intent.
I've seen some photos of that era (not sure who took them) but having only seen today's overgrown forests, I was astonished at how yesteryear's forests (then entirely natural) consist of widely-scattered trees, mostly of middle maturity, with thick grass between and little or no brush in sight. Today's forest trees are crammed cheek-by-jowl, up to their armpits in brush, with little or no grass in sight. As I say above, if it weren't pine beetles, it would be some other opportunistic pest, regardless of the climate. (And as only relatively small parts of the forested U.S. has *ever* had extended -30 temps since the glaciers departed, that claim is just a red herring.)
Healthy forests need either regular fires or judicious logging. *Choose*.
But most of the areas worst affected by pine beetles have NEVER had winters with regular stretches at -30 degrees. Such extended low temps are historically confined primarily to high altitude and east of the Continental Divide. Even here in Montana, west of the Divide seldom sees extreme cold (in fact, some areas seldom dip below zero, and never have).
Forests evolved to be burned regularly. As Smokey the Bear halted most wildfires, logging replaced the regular clearing and thinning formerly handled by fire. But now we have neither fires nor logging. In SoCal forests, there are now five times as many trees as the available water can handle even in non-drought years, so they're ALL stressed. If it weren't pine beetles, it would be some other opportunistic pest.
A lawyer/judge friend once advised me that when a case regards a subject the public knows little or nothing about, it's easier to convince one ignorant person (judge) than 12 ignorant persons (jury).
I guess it says plenty for how well the troll-suppression system is working that having been a regular here (with around 16,000 posts) since 1998, I'd never even *heard* of "APK" before this little subthread.
That's a good idea, as it would make difficult the retaliatory gang-downmod.
OTOH, some of the troll children might then notice that they can't be swamped back under their bridge so easily, and then we'd be flooded in trash.
Maybe a better solution would be that every downmod costs you a karma point. So if you downmod, you'd better be prepared to help uplift the general tone of discussion, cuz otherwise it'll cost you.
Glah, I can see problems with that too.
I have a plastic mongoose. I've never had a cobra in my house. Q.E.D.
I have one of those too! Except mine keeps away elephants.
There are so many targets that COULD be attacked, but haven't been (frex, every mall, Walmart, stadium, and university) that the existing attacks don't even amount to good statistical noise.
The third is that their solar irradiance chart is a fair match for observed temperature trends...
This is why it's not Apple Pi.
That's a great theory but in my experience it's not how aluminum oxidation works, at least if you add any moisture at all (and most of us don't live in a 100% dehumidified environment). I have a trailer with an aluminum skin that's actually become porous due to oxidation. I've seen the same happen with aluminum house siding. I've seen aluminum tools become pitted with age. And so on. I don't see why CDs would be immune to the effects of atmospheric moisture.
Alt-Keystone: build pipeline to just south of the border, ending at the nearest rail line. Build refineries there. Ship end products same as they'd have been shipped from wherever the original endpoint was to be. I don't know how that would work out economically, but as it stands we'll all die of old age before they make up our minds, so we might as well look at alternatives.
TFA to which you link says "however, it has also been suggested that this was due to unusually clear weather during the period."
When I lived in the desert, I regularly observed that over the course of a day that started off with a completely clear sky (the natural everyday state of the desert sky), by early-afternoon contrails from Burbank and LAX sufficed to create a high-altitude haze that covered most of the sky.
So I'd say rather that the "unusually clear weather" resulted from a lack of contrails.
Also there's the question of just exactly where they measured Arctic ice. Per some studies, the total mass is pretty much constant but it shifts around the pole (I'd bet this could be correlated with El Nino currents, now that I think of it), so you can measure it as increasing or decreasing if only you cherry-pick your locations.
Hell, if I picked this past winter as a trend (one unusually warm month, three with record-setting cold), I could demonstrate that we'll be deep in an ice age in less than five years. In fact, let's just use yesterday... it snowed in Bozeman.
"...thick deep rich soil, the kind you need for farming."
That describes the ideal situation, but as the world IS, that ideal exists mainly in riverbottoms and some formerly-glaciated areas, and not much anywhere else. Everywhere else, we use modern farming methods to improve production from soils our ancestors would have regarded with dismay. I'd make an educated guess (being an ag type myself) that probably 3/4ths of present-day cropland was naturally less than good, let alone great, prior to being put under the plow.
Further, the notion that we need to turn the tundra into purely cropland is itself ingenuous. It would be more efficient and more productive to turn it into grassland for seasonal grazing, as there are plenty of grasses that thrive in acid soil, and protein availability is the real boundary on human health (calories alone don't do it). More protein means more healthy people.
[plaintively] ...a scanned and uploaded copy of all four books of Using Latin...??
Very likely a factor.
Anecdotally, the YouTube channel I've learned the most from (in this case, history of weapons) consists almost entirely of a guy standing there lecturing, and occasionally waving around a prop.
6. Profit!!
Anything is a contaminant if it's where it's not wanted. But I also have a hard time considering something required by plant life as a 'pollutant' ... especially when some greenhouses deliberately increase the concentration to improve yields.
No fair! I moved back to MT from the SoCal desert a couple years ago, and I got reminded about the weather real quick :) I've got two older Ford pickups myself. They have keys. And the lights and wiper on the dash and the dimmer switch on the floor, where the gods intended. ;)
BTW re your sig, the local EMTs set up in front of Costco a while back and trained folks all day long. Takes about 30 seconds to become proficient.
Excellent idea! And then they can say the words disappeared as they were read, just like the publisher intended. ;)
Will it notice the loaded 18 wheeler two cars behind it, that can't stop in nearly the same distance??
And what if just as your car swings off the road and passes that point of no return, the oncoming car brakes or swerves and gets out of what would have been your path had your smartcar not jumped over the edge. Now you've died for no gain at all.
See, you can't predict that sort of thing, unless all vehicles are obeying the same set of logic gates.
It occurs to me that this could also generate a new form of 'chicken', where the challenger is sure to win.
I'd say rather that Russian culture is not very different from the norm for large cultural groups throughout history, and that our 'enlightened' cultures in the West are a historical anomaly.