One Third of California's Trees Are Dead (sfgate.com) 393
"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.
Okay... (Score:5, Funny)
Next up: lung cancer causes smoking!
Not ENTIRELY silly. (Score:2)
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 tree
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I would have thought your legal victory over Gawker would have calmed you down a bit and you'd stop trolling Slashdot
Need to focus on priorities here! (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as Nestle is still getting their water [sbsun.com], who cares if the trees gets theirs.
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And the cows... lots of cows.
It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce just 1 pound of meat. Only 25 gallons of water are required to grow 1 pound of wheat. You can save more water by not eating a pound of meat than you can by not showering for six months!
We even grow hay and corn to send to China for their cows.
Moooo
www.cowspiracy.com
Re:Need to focus on priorities here! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's nonsense. A pound of meat can't contain more than a pint of water even if it contained nothing but water. A cow may drink a lot of water, but most of it is returned to the environment when the cow urinates. The water is most certainly not destroyed.
Perhaps California needs more water treatment plants, but that's hardly the cow's fault. Maybe some of those people displaced by automation can go work in sewage treatment instead of going on the dole. Or, if the doomsayers are correct that absolutely everything will be automated leaving everyone unemployed then I assume the water treatment systems will be fully automated as well. Either way, there's no reason to worry about water temporarily spending some time inside a cow. It's not a long term problem.
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Almost all of the water that goes into beef production is used to grow the corn the cows eat, Einstein. The amount that cows drink is negligible.
The water used to grow corn ends up evaporating, so sewage treatment is completely irrelevant to this issue.
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Yes, all those massive fields of corn growing in California. Wait, not California, the Midwest. Were farms actually get rain. So much rain, in fact, farmers often install tile drainage to eliminate excess water (and the excess ends up either evaporating and coming back as rain, or filtering down through the soil to aquifers). Not all water is equally valuable.
California does produce some corn, but it's a tiny fraction of the US grain production total [wikipedia.org].
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Most of the water to produce beef in CA goes to irrigate fields of forage (hay, alfalfa, etc.) for cows. It all evaporates.
CA also exports hay to China for their cows.
Moooo
Re:Need to focus on priorities here! (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's not the tree huggers who have been pushing ethanol; it's the agribusiness lobby. Most tree huggers are against corn-based ethanol, and rightfully so.
Re:Need to focus on priorities here! (Score:4, Funny)
Any self-respecting enviro-foodie would only eat seaweed-flavoured beef [slashdot.org]
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Googling about:
"Total amount of water needed - to produce one pound of beef is 1,799 gallons of water; one pound of pork takes 576 gallons of water. As a comparison, the water footprint of soybeans is 216 gallons; corn is 108 gallons."
Re:Need to focus on priorities here! (Score:5, Insightful)
And it is totally false.
Or do you think cows contain some kind of secret matter transmuter?
They are counting all the water that PASSES THROUGH, very VERY little of which is actually consumed.
If a cow actually contained that much water, the water alone would weight nearly 7 tons....
In other words, it is the usual media BS that people believe these days without the slightest attempt at critical thinking.
So, grow up and use that thing between your ears next time. The water was not removed from the system, it just passed through..
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Thanks for your response. I am sick of the vegans and vegetarians pushing their religion and absurd phony data at ever opportunity.
We do have a problem though when it comes to the CAFOs which are terribly bad for the environment and I think we'd rather they keep their nasty effluent on their factory (it can't be called a farm or ranch by any reasonable definition).
They should consider the much more tasty religion of Ketogenic. We eat bacon!
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People!
The trees are in the mountains and depend on natural rain and snowfall. No irrigation at all there. If it doesn't rain or snow, they don't get water.
What happens to the water once it gets to the valley is irrelevant.
What is the norm? (Score:2)
Re:What is the norm? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure there are always some dead trees in a forest, as anyone who's ever hunted or rambled in a forest knows. But one out of three? And from drought? It's not normal for the historical period.
However... There have been prehistoric droughts in California lasting decades, even centuries. Since we know this from tree rings, we know some rain must have fallen, but less than we are accustomed to as "normal" in historic times. These have been correlated to "radiative forcing", natural climate change mechanisms such as variations in the Earth's orbit and volcanic activity. Warmer Earth == drier California.
Interesting they release these reports on rainy da (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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that would be because heat-stressed trees are much more vulnerable to bark-beetle infestation
Re:Interesting they release these reports on rainy (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Interesting they release these reports on rainy (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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 l
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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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
They're not dead.. (Score:2)
Are these numbers right? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
I'm not seeing it. (Score:2)
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Your anecdotal experience is irrelevant.
Re:75% of california's poeple are brain dead (Score:5, Funny)
I'm a little unclear here. Do you believe droughts are visited on states that vote Democrat?
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No, just that they're bad at water management.
See also: Flint, MI.
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The last time I went to a forest, I didn't see man made irrigation watering the trees.
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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.
Not affecting the trees (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Which one?
Re:75% of california's poeple are brain dead (Score:5, Funny)
And He's coming for you, too.
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Your aunt died of shame.
Re:75% of california's poeple are brain dead (Score:5, Funny)
Aunt that a shame.
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God killed Antonin Scalia and Andrew Breitbart.
If that were true, it would almost be enough to make me believe in god.
Re: 75% of california's poeple are brain dead (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: 75% of california's poeple are brain dead (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: 75% of california's poeple are brain dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Which would serve the purposes of drinking water, but watering entire forests? Impractical doesn't even begin to describe it.
Re: 75% of california's poeple are brain dead (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: 75% of california's poeple are brain dead (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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Tequila!
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Sell it to people in hard water areas for their water softeners.
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What ever technology you propose, this is the number you have to scale up to.
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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
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Fracking and oil well injection seems to have made the "geologically stable" midwest a thing of the past. Lots of earthquakes there now.
Re: 75% of california's poeple are brain dead (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: 75% of california's poeple are brain dead (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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!
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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.
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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!
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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".
Re: 75% of california's poeple are brain dead (Score:4, Insightful)
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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".
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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 cour
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Luke 4:24
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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.
Re:Karma (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Karma (Score:4, Informative)
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Sea water has salt. Salt kills plants.
No way, salt is an electrolyte, electrolytes are good. - Idiocracy
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Do you also love it when retarded right lies about their political opponents? Like when Trump spread a hoax news site's fake story about a protester was paid $3,500 [politifact.com] as if it were fact and thousands upon thousands of Trump supporters repeated that story for the rest of the election?
Of course one bit difference is that the retard was Trump, not some semi-anonymous rando from the internet, which makes it just a little less lovable.
Re:Karma (Score:4, Informative)
Non-indigenous inspect species killing CA forests (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Non-indigenous inspect species killing CA fores (Score:4, Informative)
Those insects are taking root strongly because the trees have been under significant stress for years due to...
you guessed it: drought!
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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.
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The trees get their water from precipitation, either directly as rainfall or from later snow melt.
And the water in the rainfall came from the humidity in the air (which was then "squeegied out" by the mountains forcing the air upward).
But much of the water in the air came from the imported irrigation water, evaporated by transpiration in irrigated plants (and a bit from wet surfaces). Very little of the water imported to west-of-the-Sierras ends up in the Pacific Ocean or refilling overpumped underground a
CA has naturally occurring forests (Score:3)
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.
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There's a problem with bark beetles boring in to heat stressed trees (pines). That accounts for a lot of the trees dying. The last few drought years have exacerbated the problem. The problem wasn't as bad last summer FWIW. Still not great but not as bad as the previous two years.
Re:Karma (Score:4, Interesting)
As for the most populous areas in the state being desert, I could be pedantic and point out that potential natural vegetation in LA, San Diego, and the bay area would be predominantly chaparral, grassland, and coastal sage scrub, but I do get your point. However, those aren't the parts of the state that TFA is concerned with.
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We did get a huge influx of immigrants from other states during the dust bowl. And all the prejudice that pops up when that happens.
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Oklahoma Population 3.878 million
California population 38.8 million
If we only shipped 10% of our population, we'd shift that state in a drastic manner. For one, lots more better restaurants, maybe they'd get real Mexican food instead of that tex-mex shit that they think is Mexican.
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I was. Spent slightly over a year there. Met a lot of intelligent, really nice open-minded people. OKC is a great city and I would really enjoy living there long-term. Except for the lack of avocados and fresh vegetables, there is almost nothing bad about it. It is clean and has lots of room if you're looking for that. I wasn't too into the fracking so I turned tail and headed back to Cali.
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We could sent the lowest decile (by IQ) of California's population to OK. This would increase the average IQ of both states!
Win! Win!
Re: Karma (Score:2)
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There's little fruit and related labour in California.
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Much of the death is from an outbreak of various insects, moths and beetles. At least up in the sierras. There's also a disease spreading amongst oaks. Add in a drought, and there's a lot of dry tinder waiting for a spark.
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Trees in the Southern California mountains have been dying for years due to smog. That's pretty much a home-grown problem. Ozone concentrations tend to be highest in the areas that have had good forests, and pines (especially) seem to be sensitive to it. Combine with drought and beetles...
Smog and ozone have both been declining since the 1970s. Things are far better on that criteria than in the past.
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I know stuff-all about american species but any tree that is stressed from insufficient water will be more vulnerable to insect and disease attack.
The invasive insect species have been devastating California forests since before the drought.
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The invasive insect species have been devastating California forests since before the drought.
That, sir, is a lie told with weasel words. "Before the drought"? Only true if you take it to mean before this drought. But the pine borer really took off during the last drought. At best you are spectacularly ignorant of the fact that this problem was in fact brought about by drought.
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Yes, we do have a lot of surplus salvage lumber right now... keeps lumber prices low for now... not sure about the future, though.
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Ah, the old "It's not dead, it's just sleeping".
Let me guess, it also has a beautiful plumage?
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1) This article has nothing to do with the other states in the Colorado River compact.
2) This has nothing to do with diverted water in aqueducts period, it has to do with insufficient rainfall for forests to survive.
3) And the energy for desalination is to come from where, exactly? That's always been the big issue with desalination: it's extremely energy-intensive.
4) California wouldn't have water problems if not for their decisions to be an agricultural state in the middle of a desert. And even grow wate
Re:California needs to desalinate (Score:5, Informative)
The majority of the crops are grown in the central valley, most of which is definitely not a desert (only in the far south-west end does it get close to desert naturally). It gets plenty of rain, and likely would be deciduous forest except most of the rain happens in the winter (instead of year-round), which is why irrigation is important.
There is currently an anti-farmer campaign going on in California, and there are good arguments for re-negotiating (some of the water allocations along the south of highway 5, by Patterson, are ridiculous, for example); but there is a lot of resistance to change, because if the water rights are ever re-negotiated, municipalities like San Francisco would probably lose their senior water rights status. Those holders guard their rights fiercely.
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Approximately half of California is a desert (an area of 10 inches of precipitation or less per year): map [worldatlas.com]
An additional large portion is arid (~10-20 inches per year) - more specifically "hot mediterranean climate".
Which as you can see from the above map mostly ranges from desert (Bakersfield) to arid (Fresno, upwards to around Sacramento). The far north end (Sacramento Valley) isn't very arid, but it's also not as m
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The far north end (Sacramento Valley) isn't very arid,
The Sacramento Valley is some of the most beautiful farm land on earth. Green fields, dark, fertile soil. Blue skies, cows look at you as you drive by.
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... take out your earplugs.
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Look into ecology
He's demanding proof which already exists, he's not going to look into anything farther away than his own navel. And while he's there, he's going to think only about lint.
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The politicians (in Europe) declared wood pellets to be green renewable energy.
The "greens" think it's stupid.
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'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 t