Truck Load Rates Halt 8 Week Slide 2.0

No, that's expensive and crazy. People out west choose to live in an arid desert and want to build large cities there or grow crops in a desert. They need to figure out a solution to the water problem they created. The Pacific Ocean is a virtually inexhaustible supply of water. Desalination plants are expensive but probably the only solution they've got.

 

I read a huge article several months ago about the water restrictions in that area and how Chicago rightfully and jealously prevents its water from going to other states or regions. You think it's an endless resource but really it's not and if they didn't do that you'd have farms in surrounding states sucking up all that water to irrigate their crops.

 

They've recently found a big problem with desalination plants. The heavy brine leftovers after the salt is filtered out is just dumped back into the ocean where it was assumed it would easily blend back into the sea. They were wrong. The more saline water is the more it sinks. Fresh water stays near the surface and gradually mixes, but heavy brine byproducts of these plants just runs downhill to the deepest parts of the ocean. So they've now finding huge dead zones on the ocean floor where they've been dumping all of the heavy saltwater. We humans are really stupid sometimes.

 

Couple years back, I arranged a bunch of material for the dam project. Trippy to see it looking like that; when I did the mapwork on it, it seemed like quite the reservoir.

 

Those fires were created by "Native" Americans. That's how they hunted regularly.

Indigenous impacts on North American Great Plains fire regimes of the past millennium

 

Yes they absolutely used fire to corral herds of game, but they did so much more than that with fire which is illustrated in the great link that you provided. They used fire to control where the herds of bison would be at any given time of the year. If they wanted the herd to be in a particular area in the spring, they would burn that area in the previous fall because they knew the bison liked to eat new grass shoots in areas that recently burned. So they could manipulate the behavior of the herds for easier hunting. The same was true in California with herds of deer, elk and antelope. They also used fire to clear out thick growth in areas where they harvested seeds, nuts, berries, and reeds for making baskets. Many plants and trees can't grow unless old undergrowth is cleared out. Several types of conifer can't reproduce unless fire releases the seeds from the pine cones.

For the last 20-30 years here in California the state has reacted to large wildfires instead of being proactive and preventing them. As your link points out, a very small group of humans can have a huge impact on the natural environment. The efforts of the natives to improve their hunting and foraging helped keep large wild fires at a minimum.

 

I don't want to turn this into a debate so I'll digress with the "Native" Americans did so much damage to the entire ecosystem of the continent that's it's almost inexcusable. To say they lived harmonious on the land and didn't contribute to our current situation is utter nonsense...sorry.

 

I never said they lived in harmony with the environment. On the contrary, they were just as flawed and violent as modern people. But, like modern humans they knew how to manipulate their environment to suit their needs. In the case of forest management, we no longer put much effort into it because the environmentalists don't like it. The point I was making is that when they burned to improve their hunting and foraging grounds, they decreased the fuel for out of control wildfires. People today have the misplaced belief that we should just let nature do her thing and grow the way she wants. Then they freak out when a fire happens in a place left to over grow for 50 years or more. You'll have to be more specific on exactly what their inexcusable damage to the environment was. I've been an archaeologist for almost 40 years and I've yet to see damage they've created that nature didn't easily overcome very quickly. We've done far more damage in a little over a century than they did over 15,000+ years in North America.

 

It's mostly in the study I linked above that you obviously didn't read. If you truly are an Archeologist (which I don't believe for a second) you'd already be fully aware of what fires do to all forms of life that live inside and/or around the blaze area. Lighting a forest on fire to herd animals to hunt is so far beyond irresponsible and reckless I don't even know where to begin. I'm sorry, I'm not going to respond anymore. I have to block you so I can resist the temptation to continue responding to you. I'll unblock later.

 

Unable to respond with a cohesive rebuttal, so you block me rather than discuss it like an adult. You've already called me a liar, and accused me of not reading the study cited in your link, and yet your entire argument revolves around lighting forests on fire and how irresponsible that is, when the study in your link has absolutely noting to do with burning forests. It was all about bison hunting on the northern plains and studied fires on the great grasslands of Montana into Canada before the arrival of Europeans. It hypothesized that early Native American burning northern grasslands could possibly have created enough carbon in the atmosphere to create greenhouse gases and sped up the end of the last ice age. That's a part of their study I don't happen to agree with, but that is the nature of peer reviewed studies.

So exactly who didn't read the link again? Oops, sorry. I forgot you're no longer listening. My bad.

Sorry about hijacking the thread guys. I get kind of immersed in my other line of work when I'm home for a few days. Yes, I'm a nerd at heart.