patrick.net

The bugs start their damage when adult females lay their eggs just under a pine tree’s bark. At the same time, she also spreads fungi, which chemically turns tree tissue into food for larval beetles. This ultimately kills the tree, as the youngsters feed on both fungi and tree. Healthy trees can use a number of chemicals to repel adult beetles, but drought conditions and excessive heat can impair the pine trees’ ability to wield these weapons. And bark beetles have always searched for weaker trees.

A number of forestry experts and scientists have been searching for ways to reduce the damage created by the beetle. The fewer dead pine trees that exist, the less severe future wildfires will be. One area scientists are turning to is genetics, especially the modification of pine trees to resist the pine bark beetle.

Since when are Liberals champions in destroying bio diversity, and destroying ecosystems at the beneficial microbial level??

Liberals have truly lost their ways, I don't respect nothing about them. Not a single fucking thing. They have to be right all the Fucking time or they will invent an even Bigger stupid pseudo Scientific reason to galvanize around after reality has shown them to be failures.

Controlled burning has been going on since the stone age, stop being so fucking stupid. Even stone age man before there was even modern man as we know it. Burned off the excess fuel either intentionally on the ground in controlled fires. Or by collecting all of the dead wood and thatch for heat source and cooking fuel.

What they didn't burn natural lightening took care of the rest. They didn't get decades of accumulated undergrowth and deadwood.

For the past few decades, the left fancies themselves as the champions of science. Yet their anti-GMO faction has been one of the biggest antiscience movements I can recall.

GMO sucks I miss bread that told in three days it's time to buy new bread by turning green. It tasted 10 times better than the Frankenwheat we eat now.

Tenpoundbass says

Even stone age man before there was even modern man as we know it. Burned off the excess fuel either intentionally on the ground in controlled fires. Or by collecting all of the dead wood and thatch for heat source and cooking fuel.

What they didn't burn natural lightening took care of the rest. They didn't get decades of accumulated undergrowth and deadwood.

Lol I'd love to see the historical evidence of the Stone age man doing controlled burns

I rather not fuck with evolution that harshly too, just saying there might be some serious unintended consequences.

This whole Tran surgery crap is already rediculous. And these crazy nuts want special rights too.

Tenpoundbass says

GMO sucks I miss bread that told in three days it's time to buy new bread by turning green. It tasted 10 times better than the Frankenwheat we eat now.

Do not confuse GMO with preservatives. Bread without preservatives gets hard, dry and stale pretty quickly. In France and other Euro countries, bread is baked daily and nobody wants it if it is more than just a few hours old. Even in America, it was not that long ago that "day old bread" used to be considered undesirable. There are still bakeries around, and even chain groceries, that have on-site bakeries and make some pretty good bread. And like Europe, that on-site bread will only last the day. Still hard to find a real high quality French bread, but plenty of places bake good Italian bread. Also good rye, pumpernickel, mountain, sourdough, and neo-Tuscan boule.

HeadSet says

Tenpoundbass says

GMO sucks I miss bread that told in three days it's time to buy new bread by turning green. It tasted 10 times better than the Frankenwheat we eat now.

Do not confuse GMO with preservatives. Bread without preservatives gets hard, dry and stale pretty quickly. In France and other Euro countries, bread is baked daily and nobody wants it if it is more than just a few hours old. Even in America, it was not that long ago that "day old bread" used to be considered undesirable. There are still bakeries around, and even chain groceries, that have on-site bakeries and make some pretty good bread. And like Europe, that on-site bread will only last the day. Still hard to find a real high quality French bread, but plenty of places bake good Italian bread. Also good rye, pumpernickel, mountain, sourdough, and neo-Tuscan boule.

There's no commercial GMO wheat yet but Monsanto is pushing for it. GMOs are useless and dangerous even though studies thus far have been inconclusive. The problem is that the tail risk is way to high in case of an event because cross-pollination cannot be stopped once released, so proving that they have been safe so far is not the issue (although even that is debatable). We do not have scarcity of food, we have a distribution, infrastructure and government problem. We have too many overweight citizens and too much corruption in environmentally less fortunate countries. If modern western or asian civilization would violently take over the African countries you'd see everything blooming within a few decades, no doubt about it. The rich people in Africa are well-fed and overweight as well while their citizens starve. GMOs are being tested on 3rd world citizens under the guise of "better" or "more efficient" crops when everybody knows that the problem are the war-torn countries and their warlords. You don't have to be a leftoid to oppose GMOs. Genetical engineering to cure diseases is a far better use of resources and money than GMOs.

What does this article have to do with the areas burning in the south that have zero to do with the pine beetles?

I think people forget that much of California is high desert. Droughts are common in the southwest, and there are certain regenerative processes in nature that demand fire. I’m sure historically fires here are nothing new, but the number of people living here is.

I say deal with it or move, hopefully the latter.

Gene editing isn’t going to make it not dry as fuck