patrick.net

Do they need to have a DIRECT human benefit to care when human activity causes their populations to crash? Smelt are an ocean schooling fish, and have an important place low in the marine food chain. The problem humans are causing for smelt is, we remove so much of the natural flow of rivers that it affects the salinity of entire bays and estuaries, impacting the niche they've evolved to thrive within over thousands of years in 3 human generations of large scale dam building.

By the way, did you know that thanks to water impoundment at higher latitudes, human activity has actually sped up the rotation of the earth?

Humans have achieved near god level power to manipulate the planet, affecting every living thing in the biosphere. In practice, humans have been rather shitty Gods in our stewardship of Eden.

Also, I couldn't find a match to "topsmelt lawsuit" aside from the City of San Diego being allowed to proceed with a lawsuit with Monsanto over PCB disposal that contaminated San Diego Bay fish species in a serious and long term way. Another externalized cost borne by generations of people who didn't profit from the shitty short-term decisions, courtesy of Laissez-Faire Capitalism.

I dunno. I read a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" maybe 15 years ago. The author Lomborg makes very good arguments that the environment has actually been getting much better for decades now, pretty much our whole lives.

Patrick says

he author Lomborg makes very good arguments that the environment has actually been getting much better

I'd be interested to hear if they're actual benefits from an environmental point of view, or industrialist-fellating excuses for continuing to externalize costs? A common "shitty" environmental claim runs, "There's more forest in the US than 100 years ago" True because mechanized agriculture has made small subsistence farms obsolete to revert to wildlands, but clearcutting natural old growth forests and replacing them with monocrops of commercially favorable species is not equivalent forest land to what stood 100 years ago. Hence the endangerment of the Spotted Owl that industry-fellaters joke about, because of the widespread actual destruction of its old growth habitat.

I'm all for protecting the environment, but again, we have landed on Mars, been to the moon (some may dispute that), built EVs, autopilots, quantum computing, but we can't build mechanically separated septic systems to save a shit ton of drinking water, nor have we built sufficient, possibly portable (sure Elon has some ideas) reservoirs, that tech is stuck in the stone ages. Instead we punish the citizens with lo-flo shit, sky high water costs and carbon tax. Nothing to do with politicians, got it. I'd also like to see the Thorium reactor getting done by us instead of China beating everyone to it

mell says

nor have we built sufficient, possibly portable (sure Eln has some ideas) reservoirs,

Americans currently use the ENTIRE flow of the Colorado River. We grudgingly dole out just enough to Mexico to meet old treaties. A planned pulse flow allowed the Colorado River to flow all the way to the sea ONE TIME in 2014, a sight residents hadn't seen for literally decades. There's literally not enough water falling on its entire watershed to keep Lake Powell full and the mighty Colorado flowing all the way to the ocean.

California's rivers are approaching this too, hence the suits over what people dismiss as trivial things like the smelt. Humans are already taking so much water out of rivers all down the coast that it affects the salinity of large coastal features like bays and estuaries, and is causing seawater intrusion into coastal freshwater aquifers also feeding human demand.

Capturing storm pulses using more reservoirs isn't the solution. The problem is, if we doubled our capacity by stacking new reservoirs in the major river systems, there isn't enough water coming in to get and keep them full at this point, to meet human demand for fresh water all the way between rainy seasons.

Earth could be a utopia for thousands of generations to come with population numbers stable in the millions. Instead we're gonna rat-utopia our way into an almost unfixable oblivion in another 1-3 generations, sadly. That's one reason I elected not to have children myself.

Automan Empire says

Earth could be a utopia for thousands of generations to come with population numbers stable in the millions. Instead we're gonna rat-utopia our way into an almost unfixable oblivion in another 1-3 generations, sadly. That's one reason I elected not to have children myself.

And vote for Biden?

I think I agree with Automan Empire.

A vast population doesn’t improve anything, and I keep seeing too much development and crowding in the places where I liked to live.

Lately I’m visiting in Baja California Sur Mexico and I got fed up with the bottles that my girlfriend threw in the trash, and if she had girlfriends over they generated 20 beer bottles or more.

I located a recycling place on the road to Cabo San Lucas, driving was a pain in the ass but I felt good that even after New Years we have generated only one kitchen sized trash can, and a big bin full of bottles.
The key is to rinse the beer bottles out or they stink.

I suggested to the girl that she started a little business and go to the expats and recycle their bottles and cans for a small fee, $10/week. The Canadians might not go for it as they are famously cheapskates, so maybe I am nuts.

Her reaction was funny; “Why are you thinking of ways for me to work?”

Automan Empire says

mell says

Stop believing the leftoid media propaganda and start believing your own senses and common sense.

I am. I provided a link to regularly updated info about ALL of California's major reservoirs and asked people to show what's wrong THERE with the way reservoirs are getting managed.

You came back with an advertorial/propaganda piece masquerading as a news article that cherry picks a few metrics to make a particular point.

I for one don't believe any official narrative coming out of California about anything. They don't have enough water, because they would rather blame and tax people/entities, than solve problems. In utter woids, California has a water crisis because they don't do a damn thing about it.

Californians are more optimistic and trust the science of harvesting water from the lunar polar caps, than they are about creating reservoirs and capturing the rain water.

Liberals would much rather hype the severity of a crisis than solve them.

California has an interesting two part water supply system; it’s largely to supply Southern California (a desert) and the Central Valley with the aqueducts and pipes that go hundreds of miles.

Meanwhile, places like Santa Cruz County depend on rainfall. Towns along the coast are considering desalination plants which will produce very expensive water.

Around Castroville, Monterey County, they are pumping reclaimed sewage water into the ground to keep out seawater from intruding inland.

clambo says

I think I agree with Automan Empire.

A vast population doesn’t improve anything, and I keep seeing too much development and crowding in the places where I liked to live.

Then get your booster.

Patrick says

I dunno. I read a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" maybe 15 years ago. The author Lomborg makes very good arguments that the environment has actually been getting much better for decades now, pretty much our whole lives.

Has it been getting better in China and India?

Automan Empire says

mell says

nor have we built sufficient, possibly portable (sure Eln has some ideas) reservoirs,

Americans currently use the ENTIRE flow of the Colorado River. We grudgingly dole out just enough to Mexico to meet old treaties. A planned pulse flow allowed the Colorado River to flow all the way to the sea ONE TIME in 2014, a sight residents hadn't seen for literally decades. There's literally not enough water falling on its entire watershed to keep Lake Powell full and the mighty Colorado flowing all the way to the ocean.

California's rivers are approaching this too, hence the suits over what people dismiss as trivial things like the smelt. Humans are already taking so much water out of rivers all down the coast that it affects the salinity of large coastal features like bays and estuaries, and is causing seawater intrusion into coastal freshwater aquifers also feeding human demand.

And the reason why we need to waster perfectly good potable water by dumping into the ocean is?

Onvacation I don’t get your attempt at humor.

So you like crowds but wish me harm, interesting.

I post from boredom but I don’t troll here.

clambo says

Onvacation I don’t get your attempt at humor.

So you like crowds but wish me harm, interesting.

I post from boredom but I don’t troll here.

Cause I'm not funny.

I don't wish you harm but if you want to lower the population, get the booster.

That's the government's plan.

zzyzzx says

And the reason why we need to waster perfectly good potable water by dumping into the ocean is?

I don't think you're comprehending the issue here.

Humans already use the ENTIRE FLOW OF THE COLORADO RIVER WATERSHED. The lower parts of the river have been dry and dead most years for half a century running. Americans don't care because the terminus is in Mexico. Americans seeing the same happen to the lower 40 miles of the Sacramento river would be outraged rather than act as blase as you do ITT, as would water districts and residents along the coast where ground water would rapidly become too saline to ever use domestically again.

Humanity can't simply reservoir our way out of this. If there was a PLACE to build another Lake Oroville, it wouldn't catch enough storm pulse to make a difference in summer-fall water demand, and there doesn't appear to be enough water being released from the dam to have both a healthy Sacramento river year round and also millions of acre-feet of impounded water.

clambo says

Onvacation I don’t get your attempt at humor.

Politics as sportsball. It appears he literally can't imagine someone rationally not agreeing with his existing worldview, so he has to invent a twisted caricature of those who disagree as "mindless Biden voters" then get pissy when people don't even respond because he's so far off in the weeds from their actual views.

mell says

Reservoirs should be full to the brim but I'm sure politicians made sure there is enough drainage and poor planning so they can keep promoting state of emergencies and fuck over their constituents.

It's much less subtle than that. In NorCal this past year, they were literally taking a page from Chinatown and dumping water into the ocean.

I know for a fact two years ago we got a shit ton of rain, and this year we've also done just fine. There is no drought, we just happen to live high desert area.

Definitely seems colder this year than last year. I remember last winter we hardly ever closed our windows due to it getting stuffy, but this winter, despite moving to a southern facing unit(more sun), our windows have been closed almost all winter so far.

Automan Empire says

It appears he literally can't imagine someone rationally not agreeing with his existing worldview, so he has to invent a twisted caricature of those who disagree as "mindless Biden voters" then get pissy when people don't even respond because he's so far off in the weeds from their actual views.

I have several times asked you point blank what are your views to end this miscommunication that you intentionally foment by being obtuse about your views. You refuse to reveal your viewpoints, so stop complaining about people speculating on what they may be. It's YOUR fault that you're "misunderstood" - you want to be misunderstood, rather than just explaining your position and viewpoint.

I can understand his frustration with you, but I don't understand why he continues to interact with you. In my opinion, it's a waste of time.

Automan Empire says

Humanity can't simply reservoir our way out of this. If there was a PLACE to build another Lake Oroville, it wouldn't catch enough storm pulse to make a difference in summer-fall water demand, and there doesn't appear to be enough water being released from the dam to have both a healthy Sacramento river year round and also millions of acre-feet of impounded water.

Wasn't there a plan to siphon water from the Mississippi to someplace out west?

https://www.deseret.com/2012/5/13/20502414/the-fight-for-water-can-the-mighty-mississippi-save-the-west

In the Mississippi River scenario, 675,000 acre-feet of water would be diverted from the nation's largest river downstream of where it meets up with the Ohio River. From there, the water would be conveyed via tunnel, canal and a monstrous pipe 775 miles long and 144 inches in diameter to dump into the Navajo River in southwestern Colorado.

The Navajo would then deliver that water to the San Juan River, a tributary of the Colorado River, for use by agricultural users in Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. Those users would then be taken off the Colorado system and the savings in water would flow downstream to other cities that need to grow in the future.

Ludicrous? Not to Mulroy and others staring straight into the bottom of a dry water barrel.

"Well, you know a lot of people laugh about that," she said. "But you have to remember that Hoover Dam was built as a flood control project. And one man's flood control project is another man's water supply."

The Mississippi has a storied history of flooding — in 1927, in 1937 and in 1973. Then came last year, when seven states were awash and 130,000 acres of farmland were deliberately inundated to save a town.

Mulroy said there are lessons to be learned, and more importantly, that the excess water could come to the basin states.

"Why can't it fuel fields farther to the west. … Why can't we put that water to beneficial use?" she questioned. "It would make far more sense to capture that and begin to put it to use where it is needed here in this country."

As the bureau works through the proposals and completes its analysis in the coming months, nothing is out of reach as it approaches the caretaking of the Colorado River much like a nutritionist might.

Sierra Club agitprop?

richwicks says

It's YOUR fault that you're "misunderstood" - you want to be misunderstood, rather than just explaining your position and viewpoint.

My problem is I HAVE explained my viewpoint. One or two bad faith posters and their manipulative presuppositions have now created a situation where completely unrelated posters find ME annoying and in bad faith for consistently refusing to engage their shitposts.

These are classic bullying techniques. In person we could sort it quickly. Online I can't be arsed and will sooner disengage from or completely leave a community that tolerates bullies and demagogues in their midst. I expected better of YOU, Richwicks, than to act like a burned out teacher who can't be arsed to sort out a real conflict between her charges, so punishes the victim and bully alike which the bully relishes as a win state and the victim adopts a rightful "fuck this shit I'm out" mentality toward the entire space.

Automan Empire says

richwicks says

It's YOUR fault that you're "misunderstood" - you want to be misunderstood, rather than just explaining your position and viewpoint.

My problem is I HAVE explained my viewpoint.

I don't believe you but I could be incorrect about this. Point to your post(s) where you've done this. Just give me the link. A link like this:

https://www.patrick.net/post/1340402?80#comment-1808074

See? That's when I tried, then ultimately decided "fuck it":

https://www.patrick.net/post/1340402?80#comment-1808433

You intentionally frustrate people in my opinion. I just got tired of it, but it keeps coming up over and over again.

You're now violating the same rule of discourse the troll did. ONUS PROBANDI. The burden of proof is on the claimant. It is not for me to "disprove" what the troll established using a consistent false narrative.

That other members of the community have now accepted the troll's narrative as fact and are now demanding that I step up and prove their claim wrong, is the EXACT state of affairs that Onus Probandi intends to make impossible. Good job, ignoring the rules of discourse, and joining a troll in insisting that I am responsible to initiate action to disprove the troll's prior claims. This casts ALL discourse by ALL said participants in a disingenuous light, one that does not incentivize my future participation and bonds to the "community."

Look at yourself. You're angry at ME for refusing to participate in a belligerent discussion. You're blaming ME for not engaging the troll. You're declaring ME frustrating for refusing to answer annoying troll JAQoffs. You're giving ME a burden of proof to meet, to refute an unproven claim, leaving said unproven claim alone which means tacitly accepting some truth value to it.

Automan Empire says

"mindless Biden voters" then get pissy

Yup.

richwicks says

I can understand his frustration with you, but I don't understand why he continues to interact with you. In my opinion, it's a waste of time.

You can't waste time or money, but you can misuse them.

I ask pertinent questions that automan won't answer for entertainment and to highlight his hypocrisy.

The problem with "global warming" is that climate modelling has been so wrong for so long time that I simply can't take the proponents of AGW seriously any more.
And mind you humans DO have effect on climate. It is not clear how much though.

Automan Empire says

My problem is I HAVE explained my viewpoint

No. You never explained why you voted for Biden.

Or did I miss your response?

Automan Empire says

These are classic bullying techniques. In person we could sort it quickly. Online I can't be arsed and will sooner disengage from or completely leave a community that tolerates bullies and demagogues in their midst. I expected better of YOU, Richwicks, than to act like a burned out teacher who can't be arsed to sort out a real conflict between her charges, so punishes the victim and bully alike which the bully relishes as a win state and the victim adopts a rightful "fuck this shit I'm out" mentality toward the entire space.

OK

Bd6r says

"global warming"

When it started in the late 70's it was actually global cooling. I read some of the study they always point to in Hawaii. It did not make a strong case that any temperature changes are specifically caused my man.

NuttBoxer says

When it started in the late 70's it was actually global cooling.

Yeah, and by 1980's it morphed to Florida under water by 2000 etc. There is a fair number of climatologists etc who disagree with prevailing premises, but they are silenced and not given grant $$$.

personal

Having said all that, you do have some good ideas.

We don't have many dissenting opinions on subjects here on patnet. Would be nice when we do if people would remember not to take it personally and attack the dissenter. If you want to flame, go to reddit, or any other social platform where you can be as nasty as you want. This should be a place where people can discuss anything without being attacked for their beliefs.

NuttBoxer says

This should be a place where people can discuss anything without being attacked for their beliefs.

Well, that's no fun at all.

NuttBoxer says

Bd6r says

"global warming"

When it started in the late 70's it was actually global cooling.

The same "idiot case" keeps getting made, and it was the EARLY 70s when this one already got SOLVED. This is the environmentalism version of "There's no point working harder to earn a raise, this will only bump me into a higher tax bracket and I'll just make the same or less!"

Until the early 70s, particulate and aerosol emissions were the most obvious form of pollution, to the point where albedo and insolation were measurably impacted and had the potential to eventually push feedback loops into a runaway cooling loop. Particulates like fly ash were simple and least costly to remove; they were also highly alkaline so their removal left sulfur gases as a major constituent of flue gas, causing the problem of "acid rain" to become urgent. At the same time, early efforts to reduce HC and CO emissions from cars resulted in nitrous oxide emissions skyrocketing and contributing to the now acidic sky brew.

Eventually, technology was developed that allowed humans to reap the benefits of mass smokestack industries like power generation, metal smelting etc, without the former levels of retched air pollution, without EVER seeking the right wing narrative of "a sevret goal to put humanity back in the stone age." GLOBAL COOLING AND ACID RAIN ARE NOT ENVIRONMENTAL HOAXES, THEY ARE ACTUAL PROBLEMS ALREADY SOLVED THROUGH BETTER TECHNOLOGY.

Onvacation says

I expected better of YOU, Richwicks, than to act like a burned out teacher who can't be arsed to sort out a real conflict between her charges

Listen, there's an ongoing, and tiresome argument going on and from MY point of view you continue to complain that people are making assumptions about you, but you don't clear it up. I find it maddening.

I think the purpose of discourse is to understand other people's point of view, AND to be allowed to change your own point of view. If I don't know your reasoning or logic of even what your conclusion is - there's no point in discourse to me.

I've been shown MANY MANY times to be making erroneous logic and faulty conclusions, and to have incorrect beliefs and "facts". It happens less, because I'm older, and I WANT to know when I'm wrong. 30 years ago, I had an engineering mentor that told me "get rid of your cognitive dissonance" - meaning, if I had two conflicting thoughts, get rid of ONE of those thoughts - one has to be wrong - maybe BOTH are wrong, but get rid of one and you can deal with the other later.

I've been doing this for nearly 3 decades now, it's humiliating and humbling but I'm glad I did it.

When you have incorrect of faulty reasoning, when you believe lies, you end up with contradictions ALWAYS in your thinking unless you have been told one hell of a good lie. When you don't have a lot of cognitive dissonance it's either you're well brainwashed and can't see the contradictions in your thinking, or you're right. What my mentor told me 3 decades ago was about my JOB, but man, those were fucking words to live by.

Onvacation says

Automan Empire says

My problem is I HAVE explained my viewpoint

No. You never explained why you voted for Biden.

He has said he didn't vote for Biden I believe but he didn't explain who he voted for, or who he favored, or even if he voted at all.

I sit out most elections. What's the point in Silly Con Valley?

NuttBoxer says

We don't have many dissenting opinions on subjects here on patnet. Would be nice when we do if people would remember not to take it personally and attack the dissenter. If you want to flame, go to reddit, or any other social platform where you can be as nasty as you want. This should be a place where people can discuss anything without being attacked for their beliefs.

I agree and let me add that that 5g nano particle graphene brain replacement stuff is wayyyyyyyy out there ;)

Automan Empire says

The same "idiot case" keeps getting made, and it was the EARLY 70s when this one already got SOLVED. This is the environmentalism version of "There's no point working harder to earn a raise, this will only bump me into a higher tax bracket and I'll just make the same or less!"

What has not got solved is unhinged alarmism, Florida under water by 2000, and denial of the only effective tool in solving CO2 emissions problem - which is nucular energy. Instead, we should use solar energy in Greenland, litter countryside with bat-killing wind farms, and bicycle from NY to SF.

If we keep being bombarded by WRONG PREDICTIONS for 40 years, then any new predictions coming out of that crowd are met with understandable skepticism.

Furthermore, the climate panic crowd are in essence people who live in 100000 sq ft houses, and emit 1000 times more CO2 in their air travels in private jets than average climate-denying redneck.

Bd6r says

then any new predictions coming out of that crowd

I just demonstrated, what you are calling "that crowd" is three completely different phenomena, the first two occurring 10 years earlier than you even claimed and more than 2 generations prior to the "warming" alarmists and genuinely concerned people of today.