4 ms·

I fixed my fair share of Y2K bugs in COBOL in 1998-1999. I agree with you. I know from the work I did then that there would have been some pretty serious, life-

I fixed my fair share of Y2K bugs in COBOL in 1998-1999. I agree with you. I know from the work I did then that there would have been some pretty serious, life-disrupting issues had there not been the colossal effort to fix it all (payroll jobs in fact did fail to run, as did financial reports, report cards, etc.). I'm generally an optimist. I think there will be fairly widespread support for environmental engineering in our state to protect and repair our natural areas. (There already is a lot of that.) But it looks like a really big, scary problem from the boots-on-the-ground perspective.

Mz 10y ago
But it looks like a really big, scary problem from the boots-on-the-ground perspective. I know that you are aware that I am homeless in California and have been for about 4.5 years. Every place I camp with my two sons, we urinate on the local bushes and trees to intentionally try to grow better cover for our campsite. Where we currently are, we are camped behind what we thought was a dead tree. Large parts of it are covered in lichen. With being peed on for months, it grew a whole new section and developed berries. Birds began nesting in it. Nearby, what was previously essentially a dead zone is alive with insects and smaller animals. The large bird that routinely perches above us has stopped screeching constantly -- a territorial behavior intended to drive off competitors for its food -- and we recently witnessed multiple birds of the same species gather nearby in a copse of trees. We think these are all golden eagles and we think they may have paired off to mate, though we aren't sure. It was somewhere between 8 and 11 birds that we could count and it may have been more. I am homeless and live without a car (and gave up my car a few years before I walked away from my corporate job) and everywhere I pee, the flora and fauna flourish. My "boots" are probably on the ground a lot more than yours, and to me it looks like it isn't that hard at all to make a positive difference in this situation. Though I have no idea how to start a "please walk more and please pee on a tree" campaign. Nonetheless, everywhere I go, people begin walking more and the local environment visibly improves -- a thing I have written about some: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/08/for-just-few-dollars-more.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/08/for-just-few... I also have a deadly medical condition that is incurable and I am getting well when doctors claim that cannot be done. So I spent over a year at death's door and have spent a lot of years coming back from that. Thus, what we are doing to our environment looks solvable to me. I have done harder things. But I am a homeless woman that everyone dismisses as insane because, obviously, only men in white lab coats can figure out how to help deathly ill people (for scads of money, of course) not former homemakers who are dirt poor because of a) being a woman that no one will listen to and b) having an expensive debilitating medical condition. So, to my eyes, the big challenge is figuring out how to get an audience and how to present the information in a manner that will be palatable. If I can get off the street in the near future, I imagine I will work on that -- because we all need a hobby, I guess.
- thaumaturgy 10y ago
  Well, there are some important differences between berry-bearing trees and the larger conifers, as well as all the various different microbiomes we have around the sierra. There's chaparral, scrub, high desert, foothill, subalpine and alpine environments, and they all have different needs and react differently to environmental changes. The high desert stuff, for instance, is really good at coming back from extended dry hot periods. Chaparral, scrub, and foothill aren't likely to change drastically, I don't think (in my totally uneducated opinion). I'm more worried about the subalpine forest, the kind of stuff you see in the western Sierra from about 3,000 to 8,000 foot elevation. That's where we're seeing the worst of the tree die-off and wildfire disasters, and it's an ecology that takes much longer to return to what we think of as "healthy". The watersheds in these areas is also a major, very important part of the state's water supply, so impacts on these ecosystems have the potential to affect communities all over the state. Best wishes to you. Good to hear from you again.
  - Mz 10y ago
    there are some important differences between berry-bearing trees and the larger conifers Yes, one of which is that some pines only reproduce in the aftermath of fire. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BOREASFire/ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BOREASFire/ http://creationrevolution.com/plants-that-need-fire-to-survive/ http://creationrevolution.com/plants-that-need-fire-to-survi...
    - headShrinker 10y ago
      "So other than that Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

Mz 10y ago

But it looks like a really big, scary problem from the boots-on-the-ground perspective. I know that you are aware that I am homeless in California and have been for about 4.5 years. Every place I camp with my two sons, we urinate on the local bushes and trees to intentionally try to grow better cover for our campsite. Where we currently are, we are camped behind what we thought was a dead tree. Large parts of it are covered in lichen. With being peed on for months, it grew a whole new section and developed berries. Birds began nesting in it. Nearby, what was previously essentially a dead zone is alive with insects and smaller animals. The large bird that routinely perches above us has stopped screeching constantly -- a territorial behavior intended to drive off competitors for its food -- and we recently witnessed multiple birds of the same species gather nearby in a copse of trees. We think these are all golden eagles and we think they may have paired off to mate, though we aren't sure. It was somewhere between 8 and 11 birds that we could count and it may have been more. I am homeless and live without a car (and gave up my car a few years before I walked away from my corporate job) and everywhere I pee, the flora and fauna flourish. My "boots" are probably on the ground a lot more than yours, and to me it looks like it isn't that hard at all to make a positive difference in this situation. Though I have no idea how to start a "please walk more and please pee on a tree" campaign. Nonetheless, everywhere I go, people begin walking more and the local environment visibly improves -- a thing I have written about some: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/08/for-just-few-dollars-more.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/08/for-just-few... I also have a deadly medical condition that is incurable and I am getting well when doctors claim that cannot be done. So I spent over a year at death's door and have spent a lot of years coming back from that. Thus, what we are doing to our environment looks solvable to me. I have done harder things. But I am a homeless woman that everyone dismisses as insane because, obviously, only men in white lab coats can figure out how to help deathly ill people (for scads of money, of course) not former homemakers who are dirt poor because of a) being a woman that no one will listen to and b) having an expensive debilitating medical condition. So, to my eyes, the big challenge is figuring out how to get an audience and how to present the information in a manner that will be palatable. If I can get off the street in the near future, I imagine I will work on that -- because we all need a hobby, I guess.

thaumaturgy 10y ago
Well, there are some important differences between berry-bearing trees and the larger conifers, as well as all the various different microbiomes we have around the sierra. There's chaparral, scrub, high desert, foothill, subalpine and alpine environments, and they all have different needs and react differently to environmental changes. The high desert stuff, for instance, is really good at coming back from extended dry hot periods. Chaparral, scrub, and foothill aren't likely to change drastically, I don't think (in my totally uneducated opinion). I'm more worried about the subalpine forest, the kind of stuff you see in the western Sierra from about 3,000 to 8,000 foot elevation. That's where we're seeing the worst of the tree die-off and wildfire disasters, and it's an ecology that takes much longer to return to what we think of as "healthy". The watersheds in these areas is also a major, very important part of the state's water supply, so impacts on these ecosystems have the potential to affect communities all over the state. Best wishes to you. Good to hear from you again.
- Mz 10y ago
  there are some important differences between berry-bearing trees and the larger conifers Yes, one of which is that some pines only reproduce in the aftermath of fire. http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BOREASFire/ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/BOREASFire/ http://creationrevolution.com/plants-that-need-fire-to-survive/ http://creationrevolution.com/plants-that-need-fire-to-survi...
  - headShrinker 10y ago
    "So other than that Lincoln, how did you like the play?"