102M dead California trees 'unprecedented in our modern history' | Hacker News Reader

102M dead California trees 'unprecedented in our modern history'

latimes.com

185 pointsMz78 comments

Was curious how this drought compared to direct human impact on trees, quickly mashed together some facts.

There just over 400B trees live around the world, 7.3B in California. Thats 1.8% of estimated world tree population vs holding 0.5% of people population.

301M of 4.9B (6%) trees died in Texas drought of 2011. Drought in California currently accounts for 102M (1.4%) of trees in the state dying.

Also note California has about 1 tree per person in the world. The worst famine in 150 yrs would kill 30M humans / year if it happened today. This considers the % of human deaths / year by famine of 1876-1879 as a benchmark. The article would imply 72M trees dying / year per drought in California. Not sure how comparable that is given different lifespan / reproduction rates, but kinda interesting.

Worldwide people cut down 15 billion trees each year. Maybe 7B for fuel, 6.5B for paper/etc and 1.5B for lumber. If this was distributed equally (which its probably not in reality), that would be equivalent of 274M trees cut down by humans in California / yr.

The global tree count has fallen by 46% since the beginning of human civilization.

[1] http://time.com/4019277/trees-humans-deforestation/ [2] https://www.quora.com/How-many-trees-are-cut-down-a-day-for-... [3] https://www.quora.com/How-many-trees-are-in-California [4] http://www.chron.com/news/article/2011-Texas-drought-slaught... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines [6] https://ourworldindata.org/famines/

Current (highly uncertain) estimates of the number of trees globally are around 3 trillion. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7568/full/nature1...

The uncertainties are pretty large, but it's reasonable to assume that 400 billion is very much a lower bound.

So here I come along, as a mechanical engineer who's made a living writing software and administrating servers and networks, with a more-than-passing interest in climate science and what it might mean for mankind. In just these 2 comments, I see a perfect example of what puts me off to try to wrap my head around the "debate."

First guy says there are 400B trees, down around 50% from the beginning of time. That puts the original figure at about 800B. Second guy says there are actually 3T trees presently, which would mean an almost 400% increase over the first guy's original figure. Both cite sources, which I'm sure are well researched, exhaustively written, were presented in peer-reviewed journals, and which made their authors famous, and got lots of grant money for their respective universities.

Which am I supposed to believe? That we're killing off all the forests, or we're drowning in them? It's one figure, but it makes all the difference in the argument, and the laws which might be written AROUND that argument.

I'm not asking for clarification. I'm just pointing out that there are reasonable people who are interested in the discussion, and care about the outcome, but get put off by the inconsistencies in the facts by the published reports. (And don't get me started about reading the studies themselves. They are purposely obfuscated with domain-specific language, which would require a degree to decipher.)

You assume the estimate is based on numbers of trees instead of acres of forest. Two groups may measure the same coastline using different resolutions and end up with significantly different numbers. Likewise depending on the minimum size you get vastly different tree counts.

PS: Younger forests have more trees and significantly less wood.

He's not assuming anything. He's saying garbage in, garbage out. How can there be a reasonable discussion if we don't even know what the thing is we are trying to discuss?

Read the papers. He is arguing that they are using the same definition without doing so, thus removing his credibility.

There seems to be some interesting sourcing in OPs post. The 15bn felled trees per year actually comes from the 3tn paper (it's in the abstract). So does the 46% decline since the start of civilisation:

> Based on our projected tree densities, we estimate that over 15 billion trees are cut down each year, and the global number of trees has fallen by approximately 46% since the start of human civilization.

So I'm not sure why the figure of 400bn was used! The paper points out that a recent Amazon study estimated the number of trees in the rainforest to be ~390bn alone. From the paper, the number of trees in the US is probably in the low hundreds of billions.

The scientists that wrote the paper specifically said (in an interview I think) that you shouldn't interpret this as that we've magically discovered 2.6tn more trees. It's not like this changes our view on carbon sinks.

The difference is that instead of taking satellite images and approximating how many trees are in a particular area, they went out and measured typical numbers of stems within an area and (I would guess) correlated that to satellite data. Some trees are more densely packed than others and the distribution of numbers of stems varies wildly with biome. There's so much variation in what constitutes a "tree" that it makes little sense to use the numbers of trees cut down for anything climate related except snappy headlines. Clearly more trees cut down = bad, but you shouldn't relate an abstract, ideal, "tree" to e.g. one ton of carbon dioxide.

A better metric might be area of forest or the amount of biomass. That smooths out variations in species and gives a nice number.

Obviously not a Californian.

We (https://tensorflight.com) are working on utilizing deep learning for detecting trees the most affected by drought in aerial images collected by UAVs, among other things. We detected several hundred K trees last week.

Contact me (kozikow@tensorflight.com) if you want to get involved in any capacity (either as client, partner or coworker).

Disclaimer: I am a cofounder.

After those areas have been detected and a pattern emerges what are the resulting action items? Can building models actually help mitigate the losses?

Selective irrigation can deliver water to trees with the most need for water. There is no good automated system for selective irrigation yet without human irrigators or expensive installation. Autonomous irrigation drones will happen at one point.

I must add that so far we have been focusing on orchards rather than forests. We are looking into expanding to forests and we have been in touch with the government.

> Autonomous irrigation drones will happen at one point.

Will that be cost effective? Water seems enormously heavy for what it is. Or will they be automated land irrigators?

What percentage of the images surveyed classify as candidates for selective irrigation? What if that area is more than available selective irrigation capacity?

Hey, I'm very interested in remote sensing. Forestry applications are dire to my heart, but at the moment AG has a lockdown on my attention. I have stats/ML knowledge an have done initial research about remote sensing and I've got questions. Is it OK to shoot you an email or two even though I probably won't fit in the 3 groups you mentioned?

PS: I'm at the other way of the world, if that makes a difference.

We are interested in talking with you. Please contact us at kozikow@tensorflight.com and zbigniew@tensorflight.com. Agriculture also have a higher priority than forestry for us.

Let me guess, are you in Australia? Even if we are in California, we see the most demand for our services in Australia, followed by Canada and Midwest.

Welcome to pine bark beetles California. We had them before they were cool. Signed - Colorado, Montana, Idaho et al

Lots of Municipalities/Cities require planting of trees be done such that there's a variety of species.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_elm_disease (also transmitted by a beetle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_ash_borer etc

No kidding. I was in the San Juans in SW Colorado this summer, and the forests are absolutely decimated. Actually much worse than "decimated," since decimation only killed one in ten. See 'em soon before they burn, or come back in 50 years when they're all covered in aspens.

Oh nonono. Aspen trees are not going to fill that niche.

http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/beauty/aspen/decline.shtml

I hadn't heard of that. I guess it's buckthorn, oak brush, and similarly evil stuff instead. Bring your machete...

Unlikely to be oaks as the Sudden Oak Death is spreading in California as well.

They're mostly dying in California from drought and lack of snowpack.

Which weakens the trees such that the beatles can get 'em...

Source: I live in an affected area. Without the drought, many trees would effectively protect themselves.

We need large and widespread forest fires to combat the beetles and rejuvenate these biomes. There's a reason the beetle epidemic coincides with expansive human habitation of the West and poorly considered forestry policies.

Montana has had the major fires in and around the park system. The trees that are left are still heavily affected by beetle blight.

Of course they are. The fires burn the trees with the beetles, and the fires also clear dense forest leaving meadows that the beetles won't traverse.

The fires in question weren't from recent years. These lands and tree regrowth are in the burn areas from the late 1980's and 1990's.

The types of pines that burned in Montana require fire to procreate; fire causes the cones to open spreading seeds. No fire no new trees. There are no meadows after burn. After 10-20 years, you have dense thin tree regrowth. The beetles do great there.

Link to tree type: http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/lodgepole-pin...

Doesn't California burn every other year on its own?

I think you'll find most of the fires of the recent past are human-initiated.

These trees have been too big and too numerous the last 50 years or so. Some sort of cull was to be expected. Lightning has traditionally been nature's way of cutting back undergrowth and surplus trees but that's no longer considered an option.

This is a really important thing - this dead tree thing - while caused by drought, is largely a function of poor forest management (read, no fires allowed, ever) for a century or so.

That's an interesting perspective

He's not alone with that perspective. [1]

> Due to decades of fire suppression, a changing climate, and a shortage of forest restoration efforts, there are significant areas of overgrown, diseased, dry, and threatened forests throughout the 25 million-acre Sierra Nevada Region. While fire has historically been a natural part of the Sierra ecosystem, the unnatural conditions in our forests today can lead to fires that do far more damage than good.

1. http://www.sierranevada.ca.gov/press-room/sierra-wildfire-wi...

They've been cutting trees in Yosemite for hazard prevention. Driving is like playing frogger.

More will grow in its place, like what has happened throughout history.

I wanted to read this article but the LA Times is evidently a member of the annoying website design committee.

Global warming is not real! (Will the world really just accept this from Trump? Don't mean to turn on a flame war but it's really about this. Think global warming is bad now? How about in 20 more years?)

I hope Zuckerberg & Brin will do something to improve the direction things are going. New billionaires seem much smarter than the old ones.

These new plutocrats seem much scarier and creepier than the old ones.

Having these companies that know way more about us than any government or agency becoming involved in partisan politics should scare the pants off of everyone. Who better to conduct opposition research than Google? Who better to decide what fake news is vs real news, if you want to control the vote?

These guys haven't realized it yet, but they've crossed a big bright red line, changing their focus from being innovators to corporatists more interested in protecting their business models through political manuevering.

Part of me really does hope Trump turns out to be a trust busting Teddy Roosevelt.

I'm thinking more a McKinley / Mark Hannah hybrid. And Pence is certainly no Roosevelt.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_McKinley

Relying on the passions of benevolent billionaires seems like a really bad idea.

Sure, I'm happy when they decide to do good, but they also do a fair bit of bad.

Is selecting authority through an election a better process?

Generally speaking, and current events not withstanding, history would say yes.

Yes.

Carnegie built public libraries across the country

The Zuck brings us FWD.US

Keep calm and pee on a tree.

I am not actually being flippant: http://peeonatree.blogspot.com/

Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Register yourself on the Sex Offenders list. Make sure your house is not with 200 yards of a school.

Flying Spaghetti Monster! Look, I think public urination is a stupid law too, but it's on the books and those can be some of the consequences if you get pinched for it.

A) Laws are made by humans and can be changed.

B) Did you even read the site? It is not advocating whipping it out in front of a crowd.

Besides, it would have been completely legitimate to state that this can potentially go bad places because of stupid laws. But that isn't what you did. You did your best to just shoot the idea down entirely. "Go directly to jail...etc" This is not a case of "Go directly to jail." This is a case of "If you do this stupidly, be aware that in some jurisdictions this could lead to potential jail time...etc ...so be careful if you wish to do this."

You're implying a lot of malicious intent from a throw-away quip.

Thank you for the throwaway quip. It is serving as food for thought for how to further develop the project.

FYI: Your follow-up replies read as highly invested in defending and justifying your "throwaway quip." So, if it genuinely was intended as a throwaway quip, no big, you are failing to effectively communicate that.

Have a great day.

I pee on a tree every single day and have for years. So far, no one has arrested me -- for anything at all.

But, hey, feel free to keep your squeamish "Oh, my god, it's a PEE PEE!!!" attitudes while the world literally goes to hell around you. Cuz: Priorities!

This would seriously not be a problem in Europe. America is weirdly uptight about a lot of things.

Skimming your blog, I see you live in the desert. Well, many Californians do not live in the desert, we live in urban areas where there is a higher population density, and for health and sanitary reasons, we have modern plumbing.

Maintaining standards of public health and sanitation is a priority. Ever hear of cholera? Would you like someone with a drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea urinating near your living space?

And for those of us who are pre-menopausal and not on the pill, well, peeing on a tree is just about unthinkable (not to mention gross) for 3-4 days of every month.

And what precisely does this have to do with man made global warming ??

Not every drought / flood / tornado is a result of global warming.

In fact there have been recent studies showing that extreme weather ( drought, flood as mentioned ) has not gotten more frequent since we started emitting large amounts of CO2.

Recent Study (2016): Trends in Extreme Weather Events since 1900 An Enduring Conundrum for Wise Policy Advice - Prof MJ Kelly

http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/trends-in-extreme-weather...

Comments and refutations instead of mere downvotes appreciated.

Pine Beatle population is partly controlled by how cold of a winter one gets: "However, unusually hot, dry summers and mild winters throughout the region during the last few years, along with forests filled with mature lodgepole pine, have led to an unprecedented epidemic" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_pine_beetle

It's not really about extreme events as defined in the paper you reference ("events that are several standard deviations away from the average of the distribution by which they are measured and described") by their nature very extreme events are rare. So whether California has gotten more or less floods isn't relevant.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/climate-trends-con...

Specifically check out California here: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/state-temps/

http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/forests/fire-insects-disturbances/top...

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2664.2010....

That is a compelling explanation.

I agree that mild warming has clearly occurred. the hot summers and warmer winters are both clear and must also have been corroborated by local people ( im in the UK so completely unqualified to say )

i dont put much stock in the new highs that nasa have documented. we have had warming but the warming has decelerated IMO. New highs are to be expected and we are not currently getting cooler

California drought though is mainly caused by the lack of snow in the Sierras which isn't replenishing underground aquifers as it should. That lack of snow is directly correlated with global warming :(

But the Sierras could lack snow for either of at least two reasons:

1. It's too warm in the region, so water remains liquid and snow does not accumulate.

2. The moisture that normally falls out of the air as snow has gone somewhere else in the world.

I suspect the drought is due more to [2] than to [1] which makes the link between the drought and global warming less direct and more tenuous. But I would love it if someone who knows more about the relevant meteorology could share some facts about this.

Can't fight faith with facts cuts both ways...

Ain't that the truth.

Neither side is free of lynch mobs and people conveniently ignoring facts that don't fit their pre-agreed agenda.

This is just a side account of a regular HN user so sick of lynch mobs that I have to use a pseudonym.

Are you seriously comparing down votes with lynching?

I suspect OP wasn't literal. You think he was?

How's the almond industry in California doing?

> Will the world really just accept this from Trump?

Well, trump wants to cancel/renegotiate trade deals. Maybe we could add carbon taxes to those since lax environmental regulations could be considered an indirect subsidy to american companies.

His EPA advisor Myron Ebell does not believe in carbox taxes.

http://web.archive.org/web/20161111014732/http://getliberty....

No, I mean other countries could impose carbon import tariffs on america if they renege on the paris agreement.

You mean the agreement that was never passed by the Senate, and therefore has no legal authority in the United States?

There's zero chance of a large collection of major economies getting together to pass such a thing. The sole reason the Paris Agreement had any chance is due to the US.

Let's look at the world in question.

Europe can barely hold itself together as it is - whether the Eurozone or EU - their overall economic system is rolling from one disaster to another while 0.3% growth is cheered. Europe has registered near zero real growth for a decade at this point. Their cooperative systems are all imploding as nations - from Sweden to Britain - put up barriers. Russia is guaranteed to seek more territory in Eastern Europe with nobody to stop them. Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal are all still in economic disaster mode and trying to recover or not implode further. German banks are acting like a depression is on-going, while the German economy is barely expanding. Finland has been in a near decade long soft depression. Norway's oil party is over, the next 20 years will be mostly austerity for them. France is a worsening mess both economically and politically. The UK has no idea what it's doing one way or another; Britain will be a mess for years to come due to Brexit. Oh and not one European country can actually afford to spend a dollar more on defense (and none of them really want to outside of Russia). The US pulling out of Europe in terms of military would cost those economies a hundred billion dollars per year that they don't have and would substantially increase nationalism and infighting.

Japan is fully subservient to the US because they have no means to deal with a rising China threat (they're already bankrupt at a government level and can't even remotely afford to defend themselves without nuclear weapons, their standard of living is rapidly falling thanks to endless Yen debasement). Japan is also still mired in a 25 year economic stagnation caused by debt and bad Keynesian economic policies, a stagnation which isn't going to end so long as they keep doing the same thing over and over again (which apparently they are going to do). Japan is in no position to stand against the US (which is why Abe just paid a visit to Trump, their position is exceptionally weak right now), nor are any other nations in Asia except for China. There is also almost zero unity in Asia, thanks to the divisive nature of China's aggressive territorial ambitions.

South America? Forget about it. Two of their three largest economies are in depressions (Venezuela is beyond that actually, they've fully collapsed as a nation). The other, Argentina, is barely starting to drag itself out of a deep recession. Who there is going to stand up to the US? Not going to happen, they have far bigger problems to deal with in their own backyard.

Australia? New Zealand? Canada? They might lodge complaints, let their grievances be publicly known, but that is all they can do.

Africa? They have no power or unity to cause the US problems.

The Middle East? Happy to keep the fossil fuel party going and would be promoters of the US tanking the Paris Agreement.

And that's it.

Yeah, the USS Ronald Reagan would like to have a word with those countries.

why should conservatives care about California, at state that consistently votes lib?

Because it is one of the single biggest food producers in the US, and has an effective monopoly on many of our foodstuffs (notably many nuts and citrus fruits). Losing California's food production for any reason, including destruction by fire or drought, would cause massive problems in the US, possibly up to and including a depression or economic collapse.

This also gets to something I've never understood: why global warming is political. The science is objectively solid and the economic costs of not doing something are clear. I'll argue about the benefit and drawbacks of policies to address it all day long, but how is outright denial a thing?

Look, I'm not American, but why would they foresake a state because of the state's predominant Voting habits?

1 in 3 voted Republican, are they going to be thrown to the wolves because of the other 2 ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

I know Chris Christie is implicated in blocking traffic in New Jersey, but punishing a state is a whole different league.

The way US voting works, each state gets a bunch of electoral college votes, and these determine the presidency. If over 50% of the population of a state votes for a candidate, all their electoral college votes are designated for that candidate.

If one party has no realistic way of reaching that 50% margin, then any concessions they offer would be useless as far as getting their candidate into the presidency.

We also have this in the US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

(Drawing voting districts to make them advantageous to one party or the other depending on who gets to draw the lines)

We really need to move to popular vote instead of all these games.

because it is part of the United States of America, and inhabited by their fellow Americans.

If conservatives are this blithe about inflicting hardship against their fellow Americans, then they are traitors.

(I'm a conservative, BTW. Fuck this whole year, with a chainsaw. I'm supporting liberals because my views are being represented by utter scumbags.)

Does everything have to get back to partisan finger pointing?

America loves sport, and the national sport is politics. Red team vs blue team, only one can win, us vs them, rah rah go team.

Yeah. I'm not a fan of football, baseball and soccer, but I'm starting to think that it's valuable if it keeps American emotion out of politics.

Because it's by far bringing in the most cash for the government: http://www.lao.ca.gov/LAOEconTax/Article/Detail/90

California should get by far the biggest say in everything because of this. Divide the electoral collage up by GDP instead of population and see what the colors look like.

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