Nope, I was told good luck running my car when the power goes out. I said if the grid goes out, transportation would be the least of anyone’s worries. I could get by for while with battery and solar, but I wouldn’t be having any more fun than anyone else If power from a the grid is lost. But again, way to move the goal posts.
Macroeconomics
- Thread starter Loyal Coug1
- Start date
Allright, since this thread keeps morphing, I'm going to change the title every time you guys go to something different.
OK, I see. You took a comment about charging your car and changed it to everything but your car, and somehow I moved the goalposts.
But, I don't really care. The aliens are smart enough not to invade here, we're not worth the effort.
Fine, if the power goes out I’m screwed, and all ice guys will live happily ever after standing in line with siphon hoses.
I brought up solar. If it was a dumb idea I’ll take ownership.
As for the fishing take that’s interesting. I run with a group of guys that talk coastal fishing all the time so that’s all I hear about, and I enjoy a trip or two every year myself. It seems like all of these would be factors of salmon populations…dams, predation, and fishing regulations, particularly commercial and tribal, and if any are out of wack it would cause an impact.
Find Loyal, he knows some ladies who can suck a golf ball through a garden hose
I do not! My lady friends were all virtuous and modest. Gawd when can we leave this behind?
That’s 100% true. But a certain part of the greenies seems convinced that it’s all about the dams, particularly the Snake dams, and that their removal will magically return the salmon to their apocryphal Lewis & Clark “you can cross the river walking on their backs” glory.
They believe this in spite of clear historical documentation that the commercial salmon canning market was in collapse due to lack of fish more than 30 years before the first dam was built on the Columbia, 60 years before the first on the Snake.
You mean her $100,000 set of solar panels made in China with rare earth minerals mined by child labor?
Edited to change to the proper punctuation (?).
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No idea what is happening there now, but for many, many years Herschel the sea lion and his horde of buddies intercepted a high percentage of the salmon heading into Lake Washington right at the Hiram Chittendam locks in Ballard.
Hmm, never heard that particular story. But there ya go.
I'm telling you - eliminate those invasive sea lions and salmon are golden.
One thing about the snake dams is that the water gets really warm (well I guess most of us should know that from the Dunes), which fishies don't like.
Stop. So what do you know about solar panel manufacture?
You mean her $100,000 set of solar panels made in China with rare earth minerals mined by child labor?
Edited to change to the proper punctuation (?).
Not an expert by any evaluation, but I believe that China produces like 75-80% of residential solar panels. So mandating consumer use of solar panels means giving China even more influence and control over the US. Not a good idea, IMHO. And they have been castigated for using child labor in African countries where they have controlled large amounts of the rare earths needed for the panels and batteries. They also are accused of using slave labor from the Ouiger (spelling?? it is pronounced Weegger) ethnic group.
Another note regarding solar panels, supposedly the "break even" point is around 7-10 years (estimates vary), maybe more, but that is misleading due to about 30+% of government incentives that the homeowner gets.
China produces 70-80% of all the shit we consume, including the iPhone, so that’s irrelevant.
7-10 years is a decent break even for most of the population, so at this point it’s unaffordable to most. Most Americans aren’t putting money into their 401k that their employer matches, they sure as hell aren’t going to spend $20K on roof panels that will make them net positive in a decade.
The government isn’t subsidizing for fun, there’s a net gain by getting people to invest in renewable energy. So if there’s that AND people can save money long term that’s all good news.
And they are. That’s certainly built into the government subsidies. Good paying US jobs.
Mmm… no. She paid nowhere near that for her solar panels. And she told me they will have paid for themselves in a few more years. She has a math degree and a Masters in Comp Sci from Stanford so she’s pretty damn good with numbers; retired in her mid 30s, home worth about 6M and an investment portfolio about 4x that. Not bad for a weed smoking progressive liberal hippie.
Yeah, I don’t think the sea lions at the locks make a significant dent. Not compared to the seals, sea lions, orcas, sharks, and whatever else they encounter during 2-3 years in the ocean….not to mention the Russian, Japanese, and American fishing fleets. I’m fine with killing them off, but their take is minuscule.
As for the warm water, that’s really only applicable to the top few feet of the reservoir, and could be relatively easily addressed if the spillways were overflow instead of under flow. It’s also exaggerated to fit the greenies’ agenda. They tell people all about how salmon died in warm water for a few years because of the dams. But they leave out the fact that at the same time, salmon were also dying in warm water in rivers that don’t even have dams.
They’re also pretty ignorant of basic salmonid life cycle, considering they’re supposed greenies. The main stem snake and Columbia don’t provide good spawning habitat, and never have. Salmon don’t want big, wide, deep rivers - those are just paths. They want the shallow, gravel-bottomed, well-shaded side streams with lots of overhangs and streamside vegetation. Taking out the snake dams does little to enhance access to those streams, and does it at a huge cost. There’d be a much greater impact if they put the money into eliminating the old farm and logging diversions that blocked those streams, and improving stream quality. But that wouldn’t grab headlines.
Boy. Washington Fish and Game disagrees.
Columbia River sea lion management
Columbia River salmon and steelhead face a serious threat from sea lions that consume these fish at predation hotspots such as dams, fish ladders, and natural pinch points in the river and its tributaries. Since monitoring began in the early 2000s, sea lions at Bonneville Dam have consumed...
They’re looking at predation as a percentage of the estimated number that enter the river upon return, after they’ve already spent 2-3 years in the ocean. Those returnees are already a small fraction of the original broods. Estimates vary, but something upward of 10 million smolts are assumed to hatch annually on the Snake…and these numbers show a high of 280K returnees. That’s 2.8%, and the sea lions are getting 3% of the 2.8%. Peanuts.Boy. Washington Fish and Game disagrees.
Columbia River sea lion management
Columbia River salmon and steelhead face a serious threat from sea lions that consume these fish at predation hotspots such as dams, fish ladders, and natural pinch points in the river and its tributaries. Since monitoring began in the early 2000s, sea lions at Bonneville Dam have consumed...wdfw.wa.gov
Also can’t really tell where their numbers come from, the footnotes either aren’t on the page or don’t display on my phone. I’d guess that they’re all estimates based on…something. But…there are no fish counting facilities until Bonneville, so no way to quantify how many salmon there are until they’re already past the sea lions. Even when there are counting facilities, they’re only staffed part time, the full counts are extrapolated based on what was seen during those hours. I’d guess the consumption rate is based on the size and number of the sea lions, so there’s another estimate. When the top and bottom of the fraction are both estimates, your result gets pretty fuzzy.
Reality is that the political winds blow toward the salmon, so wherever there’s uncertainty the estimates slant that direction. When something doesn’t support the desired conclusion, it gets shoved to the background. The whole debate is complicated, and has a lot of elements to it…but the greenies and their supporters don’t want to look past the surface.
The sea lions are getting 3%? I don't know the figure, but it is a helluva lot closer to 50% then 3%.
Based on what your encyclopedic knowledge of sea lions?
The WDFW link you posted links to their data table which shows a high estimate of 5.8% of returnees eaten by sea lions in one year.
The idea that a few hundred sea lions (again, WDFW numbers linked by you) could get 50% of the population is ridiculous. If that were anywhere near feasible, there would be no salmon returning - they’d all be picked off by the thousands of sea lions along the coast well before they could reach the river mouth. I doubt that even the 5% number is realistic. 50% is laughable, baseless, fear-based arm waving, just like the laughable, baseless, fear-based claims that 10-15% of the annual hatch dies at every dam.
Well shit I looked around and looked at the report and can't back up my 50%. Some wives tale I heard a while back. So I was apparently full of it. A first!
Why are we going down this road anyway? You don't want the invasive sea lions killed? %'s aside, they are killing thousands of salmon a year. That's not arguable.
Nope. Don’t care one way or the other about sea lions. Not much more about salmon. But I do enjoy poking holes in any arguments put forward by the greenies.Well shit I looked around and looked at the report and can't back up my 50%. Some wives tale I heard a while back. So I was apparently full of it. A first!
Why are we going down this road anyway? You don't want the invasive sea lions killed? %'s aside, they are killing thousands of salmon a year. That's not arguable.
Funny thing about that though: I’ve got a masters in environmental studies. I wasn’t the most popular person in my program.
"No idea what is happening there now, but for many, many years Herschel the sea lion and his horde of buddies intercepted a high percentage of the salmon heading into Lake Washington right at the Hiram Chittendam locks in Ballard."
Herschel single handedly wiped out the steelhead that entered Lake Washington and headed up the Cedar and Sammamish...not but a few left
Herschel single handedly wiped out the steelhead that entered Lake Washington and headed up the Cedar and Sammamish...not but a few left
Good article about the locks and steelhead decimated by the sea lions, not salmon. Sure, there are other factors, but it is undeniable that Herschel and buddies were a critical cause of the elimination of the steelhead. no mention of the salmon run through there, but it must have been negatively affected by the lions also.Well shit I looked around and looked at the report and can't back up my 50%. Some wives tale I heard a while back. So I was apparently full of it. A first!
Why are we going down this road anyway? You don't want the invasive sea lions killed? %'s aside, they are killing thousands of salmon a year. That's not arguable.
Herschel, the Very Hungry Sea Lion | Hakai Magazine
It’s dangerous to blame the decline of one species on a single predator. We humans like to do it anyway.
hakaimagazine.com
This if from a while ago talking about how the southern pods won’t eat seals and sea lions.
www.seattletimes.com
Orca quandary: Other protected species are eating their food in Puget Sound
Marine mammals on the U.S. West Coast are now so numerous they are taking more chinook salmon than fishermen, posing a new threat for Puget Sound’s critically endangered killer whales.
www.seattletimes.com
Good article about the locks and steelhead decimated by the sea lions, not salmon. Sure, there are other factors, but it is undeniable that Herschel and buddies were a critical cause of the elimination of the steelhead. no mention of the salmon run through there, but it must have been negatively affected by the lions also.
Herschel, the Very Hungry Sea Lion | Hakai Magazine
It’s dangerous to blame the decline of one species on a single predator. We humans like to do it anyway.
A couple of things I see from these…This if from a while ago talking about how the southern pods won’t eat seals and sea lions.
Orca quandary: Other protected species are eating their food in Puget Sound
Marine mammals on the U.S. West Coast are now so numerous they are taking more chinook salmon than fishermen, posing a new threat for Puget Sound’s critically endangered killer whales.
The Ballard locks run was basically insignificant. The article says about 2,500 fish before Herschel showed up. That’s nothing (yet they still have the obligatory mention of the viewing window packed with fish). In addition to that, it’s not even a natural run. The ship channel didn’t exist before 1916, so neither did that run. It’s also running through a very tight channel that’s pretty easy for a small number of predators to block almost completely. Like the article suggests, we created an almost perfect sea lion feeding facility.
The bigger thing that’s at the root of both articles - our protection of the sea lions has gone too far. We’ve made their lives so easy that their population has reached an unsustainable level. Unsustainable because the food supply isn’t big enough to support it. Whatever the reason - overfishing, pollution, predation (or all of the above) - there aren’t as many salmon as there used to be. When a prey population declines, the predator population has to follow. If it doesn’t, the prey will continue to decline rapidly, eventually collapsing. Then the predator will collapse too, and the ecosystem will be in upheaval.
We’ve created this issue, by encouraging the seal/sea lion population to increase past the point that can be supported. We’re working against our own salmon recovery efforts by guaranteeing and protecting an increase in predation. I know this isn’t going to happen, but our best move is likely to just get out of the way. That’ll likely lead to a seal/sea lion collapse in the short term, but that might be what’s needed to give salmon a chance.
As for the orcas, I wonder…if the southern pod has been focused on salmon for that long, have they “forgotten” how to hunt and eat seals? It’s strange that they’ve gotten so particular about what’s a lower quality, lower availability, higher effort prey. There must be something that keeps them from eating seals, I don’t see it being a simple preference issue.
There is no argument here. We are talking about voters, not Congress. You can ignore the data, but the data is representing the facts.
On social issues in particular, it is indisputable. I guess I am "far right" now even though my views have been consistent for decades. So I'm the "fringe?" It's ridiculous. Remember, the Dems are the party of change. They promote that. Guess what? The change isn't becoming more conservative. Shocking, eh? Just be logical.
I'm not sure that the right has really moved right, or that the left has really moved left. But I'm sure of two things:
- The media has increasingly emphasized the differences, and pushed to create more
- Both the right and the left have grown increasingly intolerant of any difference of opinion. There's no longer room for compromise, and both of them will reject good ideas simply because the wrong person thought of it.
You think? Record voter turnout says otherwise (despite what trumpies say, yes there was massive voter turnout for the reason you just mentioned). Will be interesting this next round, people should still be disgusted but for different reasons.
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More showed up for the presidential election, but went away again in 2021. They really need to show up every year and create some turnover in Congress. But they don’t.
There are very, very few people that like Biden and I don't look forward to seeing his time as President continue. That said, if the alternate is Donald Trump....sign me up for Biden in a heartbeat. It will be an absolute disaster for our country if Trump is President again. The man is a psychopath and everyone who isn't licking his orange tinted taint knows that.
