[HN Gopher] California's drought may have helped solve the myste...
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       California's drought may have helped solve the mystery of a 1965
       plane crash
        
       Author : Thevet
       Score  : 53 points
       Date   : 2021-06-15 14:36 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
        
       | DoreenMichele wrote:
       | Five of the six years that I was homeless in California were
       | drought years. I didn't really understand or appreciate that
       | until that last year when the rains came and I did things like
       | took out a loan to spend three nights in a hotel because my "safe
       | from the storm" campsite was under multiple feet of water and the
       | worst rains were yet to come.
       | 
       | I clearly and obviously benefited significantly from having the
       | good fortune to be homeless mostly during drought years in
       | California. So I sometimes wonder how many silver linings get
       | overlooked while we wring our hands about some _obviously bad_
       | thing.
       | 
       | Some pine trees cannot reproduce without fire. So if you stamp
       | out forest fires entirely, you kill the forest in the long run.
       | 
       | In reality, we never succeed in completely stamping out forest
       | fires. So what happens is that successfully keeping it to a
       | minimum results in a build up of dead wood and some of the worst
       | fires in the US have followed years of good and successful forest
       | management that was celebrated as a "win" at the time.
       | 
       | Big storms, like typhoons, have been credited with carrying
       | various species to islands where they become distinct species
       | thanks to isolation. The distance crossed with the help of the
       | storm is not one they can fly or navigate intentionally.
       | 
       | I am an environmental studies major and I've lived without a car
       | for over a decade and I've lived without an air conditioner for
       | years. I'm concerned about climate change and I do my best to
       | walk the walk.
       | 
       | But I wonder at times about how things get discussed as if "X is
       | _good_ and Y is _bad_ ". I wonder if that's really the best and
       | most useful way to have such discussions.
        
         | olivermarks wrote:
         | There's a lot of denial about the natural state of California
         | IMO: fire and drought are an important part of the ecology, but
         | unfortunately humans have built homes on fire plains and there
         | is much hysteria about humans influencing the climate
        
           | asdff wrote:
           | Just across the border in Mexico the chaparrel is much
           | healthier and more diverse, because they let wildfires burn.
        
             | olivermarks wrote:
             | https://calpba.org/good-fire-alliance There is a growing
             | realization again finally that managing vegetation needs on
             | properties through controlled burning and other techniques
             | is essential
        
       | eonlegal wrote:
       | That may not be a huge benefit, considering the destruction the
       | drought is likely to cause. But it may give some people closure.
        
       | bos wrote:
       | The wreck is actually from a 1986 crash that saw no fatalities.
       | 
       | https://www.facebook.com/199535516767620/posts/4006006656120...
        
         | null_object wrote:
         | > The wreck is actually from a 1986 crash that saw no
         | fatalities.
         | 
         | I'm obviously as unsure as anybody of the correctness of this
         | analysis, but I found a source that _wasn 't_ Facebook for your
         | alternative: https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2021/06/16/folsom-
         | lake-plane...
        
           | Stratoscope wrote:
           | I too am generally skeptical of Facebook posts, but this
           | wasn't just some random Facebook user, it was an official
           | post from the Placer County Sheriff's Office. In fact the
           | CBS13 article is simply repeating what the Sherriff's Office
           | had already reported in their Facebook and Twitter posts.
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | Services like the Internet Archive have a hard time, if
             | they're able to at all, archiving Twitter and Facebook
             | social posts, so having alternate sources is helpful in
             | that regard.
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-16 23:01 UTC)