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Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable

#41

Post by jerf »

jagger27 wrote: post #34

Is anyone aware of any pre-industrial epidemics of a similar scale?

Yes. The rapid spread of something an ecosystem is not prepared for is not an industrial phenomenon. The number of such occurrences is.

But it's also worth pointing out a lot of this is the result of travel or remote trade. Stopping this sort of thing doesn't look anything like "stop burning so many fossil fuels" or "recycle more", it looks like telling humans they aren't allowed to stray more than a few dozenish miles from where they live. It's not really clear how to prevent this. We have mitigation policies in place, yes, but in the biological world 99.9999% enforcement can be as good as 0% enforcement and that's a hard bar.

Heck, we can't even contain the spread of human diseases all that effectively, and that is something that you'd think we have every motivation to do.

Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable

#42

Post by Tossrock »

chc wrote: post #29
emodendroket wrote: post #17

It's disappointing to see serious reporting like this saddled with a clickbait title like "This disease has killed a million trees in California, and scientists say it’s basically unstoppable."

After reading the article, that seems like a fair summary. What do you feel is wrong with it?

Obscuring the subject to force a click. "This disease" instead of "Sudden oak death". The idea is that person will read the scary part, want to find out which particular disease it is, and click through. It's headline SEO 101.

Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable

#43

Post by emodendroket »

chc wrote: post #29
emodendroket wrote: post #17

It's disappointing to see serious reporting like this saddled with a clickbait title like "This disease has killed a million trees in California, and scientists say it’s basically unstoppable."

After reading the article, that seems like a fair summary. What do you feel is wrong with it?

What is "this disease?" This feels like it could have come out of the Upworthy generator.

Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable

#44

Post by emodendroket »

tizzdogg wrote: post #40
wnoise wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you consider this clickbait? It's not untrue, nor does it tease with hidden information alluded to in the title. It's a straight-forward headline describing the contents of the article.

It does tease with hidden information by making you want to read the article to see what "this disease" is. And the "unstoppable" bit, while true, reads as very sensationalist. A less clickbaity title might be something like: "The Sudden Oak Death fungus has killed a million trees in California, and is no longer stoppable". Or something like that.. I'm no journalist.

The one on this link is fine, although if you want to be more newspaper-like I could you could say "Scientists: Sudden Oak Death Epidemic No Longer Stoppable"

Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable

#45

Post by whyenot »

jqm wrote: post #6

The prevention to this type of problem is probably the same measure needed to fix many forestry problems. Regular fires. But now we have homes right up to the forest and no one wants to look at charred land for two decades. So I suppose it's still a no go. The thing about fire though is eventually it probably happens anyway.

I don't think regular fire would solve this problem (it would solve other problems, though).

Fire might strip out some of the carriers of the disease (California Bay Laurel), but infected tress would still spread the infection and many of the affected oak species have very thick bark and are very well adapted to survive fires. I suppose regular fires would get rid of the dead trees, which might or might not be a good thing.

Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable

#47

Post by Angostura »

intrasight wrote: post #25

They could just as way say: "Scientists say the evolution of the natural landscape is no longer stoppable"

It's curious that so much 'evolution' is going on at the moment.

Interesting how the Great Barrier Reef and the oceans fisheries are currently 'evolving'

Rather remiscent of how the Western European population evolved in response to the plague.

Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable

#48

Post by daodedickinson »

kingmanaz wrote: post #38
stevecalifornia wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not plant related, but equally fascinating: There used to be a lake bigger than Lake Tahoe in California between Fresno and Bakersfield. It It was the largest fresh water lake west of the Great Lakes (by surface area). It was drained for agriculture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake

For a good read on what happened to Lake Tulare, read "The King of California". The world's largest cotton plantation now sits in the lakebed and holds primary water rights. Pink sheet stock. Ticker BWEL.

required reading on the topic: http://www.amazon.com/California-Indians-Their-Environment-I...

Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable

#49

Post by mschuster91 »

deepnet wrote: post #21
djsumdog wrote: post #13

> The disease is actually related to the pathogen that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1800s I was in Ireland a few months ago. Someone I met in Galway said this famine wasn't really a famine; that there were plenty of crops. The king simply withheld the potato supply, forcing the famine.

This is true, it lasted 7 years. 1 million died, 1 million forced to emigrate, 25% of Ireland's population There was a potato blight, potatoes were grown by the Irish folk for sustenance. Many Irish peasants & farmers starved to death on Absentee Estate Farms which were exporting food crops to be sold - worse aid from England was withheld for considerable time. It is a shameful episode in the History between Ireland…

> In those times many viewed the lower classes and other nationalities as somehow less human than themselves.

Just look at the current migration issues (I refuse to call it a "crisis" or "problem", as that dehumanizes the refugees) in Europe. These times are (no longer) past, they resurface right now with all the ugliness.

Especially Eastern Europe, where millions of people fled the Sowjet bloc and were accepted by Western Europe, now refuses to aid others. It's sick.

Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable

#50

Post by Amezarak »

bdamm wrote: post #37
blakes wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate that most the public isn't aware of how important forest fires are. Humans suppressing forest fires cause more damage in the long run. As far as I understand, fires essentially burn up the dead bits on the ground. When it happens naturally, the fires don't hurt the trees. But humans stop areas from burning and the dead bits build up and burn hotter, setting the trees ablaze and then we get these craz…

Perhaps what we need is to better understand how to make effective fire breaks and better manage planned fires. The reason people fight forest fires is to stop them from burning down homes and businesses, not just out of an anti-fire aesthetic. Letting a fire rage and then saying, oh we'll just stop the fire from burning this gas station, hotel, and town that is here, is damned hard to do. Sure, people built close to…

Here in the South the government regularly does controlled burns and it doesn't seem to seriously bother people, even though there are plenty of people that live in (with some breaks) and around the burning areas.

My impression is that it's an American West political problem, not a fire management problem. Maybe I'm wrong. It is drier there.

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