Y2Kyoto: California Drought Timeline

18 Replies to “Y2Kyoto: California Drought Timeline”

1. Brilliant plot. In addition, the portion supposedly caused by supposed global warming would not be nearly as problematic if the state had been properly managed.

2. Really, we’re going to trust tree rings now, of all things?

3. Even Michael Mann didn’t when he did his “hockey stick”.
   Tree rings did not show vast warming in the 20th century so he spliced “adjusted” NOAA/GISS thermometer readings on the end of his tree ring fantasy.

4. I guess building desalination facilities is an environmental No-No for a potentially wealthy costal state like California.
   Pointing fingers and blaming technology is a better way to deal with drought.

5. I think the enviros bear a lot of blame destroying irrigation

6. So let me get this straight. A place that experiences long term periods of drought. Don’t we call those deserts?

7. Hmmm, I wonder if those 15 Million Illegals have anything to do with this ?

8. “Don’t we call those deserts?”
   That is so 19th century…..
   During the time of Lewis and Clarke, Jim Bridger and such……the Great Plains were called “The Great AMerican Desert”…..and it was.
   About 1850 rainfall increased and by 1900….more and more was plowed up for wheat….then the climate reverted to it’s default state….The Dust Bowl…
   Actually in the 1970’s and ’80’s there were multi-year periods of less precipitation than during the ’30’s. Vast areas of IOWA were totally dependant upon irrigation.

9. The further back in time we look at proxy data, the more hysterical the narratives surrounding the CAGW hypothesis appear, to say nothing of the rapidly sinking credibility of the hypothesis. Therefore, they aren’t to be used by the institutional left nor allowed in debate. Fascists rule.

10. I seem to recall that irrigation in the Central Valley was interrupted/quashed in favour of having greater flow in the rivers in order to save some fish. Good planning, that.

11. “Tree rings” are the scientific frauds way of saying “tea leaves” They can interpret them any way that suits their fancy.

12. All together now; Its unprecedented.
    Never happened before ever.

13. canuck66 “I seem to recall that irrigation in the Central Valley was interrupted/quashed in favour of having greater flow in the rivers in order to save some fish. Good planning, that.”
    Worse than that. We unsophisticated in piscine taxonomy call those minnows, not fish.

14. paladinphil is right………….. most of California is a desert. Nevada, same, same. people trying to create a tropical paradise out of a desert will use one heck of a lot of water that is not there, sucking other parts of the country dry. the only thing the water should be used for is food production.

15. Some of those deserts extended a little further north into the Canadian plains. We used to call the region tha Palliser Triangle. Again the wetter recent years have given us a sense of security but it wouldn’t surprise me if it got a bit drier there also.

16. While not disagreeing with the historical depiction of the graph, I am obliged to point out that it ends in the year 2000 and this is 2014, i.e., it’s 14 years behind. There is no excuse for that. The data is available. Picking and choosing your data start and end points to make or emphasize your message (as here) will always be attributed to an agenda.
    We’re not idiots and we can handle the truth……….there is a lengthy drought in the western U.S.

17. A another wrench just fell into the gears of the carbon tax mechanism. Crrrrunch!

18. In any case, the water shortage problems for California and Nevada are mainly related to population growth and increased water usage in urban areas. This is why Lake Mead (behind the Hoover Dam) is dropping steadily, rather than any sustained change in upstream water supply. The situation is approaching the point where Lake Mead may not be suitable for providing water and a decision point is reached whether to give up on the project or cut off one or the other state from the continuous outflow.
    The U.S.A. have the resources to pursue massive desalination and yet have done very little in the obviously faint hope that rainfall patterns would increase and solve the Lake Mead problem (which is the main reason for all this concern, as otherwise much of the area is in any case a natural desert and cannot sustain the population nor the agriculture that is now present).
    Massive desalination is probably the only realistic hope for the future of these regions. If it then rains more and Lake Mead fills back up (right now it’s about 70 feet below its optimal level) at some point then expansion of agriculture could take place. There is a hell of a lot of dry, flat land out that way not yet being farmed, so if a surplus ever did develop, that plus the unlimited thirst of the sprawling cities would easily take care of it.
    The bottom line is that population pressure is about 80% of the root cause of the problem and natural drought or wet cycles can only explain perhaps 20%. This recent “drought” is not very robust by historical standards and if the population of the region were half what it actually is, Lake Mead would probably have remained high enough to satisfy demand.