First up, though, it looks like the Californian Permanent Drought could be megaflood
California megafloods could be on the horizon because of climate change
With the parade of storms behind us, forecasters are looking ahead to what’s lurking sometime in our future. Darren Peck reports.
It’s simply a cult fearmongering video from CBS News. Hey, remember when the Australian Permanent Drought because Other People drove fossil fueled vehicles became all sorts of rain? Anyhow, the LA Times pours cold water (sic) on the climate doom notion
For all their ferocity, California storms were not likely caused by global warming, experts say
As California emerges from a two-week bout of deadly atmospheric rivers, a number of climate researchers say the recent storms appear to be typical of the intense, periodic rains the state has experienced throughout its history and not the result of global warming.
Although scientists are still studying the size and severity of storms that killed 19 people and caused up to $1 billion in damage, initial assessments suggest the destruction had more to do with California’s historic drought-to-deluge cycles, mountainous topography and aging flood infrastructure than it did with climate-altering greenhouse gasses.
Although the media and some officials were quick to link a series of powerful storms to climate change, researchers interviewed by The Times said they had yet to see evidence of that connection. Instead, the unexpected onslaught of rain and snow after three years of punishing drought appears akin to other major storms that have struck California every decade or more since experts began keeping records in the 1800s.
Well, now, that’s a bummer.
Mike Anderson, official state climatologist for California, suggested that the recent series of atmospheric rivers — long plumes of vapor that can pour over the West Coast — was a grim reminder that in a place so dry, sudden flooding can bring catastrophe.
“Each of the recent atmospheric rivers were within the historical distribution of sizes of atmospheric rivers,” Anderson said, “It will take further study to determine how warming temperatures influenced the sequence or the sudden transition from dry to wet and soon back to dry.”
Do warming temperatures play a part? Possibly. That doesn’t mean it has anthropogenic causation, other than things like land use.
(Enterprise-Record) I’m delighted that weatherman Anthony Watts has spot-lighted California’s “Great Flood” of 1861/62, because so few Californians know about it. I taught about it in an OLLI class I called “Megageology.”
That winter, an atmospheric river brought 43 days of rain, killing thousands of people, drowning 1/4 of all livestock, destroying virtually all bridges and roads, and placing Sacramento under 10 feet of water for six months. The capital was moved to San Francisco, the state was bankrupted, and government workers received no pay for nearly a year! Much of our Central Valley became a lake — 300 miles long; up to 40 miles wide.
Geologists have drilled/core-sampled San Francisco Bay, plus lake and marsh sediments throughout California, to positively identify the stream gravels deposited by the 1861/62 flood. Drilling deeper, they discovered that similar and even more devastating flooding occurred here in AD212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605 — roughly every 200 years.
It’s not unusual, due to the location, for the People’s Republik Of California to go through drought then flood. However, if Warmists are so concerned then they should all give up their own use of fossil fuels, go vegan, move into tiny homes, and live like it’s 1499.
I have been doing extensive reading on the drought in the Southwest over the course of the past several months because it is what I like to do. Inform myself. Kind of like Clint Eastwood responded when accused of shooting an unarmed man. “He should have armed himself.”
Knowledge is always key to understanding what is going on around you.
In the case of the southwest, Scientists who have no political agenda have been studying a particular pine tree that lives for around 3000 years.
Methuselah, a Bristlecone Pine is Thought to be the Oldest Living Organism on Earth This is from an article posted by the USFDA and of course basic common knowledge.
They have studied the tree ring data of dead Bristlecone pines that go back 1000’s of years and have reached a conclusion that in the great southwest, there is a remarkable cycle lasting 800 years in which it is basically famine or feast.
When they set the flow rate of the Colorado river back in the 1920’s it was at the end of the FEAST or WET season that the Great southwest was experiencing. Since that time according to the Tree ring data, the Southwest has now entered a period of 800 years in which it will get progressively drier and drier and drier.
800-1600 years ago was smack dab in the middle of the Incas, Myans, and Pueblos who all vanished now most likely the result of this 800-year cycle of feast or famine.
So at the beginning of the planning stages, the Government decided that the flow rate of the Colorado river was 16 million acre-feet per day so everything they did infrastructure and agriculturally was based on a faulty number that was fixing to change rather dramatically.
Almost before the Hoover Damn was finished the actual flow rate of the Colorado river was closer to 13 million acre-feet not 16 million and in the 1950’s when they decided to water the desert and grow vegetables to compete with the rest of the world the flow rate had slowed even more to 11 million acre-feet as the Southwest was slipping into the famine phase of the cycle.
By 2000 the demand on the Colorado river was at its peak while the amount of rain and snow had fallen drastically………
Blamed of course on Global Warming, even though the bristlecone data shows a very distinct 800-year wet vs dry period for the great Southwest and they are now plunging into the DRY version of the cycle since the mid-1950s when California and Arizona decided to expand and grow things in the DESSERTS of their respective states going from servicing 12 million people in the 1930s to over 43 million in 2023.
And now you know PART OF the rest of the story.
Teach if AGW isn’t causing temps to rise what is? Have you any other explanation?
Facts matter
Yes droughts are cyclical
However you forgot that this current drought is the worst in 1200 years. Has global warming now made this current drought more extreme ?
Dowd posted a response: However, you forgot that this current drought is the worst in 1200 years. Has global warming now made this current drought more extreme ?
I have forgotten nothing. I merely posted A strong scientific theory brought to you by the US government as to why the drought is happening based upon SCIENCE. Additionally, the Colorado river was already beginning to suffer drought effects in the 1920s. How many SUVs were cruising the highways in the ‘1920s?
When according to the hallowed chart of CO2 the CO2 levels in the 1920s were: 307 PPM and had risen only about 24 PPM since the 1850s and yet a severe drought began nonetheless. Additionally, the co2 levels in the past 15,000 years of these cycles were in the 200-280 region because the earth was coming out of a deep freeze. Co2 must be responsible for a rise in temperature when the Milankovich cycle cannot possibly be used to explain said rising temperatures.
The fact that it may or may not be the worst in 1200 years is not addressed in my post for a very simple reason. It is irrelevant to the fact that feast and famine occur regularly in the desert that is known as the Great Southwest and this region is once again plunging into a drought right on schedule.
Obviously, some wet periods and some drought periods are going to be better or worst than those in the past.
That is the nature of our weather.
Incidentally, did you know that California’s reservoirs are now between 96 percent and 116 percent full? Also, I might add the snowpack in the mountains that feed the Colorado river and provide about 99 percent of the lake and river’s water levels, now stands at 149 percent above normal with 2 months left to go in the wet season.
Has the drought ended? No, but the reality is that AGW, as it exists, might just prevent California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah from having to buy water from Amazon. Because after all every event related to snow is a result of AGW and CO2. Right?
Dear H:
You wanna know??
Sunspots?
Cosmic Rays?
Changes in the earth’s wobble?
Changes in the earth’s orbit?
Volcanoes?
Mr Lewis,
A recitation of potential causes is not evidence. Are sunspots, cosmic rays, Milankovich cycles or volcanoes causing this bout of warming?
But if you deny that it’s warming, why bother?
James,
The most reliable method of climate change that I have seen is modification of msg ent waves associated with the sun. And they have predicted a substantial cooling by 2030.
We have had warming of the earth for 20,000 years. But to say a trace gas in the atmosphere is causing warming is ridiculous. This has not been proven in any reliable manner. Then the only way to stop this warming approved by the liberals is massive taxation and unilateral destruction of our economy and way of life.