[DrCaleb]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Many of the climate changer nutters are completely ignoring the fact that this has happened before.

1950`s, 60`s, 70`s, 80`s.....this time though, it's all because of climate change.

And most of the climate change deniers are ignoring that climatologists have been saying it's been made worse because of both over use and climate change. Not that it hasn't happened before.

[Lemmy]

$1:

California has seen droughts before, but this one just isn’t letting up. A recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters looked at signs of past droughts based on growth rings in trees. The results suggest the current drought is California’s worst in 1,200 years. Such a time span is a headline grabber, but a more relevant issue for Californians is whether periods of exceptional drought are becoming more common as the climate warms.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/california-goes-from-bad-to-worse/article23778299/

[DrCaleb]

$1:

Two years into California's drought, Donald Galleano's grapevines are scorched shrubs, their charcoal-colored stems and gnarled roots displaying not a lick of life. "I've never seen anything like this," says Galleano, 61, the third-generation owner of a 300-acre vineyard in Mira Loma, California, that bears his name. "It's so dry ... There's been no measurable amount of rain."

California is experiencing its worst drought since record-keeping began in the mid 19th century, and scientists say this may be just the beginning. B. Lynn Ingram, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California at Berkeley, thinks that California needs to brace itself for a megadrought—one that could last for 200 years or more.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... o-climate/

[Zipperfish]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Many of the climate changer nutters are completely ignoring the fact that this has happened before.

1950`s, 60`s, 70`s, 80`s.....this time though, it's all because of climate change.

Nutters? By that you mean over 90% of the world's scientists? What's nutty is the ongoing denial despite several lines of fairly convincing evidence.

Last year was highest average global temperature recorded on the instrumental record. March 2015 (the most recent available data) is the warmest on record. The ten warmest years on record have all been since around 1998. California's winter 2014-15 is the warmest on record, breaking the record set last year. Melting permafrost in the north. Receding glaciers. Declining arctic ice minimums. Rising sea level. Tipping point of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

California undergoes regular droughts naturally. However higher average temperatures are and will continue to exacerbate the situation by increasing evaporation rates, among other reasons.

[Thanos]

Climate change or not, all that's being proven is that dropping 40 million people into a high-foothills desert was a spectacularly bad idea. And, climate change or not, nature eventually lashes back pretty harshly against spectacularly bad ideas.

[Zipperfish]

Thanos Thanos:

Climate change or not, all that's being proven is that dropping 40 million people into a high-foothills desert was a spectacularly bad idea. And, climate change or not, nature eventually lashes back pretty harshly against spectacularly bad ideas.

Our entire species and civilization is predicated on staying one step ahead of nature. And yes, she always comes back to bite us. I gather they are planning on some pretty world-scale desalinization plants in Calfornia. They use a lot of energy, so hopefully they won't be coal-fired!

So we stay one step ahead, but she has several fronts--airborne ebloa. Superbug proliferation. Sun sneezes.

[OnTheIce]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Nutters? By that you mean over 90% of the world's scientists? What's nutty is the ongoing denial despite several lines of fairly convincing evidence.

You have me confused with a denier. Wipe the froth from your mouth and calm down.

With respect to the "nutters" are those who act like this type of event in California has never happened with the purpose of pushing their aggressive agenda.

[Thanos]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Thanos Thanos:

Climate change or not, all that's being proven is that dropping 40 million people into a high-foothills desert was a spectacularly bad idea. And, climate change or not, nature eventually lashes back pretty harshly against spectacularly bad ideas.

Our entire species and civilization is predicated on staying one step ahead of nature. And yes, she always comes back to bite us. I gather they are planning on some pretty world-scale desalinization plants in Calfornia. They use a lot of energy, so hopefully they won't be coal-fired!

So we stay one step ahead, but she has several fronts--airborne ebloa. Superbug proliferation. Sun sneezes.

Hello, desalinization plants, and a hearty welcome-back to the long-depressed natural gas market to fire the goddamn things, which means an uptick in work for losers like me.

That's the problem though with humans moving outside of nature's boundaries. The bizarre intelligence and aptitude for making things tends to eliminate the harshness of what the planet can naturally create to contain what our recalcitrant specie is capable of. Give it a world-wide ebola or super-flu epidemic that doesn't eliminate at least 50% of the overall number and ten bucks says it'd be back to 7 billion jabronies and still growing within 50 years of the thinning-out.

[DrCaleb]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Nutters? By that you mean over 90% of the world's scientists? What's nutty is the ongoing denial despite several lines of fairly convincing evidence.

You have me confused with a denier. Wipe the froth from your mouth and calm down.

With respect to the "nutters" are those who act like this type of event in California has never happened with the purpose of pushing their aggressive agenda.

The denier agenda is to bring forward things that never happened and prove them wrong, in order to give their argument some weight. This is known as the 'Strawman'.

For example, it's a strawman to say that 'warming nutters' have said that 'this kind of drought has never happened before in California'. I read quite a bit on the subject, and I've never seen an article like that. To then use it as

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

Many of the climate changer nutters are completely ignoring the fact that this has happened before.

would be an example of that. Whether it's your fallacy or not, it's still a fallacy.

[Zipperfish]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

You have me confused with a denier. Wipe the froth from your mouth and calm down.

With respect to the "nutters" are those who act like this type of event in California has never happened with the purpose of pushing their aggressive agenda.

Nice concession speech.

[OnTheIce]

You both show how rabid and ridiculous those of your ilk are.

I've never denied climate change. I never get involved in your epic circle-jerk debates where you all repeat your position over and over again and don't seem to realise that nobody will change their position.

The hint of someone not going along with the agenda, word for word, results in immediate condemnation, insults and just general stupidity.

Even when the person tells you they support your views, just not the radical views of some, they still get shit thrown at them.

[BartSimpson]

The liberal Democrat San Jose Mercury News printed this story last year:

http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_2 ... asted-more

$1:

California drought: Past dry periods have lasted more than 200 years, scientists say

California's current drought is being billed as the driest period in the state's recorded rainfall history. But scientists who study the West's long-term climate patterns say the state has been parched for much longer stretches before that 163-year historical period began.

And they worry that the "megadroughts" typical of California's earlier history could come again.

Through studies of tree rings, sediment and other natural evidence, researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years -- compared to the mere three-year duration of the current dry spell. The two most severe megadroughts make the Dust Bowl of the 1930s look tame: a 240-year-long drought that started in 850 and, 50 years after the conclusion of that one, another that stretched at least 180 years.

"We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years," said Scott Stine, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay. "We're living in a dream world."

California in 2013 received less rain than in any year since it became a state in 1850. And at least one Bay Area scientist says that based on tree ring data, the current rainfall season is on pace to be the driest since 1580 -- more than 150 years before George Washington was born. The question is: How much longer will it last?

A megadrought today would have catastrophic effects.

California, the nation's most populous state with 38 million residents, has built a massive economy, Silicon Valley, Hollywood and millions of acres of farmland, all in a semiarid area. The state's dams, canals and reservoirs have never been tested by the kind of prolonged drought that experts say will almost certainly occur again.

Stine, who has spent decades studying tree stumps in Mono Lake, Tenaya Lake, the Walker River and other parts of the Sierra Nevada, said that the past century has been among the wettest of the last 7,000 years.
Looking back, the long-term record also shows some staggeringly wet periods. The decades between the two medieval megadroughts, for example, delivered years of above-normal rainfall -- the kind that would cause devastating floods today.

The longest droughts of the 20th century, what Californians think of as severe, occurred from 1987 to 1992 and from 1928 to 1934. Both, Stine said, are minor compared to the ancient droughts of 850 to 1090 and 1140 to 1320.

Modern megadrought

What would happen if the current drought continued for another 10 years or more?

Without question, longtime water experts say, farmers would bear the brunt. Cities would suffer but adapt.

The reason: Although many Californians think that population growth is the main driver of water demand statewide, it actually is agriculture. In an average year, farmers use 80 percent of the water consumed by people and businesses -- 34 million of 43 million acre-feet diverted from rivers, lakes and groundwater, according to the state Department of Water Resources.

"Cities would be inconvenienced greatly and suffer some. Smaller cities would get it worse, but farmers would take the biggest hit," said Maurice Roos, the department's chief hydrologist. "Cities can always afford to spend a lot of money to buy what water is left."

Roos, who has worked at the department since 1957, said the prospect of megadroughts is another reason to build more storage -- both underground and in reservoirs -- to catch rain in wet years.

In a megadrought, there would be much less water in the Delta to pump. Farmers' allotments would shrink to nothing. Large reservoirs like Shasta, Oroville and San Luis would eventually go dry after five or more years of little or no rain.

Farmers would fallow millions of acres, letting row crops die first. They'd pump massive amounts of groundwater to keep orchards alive, but eventually those wells would go dry. And although deeper wells could be dug, the costs could exceed the value of their crops. Banks would refuse to loan the farmers money.

The federal government would almost certainly provide billions of dollars in emergency aid to farm communities.

In short, attributing this relatively innocuous California drought to global warming flies in the face of epically worse droughts that took place well before any kind of human activity could have influenced global climate.

[DrCaleb]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

You both show how rabid and ridiculous those of your ilk are.

I've never denied climate change.

I never said you did. Who's ridiculous again?

[OnTheIce]

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

You both show how rabid and ridiculous those of your ilk are.

I've never denied climate change.

I never said you did. Who's ridiculous again?

Precisely my point.

I stand on the same side of fence as you but just because I don't follow the mantra to the letter, the frothing begins.

[DrCaleb]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

DrCaleb DrCaleb:

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

You both show how rabid and ridiculous those of your ilk are.

I've never denied climate change.

I never said you did. Who's ridiculous again?

Precisely my point.

I stand on the same side of fence as you but just because I don't follow the mantra to the letter, the frothing begins.

It's nothing to do with the 'mantra'. You were using a falsehood as the basis for your argument. Whichever side of an argument, and whichever argument it is; I'm going to call out someone doing that!