Let me be clear. There is a drought in California and with 3-4x the amount of people residing there compared to 75 years ago, it is a big problem.This needs perspective.
Go figures, in the middle of one of the coldest, snowiest winters in 50 years in California, the LA Times rides to rescue of anyone who might figure it to be a good thing with what you see above. They take elements of truth and completely hide other factors, and then blow it up into a focused doom-and-gloom article with man-made climate change as the culprit. The fact is man is at fault, but not through his role (or lack of) in climate change, through policies that have turned California from a magnet attracting upward mobility of Americans to an ever-increasing anchor that is growing large enough to sink the ship of freedom in this country. It is what California has turned into and they are exporting the ideas to a population that seems so comfortable and complacent they will accept what they are told.
There is no perspective on the big picture. Yes, it is drier in California over the last 10 years (and indeed, the last 30). But the idea that there is no countering weights in the weather and climate is completely hidden. Look at the last 10 years:
Most of the nation experienced normal to above-normal precipitation.
For the nation as a whole, which is better? The last 10 years or the 30-year period 1933-1962?
Lets take corn. This is an excellent read from R. L. Nielsen of Purdue:
- Corn grain yields in the U.S. have steadily increased since the late 1930’s.
- Only two major shifts in U.S. corn yield trends have occurred since yield estimates were first published in 1866.
- Year-to-year departures from trend yield are influenced primarily by year-to-year variability in growing conditions.
Well isn’t that special? Increasing yields since the late 1930s.
This is not meant to diminish the drought in California. It’s to shine the light that what is going on in California is counterweighted and apparently in a large way by a positive. There are plenty of examples of this globally on how we are indeed in a climate optimum overall. What can be done? Well, California even with normal precipitation is a problem because with 3x the number of people now than when it was wetter and the idea you can build all these places (i.e. golf courses and then water them) without paying a price is arrogant and ignorant of the inherent problem. That the people running the place turn around and blame the increase in CO2 and then push draconian responses that they enforce on their population which in turn affects the rest of the country ( even though the same bogeyman co2, if it is the cause, would have to be the reason for much of the growing area of the US benefitting), shows an amazing ignorance to counter such via adaptation and advancement through freedom and competition.
The last 90 days in California have been a God Send for the snow pack. Cold.
And wet.
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I think we have an El Niño coming on which implies to me that another normal to above normal winter precipitation-wise is on the way next year. The next 90 days look to remain colder than average and I think the precipitation which has shut off for the last month comes back to normal or above.
Good news right? Not so fast. Increased vegetation will dry out in the summer and so the wildfire season may be greater than average. But that is the way nature is. This Utopian idea that everything can be perfect and that you trust men to fix it by limiting the very fuel needed to help counter this and replacing it with an even more unreliable source is nonsense. Look at the situation that has California in a drought but much of the rest of the nation seeing more rainfall and growing more food.
And by the way, guess what happens when you build above-average snowpack into the late spring as we may have this year. When it does get warm it has to melt faster since there is so much more of it. So just like last year with Colorado hysteria about how fast snow was melting (then it turned around and snowed and no one said “boo”), we will likely see it again. Write something in a one-sided manner, get it out there with no countering perspective, or mention that the opposite then happened.
But here is the point: does the media bring up the rest of the nation? This is a big country, but with the media having a socialist tilt. I guess they were thinking that it would be shared misery. But it is not. Its typical of what goes on in a system that by its very design has imbalances it seeks to correct through the weather and climate, but can never do.
Adapt and advance with nature. Do not think you can change nature. Don’t throw away the tools of freedom and competition along with the fuel needed to do that with some crazy notion that you are like God and you can change nature. If you buy into that, then you are buying into a false religion — that’s what this whole climate situation has become.