![350-org-logo[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/350-org-logo1.png?quality=75){kind=logo}
You just have to laugh. In their zeal to make the current drought situation all about their irrational CO2 fears, Bill McKibben’s 350.org tweeted this ridiculous comparison of before and after at California’s Folsom Reservoir, near me. Only problem is, the devil is in the details. See the picture then click to enlarge.
Note the “what a difference a year makes” is actually comparing 2011 and 2014. In 2011, California was reaping the liquid benefits of the 2010 El Niño. In 2014, ENSO switched to the La Niña dry pattern.
Now here is the link to the actual tweet, we’ll see if they disappear it or make a correction.
What a difference a year makes in California. #ConnectTheDots pic.twitter.com/FSRb6EwCSZ
— 350 dot org (@350) June 13, 2014
The real reason for the California drought is ENSO and weather patterns, like this one:
![ENSO_pic[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/enso_pic1.jpg?quality=83)
Source: NOAA ERH
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Thanks! Let’s see more detail.
We all know they want to send everyone (except themselves of course) back to the pre-industrial era. A time of early death, slavery, rampant diseases and mass suffering. Now that would be worse than we thought!
They have to prove their ideas can work. Since it involves the world we need a pilot scheme in a mid-sized country. Show it works without dams and nuclear.
Dams should never be used for flood mitigation. Because no one knows what is around the corner. That is, unless you have a super computer that controls weather!!
There’s a number of reasons this illustrates their bad science:
– July and January are not comparable. One is post flood/snow pack and one pre.
– Sacramento received above average rainfall in Feb, Mar and April and I think May this year
– Folsom recovered to almost 600K acre feet about 60% full, looking much like the July pic by May this year. Nobody shows that though.
– Folsom is controlled by the Bureau of Reclamation. Releases and level are DECISIONS, not based on water availability. Folsom rose from 162 acre feet to almost 600K, a rise larger than previous droughts. The low of 162 was caused by a BOR DECISION to allow Folsom to drain. The San Juan water district that get’s its water from Folsom for 250K residents above Sacramento, sent a letter in January to BOR saying they had gambled with people’s drinking water and the community’s survival. BOR flushed it all to the Pacific for environmental reasons when they could have picked a different reservoir source. Even in September-December, when no rain fell, BOR drained Folsom at 2000+ CFS. It was a DECISION and you could say the picture was created by them.
That’s the story not told.
Lil’ Fella From Oz
May I say in the most polite and kind way that you are an idiot. Had you been here in the central valley of California in early 1997 you could have experienced the very salvation of state by the dams you so glibly dismiss. Our home furnishing lived on a trailer for two weeks. Ready to be towed to high ground at a moments notice.
The total stream flow into the central valley was above 3 million cubic feet per second at peak flow. Peak flow that can transit out of the valley is about 900,000 cubic feet per second. The difference in flow would have turned the valley into a 400 mile long lake as it did in 1862 (Go look it up). The only player that could make a difference in flooding was the dams…and they did their job.
See http://www.uscid.org/~uscold/ben_9707.html for additional details.
pbh
Even without the El Nino and La Nina, it looks like one photo was taken before the
snow melt and rainy season, the other after. Even if both photos were taken in the
same year, logic dictates that the level would be lower in January than in July.
Pamela Gray says:
June 13, 2014 at 9:40 pm
Richard D. Give it a fricken rest…. Out of [my] public and land grant education I ended up doing a piece of pretty good research that got published in a major journal… By God I’ll put my education and the high standards I teach to up against anybody’s here. So take it somewhere else.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Not sure what’s happening here.
Pamela appears to be saying she received (and is delivering) a good education from/in a public school. Richard referenced the manifest failure of large swaths of public education.
They’re probably both absolutely correct.
Lil fella from Oz is, I believe, firmly placing his tongue in his cheek. Note the silly last sentence, ” That is, unless you have a super computer that controls weather!!”. The full comment is a bit tortured into light-hearted sarcasm against AGW proponent thought but nonetheless I do get a faint tickle in my funny bone. I am not sure how to make suggested improvements to the comment without moving the commenter’s point away from the one he wished to make. Maybe Lil fella can provide a translation for the rest of us challenged in the skill of sarcasm fluency.
“Casino-Capitalism At Greenpeace! “Blows Millions In Donations” In Currency Speculation! “Rocked By Finance Scandal”
http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/16/casino-capitalism-at-greenpeace-blows-millions-from-donations-in-currency-speculation-rocked-by-finance-scandal/
Yeah, uh, this is something you can observe at small river “barriers”, like the one on my hometown that separates the local river into river and canal (the canal leads to a power station.) Every winter, as long as I remember, the water levels were low. The operator often even opened some of the watergates to empty the small reservoir even further, because nobody wanted floods come spring. And when it was spring the water levels would always go back up, because the river would carry the water from snow melting in the mountains.