Guest post by Alec Rawls
Salient firsts in a child’s discovery of the world are often treasured moments for doting parents: a toddler’s first encounter with a friendly dog, his first go on the ice, his first hard spring rain…
Neither is it wrong for a father, steeped in the constant drumbeat of global-warming scare stories, to magnify the special moment with his worries about the future:
“When he opened his mouth to taste the rain,” said father Jason Spates, ”I was thinking, some day we may tell stories about green lawns, water in fountains and pools in residential backyards.”
But when CBS spins this adorable human interest anecdote with the headline: “Drought So Bad This California Kid Has Never Seen Rain,” and introduces it as a “sign of the times” over an image of a cracked lake-bed labeled DROUGHT EMERGENCY, they really need to do some fact checking.
The May 15th news story references a rain the day before in Dana Point, on the southern edge of Los Angeles, where according to Weather Underground there was an accumulation of .26 inches of rain on the 14th.
How far back do we have to go to find a date in Dana Point when it rained more than on May 14th? How about less than a week, when it rained .42 inches on the 8th? Or we can go back six months to December 2014 when the rain totals in Dana Point were: .39 inches on December 2nd, .53 inches on the 3rd, .71 inches on the 12th, and .48 inches on the 30th.
It may well be that young Mr. Spates was never alert to the rain before. It is obviously not unusual for a toddler to at some point have his first conscious awareness of a sudden rain, and of course it is lovely for his parents to grab the camera and share some pictures. (They’re even flying an American flag. Nice.) And how would daddy Spates know that the world has not warmed (according to the more reliable satellite temperature record) since before the last big rain-bringing El Nino in 1998?
It’s pretty hard to blame the switch from wet to dry on an increase in global temperature that has not occurred, but no mainstream anti-denial “believer” news source like CNN or CBS will ever let their readers see this information, so just a reminder from Christopher Monckton’s latest update on “the pause”:
Of course a lack of warming is not necessarily good news on the drought front. Warming means a faster hydrological cycle which means more total rain. If the Pacific Decadal Oscillation turns to an extended cold phase (as past patterns predict) and if the sun stays quiet (as solar scientists expect), then we could easily be in for a long dry cold spell. Now that is something worth worrying about.
If only the greens didn’t control the state government then California could prepare for this likelihood by building a fleet of thorium powered desalinization plants, providing water and power in abundance. Makes a lot more sense than Jerry Brown’s current plan to unplug 40% of our existing energy infrastructure within 15 years and 80% of our existing energy infrastructure by 2050 while sacrificing the state’s water and farming to the Delta Smelt.
Will “the children” (when they are no longer children, and have to worry about children of their own) really thank us for leaving them in the dark with unreliable water supplies? “Thanks dad” is susceptible to multiple intonations.
“It’s rained before and it’s raining again,
But this time its “climate change”.
Compensation I’ve been promised by President Obama,
So a claim form I need to arrange.
Although it has rained many times before,
I think I can claim “extreme” drops.
So I must get my form submitted, quick, quick,
Before this extreme weather stops…..”
You better read more: http://wp.me/p3KQlH-7G
Berma-Shave
‘Bama Shave
To make your benefits even simpler yet,
The claim form is posted on the internet!
Will, you rule in the climate poetry world! 🙂
The comments on this article are hilarious.
thanks
Which article, which comments.
Please identify your targets.
“Which article, which comments.”
“this article”, “The comments”
@Paul, I believe he was asking this article at: (pick one) Drudge, CBS, Here, and the comments associated. It is much easier to leave a snarky answer though.
@ Owen in GA,
Yes much easier, thanks for clarifying the question.
You’ve accomplished nothing, Paul.
It’s not the climate that’s out of control, it’s today’s media. 97% of reporters have jumped the shark.
if 97% were eaten BY the shark..the quality of news would improve..one hopes.
The shark wouldn’t touch them…professional courtesy
I don’t know, sharks have been known to eat bottom feeders before.
Just like in the UK where “snow has become a thing of the past” too.
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=snow+storm+uk&biw=1360&bih=599&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=7WJcVeSsLuXbmgXEjQE&ved=0CDUQsAQ
thanks moonbeam
thanks obama
Obama: climate change poses risk to U.S. military, national security
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/20/us-usa-climate-obama-idUSKBN0O513H20150520
Rising seas, thawing permafrost and longer wildfires caused by warmer global temperatures threaten U.S. military bases and will change the way the U.S. armed services defend the country, President Barack Obama is set to say on Wednesday.
In his commencement address at the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, the White House said Obama will underscore the risks to national security posed by climate change, one of his top priorities for action in his remaining 19 months in office.
“You are part of the first generation of officers to begin your service in a world where the effects of climate change are so clearly upon us,” Obama is set to tell the 224 graduating cadets, according to excerpts from his prepared remarks.
============
Climate change be damned. Hope and Change (™) seems to be the more serious problem.
With sea levels rising so dramatically, won’t the Coast Guard simply have less coast to guard? /whatever
But there will be more sea for the Navy to guard.
I detest this president and his absolute LIES. He is a disgusting individual.
“Barack Obama promised to run the most transparent White House in history—disclosing donations, shunning lobbyists, and broadcasting important meetings on C-SPAN.”
But then:
“If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door. If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving. And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read. For those out to sink Obama’s free trade push, highlighting the lack of public information is becoming central to their opposition strategy: The White House isn’t even telling Congress what it’s asking for, they say, or what it’s already promised foreign governments.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2008/11/the_tmi_presidency.html
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/secrecy-eroding-support-for-trade-pact-critics-say-117581.html
When the administration got all huffy about Netanyahu being invited to address Congress directly, I thought someone missed a great opportunity to respond “but we have to invite foreign leaders to address the Congress. How else can we find out what our administration is doing?”.
@Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7
priceless . . . and sad
Oh if only they had Tim Flannery to go over there and tell them they had “entered into permanent drought” and “They will never see above average rainfall ever again” oh and my personal favourite “the dams are never going to over flow again”. The very next year had flooding for the entire eastern states, dams overflowing everywhere. Oh how I wish he would say it again, we could use a drop of rain where we live.
Now why didn’t I think of Tim Flam? He’s the perfect tool for the job.
A theatrical and very public prediction from Tim Flam is the only known cure for drought over here in Oz. We use him like our own sort of King Knut nutbot when it doesn’t rain for a while.
We were about to put him in the shed for a while but you guys are most welcome to borrow him to sort California out.
Wow, besides a drought, you have that that Jerry Brown and his fantasy solutions to your fantasy energy problems. Talk about Californication.
He’s more qualified to talk about English literature than water management.
Flim Flam, Tim Flam is most certainly a tool
‘perfect tool’ or perfect fool. Could be a typo?
Nah mate, perfect tool, all you have to do is listen to him, take the exact same stance as him, and vola you will be right.
Damn these dyslexic fingers. Change that to “exact opposite”
To paraphrase well know climate ‘expert’ :
California children just aren’t going to know what rain is !
California children just aren’t going to know what
rainscience is!Thanks, Mr. Cow. That would be a real shame!
Science will always oppose witchcraft and divination.
@ Andrés
I apologize if my meaning/sarcasm was not clear. I am a scientist (retired). I fear that the long unbridled and illegitimate behaviors of many pretenders in this field will, and perhaps has, deteriorated respect for all science. At the very least, I consider most of those pretenders to be shamefully and publicly disrespectful.
The California coast will be ice free .. already
Oh noes!
(Good one, Neo.)
Good Morning everyone,
I am listening to a white throated sparrow outside my window as the sun rising. It sounds like this… (second song)
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/White-throated_Sparrow/sounds
I see these news articles and I recoil knowing that they, along with the Gavin Schmidt appearance on John Stossel’s show, they represent a pervasive cognizance that has crept into our society. It like a zombie infection. The sounds and ideas of green virus invade the human mind and cause utter self destruction of the individual, but not until after the individual spreads the Green Germ.
Green Germ infects ants
Gavin Schmidt comes out of Praying Mantis
In the video above, you can clearly see Gavin Schmidt, having lived inside a normal brown bug, turned it completely Green and controlling it’s behavior made it desire water. Watch closely as Gavin Schmidt wriggles out of the , now green, bug.
Nonsense you say?
Listen to the news article… now that is nonsense.
Hi Paul,
I listened to your sparrow link, and then got sucked into listening to all kinds of other birds.
It got me reminiscing about living in San Francisco and having Northern Mockingbirds singing the summer away. I would invariably have one staking out a treetop just outside my office and bedroom windows, and just loved listening to him sing nonstop — day and night.
For any readers out there who have never heard a Northern Mockingbird sing, it is one of the great wonders of the world.
Since the previous video won’t play on this site (though you can listen to it on YouTube), I’ll try another.
he’s /she’s pretty chatty. Great site eh what?
Here’s one that is rather unforgettable, once you listen to it :
CA children will never hear the truth either.
Since January 2014 statewide, CA is down only 4.71 inches; 22.39″ is the annual normal
Date Inch Anom Running
201401 0.55 -1.32 -1.32
201402 4.01 +2.14 +0.82
201403 3.28 +1.41 2.23
201404 1.06 -0.81 1.42
201405 0.36 -1.51 -0.09
201406 0.06 -1.81 -1.9
201407 0.23 -1.64 -3.54
201408 0.45 -1.42 -4.96
201409 0.72 -1.15 -6.11
201410 1.05 -0.82 -6.93
201411 1.85 -0.02 -6.95
201412 6.31 +4.44 -2.51
201501 0.65 -1.22 -3.73
201502 2.89 +1.02 -2.71
201503 0.77 -1.10 -3.81
201504 0.97 -0.90 -4.71
2013 was a drought year but there hasn’t been a “drought” in CA for over a year – they have a man made water shortage.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us/04/00/pcp/p12/12/2014-2015?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000
when I was 5 or 6 years old I had a realization. Lying in bed, musing in my head, rain drops were hitting my bedroom window and I said to myself ” It is raining” and I had a realization right there about the “it” that was raining.
In the mundane it is to be expected that you can talk to some people until you are blue in the face but they still will not comprehend what it is that you are trying to impart.
for example I just thought that “time is there to stop everything happening all at once”.
I sort of know what I mean but I imagine other people will see the statement completely differently.
Another steaming crock of hooey from the spittle-flecked, swivel-eyed global warming lunatics.
Let’s just hope that the whole diabolical CAGW ‘house of cards’ implodes in the run-up to the UN’s Global Government Summit in Paris in December and that, from 2016 onwards, we don’t hear any more of this appalling codswallop!
A full-blown Climategate 3.0 in the Autumn would be a nice suprise, and it would keep those shysters on the back foot…
The idiots that post this nonsense are fully aware their claims are bogus. But they are also well aware that far too many people accept their bogus claims without question and won’t or haven’t time to fact check as do most of us. Thus, they have accomplished their objective.
Lord Christopher Moncton was correct when he wrote yesterday that global warming fanaticism is the modern day equivalent of fascism. Factually, we are correct, but are we winning this fight?
*Monckton, my apologies, Lord. Monckton.
Given that, typically, a child of 4 years or less is not self-aware, so not only do they not know what or who they themselves are, they certainly won’t understand what that wet stuff that falls from the sky adults call rain is. Before at least 4 they will not have the slightest concept of what rain is. So this is definitely a garbage article and should be actively ignored!
Fact checking and the legacy media don’t go together.
So climate change is, rain, snow, etc… They keep saying it is not, when they’re questioned.
If the kid looked around, instead of up, he would see plenty of drips.
California children will not know what rain is, but
California children will sure enough know what High Speed Rail is!
I don’t think they’ll know what High Speed Rail is, either, but they’ll certainly be aware of large state deficits, and eroding incomes due to high state taxes.
Rain fall amounts have been good but there is very little snow pack. So we should conserve water because half the state is desert.
But these people run out to the nearest resevoir to photograph the cracked earth and give the rest of the world the impression that rain has ceases to fall in California which is, of course, nonsense.
The state’s population has doubled while storage has remained static.
You can drive up or down hwy 5 for a couple of hours and see nothing but orchards. Ag in this state is huge and they use a lot of water. Many orchards are still food irrigated, which is fine during normal rain years. As usual, we are not prepared for anomalies and then run around like chicken little when they do happen.
Now they decide it’s time to conserve, two seasons after the dry year of 13.
Good on you Grant, for a non-hysterical comment which stays focused on the actual issue that everyone needs to get involved with. California is an unsustainable society; its unfortunate that government isn’t strong enough to deal with the increasing problems.
mike hamblett,
Your comment was the most rational one I’ve seen you post. Keep it up.
Re: CA gov’t not being strong enough: the state’s government is completely controlled by the Democrat Party. It controls the governor and both hoses of the Legislature. They can do whatever they want.
Why don’t they take appropriate action? Instead of providing for state infrastructure, including water storage, they are wasting more than $100 Billion on a stupid, unnecessary railroad train, which will be slower than molasses in January compared with the exisiting infrastructure: air travel, which inexpensively gets people from one end of the state to the other in an hour.
That much money could completely fix all water-related problems in the state. Instead, they dither.
“…hoses of the Legislature”
-☺-
There was only one job, and it was a hose job.
Beautifully stated!
The rain that on the righteous falls
falls also on that other fella.
But mostly on the just, because
the unjust stole the just’s umbrella
~ Charles Synge Christopher Bowen
Strange that California with all it’s water problems would allow a flooded crop like rice.
California’s rice acreage in 2013/14 of 566,000 acres is up almost 1 percent from a year earlier and is the second biggest rice producer in the U.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_the_United_States
Image of geese flying over a rice field in the Sacramento Valley, California:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NRCSCA06047_-_California_%281035%29%28NRCS_Photo_Gallery%29.tif
The power of the agruculture lobby is utterly absurd considering what a tiny proportion of the population works in agriculture nowadays. Without agriclture California has enough water for 100+ million people. World food output hit new records each of the last two years. Just cut back on agricutlure in California and leave it to the many places with sufficient water. Problem solved.
Yes, a miniscule percentage of the population. But…they feed the rest of us. How about you? Are you ready to do without? Cheap food, that is.
Forget toddlers, many college students around the world have never experienced global warming during their lifetime.
^ ^
This!
How true.
Some toddlers have never seen rain.
No children under age 18 have seen global warming.
That is slightly premature. In most countries the students who start at uni this year will be the first who haven’t.
Rainfall in Dana Point? Detailed records are available here:
http://ocwatersheds.com/rainrecords/rainfalldata/rainfalldata/
The closest data would be Costa Mesa with 56 years of record.
The real-time rainfall can be accessed here:
http://ocwatersheds.com/rainrecords/rainfalldata/stormdata/
Daily rainfall summaries for stations closer to Dana Point can also be accessed.
Regarding not seeing rain in one’s lifetime, the lowest annual rainfall for the Costa Mesa site was 2.65 inch for the 2006-2007 water year. Local water year runs from 01 July to 30 June. That was stated by Department of Water Resources to be a weak El Nino year. The highest annual rainfall was 23.39 inches for the 2004-2005 water year, also stated to be a weak El Nino year. Go figure.
This water year (2014-2015) rainfall is 7.28 inches, hardly a record low. Average is a bit over 10 inches. Rainfall for May is 0.80 inch so far. May average is 0.15 inch, so this is a very wet May.
That is excellent info, Neil! I will be passing it on to others!!
Remember the song, “It Never Rains in Southern California?” There’s a reason the songwriter wrote that – because it never rains in Southern California. As San Diego meteorologist John Coleman states, “What drought? There’s 40 million people living in a desert.” People seem surprised that we don’t have a lot of water here.
“in Dana Point, on the southern edge of Los Angeles” Dana Point is squarely in Orange County which is decidedly not Los Angeles. Just heading off any LA vs. Orange County tensions before they erupt 🙂
A former Bureau of Reclamation Chief, Dan Beard, makes the case that the federal dam-building programs his agency oversaw for decades spawned massive “entitlement” expectations among farmers, ranchers, and cities including Los Vegas and Los Angeles. Such groups, he claims would now be more efficiently and cheaply served by state level water programs. It’s an interesting perspective from the one I always heard growing up. I always thought big dams were a boon to mankind.
He apparently includes hydro power among the “benefits” of dams which should be locally created and delivered.
Beard’s book is called “Deadbeat Dams: Why We Should Abolish the Bureau of Reclamation and Tear Down Glen Canyon Dam”
http://www.cpr.org/news/story/get-rid-us-bureau-reclamation-says-its-former-boss
I don’t know if I agree with Beard’s plan to tear down the existing dams. Rain and snow patterns do shift, making a means of large-scale storage and redistribution of water resources necessary. This may beg the question of the aesthetic pictured above… of an “underprivileged child”, face to the heavens, longing for a taste of rainwater to soothe his parched little throat. But Beard is right on when he says that water is not scarce. It’s just being mispriced, and, in my opinion, poorly allocated. If California is experiencing a dry decade, some other area – Colorado’s front range in this case – is getting inundated. Every river along Colorado’s front range has been on, or is currently on, flash flood watch, including Bear Creek, Clear Creek, Boulder Creek, Cache le Poudre, North Platte… That’s millions of acre-feet running east out onto the plains, ultimately to be dumped into the Gulf.
In any case, the taste of rainwater is overrated.
Would cbs report on babies who haven’t seen a hurricane and imply they will never see one on their lifetime?
What did you expect from the News Media (Propaganda Media), they never let facts get in the way of pushing their propaganda.
…and Jamaican toddlers will probably not see snow! (at least, that’s what we hope…)
But, it would be a boon for the bobsled team!
Since there has never been drought before in California, I think their logic is sound.
First rain drops … first kiss …
http://wfmu.org/Playlists/Ken/gfx/kiss_the_pig.jpeg
Maaate, you really do post some awesome pictures! Is there lipstick on that pig?
Sure, it makes perfect sense that excess heat in the *oceans* would cause drought. Wait, what?
Also, tearing down dams in CA makes sense if your plan is to force people to emigrate away from CA. By dehydrating them. I’m sure that is a compassionate policy from the point of view of the urban poor.