From the “but the media told us the drought was permanent in California” fake news department.
Wired, May 2016: “Thanks El Niño, But California’s Drought Is Probably Forever“. “California is still in a state of drought. For now, maybe forever.” The article gives no support — none — for this clickbait claim. In January Wired attempted to weasel away from their claims by defining drought to mean needing more water than nature provides (“A Wet Year Won’t Beat California’s Never-Ending Drought“). Orwell nodded, unsurprised.
The NYT did no better in “California Braces for Unending Drought“, May 2016. The closest the article comes to supporting their headline is an odd statement by Governor Brown: “But now we know that drought is becoming a regular occurrence…” Drought has always been a regular occurrence in California. The governor also said that “California droughts are expected to be more frequent and persistent, as warmer winter temperatures driven by climate change reduce water held in the Sierra Nevada snowpack and result in drier soil conditions.” That is probable. But it is quite mad for the NYT to call more frequent droughts “an unending drought.”
By Bark Gomez and Yasemin Saplakoglu, Bay Area News Group
Sacramento >> On the heels of what is becoming one of the wettest rainfall seasons ever recorded in California, Gov. Jerry Brown on Friday rescinded the drought emergency order he signed in 2014 while signaling new legislative efforts to maintain water conservation measures.
“This drought emergency is over, but the next drought could be around the corner,” Brown said in a statement. “Conservation must remain a way of life.”
Brown is making permanent the bans on wasteful water practices, like hosing off sidewalks, and requiring water agencies to continue to report their water use every month to the state.
At the same time, state agencies Friday announced a long-term plan to better prepare California for future droughts with continued water conservation efforts. The framework requires new legislation to establish long-term water conservation measures and improved planning for more frequent and severe droughts.
“This framework is about converting Californians’ response to the drought into an abiding ethic,” California Department of Water Resources acting Director Bill Croyle said in a statement. “Technically, the drought is over, but this framework extends and expands our dry-year habits. Careful, sparing use of water from backyards to businesses and farm fields will help us endure the next inevitable drought.”
Brown’s executive order lifts the drought emergency in all California counties except Fresno, Kings, Tulare and Tuolumne, where emergency drinking water projects will continue to help address diminished groundwater supplies, according to the governor’s release.
More: http://www.chicoer.com/general-news/20170407/governor-declares-end-to-drought-emergency
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AGW has been causing extreme droughts and extreme floods since 1850 BC
OOPs – I meant 1850AD
Joe the predictions of Peak Rain & Snow like Peak Oil and Anti-Peak Hurricane is all about Hubris nothing about reality
Predictions always seem to follow a straight line….
…on other words, they can’t predict squat
predictions are always hard – especially about the future
Peak oil is very real. Then new technology creates another peak does not invalidate the clear and accurate prediction of the first one.
Peak oil based on a normal distribution documents accurately have a wide range of biological systems operate. For example, in an interview years ago the manager documented how he grew his company by plotting the life cycle time scale of each product based on a normal distribution, and overlapped the introduction of new products at the decline stage of the previous one. The sum total was to create a modestly and continuously growing company. A dozen peak cycles were in his time chart. It was a very methodical way to grow a company.
Drought will become a rare and exciting event.
Leetle cheeldren will never know a world without water.
The inhumanity of it all……..
Peak Oil is very real, just as Peak Coal is very real. The Earth is finite, therefore ALL it’s resources are finite as well. But that doesn’t mean that we are anywhere near the limit of those resources.
The people who predict Peak Oil will happen in the next 10 years are very ignorant, just as the people who predicted Peak Coal would happen in 10 years back in the 1800’s were very ignorant.
We will probably stop drilling for oil in the next 50 years. It won’t be because it peaked. It will be because we will have developed better and cheaper means of producing energy, especially for transportation.
schitzree,
Speaking of ignorance, the original Peak Oil predictions were based on conventional, pooled oil, which was the only economical source at the time the predictions were first made. It never predicted that we would run out of oil, only that it eventually would become so expensive that alternatives would have to be found. Since then, breakthroughs in technology such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have provided an alternative to oil found in traps. The technological advance is the equivalent of a new energy source. However, fundamentally, the ‘fracked’ oil and gas will probably follow a similar but steeper curve of production, and probably a steeper decline. It was never about running out of oil, but a caution that exploration was not finding new sources quickly enough to forestall depletion. That problem was sidestepped by an alternative technology that doesn’t rely on finding a small target to drill, but rather drilling large areas. However, it is still a cautionary story about finite resources.
What’s happened ????
I bought a gallon of gas at Scott Gas in Wilmington Delaware in 1962 for $0.9 yep nine cents!
(peak oil ? )
I remember the “gas wars” days. That’s when I bought my first car ($45!). $.10/gallon was the going rate in California.
Hey George, apparently they delivered the gas that was supposed to go to Indiana to you guys instead. Around here it jumped from 2.11 to 2.49 in the past week.
I hear it’s around $4 a gallon in parts of Cali. I know they have higher gas taxes there but surely not dollars more.
Supply and demand must be fun when you can control the supply and the demand can’t drop much without crashing the economy. Like a license to print money.
The fact that new technology and new discoveries keep moving peak oil, is all the evidence that’s needed to conclude the concept of peak oil is fatally flawed.
Of course, all the money spent on climate modeling assures us of accurate long term forecasts. And a bioengineering project assures us of flying pigs. (Do I need a sarc?)
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, has many flying pigs. Why else would it be named Porkopolis? 🙂
I thought Porkopolis was Washington DC?
Cincy was, at one time, so called. I do know why, but that is not the topic here.
Before it was call that, it was called the Queen City of the West.
The governor also said that “California droughts are expected to be more frequent and persistent, as warmer winter temperatures driven by climate change reduce water held in the Sierra Nevada snowpack and result in drier soil conditions.” That is probable. But it is quite mad for the NYT…
——————-””””’
Probable? I see exactly ZERO evidence of this probability.
Nor do I find evidence of flying pigs.
And Washington DC is not Porkolopis, but Morodor on the Potomac.
Born and raised about 4 miles south of Fountain Square.
Funny. As I was growing up, Dad would offer us goetta for breakfast. I think he was a bit amused at our reactions and refusals. (Maybe that’s why he kept offering it?)
I kinda’ like it now but it’s hard to find where I live now.
PS No part of it could fly. it couldn’t even flutter. 😎
A Cincinnati 5-Way Chili is a better meal than goetta.
Same deal in Australia.
Now it’s red-faces all around!
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/flannery-washed-out-in-perth/news-story/dce43bec13c5610492502d78c226c50e
Good ol’ FlimFlam. Just like Nye, why do people continue to listen to him.
A lot of people started to add water tanks to their backyards to offset water restrictions, then local councils wanted to profit from that and charge them accordingly. Look out California – here it comes.
Really?council charges? where?
We bought a water tank for gardening when we lived in the city and got a 10% grant from the State govt and not a peep from council + or -. Now we live in the bush and no tanks no water.
Now Mann, Romm, Gleick, et al, can STFU about it.
When the swine in “Porkopolis” fly!
Not to forget that CA uses 4.4 million acre feet from the Colorado, and the Colorado Basin is “very damp” right now.
Yep. http://graphs.water-data.com/ucsnowpack/
“California” doesn’t use it. Those clowns who are friends of Jerry south of the Tehachapis use it. They also slurp down a huge amount of perfectly good wild salmon medium exported from north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Of course quite a bit of that goes to growing cotton in the southern valley desert, grapes in aridosols, orchards in grasslands and similar wastes.
Economics is perverse. Because of the paradox of thrift, unnecessary conservation efforts may have a bad effect on the economy.
v’. Thanks for the link.
But that’s not anthropogenic water.
They created an entire drought monitoring and restrictions bureaucracy with lots of positions and tax money.
“Let’s reduce the size of government.”
– said by no Democrat, ever.
What is bizarre is the concept of infinite austerity. So when I got my demand letter to cut 90%, I was able to cut 50%. Okay, in the next drought, after others in the state have cut back on average 50%, and the demand is to cut back, the Dems will have that epiphany moment when not one drop more is conserved. Conservation only works about twice. I am not sure where infinite conservation as a Democratic concept came from.
Especially as ‘dams’ are probably NOT part of the prep for the next drought is Moombeam;s plan.
They are slowly but surely running agriculture out of the Central Valley. Both because of its water use (they want it for SoCal growth, and don’t want to build more reservoirs), and because those areas tend to vote Republican.
+1 Except who/where is going to take over the “salad bowel” for much of the country?
… and then the water utility whines that the “peepul” aren’t using enough water, and therefore “we’ll have to raise our rates.”
Sheesh ….
Mark,
Just as with manufacturing, “Progressives” want to drive salad production entirely to Mexico.
Interior CA should secede from the state and cut off water to the coastal counties. If the elites hate dams so much, how about breaching Hetch Hetchy?
The dimwits imagine they can restore the valley, while still meeting water needs:
http://www.hetchhetchy.org/
If SF and LA were serious about “green” water, they’d be building nuclear powered desalinization plants. Wind and solar won’t cut it.
“….If SF and LA were serious about “green” water, they’d be building nuclear powered desalinization plants…” Desal is only an option when you don’t have fresh water sources. California lets more water drain to the ocean than it uses.
Joel,
The Democrats are achieving their goals of driving Republican voters out of the state and replacing US citizens fleeing the Green Hell with illegal immigrants. Compare elections 32 years apart:
1984 (OK, maybe an extreme case):
2016:
It’s effectively a one-party state.
That’s why the Dems will never allow it to split or break away. They’d lose all those electoral college votes.
It would help if California were not trying to emulate such countries as Iraq and Syria with their astonishing rates of population increase.
Tonyb
TonuB + many but that would mean closing the US border and that will never happen in Cali.
CA also makes housing very expensive, thus crowded.
Conservation is, and always has been a good idea, especially in drought-prone areas. Nothing to do with so-called “climate change”, much as the Climate Liars would like it to be.
That conservation needs to be combined with water storage. Otherwise increased conservation just means more water being flushed into the ocean.
Governor Moon Beam would be the best Clown for the March For Hypocrisy in DC instead of Bill Nye the Gay Guy.
Ha ha
“Moonbeam” Brown is having visions of catastrophe again I see.
That is how the left survives politically – keep generating fear.
Yes, and the Republicans do the same except they use drugs, terrorism, crime, immigration, etc. to create their fear. Both major parties suck.
I predict that there are still way too many people in California.
Notice how the plans to help with the next inevitable drought are to use less water instead of providing more storage? How is California going to provide water for all those illegal immigrants it encourages to enter the state/country? The reservoirs may be full but it takes more time for the ground water basins to replenish. Nature once again saves poor planning just like it will save California from ‘Climate Change’.
So…Nature is the CAGW’s meme editors’ worst enemy?
If the excess water was sent through hundreds of miles of open base aqueducts instead of flushed the water table could more quickly recover.
Or directly inject it like we have been doing with treated sewage effluent.
At any rate, they’d be a more helpful use of tax dollars than Governor Moonbeam’s toy train set.
Pity that no new reservoirs have been built to store some of this abundance of rain water for when the next drought comes “around the corner.” The last reservoir completed in CA with > 100,000KCM capacity was 1968 (Lake Success). The last with >1,000,000KCM capacity was 1970 (New Bullards Bar).
But high-speed rail is coming soon!
Depends on what the meaning of soon is.
“The California High-Speed Rail Authority is seven years behind schedule on the easiest-to-build Central Valley segment.”
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444262/
High speed rail? Maybe they can bring water quickly from the Great Lakes or Hudson’s Bay.
The municipal/state/federal planning horizon seems to be about the same as “…my grandpa said…”. In other words if it ain’t gonna happen tomorrow we don’t worry.
Just imagine how bad the control freakery would be if weren’t impossible for humans to conspire . .
Reservoirs are full and snowpack just got another big boost this weekend. Too bad they had to dump so much water out of Oroville, so much that it could have provided basically all of LA’s water for most of a year.
This is truly horrible situation. This can’t stand. This is a time for problems, not lack of them. We have to come up with something really bad, right away!
Carbon dioxide must be much more dangerous than previously thought. An excess of rain is virtually killing all the wildlife in California, washing them out to sea. The cloud covered skies of California and Donald Drumpf are making me depressed.
Oh Gaia, what have we done to anger you?
Now they will call it Carbonic acid rain
Just because the drought is over, that doesn’t mean the water control overseers will give up any of their power to decide who gets water and who doesn’t.
Really, are you even surprised? ○¿○
Smelt first.
Dogs and cats next.
Then the inedible fruits of Ma’ Gaia.
Last, but certainly least, people.
Smelt, you mean that brackish fish driven to near extinction by California importing game fish, then more aggessive Asian Smelt??
Yes, you mean that Smelt, the one Universities have received 400 million to study.
Climate cycles without end!
To better prepare for future droughts, California needs to limit growth and build more reservoirs.
Another option would be to build nuclear plants to power desalinization plants.
Desal has far greater issues than just power.
Capturing freshwater runoff before it hits the Pacific via things like the LA “River” would make much more sense than treating the saltwater it mixes with.
+1B
Most reservoirs do not have much more capacity than to hold average levels. So there is no buffer to hold more water in wet years. That means much water is let go to avoid, as best possible, overflow conditions. This is the problem. A self made crisis.
True. But there is aquifer storage capacity in the ground that can be utilized as well.
Bingo.
Most reservoirs do not have much more capacity than to hold levels slightly over
average of the population’s demand at construction time.
With the continuing climate change causing droughts to become more frequent, the Governor will find there is a new major drought every 4 or 5 months!
Weather forecast says we may have a drought this afternoon!
Excellent. +10
This chart shows California’s population growth since 1880
http://worldpopulationreview.com/states/california-population/
The state is shown as having periodic drought since the first US weather review monthlies from 1850 . It will need to install much more water storage or drastically reduce consumption if the populace are to have sufficient water for everyday needs
Tonyb
Permanent droughts just don’t last as long as they used to in the good old days.
Never let a permanent drought go to waste.