Reposted from the Fabius Maximus Blog.
Larry Kummer, Editor Information & News, Science & Nature 22 April 2019
A lesson for Earth Day – A people can be molded into a new form by years of skillful propaganda. This is happening in America today, as journalists systematically lie to us about the weather. They have abandoned the careful work of the IPCC, delivering instead a daily diet of weather porn. Climate scientists as a profession are complicit by their silence. Reporting about the recent Texas drought tells the tale, a lesson for Earth Day 2019.
Fear the weather!
News from four years ago: “Fear in a Handful Of Dust“
By Ted Genoways in The New Republic, 22 April 2015.
Genoways painted a terrifying picture about the most recent Texas drought.
Climate change is making the Texas Panhandle, birthplace of the state’s iconic Longhorn, too hot and dry to raise beef. What happens to the range when the water runs out? …”{E}nvironmental activists and reporters began to ask whether ‘drought’ – a temporary weather pattern – was really the right term for what was happening in the state, or whether ‘desertification’ was more appropriate.
Other journalists also played the drought is the new normal for Texas story. As in this from the Dallas Observer on 14 October 2013.
“Texas Climate News sought out the state’s finest climatologists, oceanographers and public-policy experts. If nothing else, their responses make clear that the Lone Star State is headed for a new normal. Pretending it isn’t happening is not a viable option.”
These exciting stories are, like so many journalists feed us about climate change, quite bogus. Texas is slowly warming – at 0.02ºF per decade since 1950. But its precipitation is also slowly increasing – a quarter-inch per decade. (Both trends are roughly unchanged from the longer 1895 – 2019 trends.) As this graph from NOAA’s interactive tool shows, rainfall in Texas is always volatile, and droughts are common.
The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) measures the combined impact of changing temperature and precipitation. It shows no statistically significant trend for Texas. The NOAA tool shows other, more sophisticated, drought indicators. They paint the same picture.
Weather varies. That is the old normal and the new normal. See this NOAA interactive graphic map showing the comings and goings of dry and wet periods in the continental US since 1900.
The old adage says that “droughts end with floods.” But, like droughts, floods are just raw material for journalists to create weather porn to terrify Americans. It’s not weather, but something extraordinary! As explains in “Visualized: How the insane amount of rain in Texas could turn Rhode Island into a lake” by the WonkBlog of the Washington Post, 27 May 2015 — Excerpt …
“It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of the flooding that’s hit Texas recently. The Memorial Day weekend of heavy rain has capped off a month where some areas of the state have seen more than 20 inches of rain fall. More rain is in the forecast. It’s difficult to comprehend the ridiculous amounts of water that have fallen in such a short time in a state that, until recently, had been in the grip of a historic drought. But one place to start would be to look at reservoir levels in the state. In the past 30 days, Texas reservoirs have gone from being 73% full to 82% full, according to data maintained by the Texas Water Development board.”
Contrast the reporting about weather and financial markets
Stories about market movements occur in a world in which statistics was invented. Especially standard deviation, by Francis Galton in the 1860s. Stories about weather and climate exist in world in which numbers are just small, big, or huuge. Their frequency is described by the almost meaningless when it last happened, or the even less meaningful “record-breaking” (most meteorological records in the US are too brief for significance, given weather’s volatility and multi-decade cycles).
Learning from experts
“We don’t even plan for the past.”
— Steven Mosher (member of Berkeley Earth; bio here), a comment posted at Climate Etc.
NOAA’s Drought in the United States page explains that although precipitation increased during the 20th century, droughts are endemic to much of the US. Get used to it.
“The incidence of drought in the United States has varied greatly over the past century. From the dust bowl years of the 1930’s to the major droughts of 1988 and 2000, much of the U.S. has suffered from the effects of drought during the past century. While annual and seasonal precipitation totals have generally increased in the United States since 1900, severe drought episodes continue to occur.”
Looking ahead, climate scientists give us a clear warning. Will we listen? For example, see “Unprecedented 21st century drought risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains“ by Benjamin I. Cook et al. in Science Advances, 12 February 2015. No matter what happens with the climate, we have to prepare for droughts worse than anything we have yet experienced.
“In the Southwest and Central Plains of Western North America, climate change is expected to increase drought severity in the coming decades. These regions nevertheless experienced extended Medieval-era droughts that were more persistent than any historical event, providing crucial targets in the paleoclimate record for benchmarking the severity of future drought risks.”
We cannot afford to continue the Hydro-Illogical Cycle (from the SPEI website).
The price we pay for propaganda instead of news
In his eagerness to produce propaganda about climate change, Genoways buried the lede. Much of the agriculture and ranching in America’s Midwest relies on water from the Ogallala Aquifer. It is a finite resource, being withdrawn from at an unsustainable rate. Its exhaustion will change American farming forever. But instead of focusing on this, journalists incite terror about the extinction of humanity due to climate change – despite the near-total lack of scientific support for this nightmare.
This week’s climate doomster article in the NYT: “Want to Escape Global Warming? These Cities Promise Cool Relief” by Kendra Pierre-Louis – “If extreme weather made your city unlivable, where would you move?.” They no longer need any science to justify their doomsterism. Their story has become true by repetition.
For More Information
Ideas! For some shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information see The keys to understanding climate change and these posts about droughts …
- Have we prepared for normal climate change and non-extreme weather?
- Let’s prepare for past climate instead of bickering about predictions of climate change.
- Droughts are coming. Are we ready for the past to repeat?
- Key facts about the drought that’s reshaping California.
- Key facts about the drought that’s reshaping Texas.
- The Texas drought ends; climate alarmists wrong again!
- Lessons learned from the end of California’s “permanent drought.”
Books about our past, also describing our future
See the 1993 classic book forecasting our present problems, which will grow worse over time: Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
You call that a drought? This is a drought obviously caused by too many cooking fires by the Mayans by all accounts-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/techandscience/royal-vase-gives-clues-to-collapse-of-maya-civilization/ar-BBWgbLx
Has to be unless they’d discovered the steam engine and the Industrial Revolution we don’t know about. Just ask the 97 percenters for confirmation with their settled science.
So a draught is when the Mayas “discovered the steam engine and the Industrial Revolution.”
All else is “too many cooking fires”.
“The Price We Pay for Propaganda Instead of News” is a right-on lead-in to a very real problem. Think of the propaganda assault against political opponents, non-LBGTQ persons, and (gasp) Old White Guys. That last hits close to home. Who is a willing consumer of this propaganda, ie, who buys things from the sponsors of this? Because if there wasn’t any economic incentive the idiots pushing this would push something else that pays. George Soros is behind a lot of it and he doesn’t seem to care about profit anymore. But, who is the willing consumer?
Actually faux news is a market unto itself, The Eagles captured it perfectly … “talk about the train wreck with a gleam in her eye.” The typical journalism student, these days, knows absolutely nothing about anything, the, like Obummer, learned to read from a teleprompter, and then build their substnative knowledge from Wikipedia
Dire Straights, Money for nothing ?
The Eagles – “Dirty Laundry”
Bobby Bare – “Dropkick me Jesus through the goalposts of life”. I have no idea why that came to mind.
Ron, how about this?
Actually, that was a Don Henley solo, not The Eagles. It was on Henley’s first solo album, “I Can’t Stand Still,” from 1982.
I have a buddy who tried his hand at becoming a sports caster on tv in the 90s. He told me that he created feel good stories about local athletes that were usually cut from airing because the weather “terrorists” took extended time to shakedown viewers about an upcoming storm 🙂
They know how to make money.
The hydro-illogical Cycle Cartoon is a perfect illustration for Australian Climate cycles also, in the land of ‘Droughts and Flooding Rains’.
Gee, it would be nice if the people who promote this feverish hype let someone else have a turn, wouldn’t it?
What would they do if the playa in the Black Rock range in Nevada became a semi-permanent lake because of water runoff from an excess snow load in the mountains that run through there?
I guess we just have to keep pointing out the obvious and let them jump up and down and wave their arms. At some point, they might become exhausted and stop bothering us.
“In the Southwest and Central Plains of Western North America, climate change is expected to increase drought severity in the coming decades. These regions nevertheless experienced extended Medieval-era droughts that were more persistent than any historical event, providing crucial targets in the paleoclimate record for benchmarking the severity of future drought risks.”
Can these doomsdayers ever understand how they’re shooting themselves in the foot with statements like that? Or have they finally given up on the plant food meme and now it’s just good old fashioned fire and brimstone with plagues and pestilence be upon us all sinners.
I’ve measured 7-1/2 inches of ‘Texas “Permanent” Drought’ in my backyard gauge in the last 36 hours.
My plants are loving it.
i cracked up on the para that said there was a drought BUT reservoirs held 73%
huh???
melbourne aus has had more rain than most of the state and at 50% is not a problem water rationing or alerts should be threatened to ensure supply but until its at 30% or less its not a big issue
isnt a massive volume of water being sold to like china or nestle cheaply? from ogalalla? i d remember some ire at that.we have nestle/others trying the same pay stuff all take locals groundwater here in aus
“state’s finest climatologists, …. and public-policy experts.”
Well that explains everything.
I took out “oceanographers” because I am not sure they are responsible for the propaganda.
Kummer begins his effluence with: “They have abandoned the careful work of the IPCC…”
How can anything this guy writes be taken seriously?
His entire schtick is built around extolling the sanctity of the glorious IPCC and the unquestionable authority of the UN!
The IPCC was created to push a foregone conclusion: CO2 causes “global warming.” Mankind is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere due to industrialization and capitalism. Therefore, mankind is bad, capitalism is bad. Mankind must be punished and capitalism abolished.
The IPCC is NOT some pristine arbiter of “science.” It is an out-of-control internationalist socialist attempt to destroy American economic prosperity.
“…Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is part of the United Nations for the purpose of limiting or abolishing the production of CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels. While the US is clearly targeted for these crippling measures other members of the UN other developing nations simply will not be implementing with these suicidal measures. The IPCC is also the brainchild of Maurice Strong, a billionaire socialist working closely with the UN. At the Rio conference of the IPCC in 1992 Maurice Strong made this statement to thousands of supporting fans and international leaders:
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” — Maurice Strong, head of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and Executive Officer for Reform in the Office of the Secretary General of the United Nations. (http://www.whale.to/a/strong_h.html).”
See through Kummer for what he is: a shill for the IPCC. Useless.
Most work of the IPCC is just scientific work. The alarmism is a dressing on it, often in disagreement with the WG work.
I fully behind Kummer. I’m also fully behind science, as Judith Curry says of herself.
What I’m against are mostly baseless scares used to drive policies that don’t follow.
Well, Hugs, then you’re being played for a rube!
The IPCC is sham “science.” It is a political body, rallying like-minded activists for a political cause–the destruction of capitalism.
The evidence is there for all to see. If you buy the IPCC (and Kummer’s) propaganda about their “science”, then you’re part of the problem.
There are numerous detailed deconstructions of the IPCC’s political games. Here’s just one:
“20. The issue of consensus is key to understanding the limitations of IPCC pronouncements. Consensus is the stuff of politics, not of science. Science proceeds by observation, hypothesis and experiment. Professional scientists rarely draw firm conclusions from a single article, but consider its contribution in the context of other publications and their own experience, knowledge, and speculations. The complexity of this process, and the uncertainties involved, are a major obstacle to meaningful understanding of scientific issues by non-scientists.”
For this scientist’s full and detailed evisceration of the IPCC’s political games, see the article:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/05/08/paul-reiters-damning-assessment-of-the-ipcc/
We are not approaching The Climate Apocalypse. They intend to take credit, one way or another, but always in a way that leaves them in control of government and of thought.
The weather will continue to abuse until political control improves.
The stupidest thing about all of this is that eco-activists and journalist shift the blame from who actually is abusing water to climate change, effectively hiding the abuse and making it worse. Here in Chile we have issues similar to Texas (we’ve always been short on water, regular draughts) and although we know there are huge agricultural businesses and mining operations that straight rob water from aquifers and rivers, they can easily blame climate change and not take responsibility for their actions. Same can be said about the government, who is way behind in implementing a nation-wide program for rainwater storage, building more reservoirs, create public awareness, etc., like they did in Australia. Our water shortages are explained mostly from abusing the source, not the changing weather. Of course lacking rain and snowfall makes it worse, but we can’t blame only that, it doesn’t make sense! But as long as stupid journalists keep on blaming only the weather, we’re screwed! It makes me mad!
It seems a bit obvious that Chile and Texas could create infiltration wells across their main aquifers and run all surplus water from heavy falls into the ground, not to the sea.
“In the Southwest and Central Plains of Western North America, climate change is expected to increase drought severity in the coming decades. These regions nevertheless experienced extended Medieval-era droughts that were more persistent than any historical event,”
Is the Medieval-era not “historic”? Or do they mean that proxy data from the Medieval era suggests that this area suffered from more severe and prolonged droughts than those indicated in our recent written records….
Absolutely the Medieval Period was historic, but the Anasazi didn’t have many historians leaving written records of their history for future generations as the Europeans did.
“We don’t even plan for the past.”
How can we? The past keeps changing.
Mark W:
True, the past climate keeps changing.
But the future climate does not — it is “known”, with 102% confidence, based on a CO2 – warming formula that never changes — 30+ years of
grossly inaccurate computer game forecasts don’t matter –always wrong forecasts also don’t matter — what matter is CONSISTENCY.
And the climate scaremongers, are certainly consistent, sort of like a stopped watch !
+10
Jim
“They have abandoned the careful work of the IPCC.. ” stated Mr. Kummer.
The rest of the article makes sense, but this complement on the work of the IPCC near the beginning, is off topic, possibly a typo … or much worse:
Mr. Kummer, if you believe the work of the IPCC is “careful”, can you explain why their computer games (climate models) predict a rate of global warming that is quadruple the actual warming rate since 1940 (using satellite data from 1979) and triple the warming rate since 1979 (using only satellite data) ?
I will not wait for you answer, because no logical answer is possible, but I will opine that anyone who thinks the IPCC’s work is “careful”, is a fool.
Their work is biased, ignores all data that contradicts, and even ignore actual temperature measurements in the past, during the “Age of Man Made CO2” — we have been adding a lot of CO2 to the atmosphere since 1940 — the temperature change in those 78 years just might be a good guide to the effects of adding a lot of CO2 to the atmosphere in the NEXT 78 years … but not for the IPCC, who claim the next 78 years of adding CO2 will be A LOT DIFFERENT, than the past 78 years of adding CO2.
And the IPCC’s “scientific explanation is”: Because we say so, with great confidence, and we have been saying so, with great confidence, since 1988 !
So, Mr. Kummer, to use a technical term — If you support the IPCC, then you are a fool.
I can’t understand why this website would reprint an article that starts off with a complement for the IPCC.
If the IPCC did “careful” work, this website would not need to exist !
The IPCC almost completely ignores natural causes of climate change, uses a formula for CO2-caused warming, developed in the 1970s, that is nowhere near actual observations of global warming, completely ignores weather satellite and weather balloon data, uses ice core proxy studies for pre-1959 CO2 levels, but completely ignores temperature data derived from the same ice cores, and featured the fraudulent Mann Hockey Stick chart, for years !
I guess in your biased world. Mr. Kummer, grossly inaccurate predictions of the future climate, for over 30 years, so far, do not matter — the IPCC is still “careful”.
In real science, which may be new to you, Mr. Kummer, decades of inaccurate predictions falsify a theory.
I guess the IPCC is just being “careful” — they have a theory from the 1970s that makes wrong predictions, but they keep using it to be comsistent ?
You owe this website an apology, for being so foolish, that you actually claim the work of the IPCC is “careful”.
If you are being misinterpreted, please explain what you really meant (and be more careful with the words you select in the future).
Have a nice day,
Richard Greene
Good catch, Richard.
You’re on to Kummer’s game.
No, it’s not a typo.
This is Kummer. He’s a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing.
He’s somehow gotten Watts to allow him the privilege of posting his nonsense here.
Kummer worships the IPCC and their “science.” It’s hilarious that he has the audacity to mewl about “propaganda,” when every one of his postings is pure influence porn.
He’s got ulterior motives–seemingly to destroy the credibility of climate realists.
Notice that 90% of the readers here don’t catch his IPCC obeisance.
Wait for him to respond to comments by attacking when someone notices his nonsense.
Thanks, Kent:
I always believe that after
you call someone a “fool”,
you should always end your
“discussion” with:
“Have a nice day”.
This is a huge change from
the previous internet rule, that
all arguments end only after
one of the participants is
compared with Hit-ler, or
from a leftist point of view,
compared with Donald Trump !
I welcome character attacks !
They are proof that my comments,
or articles, made sense,
and communicated
clearly, and effectively.
For skeptics, character attacks are
like war medals — proof we are doing
a good job. I’m sure I’d have some if
I allowed comments on my own
climate science blog — but I’m not
online at least four days a week, and
couldn’t “police” the comments most
of the week, so I don’t allow them.
I also don’t care what leftist climate
scaremongers think !
I think you’re misunderstanding what Kummer was referring to. He doesn’t deserve your disdain. He’s as aware as any of us that the IPCC reports are strongly AGW biased, with the Summary for Policy Makers section wildly so and not particularly constrained by what’s in the working groups reports. He’s definitely not worshiping the IPCC in referring to their “careful work”. You should consider how carefully the SPM is written!
But what I see again and again, and what Kummer is pointing out, is politicians and journalists exaggerating what even the SPM and other “climate assessments” actually say. No one is allowed to downplay a worrisome projection, but exaggerations and mischaracterizations are allowed to stand unchallenged by climate scientists. In this way, the warnings of doom get ever more radical, and cooler heads are ignored (or lopped off).
David,
Thanks for your interpretation of my understanding. While that very well may be possible, I’m totally comfortable with my assessment of Kummer. My assessment is based on extensive reviews of his effluent. Initially, I mis-read him, by not reading carefully. Going to his own blog and reading all his product in context is what turned on the light, illuminating this bad actor.
“…what Kummer is pointing out, is politicians and journalists exaggerating what even the SPM and other “climate assessments” actually say.”
Sorry, that’s nonsense. The IPPC, though there are scientists busy in the background, is 100% a political entity, designed to take any input and spew out the same results: CO2 is killing the earth! Man creates CO2. man is bad. Capitalism creates CO2. Capitalism is bad.
The “science” of the IPCC is corrupt. This has been shown time and time again, since its inception. Inserting as “scientific findings” information gleaned from a pamphlet published by an environmental lobbying group and much worse abuses. This is known by all who pay attention to the subject. The IPCC is not a group of untouchable scientists ruined by politicians. It is a group of politicized scientists feeding foregone conclusions to politicians with a mission.
Kummer knows that. He’s not misled. He’s not ignorant. He’s not stupid. The foundation of his schtick is worshiping the IPCC, demanding that the IPCC be respected. And that’s all you need to know. He is a sales con man. His profession is stockbroker–the job in which one stirs up angst, whether the market is going up or going down–the rubes must be antagonized, and you must appear as an “expert,” regardless of how many times you’ve been wrong in the past. That is Kummer’s schtick. The only thing I haven’t figured out is what his end game is–if he was selling stocks, it’d be the pitch for the rubes to buy, buy, buy. Not sure what he’s selling now.
Another excellent indicator of Kummer’s scam is his worship of the unhinged “economist” Paul Krugman. Krugman has nearly never been right about anything. He has made public predictions regularly for 20+ years. His results are much worse than flipping a coin. Yet Kummer constantly recommends Krugman as a source of wisdom to his readers. This worship of the Keynesian economist–whose “science” is based on fake models that are never right–is virtually identical to Kummer’s worship of the IPCC–whose “science” is based on fake models that are never right.
But both Krugman and the IPCC keep the rubes in turmoil and fear. And there you go. That’s Kummer’s con–exactly the same as Krugman and the IPCC–but Kummer gets his cake and eats it too.
How did they get “Texas Precipitation?” (Maybe I missed it?) The average annual rainfall varies widely across the state – < 10 inches in El Paso; about 50 inches in Houston; 37 inches in Dallas; 22 inches in Perryton.
I believe it’s kinda like an average global temperature. You know the one they can adjust with the CO2 thermostat knob when the Neo-Keynesians get a bit bored twiddling the financial knobs with national economies. You feed some stuff into computer models and it tells you the right knob settings.
“Education is a weapon whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands, and at whom it is aimed.”
–Joseph Stalin
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
–Joseph Gobbels
Take one thing that everybody has in common — the weather — and make it perpetually breaking news and potentially scary. That’s what I see. We seem to need a common fear and a common drama — it’s just how humans roll, I guess.
Sadly, this can easily roll us into stupid blobs of intellectual silly putty that just imprint whatever is pressed upon it.
Logical thinking skills have decreased, as CO2 has increased.
The educational system treats the learning process like this silly putty — take a student, imprint something, have the student remember it, regurgitate it, … keep this process going year after year, in a production line that enables tuition and fees to keep flowing to support tenured professors, athletic programs, and physical growth or upkeep, while the minds passing through all this are deeply neglected.
Al Gore Commemorates Earth Day By Using Private Jet To Write ‘Save The Planet’ In The Sky
https://babylonbee.com/news/al-gore-commemorates-earth-day-by-using-private-jet-to-write-save-the-planet-in-the-sky
I’m only online three days a week,
and try to focus on science, finance,
economics, politics, and women who
are top heavy … but I have to admit
the Babylon Bee website,
that I’d never heard of,
is funny and addictive.
Thanks for the link.
From the article: “A people can be molded into a new form by years of skillful propaganda. This is happening in America today, as journalists systematically lie to us about the weather. They have abandoned the careful work of the IPCC, delivering instead a daily diet of weather porn. Climate scientists as a profession are complicit by their silence.”
Complicit. That’s exactly right. Responsible climate scientists should speak up. For the children.
The Media is definitely exaggerating/lying about nearly every extreme weather event that takes place today. They claim to see CAGW in everything. No science backs up any of these claims. First, there is no evidence CO2 is causing the Earth’s atmosphere to do anything it wouldn’t otherwise do, and therefore there is no evidence that CAGW is causing any extreme weather event.
Here’s a headline off my local weather radar website this morning:
“Dangerous Cyclone Kenneth to make unprecedented strike in northern Mozambique”
No doubt it will be blamed on CAGW. Without any evidence at all.
The 50s drought seems still the worst recorded for Texas, and although there may have been some bad ones earlier floods were often recorded during Spanish explorations and occupation. Circa 2010 was first time bay salinities (except for the Laguna Madre) had been recorded as high as the 50s (both date and salt), but as graph shows it was not as long, some said 50s lasted a decade then early 60s also dry. Ranchers in the hill country recalled all the cattle deaths. They built lots of dams after the 50s.
Snowfall was from 5 to 20 inches over most of SE Texas from February 12-15, 1895 (Griffiths, J. F. And G. Ainsworth. 1981. One hundred years of Texas weather. Office Climatologist. Texas A & M. University Monograph Series. page 27), happened again this century. Texas weather often backwards, Bomar’s “Texas Weather” tells you a lot about it.
“..But [Texas’] precipitation is also slowly increasing – a quarter-inch per decade. (Both trends are roughly unchanged from the longer 1895 – 2019 trends.) As this graph from NOAA’s interactive tool shows, rainfall in Texas is always volatile, and droughts are common….”
After the devastating wild fires it had last year, California’s precipitation trend line at the ncdc.gov website is going up just 0.05″ per decade.
https://tinyurl.com/y2nwqea6
If this trend line in California is rising ever so slightly over decades, what roll is precipitation change from CO2 induced climate change supposedly playing in making the wild fires worse?
I had to laugh when the statement was made that Texas had 20 inches of rain in a month as though that was something of a disaster. I used to live in Prince Rupert BC which got over 200 inches a year only to be surpassed by Ocean Falls BC at 280 inches per year. It was dreary but we got on with life.
Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda (Horace Liveright, New York; 1928):
Edward Bernays, some kin to Sigmund Freud, was the propagandist Woodrow Wilson hired involve America in that war in Europe.
OKS,
President Wilson followed the smart advice: hire the best, the power hitters. That’s how to change the course of history.
True then. True now.
The drought of the late 40s – early 50s was a big reason for building a number of dams in central Texas, e.g. Canyon Dam north of San Antonio. Impound water during rainy times and manage the flooding if any. Those dams make farming and ranching a lot easier and surer to yield real cash.
A good resource for Texas lake levels (all but one or two are man-made) is: https://www.waterdatafortexas.org/reservoirs/statewide which currently shows Texas lakes to be collectively 89+% full, a very high number. All 3 North Texas Municipal Water District lakes, which supply some parts of the Dallas area community, including Garland are: Lavon, Jim Chapman, and Tawakoni each of which is currently a foot over conservation level; i.e. over full. When these lakes get down around 60%, we get instructions to conserve water.
Update: a warning from long ago that was ignored.
I strongly recommend this op-ed in the BBC: “Science must end climate confusion” by Richard Betts, 11 January 2010. He cautions about scientists exaggerating or misrepresenting climate science “if it helps make the news or generate support for their political or business agenda.” Too bad they did not heed his warning.
H/t to Richard Betts
Agreed.
And I think more emphasis should be focused on how a warming earth melted 13,000′ of Laurentide Ice Sheet ice from over what is now the Quebec, Canada area, and much the same with all of Canada; and what is now the Chicago area was covered in about one mile of ice, now melted thanks to global warming that started from 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. Thanks to global warming for melting mountains and mountains of North American ice. Precedence. Trillions upon Trillions of metric tons of ice melted with no influence whatsoever by mankind. Not one bit of that warming can be blamed on mankind, not one melted ice cube’s worth.
You know, it’s kind of hard to barbecue in your backyard under a mile of ice, so praise God for global warming. Thank you, God.
Another update:
Also see Richard Betts his comment in the NYT elaborating on his BBC article and providing some context for the decline of arctic sea ice in 2007.
Earth Day, April 22nd. Also birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, aka Lenin … what a coincidence!
Cheers
Mike
I am a Texan of less than 2 years and I must tell you the trends in this state are concerning. Texas is being destroyed by an invasion of immigrants from California and other left-coast states, Illini and East Coasters. These people are refuges fleeing the economic conditions caused by progressism and incompetent governance.
Unfortunately these same refugees lack the intellect and self-awareness to understand what caused the conditions that led them to leave in the first place. The result is the Californication of Texas.