Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A very confused Guardian article which seems to suggest global warming is reproducing 1930s dust bowl conditions, and poor forest management is a climate migration issue.
Americans are becoming climate migrants before our eyes
Alex Domash
Fri 2 Oct 2020 22.05 AESTWhile the US closes the doors on climate migrants from abroad, it must acknowledge that the problem has already come home
In November 2018, I traveled with a caravan of thousands of Central American migrants as they marched across Mexico towards the US border. While some were seeking refuge in the US from gang violence or political persecution, many others were looking to escape something much more subtle: climate change. The Trump administration decried these climate migrants as “invaders” and attempted to build a wall to keep them out.
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The message from the visceral scenes unfolding in the western US is clear: climate displacement isn’t something that happens only outside of our borders. It has already begun in the US, and we can no longer turn our backs on the more than 20 million climate migrants worldwide.
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But the American dream of tomorrow is also under great stress. The climate displacement of the Dust Bowl era is already here – and has been here for many, many years.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/02/climate-change-migration-us-wildfires
Little of what Alex Domash describes has anything to do with anthropogenic climate change.
The dust bowl was not the product of anthropogenic CO2, it was a natural climate shift – which could happen again, anytime. Even most alarmists admit there wasn’t enough anthropogenic CO2 in the early 20th century to make much of a difference.
Reconstructions of the past US climate suggests pre-Columbian America was plagued by decades long mega-droughts, centuries before anthropogenic CO2 became a significant issue.
As for the forest fires, even greens like California Governor Gavin Newsom sometimes admit there have been a few shortcomings with forest management.
My point is, another severe US drought could happen anytime, regardless of what happens to anthropogenic CO2.
The question is, what to do about it. Do you bunker down with wind turbines and solar panels, and hope the rains come this year?
Or do you think ahead, release as much CO2 plant fertiliser as is convenient, and build up national engineering and industrial capabilities, to create the capacity to adapt to and overcome natural disasters like droughts?
Given a future mega-drought or dust bowl is inevitable, regardless of climate policy, it surely makes more sense to ensure we can do something about it when it happens, to ensure we have the economic and engineering capacity to affordably transport or even desalinate gigalitres of water, to replace whatever rainfall is lost to the drought.
Greens like Alex might want to cower in their eco-bunkers, or run away from the pain, accepting whatever nature throws their way. I prefer a future of vast engineering projects, in which mankind has achieved our utmost potential, including where necessary taking control of nature. A future in which disasters like extended droughts no longer pose any threat to national wellbeing and prosperity.
It is no surprise Guardian readership is plummeting. It is the most ridiculous newspaper, read only by middle class low earners. People very much like it journalists. Monbiot for example. Comes from a wealthy family but struggles to make more than 40 k a year. That is pitiful. No wonder he is so envious of his peers who went on to have successful careers, and wants to destroy the very system they benefitted from.
‘Bring everyone down to my level of low achievement’, that is the Socialist mantra.
A clique of bourgeois socialists run the Guardian. Since chief editor Alan Rushbridger was removed for defying MI5 by refusing to hand over their copy of the Wikileaks material, it has been turned from a newspaper into a political campaign platform, along the US media model. That was the end of journalism at the Guardian.
As for the “refugees” from California, they are not climate refugees, they are seeking refuge from the insane politics of Newsom et al. Many seem to be flocking Austin Texas.
Many traditionally left individuals, like Joe Rogan, have had it with WOKE BS.
As they say: I did not abandon the left, the left abandoned me !
Your comment is spot on. I was born in Glendale California back in 1963 and until recently lived my entire life in the State. It was a wonderful place to grow up and live for quite a long time, but due to illegal immigration and the amnesty of the eighties the left gradually gained an unshakable hold over the State Government. Since then it’s been like watching a slow motion train wreck. I was glad to finally escape, yet sad at the same time. I’ll always regard California as home, but I’ll never go back.
I feel the same way about Washington State. I loved growing up there in the 80’s and 90’s. Lived in Vancouver, WA and spent many wonderful days in Portland, OR enjoying the city and all it had to offer. I would also take advantage of Seattle though not as often since it was a good two hour drive. Back then, Portland and Seattle were clean and beautiful with some homeless people but nothing like today and NO ANTIFA goons running the streets. It was fantastic and of course the natural beauty of the area. Mt Hood, the Columbia River Gorge, the coast, Mt St Helens and so many other wonderful and beautiful places to visit.
I live in Arizona now and I love it here. However, I find myself thinking back to those days of endless fishing, camping, hiking, snowboarding and city life with friends and family I once enjoyed so much. Sadly, even though I still consider Washington home, I will never go back. That boat has sailed long ago.
The “reporter” Alex is already at a low level of achievement. Those were pretend Climate Refugees he was marching with, from Central America. They actually were Socialism Refugees. As a professional person who has worked in Central America, both in cities and in the field, I am certain it is one of the most easily cultivated sectors of the world. Add in fantastic tourism settings, and you can’t go wrong. Unless you elect socialists/crooks/Marxists wannabees. Socialism Refugees also includes some Kalifornia emigrants headed for other states.
When the caravans were traveling to the US, I do not recall even one word that they were “climate refugees.” That appears to be latter day conclusion by the author.
I migrated from my TV room to my kitchen today. Does that make me a food refugee?
Actually, the Guardian fulfils a valuable role, and it will be a shame when it finally folds. By being wrong about everything, every single time, the newspaper tells us what will NOT happen. See, for example, the Guardian’s embrace of CAGW.
Wasn’t the Dust Bowl also partly due to poor arid land farming practice…?
Mechanization of farming methods (the tractor and pulled combines) were adopted quickly by the US farmers between 1910-1930. Lots of land came under cultivation with these new labor saving machinery.
That did two things, 1) produced temporary production surpluses that crashed prices and led to more attempts to plant more to compensate, and then 2) bad plowing practices led to severe soil erosion when short-term drought of 3-5 years hit.
The combination led to collapsed farm prices, failed farms, then dust bowl when the farmers kept using bad soil turning plowing practices. The dust bowl with massive all continent wide dust storms. The sad irony is that whilst this was happening in North America, in USSR Stalin was brutally collectivizing farms (run by the kulaks) which collapsed food production and brought about mass starvation from Ukraine to the Urals. The US migration was voluntary under economic duress. The USSR mass “migration” of the kulaks to the Siberian gulags was by bayonet and gunpoint.
In 1837 John Deere invented the Sod-Buster plough that enabled farmers to plough up the prairie grassland that had accumulated in fertility over hundreds of years.
It was called the ‘Plow that Broke the Plains’ and it did in both senses.
Fields were left with no cover over winter and in a dry spring the soil was vulnerable to wind erosion, hence the dust bowls developed in the 1930.
The fertility was ‘mined’ over a period of years which also reduced the ability of the prairies to grow crops.
It is a great shame that by the 1920’s Hickman and Brady had written a book called The Nature and Properties of Soils which contained the knowledge that would have helped farmers avoid the mistakes of their forefathers.
Another problem was caused by trying yearly cropping in areas where the rainfall was only sufficient for a crop every other year. By leaving a field fallow for two or three years enough moisture could be accumulated to grow a crop. The fallow of course has to have some form of cover such as stubble to avoid erosion.
As Michael Ozanne says above poor arid land farming practices caused the problem, mainly through ignorance and the transfer of European wet climate farming practices to America.
The dust bowl was also the result of the weather, it happened toward the end of the hottest decade in the last century, we haven’t had as hot a decade since then.
And the dustbowl was completly over hyped, most people believe it covered the entire continent, but it actually occurred in about 40 counties located at the corner of Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas. That’s it. If the book and movie Grapes of Wrath had not been released, almost no one would have noticed.
The dustbowl is mostly Hollywood myth.
Klem,
A couple of quibbles.
While the source of the dust was in OK, TX, KS, CO, and NM, the dust storms impacted much larger areas. I don’t think it’s true that nobody would have been aware of it if not for novels and Hollywood.
Second point—I would argue that it was not a decade of heat that caused the dust, but a decade of drought that caused the heat. The dust was mostly the result of soul erosion due to bad farming practices arising from mechanization. Many previous droughts of longer duration had not caused similar results.
Yes if we have learned anything including on here, drought comes first, as the land dries out there is less moisture in the air and then day time temps increase while night time temp decreases causing issues from both ends
And yes the only real solution by drought is more CO2 for plant resiliency and big engineering projects to create and save more water
Funny typo—soul erosion! We seem to have plenty of that too. But I meant to say soil erosion.
Soul erosion is what happens if you read too many Guardian articles
Nobody in WDC politics believed it was real until a massive dust storm blew its way right into Washington in the middle of a Congressional hearing about it.
A contributing factor was also the removal of wind breaks to gain an incremental increase in area to plant. This allowed the wind to scour the earth for miles at a time with no impediment.
Yes, I have seen that in action
New problem is that farm equipment is getting so big, the spread on cultivators and seeders getting so wide that people are starting to cut down some of those shelter belts, for instance where they line roads 100 feet from the road.
An example of technology causing an issue
Problem solved if the farmer plants new belt further back from road but since we are in wet period there isn’t much push to do so
Then when next drought comes there won’t be enough moisture to establish them
Short sighted, once again
Tim Gorman <==== Then the installation of miles of wind farms would have been beneficial!
The only reason for my comment is that the installation of miles of wind farms has a number of effects, and we don’t know the first thing about them as a system. Slowing down winds can have major, negative consequences; slowing the transport of water, organic materials, and minerals in addition to interfering with convective cooling of the surface. We haven’t, as far as I know, even bothered to start looking at such things.
The event was not “climate change”, and it was quite wide-spread in the great plains (south to north). This was a very complex, and sad, situation.
The best report I have read is this:
https://www.timothyeganbooks.com/the-worst-hard-time
Much of the might of the Roman Empire (or Egypt or Mesopotamia) was based upon developing its water resources, and supplying water via aqueducts and/or canals to cities and farms. That was some of the earliest great civilizations that realized this and put into practise this simple fact. There is no reason not to do the same now on a massive 1000 year plan to ensure we weather any drought for as long as necessary. There is no shortage of fresh water on the planet..perhaps some places are more challenged than others, but if there is a will, there is a way. Even desalination makes sense if it is done wisely and properly with every drop managed and recycled. Israel does a great job with their scarce and expensive water resources.
What we are losing is the will to be able to do anything, especially anything to do with water. And energy. Unless it is on some ill thought ought plan like renewable energy which has become unproductive and expensive as we see with solar and wind. Water and energy should be the least of our problems, and future civilizations probably will figure this out that the multiplier effect to implement such pays eternal dividends and is worth the cost to develop, if petty politics and ideologies can be cast aside. We can have our cake and eat it to. Let’s get with the program and solve these problems so that future generations have a chance at basic survival, and paying back the massive stupid debt we are leaving them.
“What we are losing is the will to be able to do anything, especially anything to do with water. “
How true that is !
Here is the dam capacity installed per decade in Australia.
Is it any wonder that things like recycling waste water in cities is having to be considered.
“Recycling waste water” makes common sense, especially for irrigation.
Of course, we’ve been indirectly “recycling waste water” practically everywhere already.
The processes involved in making waste water “safe” even for urban irrigation are quite expensive, and cannot be absolutely guaranteed to be 100% effective.
Recycling water has been quite common in the UK.
In my gap year I worked in a laboratory where the tap water would turn cloudy if silver nitrate was added to it due to the chloride ions present. The chloride ions were present in relatively large quantities from the salt added to cooking pots.
The water from the River Severn was said to have been through three sets of kidneys since it left Plynlymon in the Welsh Hills, via Birmingham, Worcester and Gloucester.
One of my tasks was putting water through a de-ioniser for use in the lab.
We do this in Arizona regularly as well. You will see signs posted to not drink the irrigation water because its ‘reclaimed’ waste water. We use it for irrigation, park ponds and lakes for fishing and recreation and now for snow making at Snowbowl Ski Area north of Flagstaff. In the US, we are already required to sanitize waste water to a point that it is safe to be released back into nature so why not use it? Water is a rare commodity here. We might as well put it to good use.
California has abandoned a marvelous, effective state-wide water management program because the new group-think has been so distorted by the “climate change” canard. Until the state re-examines their policies and returns to sound scientific, economic, and engineering principles, the place will contingue to generate more “climate migrants”. Apparently it is easier in California to blame Mother Nature than to look in the mirror.
The dust bowl was caused by removing all trees that acted as wind breaks as well as plowing up land that probably shouldn’t have been plowed. Current farming practices use a plow that doesn’t disturb the surface but yet prepares the sub surface for planting. Irrigation and trees help keep the topsoil in place however from what I understand, some of the the trees are being removed again. Farming methods that work well in a wetter climate can’t be used in drier areas of the country and if you’re to farm in a drier climate, you need to adapt to what mother nature provides.
On the button
People are leaving California because of taxes and public safety issues. A U-Haul truck from San Francisco to Boise Idaho on Oct. 26 costs $1603. Going the other way it’s $257. Go figure.
Yep, Stupidity Migrants not Climate Migrants
It seems the smokescreen fo the Ca exodus has been revealed
Climate legislation migrants are a different concept from climate migrants…..
Cool stat. That’s just market forces in action. There’s so many wanting to leave S.F that demand is way ahead of supply and prices adjust to match.
So you hire in Boise, do the round trip and don’t go back. You still make a saving of around 50%.
Totally agree that this shows how bad the situation is in California, but the idea of doing a roundtrip rental from Boise doesn’t make sense.
First of all, the one-way price is based on where you return the truck. They are subsidizing the cost for the Boise-SF leg, because they would otherwise have to pay someone for at least 20 hrs and bus fare to travel to Boise and drive back. A “local” rental with massive excess miles isn’t going to be anywhere near $257.
Let’s guess it’s $0.75 per mile and $25 for the local rental. $25 + (2 x 639 miles x $0.75/mile) = $1,021. Your cost for extra fuel for the 639-mile leg from Boise to SF assuming $2/gal and 10 mpg will be about $128. So $1,149, plus your cost for extra tolls. All told maybe you can save $450, but it requires that you spend an extra 21-22 hours on the road. (Instead of hauling your car behind the U-Haul and taking one 9:20 trip with three half-hour breaks, you drive your car to Boise (10:50 with breaks), you rent the truck and drive back to SF (another 10:50 with breaks). Are you doing this 21:40 of driving without renting a motel room? Sleeping in the truck at the Wal-Mart maybe?) Finally you pack the truck and do another 10:50 drive to Boise. So that’s at least an extra 21:40 of your time, maybe closer to 30 hrs if we count sleeping in the truck in the Wal-Mart.
Your $450 payday comes from taking an extra 21-30 hours of your time. $450/30 = $15/hr
If you are paid $31k/yr and you’re young enough, maybe that makes sense to you. But if you and your spouse have a household income of $117k/yr and you are both foregoing a day’s pay in order to waste your 30 hours beating the man, guess what, you just gave up $450 to save $450.
The route from San Francisco to Boise is uphill. /snark
This. For people from the bay area and Los Angeles it’s everything from homeless and crap in the streets to Antifa terrorism. For other parts of CA it’s mostly about taxes, present and future (everybody knows about CalPERS’ huge unfunded pension obligations, which cannot be changed or avoided by any means according to the state supreme court). And Newsom has added needless extended lockdowns on top of those issues.
I’m desperate to get out before the other states build a wall.
A modest proposal:
Most of the current and future government pensioners probably are clustered in big coastal cities, right? So here’s the deal…Let each county vote on seceding from the state and federal union to form the Democratic People’s Republic of California (DPRC). Each county would be responsible for the pension costs of their own residents. Rural counties stay in the state of California while the loons go off to form the DPRC, taking most of their unfunded pension debt with them and hopefully most of the state supreme court (in)justices as well.
All we need is enabling federal legislation to let them go. Maybe include strict new skill-based immigration reform in the deal.
Right, so it is the ECONOMIC CLIMATE and the PERSONAL RIGHTS CLIMATE in California that they are fleeing from. Where did the idea of not letting them move to another state ever come up?
When you live in an area that has 400 out of 500 years in drought, you may not like it when the 100 years of wet ends, but that’s life as an adult. Endure or move, but do not complain if you stay.
Hi Ralph,
And I read that the situation is similar for anyone wanting to get out of New York – I haven’t heard anyone suggest that’s because of the stifling heat due to gullible waming. I guess the warming due to burning cars and buildings coupled with all the hot air being emitted by the likes of the mayor and governor might be a bit much to tolerate though; in addition to the taxes and crime.
Even if you believe what “they” say…they don’t say that. Clearly the Guardian doesn’t know, understand or believe what they sneeringly refer to as “the science.”
The IPCC Paris statement says that between 1918-2018 extreme weather events of all sorts such as all kinds of storms have lessoned as have droughts and fires…both numerically and in potency. Plus, as we all know the planet has greened substantially with all it’s lovely new CO2 and will continue to do so unless the morons of the world put a stop to it.
Of course, by then we will be well into the Modern Minimum and the morons will be saying CO2 caused the cooling……I have my own ideas about what should happen to these people, but when I express them here I get moderated, so will refrain and let your own imaginations run wild.
“all kinds of storms have lessoned”
What was the lesson?
Don’t be a spelling nazi
Just with the trolls
That’s one lesson Jeff never seems to learn.
Tommy Wils guessed what would happen if it all turned out to be a scam
He revealed it in the climate gate emails
Just refer to Tommy Wils, people can look it up
Don’t California my Arizona.
Leave your damn, failed liberal politics in California if you leave.
We’re inundated with California migrants in Northern Nevada. They don’t understand why they left, and think we Nevadans are knuckle-draggers. BTW: they’re disproportionately neurotic.
Arizona is worse off than California or maybe more accurately further down the drain. Check out https://www.fs.usda.gov/4fri National Forests are not mismanaged so much as unmanaged. Overgrowth is a symptom. The root cause is the legal system that freezes any real, long term mitigating action. Fixing the symptom unaffordable. Short sighted politicians would rather throw firefighting dollars at the symptom on a yearly basis than fix the 1973 endangered species act that produced huge, long term unanticipated consequences.
Joel
That is one of the problems with immigrants in general. They are loath to change the way they think and do things. It generally goes over their heads that their culture has failed to provide them with the opportunities and quality of life they desire, and yet they want to continue as before, just in a different place instead of in a different way. That problem is amplified when there is mass migration within a short time period. They end up fouling their new nest by ignoring how things are done by those who were already there.
The very fact that Australia sits on top of the bulk of the world’s uranium reserves, I find Australia’s lack of reliable, affordable electricity for things like massive numbers of coastal desal plants and the pumps and canals to push the water to where it is needed as ironic.
Just needed a few new dams to be built, then no need for desal etc.
Welcome Reef, Wolfdene, Mitchell River, Tillegra, and a few along the eastern coast channeling water to the other side of the Great Dividing Range
Plenty of sequestered carbon , pretty much the cleanest in the world to be had for power.
Large chunks of California with no forest also burned… you can’t say wineries burn because there’s no forest management in the vicinity.
forest management could be better: it isn’t the prime cause, the only issue.
The California climate has changed and will keep changing…
I had a Giff last night and it woke me up,. ( It was me that was screaming )
Why do the forest fire statistics plunge as soon as one crosses the US-Canada border (where active forest management is standard practice)?
Why do many fires in CA begin in areas where people live and along highways? A lot of it is probably arson by eco-activists. Which is also the case in Australia. Wineries don’t start to burn by themselves…
There is no active fire mngt in Canada. We’ve had a series of very wet summer in the west. In Alberta, nothing has been done to protect communities that burned only a few years ago. When the fires return, and they will, it will be the same story as California.
In Canada, unemployed people don’t generally start forest fires so that they can get a job as a firefighter. The pay isn’t worth it.
…except Canada allows timber harvesting while California does not. Termites in California just can’t keep up with the excess.
A WEATHER episode.. Californian climate is still Californian climate.
Yes it has changed a bit..
There were FAR longer dry periods in the not so distant past.
And yes, the climate will keep changing, just as IT ALWAYS HAS. !
You have absolutely no evidence that human replenished atmospheric CO2 has made any difference to the climate whatsoever.
Where did all the fires start? Probably not in grape vines!
At least forest management may actually do something explain how emission control is going to stop fires for the next 100 years please Griff?
So Griff, are you saying the fires started in the wineries and spread to the forests, or did they start in the forests and spread to the wineries (along with any other combustible landscape)?
For kicks and grins, examine your “large chunks of California…also burned” and see how many were adjacent to forest fires and how many burned concurrently. The evidence is there.
Large chunks of CA without forests burn every year. Nothing unusual there.
Forest fires don’t stop when they get to edge of the forest. Funny thing that.
The climate in CA is not the same as it was last year. So what.
On the other hand CA has suffered from droughts for 10’s of thousands of years. Many of these droughts have lasted for more than 100 years. The article that griff didn’t bother to read mentions these.
griff posted, INCREDIBLY: “The California climate has changed and will keep changing…”
Finally, a reasonable, fact-based comment!
Yes, California’s climate has been changing for a least the last 60 million years (i.e., since the Paleocene) when its land masses formed (via plate tectonics) in what we would today recognize as the state’s geography . . . see Christopher Scotese’s beautiful animation of plate tectonic movements at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_iEWvtKcuQ (among many other web links)
Over those 60 million years, paleoclimatology research has DOCUMENTED that there have been widespread swings in “California’s” overlying atmospheric temperature, CO2 concentration, and humidity, as well as forest wildfire activity, precipitation (flooding/drought conditions), mountain snow pack depths during summers, etc., etc.
Homo sapiens has been present for only the last 0.5% of that interval. Mankind’s widespread use of fossil fuels has only occurred over the last 0.0004% of those 60 million years.
So, yes indeed, California’s climate has changed and will keep changing . . . independent of human activities.
griff
The problem in the Wine Country (and previously in Paradise) speaks to the mindset of most Californians. They are oblivious to the risk of building flammable structures (commercial one-story buildings often have flat roofs sealed with asphalt) and planting highly flammable landscaping (including fast-growing eucalyptus trees) around their properties without fire barriers. That is, private property generally has NO ‘forest management!” Private property owners rarely plan on dealing with fires, even when they build in rugged terrain that has difficult access and contains an abundance of vegetation that can bring fire to them. Private property owners are more concerned with appearances than with the reality of risk — not unlike how public lands are managed.
When California no longer has a Mediterranean Climate, I will agree that the climate has changed.
Griff
Jim Steele has given you the answer many times
Invasive annual grasses brought by settlers outcompete the native grasses and die back every summer
Massive fires result with nary a tree in sight
If you would simply absorb things you look at you would be better off
Then we would be better off too although watching you get spanked every day is its own reward
More ignorance on display from the griff.
“you can’t say wineries burn because there’s no forest management in the vicinity.” I can tell you have never been there or looked at the satellite view of the area. The wineries are in the valleys surrounded by, hills & mountains covered in forests.
“forest management could be better: it isn’t the prime cause,” Sort of true, the prime cause is totally useless state government, elected by misled folks, the non management of the forests is only one of the symptoms of their stupidity. Luckily Mother Nature knows how to cleanup the forests for them to regenerate, uncontrolled burns does a great job of clearing the underbrush, but also does far greater harm.
“The California climate has changed and will keep changing…”, agreed it is always in state of change, and the change has been minuscule over the last 50 years, well within normal weather fluctuations.
If the Kalifornia government want to blame Climate Change for the fires they better start adapting because screwing up the electricity production, transportation system and the environment as they are planning will have no impact on the climate.
There be grass fires in California every year. Wake up the Woke.
You could of course allow nature to recover by attending to details in that regard, which does not mean anything but planting ‘nurse’ trees which resist drought extremely well; guide surface water to locations where plants are planted; create keyline water retention areas to help build up groundwater; produce mulch by the shedload and leave it to turn into topsoil, either using animals or simply letting nature do its thing in the winter; and then plant succession species to move toward a self-sustaining system.
There is no new technology needed and plenty of global experts know exactly how to do it. Because they have done it in desert areas even more extreme than California.
It just defeats the false choice between ‘old machinery’ vs ‘new machinery’. Nature requires no machinery to recover, and any machinery we choose to use to take advantage of nature recovering is just the icing on the cake.
I confidently expect this to be suppressed as this site practices totalitarian suppression in exactly the same way as Twitter and Facebook. There is no free debate here, only green nutters vs oil cheerleaders.
amazing isnt the the global climate always seems to settle in California to show its affects?
Ca’s problems are always externalised to climate, the Feds, perfect storms, mystical forces etc
Never the inevitable outcomes of choices Ca leadership keeps making
Occams Inconvenient Razor doubts their convoluted excuses.
New York generates many climate refugees. They move to Florida.
Curious George:
“New York generates many climate refugees. They move to Florida….”.
Very true and just fine so long as they moved to Miami .. now they’re migrating to our side, the Florida Gulf coast and that’s not OK… like Arizona, Nevada Texas etc. you create a nice place to live and all the folks who screwed up their neighborhoods want to move in!
Ask anyone from Lebanon, or Uganda… better stop there.
Cheers
Mike
California is already losing refugees – refugees from crazy climate policies and the corresponding crazy cost of living. It has a retarding rate of population growth. Yet the greatest population growth is generally in the areas most at risk from fires – which rather contradicts the basis of the article.
And where has one of the fastest expanding populations? Yes American climate refugees are so afraid of global warming they are heading to Arizona in droves.
The Guardian is in such a mess that it recently sent out redundancy notices with insufficient postage, so the employees had to pay to get them! Only people like Owen Jones, Jeremy Corbyn, and Griff, believe the Guardian.
“the greatest population growth is generally in the areas most at risk from fires”. I doubt it. Most Californians live in big cities, forests are prone to fires.
CG
There has been a movement, particularly among retired people, to leave the high-rent cities and go to locations in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, such as Paradise. Part of the problem is that they are living on limited incomes and find it difficult to make their properties fire resistant, and being aged, don’t have the ability to do the work themselves. In Paradise, the trees survived better than the homes, trailers, and flat-topped commercial buildings.
Paradise population change 2000-2017 +1%, 2005-2010 -2%.
CG
I’m not sure what your point is about population change in Paradise. I have a longer viewpoint because I had bought 5 acres in Paradise in 1971, and my ex-wife built a house there after her parents had retired to Paradise. The house is gone. Some of the population loss between 2005 and 2010 may be the result of the bad fire in 2008.
Still, nice of you to include a picture of the Gruaniad’s lead writers…
(Ex-reader)
US states have been receiving migrants from California for decades. It’s called californication. I heard before Oregon became defiled by fleeing californicators there were signs at the CA/OR border that said “Don’t californicate Oregon.”
“A very confused Guardian article ”
Show me a Guardian article that isn’t confused. There are around 4 such articles every day.
” I prefer a future of vast engineering projects, in which mankind has achieved our utmost potential, including where necessary taking control of nature. A future in which disasters like extended droughts no longer pose any threat to national wellbeing and prosperity.”
This is a joke isn’t it? Because this level of hubris and delusion of grandeur is terminal.
Shades of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on the Moon landing : “we are so small”.
Giant leaps are what we actually do – look at history.
Royal prerogatives tend to medieval, feudal, backwardness.
The nut case who believes that man can control the climate is whining about hubris. Now that thar is funny.
As to using engineering projects to help people survive droughts has been going on since the days of the ancient Egyptians. I’m not surprised to find out that you are ignorant of that as well.
The only thing around here that is terminal is your level of ignorance.
Probably a new low, or high, in ridiculously stupid comments
So building water storage is hubris?
A non-retard would call it good planning
As has been noted elsewhere on here, drought is the normal condition in california
Always has been
And preparing for that is bad
It’s not that I had any respect for you before but jeez. Can’t you even try?
Earth can get wiped out by a comet tomorrow, life doesn’t come with guarantees and being born doesn’t give you a right to exist. Everything in nature knows that except greentards who think there is some optimal condition …. adapt or die has and always will be the choices.
What a truly moronic comment from loy.
So long as dams and water engineering is allowed to keep up with population growth, (not held back by green anti-human idealism), there is no reason it cannot be done.
Already hundreds of projects in existence that help people cope with drought. etc.
They are called DAMS and Water Schemes.
Loy’s mind is stuck in a tiny non-space, with no ability for rational thought.
How ironic is Loy-doh’s stupid comment. Someone that believes man’s emissions of CO2 is the control knob of the planet’s climate says it’s “hubris and delusion of grandeur” to think man can control nature. Loy-doh’s lack of self-awareness is astounding.
So far, I have not seen any of these ‘migrant Californies” arriving here. Considering the rather mild climate of most of California itself, they really would not – er, make that WILL not like Midwestern winters, which are frequently cold, full of heavy snows, and not Hooman-friendly.
That’s mostly because the Weather Gods (Uranus and Neptune, or Tefnut and Horus) really don’t care what Those Pipples want.
What a confused critique…
> The dust bowl was not the product of anthropogenic CO2
Neither the article had claimed that.
> [The dust bowl] was a natural climate shift
Well, you deniers are very eager to blame bad forest management practices to get even the flimsiest reason for really unprecedented fires. How then a very well documented result of bad cultivation practices misses your eyes?
> Do you bunker down with wind turbines and
> solar panels, and hope the rains come this year?
1. Why do you think this is the only solution? Actually, scientists are unequivocal, the solution is reducing and eventually stopping fossil CO2 emissions asap. There are a lot of possible alternatives (including nuclear), and whether you like it or not, these exist and are well known.
2. Why do you think the problem is not real if the solutions are (perceived) bad?
> build up national engineering and industrial
> capabilities, to create the capacity to adapt to
> and overcome natural disasters like droughts?
Reducing fossil CO2 output IS a form of adaptation and it needs a buildup in “national engineering and industrial capabilities”, ‘cos we need, you know, alternatives.
> even desalinate gigalitres of water
Actually the unpredictable output of “renewables” are very well suited for this purpose.
The world needs way more CO2 not less. The more we have the better the plants grow thereby producing more food for the people. The more fossil fuels we use brings more of the world’s people out of poverty which lowers the birth rate so we won’t overpopulate our planet. I can’t remember who said it but one of my favorite quotes is “Life without fossil fuels is brutal and short.”
“Well, you deniers are very eager to blame bad forest management practices to get even the flimsiest reason for really unprecedented fires.”
What the well documented bad forest management practices of CA has to do with with the Dust Bowl I don’t know. However I am quite sure that in what passes for your mind, that made sense when you thought it
The scientists are not unequivocal about CO2. The problem is that you just declare that anyone who doesn’t agree with you isn’t a scientist.
THe problem is bad, however the cause of it isn’t CO2.
There isn’t a shred of evidence that CO2 is causing a problem.
If wind and solar are busy de-salinating water, then they aren’t available for anything else.
CA doesn’t have enough power to go around as it is, and you want to add de-sal to the mix.
You are even dumber than you pretend to be.
Better would be a series of coastal located nuclear plants, just like SONGS and Diablo Canyon, that could use their off-peak hours and coolant water for desalinization! But that would too logical for the easily panicked ignoramuses who think a reactor is just a bomb by another name!
Of course, once the insane demonization of CO2 falls into the dustbin of history some of the power could be used in cement production to keep our “plant food” levels high; hopefully in the 1,000ppm range!
“Well, you deniers…. Well, you deniers…. Well, you deniers … blah , blah blah..”
Tell us nyncompoo… what do we “DENY” that you can provide hard scientific proof for.?
Do you have any empirical scientific evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2 ?
In what way has the global climate changed in the last 50 years , that can be SCIENTIFICALLY proven to be of human causation?
cue…… more blustering idiocy and not a scrap of scientific evidence from the marxist nyholist.
“Actually the unpredictable output of “renewables” are very well suited for this purpose.”
So long as it is backed up by something RELIABLE.
Constant pressure needed on the membranes.
The whole idea of a desal plant is that it be able to produce water WHEN NEEDED..
Wind and solar, need not apply, unless they pretend to be part of the fossil fuel grid.
“I prefer a future of vast engineering projects, in which mankind has achieved our utmost potential, including where necessary taking control of nature.”
Well then have a look at NAWAPA, the North American Water and Power Alliance, updated from a 1960’s Parsons report. It is high time to think big, again :
NAWAPA XXI Animated Overview
https://larouchepac.com/20120410/nawapa-xxi-overview
Some forget that California, originally Calida Fornax, the hot oven, is now a huge agricultural power.
A project where Alaska and Canada will suffer unimaginable destruction and no benefits while California reaps all the benefits will not be easy to sell.
What California really needs is reliable power and desalination plants.
And stop using water for lawns. Lawns in a mediterranean climate is absurd.
Matthew Sykes – thank you for ‘middle class low earners’, for readers and journalists of the Guardian. That’s good. A few weeks ago (or months, maybe? Covid time is forgettable) Rod Liddle, in the Spectator, wrote of the academic class in the UK as ‘struggling to hold on to middle class status’ (or something like that) – which is another way of putting the same thing. An old friend of mine use to call them, with genial contempt, ‘the thinking class’. It is interesting to think of the universities in the UK becoming a low-pay, mass participation enterprise. A low achievement enterprise as well, in many areas (not all – I need a way out for myself and my friends). It is no surprise that the climate change scam should have found UK academia such a congenial environment for its intellectual Ponzi scheme.
The U.S has had climate refugees since the 50’s. People in the north would retire and move to Florida for the warm winters. Canadians have been coming to Florida in winter for the same reason. Unfortunately so did those from New York City but at least they congregated in the SE portion of the State which helped keep their contamination mostly to that area.
As we speak the French Navy, despite being paid by the UK Government to stop migrant boats from Channel crossing is now guiding them into British waters. Then, the UK Border Service is taking the migrants to port where they are sent to hotels at taxpayer expense. Not only with zero identity, and security checks, but no way of ever reliably doing them … ever.
And if this can happen under a UK Conservative Government, what hope can a UK citizen have that they can be safe on their streets ?
Climate migrants, or folks just getting tired of the crapola that California has turned into over the past couple of decades?
If Californians want to migrate, there are a lot of other reasons but not climate.
So those migrants from central America were not only fleeing rape, torture, poverty and abysmal governments, no they also fled from ‘climate change’. That ‘climate change’ must have been the coup de grace, surely. Compared that that the other ones must have been tollerable.
From the boxed excepts in the above article that were taken from the cited The Guardian article:
“.. . migrants as they marched across Mexico towards the US border. While some were seeking refuge in the US from gang violence or political persecution, many others were looking to escape something much more subtle: climate change.”
And by what objective data did The Guardian establish the truth of that assertion? And what was the actual percentage (the “many others”) that were emigrating from Central and South America specifically because of climate change™? And were they doing it because of a rise of 0.14 °C (0.25 °F) in temperature over the last 10 years, or because of a rise of 30 mm (1.2 inches) in sea level over the last 10 years, or because of something else, such as too much rain or too little rain?
And here is where the outright stupidity of The Guardian reaches its peak, at least in regard to this particular article it published: what is the rationale for those claimed to be wanting to immigrate to the US, who are smart enough to claim their reason for doing so was to flee “climate change”, for not at the same time being smart enough to understand the US is ALSO experiencing “climate change”?
Such fluff . . . but completely expected from The Guardian.
We’ll be glad to buy their timber products if they ever restart beneficial forestry again.
But migrants from California won’t be welcome to knowledgeable freedom loving people. Those moving from California to escape the problems they voted for bring their ultra-stupid voting destructiveness with them when they move. No thanks.
Political Climate Change (PCC) is a first-order forcing of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Immigration Reform (CAIR).
It appears to be a “perfect storm” of dislocation ongoing around the world. “Climate”
not always the motivating factor. Boeing is moving their 787 production line
to the east coast and going non-union. Washington is just CA-north IMO.
Depending on how the political decisions go this might be a trend for a while.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/10/01/boeing-moving-all-787-production-away-from-seattle-area-possibly-costing-1000-jobs/#6be0de1f1e52
Dan-O,
And it looks like Washinton’s idea for how to prevent them from moving is to threaten to tax them more! That should work out well! When will Progressive politicians realize that they and their policies are not welcomed by any free-thinking and prosperous people? Most likely right after pigs fly!
The Forbes article point to a tax break of $1.4 Billion between 2014-2020,
I think that the combination of covid effects on travel especially
airlines is a major factor. But yes I agree with your view on the progressive
policys esp the “climate change/energy ” policys coming from Inslee’s administration.
The left coast governors Inslee , Brown, and Newsom are marching lockstep
over a cliff. I hope that the aero sector can hang on and get through this.
“Australia is currently suffering a severe drought. ”
Only in Guardianworld™ , not in the real one.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=drought&period=3month&area=nat
Yes. Just been at Forbes, NSW, which last year was badly drought affected. Massive crops sucking in all available sunshine, heaps of water on the ground, heaps of insects. I have no doubt that the financial effects of the drought are continuing though, until some money starts flowing through the local economy.
“A very confused Guardian article”
Bad form—redundant!
Proper form:
1) A very confused article
or
2) A Guardian article
To cite H L Mencken when asked to explain what a tautology is:
“It means saying the same thing twice, but using different words, like “ignorant politician””
Uhhh, guess what?
Americans citizens moving from one state to another cannot be hindered by the Government.
That’s called “Freedom” here in US of A.
The baseless claim that they are leaving because of baseless claim of CAGW (or whatever cloaks they throw over the original baseless claim) is, itself, a baseless claim.
They are leaving CA because of the taxes, the politics, the poop in the streets of “sanctuary cities”, the unreliable “green energy” policies, etc. etc.
It IS a “mannmade” migration but “Climate” has little or nothing to do with it.
(If it was “Climate”, why are people also leaving New York?)
Not one of the discussions of fires above mentioned the conditions that cause all mega fires: IGNITION with WIND. Without ignition there is no fire. Without wind we can contain and put out fires. 10-20 mph prior mitigation, fire breads, firewise, climate, etc. can help minimize size and damage. 20-50 mph the most we can do is slow it down and protect property; any pre-conditions much don’t matter. Above 50 mph it’s gonna do what it’s gonna do, so the best we can do is try to get everyone out safely. You may quibble with the limit points but the fact is that the areas with traditional high seasonal winds are going to have mega fires because ignition is going to sometime happen at the wrong time.
“Subtle” is not how you spell “nonexistent”.
Does that mean that those people who are trying to leave the California hellhole caused by Democratic policy decisions rather than because of climate problems will have problems getting into the other states?
Soul erosion is what happens if you read too many Guardian articles
Refugees are already fleeing California in droves. The only ones left in my wife’s family are two retirement age looney left Liberals who have never made enough to pay taxes. The rest are gone. Idaho, Uta mostly but Texas as well. It’s not climate they are fleeing. It’s politics. The problem is the ones who flee and take the stupid politics that created the mess with them and import it to places that haven’t gone mad.
What a load of ill-informed utter rubbish. I don’t know why anyone reads the ‘Gaudrain’ anymore.
I like the visual symbol of donkeys leaving California. They overgrazed at their state legislature and now they must migrate.