By Steve Goreham
Originally published in The Washington Examiner.
For more than three weeks, California has been pummeled by a series of storms arriving one after another from the Pacific Ocean. Torrential rains, mud slides, power outages, and floods plague state residents from north of San Francisco down to Los Angeles, four hundred miles to the south. Scientists attribute this event to an “atmospheric river” condition in the Pacific Ocean. Many also claim that this phenomenon is due to human-caused climate change.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an atmospheric river is a long, narrow region in the atmosphere that can transport large amounts of water vapor, roughly equivalent to the average flow of water at the mouth of the Mississippi river. When atmospheric rivers make landfall, they release this water vapor in the form of rain or snow. An atmospheric river that forms in the tropics near Hawaii, sometimes called the Pineapple Express, can deliver large amounts of water to the U.S. West Coast.
This winter’s atmospheric river has been catastrophic. Ten different storms have stuck the California coast in the last three weeks. More than 20 people have died, thousands have been forced to evacuate their homes, and 25 million people are under a flood watch. The state averaged more than 11 inches of rain from late December to mid-January. The series of flooding storms were unexpected, following several years of severe drought in California.
Government leaders and some scientists blame human carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. In commenting on the flood damage, Governor Gavin Newsom said California was “proof that the climate crisis was real and that we have to take it seriously.” When touring damaged areas last week, President Joe Biden stated, “if anybody doubts the climate is changing, they must have been asleep for the past couple of years.”
But this has happened before. Geologic evidence shows that massive floods occur in California every century or two. A historic cataclysmic event was the great flood of the winter of 1861-1862. During December and January of that winter, a series of massive storms slammed, one after another, into the west coast of the state. This occurred after two decades of drought during 1840-1860. The event would also be called an atmospheric river by today’s scientists.
During the great flood of 1861-1862, a train of storms dumped record amounts of rain on California. Sixty-six inches of rain fell on Los Angeles, more than four times the yearly average. In early January, the capital city of Sacramento was submerged under ten feet of water. Governor Leland Sanford moved the legislature to San Francisco on January 22 to wait for the floods to subside. Sacramento remained flooded for months.
William Brewer toured California’s Central Valley at the end of January 1862 by boat. He wrote that the entire valley was a lake from the mountains in the east to the coast range hills on the west up to the tops of the 20-foot-high telegraph poles. One-quarter of the state’s estimated 800,000 cattle drowned during the flood.
Of course, the 1861-1862 event could not have been caused by to human-made global warming. There were no coal-fired power plants or Sport Utility Vehicles and only a few wood- or coal-burning locomotives. Most transportation was by horse and horse-drawn wagon. World carbon dioxide emissions at that time were less than a million times smaller than today’s emissions from industry. The flood of 1861-1862 demonstrated the power of natural weather events in Earth’s chaotic climate.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary provides one definition of superstition as “a false conception of causation.” The current California atmospheric river event is very similar to the 1861-1862 occurance, which could not have been caused by human emissions. There is no evidence that the current atmospheric river event is caused by human emissions either, but those afraid of human-caused climate change are claiming that this is the case.
It’s remarkable that so many intelligent people profess that the current California disaster is due to human-caused climate change. University professors, government officials, and the news media are among the believers. They seem to call every weather event “extreme.” They may also tell you that if we all drive electric cars and build wind turbines everywhere, we can eliminate atmospheric river events. This can best be described as modern superstition, on the level of past beliefs that witches caused crop failures. Instead, Californians must adapt to weather as they have throughout history.
Steve Goreham is a speaker on the environment, business, and public policy and author of the book Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development.
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Very good. The only thing I would change is this: “It’s remarkable that so many intelligent people profess that the current California disaster is due to human-caused climate change. University professors, government officials, and the news media are among the believers.” It should read educated instead of intelligent. Higher education seems to have less and less to do with intelligence, university academics,
government officials and the news media are prime examples.
The reaction to any significant weather event by the climatists just reinforces that they are involved in a cult. Now if they would just drink whatever elixir which allows them to transition to the mother ship and leave the rest of us alone would be just fine.
Wait. If most of them got the jab…never mind.
A major snowstorm in the US is moving north to the Great Lakes.
This will be the pattern of the polar vortex at the end of January at 10 hPa. The strongest wind will be from Siberia over the central Arctic and Greenland and over North America the air will swirl the other way, from east to west.
Not sorry, but these storms are not that unusual. Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1950’s and 60’s, there were winter storms of the same magnitude and duration as what we experienced with these most recent weather events. Also the winter of 68/69, 82/83, and the early 90’s.. These storms are what made surfing fun back in the day… It’s too bad our state government, or lack thereof, doesn’t seem to be interested in capturing some of the millions of acre feet of water that flowed out to the Pacific Ocean. Call it gross negligence, or just plain stupidy, take your pick…
For the last few years we’ve been hearing sob stories about the drought in California, expensive mansion burning up in forest and brush fires, Lake Mead drying up, etc. Now the same people are crying about too much rain–at least now they have enough water for tears!
But in any environment where some resource is scarce most of the time, and plentiful (or overabundant) part of the time, the logical human reaction is to accumulate the resource in times of plenty, and slowly use it during the time of scarcity.
This is hardly a new idea. In the book of Genesis, Joseph (an assistant to the Pharaoh) has a dream telling him there would seven years of abundant harvests, followed by seven years of poor harvests. On Joseph’s advice, the Pharaoh decided to store up food from the abundant years, enabling his to people to be fed during the lean years.
Whether this is actual history or legend remains uncertain, but over 2,000 years ago the Roman empire built aqueducts to transport water from melting snow in the Alps and Appenine mountains toward cities along the Mediterranean, where fresh water was scarce during hot, dry summers. Some of these aqueducts still function today, while others have been converted to railroad bridges.
In the mid-19th century, the Mormon settlers near Salt Lake City encountered very dry summers, which resulted in poor crop yields. However, there was a large freshwater lake (Utah Lake) at the south end of the valley, and a small river (Jordan River) flowing north into the Great Salt Lake (where the salt water was unusable). Water was abundant during the spring due to snowmelt from the Wasatch Mountains to the east, but scarce during summer and autumn, when rain was scarce and the mountaintops were snow-free.
Faced with this problem, the early settlers built a series of small dams and canals to divert water from Utah Lake and spring snowmelt, in order to slow down the flow and keep water flowing to their farms throughout the summer and autumn. The canals function to this day, and the Salt Lake Valley remains much greener than most of the lowlands in Utah.
So when will the California state government borrow an idea from the ancient Caesars or 19th-century Mormons and build dams, reservoirs, and irrigation canals to accumulate water during times of heavy rainfall to be used during periods of drought? This would also help alleviate downstream flooding and soil erosion during heavy rains, and dams could also be used to generate hydroelectric power to run air conditioners during heat waves. If you live in a Roman-like climate, Gavin, why not do as the Romans did?