1965 wreckage found (maybe)

That kind of severe weather variation has always happened, of course — drought one place, floods another, blizzards, hurricanes, heatwaves, etc — but expect it to be much more common in the future.

Think of oceans as the world's weather batteries, and their average temperature as the amount of charge they're holding — it's getting a touch higher every year.


Isn’t that pretty much what it has been doing since the last ice age?
I don’t know what about the earth’s climate history makes anyone think that our climate is supposed to be stable.
I noticed that “Global Warming” has now morphed into “Climate Change” I suspect the media was having trouble getting enough actual scientists to agree that science actually proved Humans were causing the climate to warm. It is much safer to agree that the climate does change, and our climate history is a very good indicator of that.

Brian
 
I heard a water expert make an important distinction between water use and water consumption — that might help you feel a bit better.

When you run your dishwasher or washing machine or take a shower, that's water use — most of the water (80–90%) cycles back and stays in the system.

When you water your lawn, or a farmer irrigates their crops, that's water consumption — almost all of the water is lost to the system.

California's agricultural lobby tries to obfuscate the problem by misleadingly comparing the residential water use (mostly) to agricultural water consumption. Not that population growth isn't an issue (it is), but the main problem is growing cash crops in the desert — it has a huge environmental cost.

So if you do want to move, and are willing to accept hardy, drought-tolerant plants for your lawn and not wash your car in the driveway every weekend, you won't be adding to the problem that much.
It would be much better if they would stop pumping water into the ocean.
 
I noticed that “Global Warming” has now morphed into “Climate Change”
Be careful not to confuse media buzzwords with what the scientists are actually saying. There's broad scientific consensus, after decades of work, that the earth's mean temperature is warming at an atypically fast pace, and that human activity is the main cause of that acceleration.

Individual scientists may go on TV and speculate about exactly what that means for the future, but precise predictions for specific places (as far as I know as a layperson) aren't part of that scientific consensus; just that injecting more heat energy into the world's oceans will likely result in significantly more violent weather and more-extreme climate variation.

Sadly, it looks like the Southwestern U.S. might end up being one of the regions drawing the climate short straw. It was marginal for water anyway (like the Sahel in Africa), so it didn't need much of a shove to push it over the cliff. :(
 
Sadly, it looks like the Southwestern U.S. might end up being one of the regions drawing the climate short straw. It was marginal for water anyway (like the Sahel in Africa), so it didn't need much of a shove to push it over the cliff. :(
There is plenty of evidence that there were vast inland lakes and saltwater seas in the American Southwest. Things changed a long time before Henry Ford showed up. Tectonics likely had a lot to do with it, and tectonics are also changing sea levels in some places. Ground rises and falls. It's what it does.

Insurance companies keep telling us that claims for storm damages have fallen in recent decades. The people who make a living studying storm history tell us that storms have been fewer and weaker in recent times. Both assertions contradict the popular narratives. The historical climate data show us that the 1930s, 1950s and 1960s had many more hot days per year than we get now. I always get a laugh when the news people tell me that "this is the highest temperature for this date since 1897" or some similar thing. If you take five seconds to think about it, they're telling you it was just as hot on this date in 1897. If it was breaking an all-time record for any date they would say so, but they can't so they resort to weasel-words to try to convince you of climate change.
 
Sadly, it looks like the Southwestern U.S. might end up being one of the regions drawing the climate short straw. It was marginal for water anyway (like the Sahel in Africa), so it didn't need much of a shove to push it over the cliff. :(

I'm sure trying to sustain a modern population of over 50 million living in the Desert Southwest hasn't helped. Absent modern technology, I don't think a natural population of that size would be able to survive in such a climate zone.
 
I'm sure trying to sustain a modern population of over 50 million living in the Desert Southwest hasn't helped. Absent modern technology, I don't think a natural population of that size would be able to survive in such a climate zone.
Yes, population growth (and even more so, intensive agricultural water use) haven't helped, but additional stress from climate change is reducing even the meagre capacity there is at a rate orders of magnitude faster than the geological time others are mentioning — we're talking years and decades instead of centuries and millennia now. It's a perfect storm.

For a peek at a possible future, you can take a look at Jordan. When I was there a few years ago, every family had a water tank about the size of a North American hot water heater. That tank got filled once a week, and had to suffice for all the family's needs — drinking, cooking, laundry, bathing, etc. People who could afford it could buy extra water from private suppliers to get them through the week, but it didn't come cheap.

Everyone doesn't necessarily die or even move away when water gets scarce, but life can become unpleasant.
 
Yes, population growth (and even more so, intensive agricultural water use) haven't helped, but additional stress from climate change is reducing even the meagre capacity there is at a rate orders of magnitude faster than the geological time others are mentioning — we're talking years and decades instead of centuries and millennia now. It's a perfect storm.

For a peek at a possible future, you can take a look at Jordan. When I was there a few years ago, every family had a water tank about the size of a North American hot water heater. That tank got filled once a week, and had to suffice for all the family's needs — drinking, cooking, laundry, bathing, etc. People who could afford it could buy extra water from private suppliers to get them through the week, but it didn't come cheap.

Everyone doesn't necessarily die or even move away when water gets scarce, but life can become unpleasant.
In the 1970s and '80s, when those desert areas were being developed for housing and industry, many of the folks that had lived there for years warned about the eventual depletion of the water resources if the development continued. They were ignored.
 
In the 1970s and '80s, when those desert areas were being developed for housing and industry, many of the folks that had lived there for years warned about the eventual depletion of the water resources if the development continued. They were ignored.
Yes, lots of causes. Climate change is one, but not the only one.
 
Be careful not to confuse media buzzwords with what the scientists are actually saying. There's broad scientific consensus, after decades of work, that the earth's mean temperature is warming at an atypically fast pace, and that human activity is the main cause of that acceleration.

(

I don’t know where you get this “consensus”, particularly regarding human activity as the main cause. Do you mean the opinion polls of scientists?

Otherwise please cite to an objective review. Quick Google scholar search turned up no such review - which is sort of curious.
 
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Isn’t jellystone supposed to erupt and cool the oceans 3-6 degrees?… I think they have it pinned down to a 700,000 year cycle. +-200,000 years and we’re in the window.
 

Thanks, but that is not an objective review in a scientific journal. That is a government agency website.

It is good to learn to distinguish between the different types of scientific publications and sources of information, as they do have differing purposes.

There is of course no reason the average pilot would know that off hand.
 
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And your post is another example of the condescension and dismissive tone of those that criticize the other side of the climate change argument. It's almost universal.

Neither post was really about climate change nor condescending. One was a suitably snarky comment on the inability of scientist (and I am one by training) to predict complex events in our environment with any degree of precision relevant to action and the other was a reader not catching on to the original readers intent.
 
Thanks, but that is not an objective review in a scientific journal. That is a government agency website.

It is good to learn to distinguish between the different types of scientific publications and sources of information, as they do have differing purposes.

There is of course no reason the average pilot would know that off hand.
Well, the good news is, the world is flat. Any excess heat, or carbon emissions can be vented off the sides.
 
Well, the good news is, the world is flat. Any excess heat, or carbon emissions can be vented off the sides.

Would love to see the article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal for that one!
 
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