Megadrought Coming to California

[Star Man]

Dear Residents:

California is already in an "Exceptional Drought" and the chances are 50:50 that we'll experience a "Megadrought" that will last for decades. The situation is worse in Arizona and Southern California, and people from those locations will move north in hopes of finding water. If the nation took serious action on global warming, the effects of drought might be mitigated, but the chances of that happening are miniscule.

The corporate forces of Big Energy have no intention of stopping their plans to emit as much carbon and greenhouse gases as they can, and the corporate forces of Big Ag will continue to pump ground water until it's all gone. Wealthy people will continue to water their lawns. The know-nothings of our idiocratic state will continue to deny there's a drought, because, you know, science.... The wars for water are already being waged as evidenced by our Governor's plan for two massive tunnels to ship Northern California water south. I wonder if the Governor has looked at our reservoirs lately. "What Northern California water?" Mt. Shasta is barren and Lake Shasta looks like a backyard swimming pool.

Star Man
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'Worse Than Anything Seen in 2,000 Years' as Megadrought Threatens Western States

https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...western-states

New study indicates chances are increasingly high that California and other states could be facing a water crisis without compare

Published on Wednesday, September 03, 2014 by Common Dreams
by Jon Queally, staff writer

California drought cracks in the dry bed of the Stevens Creek Reservoir in Cupertino, Calif., on March 13, 2014. (Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)

A new study warns that the chances of western states in the U.S. experiencing a multi-decade 'megadrought'—not seen in historical climate records in over 2,000 years—has a much higher chance of occurring in the decades ahead than previously realized. In fact, scientists are warning, the drought now being experienced in California and elsewhere could be just the beginning of an unprecedented water crisis across the west and southwest regions of the country.

“As we add greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – and we haven’t put the brakes on stopping this – we are weighting the dice for megadrought... This will be worse than anything seen during the last 2,000 years.” —Toby Ault, Cornell University
The research—a project between scientists at Cornell University, the University of Arizona, and the U.S. Geological Survey—shows that chances for a decade-long drought this century is now at fifty-fifty, and that a drought lasting as long as 35 years—defined as a "megadrought"—has a twenty- to fifty-percent chance of occurring.

“For the southwestern U.S., I’m not optimistic about avoiding real megadroughts,” Toby Ault, Cornell assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences and lead author of the paper, told the Cornell Chronicle. “As we add greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – and we haven’t put the brakes on stopping this – we are weighting the dice for megadrought.”

And if such a megadrought does occur, warned Ault, "This will be worse than anything seen during the last 2,000 years.”

And as USA Today notes, "The difference now, of course, is the Western USA is home to more than 70 million people who weren't here for previous megadroughts. The implications are far more daunting."...

To continue reading, please go to https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...western-states