Global Warming Drought Hysteria

It doesn't take a hyperventilating physicist to figure out that this winter's snowfall was below average in the Sierra Nevada. As one of my friends calculated it, we had exactly 6 powder days. That tells me I picked a good year to sit out the winter and have a child.

Let the fisking begin:

Climate change threatens California water supply

BERKELEY, California (Reuters) - California's tallest mountain range, the Sierra Nevada, may lose nearly all its snowpack by the end of the century, threatening a water crisis in the nation's most populous state, a leading scientist and Nobel laureate said.

Here we are in 2007. We know for a fact that over the course of the next 93 years, we may (or may not) lose nearly all of the Sierra Nevada snowpack. Christmas might be cancelled, too.

California could lose 30 percent to 70 percent of the snowpack to the ills of greenhouse gases and global warming, Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the 1997 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, told Reuters.

A Nobel Prize in Physics is truly impressive. That is something I probably could not hope to achieve in 3 lifetimes. But how does this make him an expert on climate change? In fairness I looked up Dr. Chu's bio, and he is currently pushing his scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to develop technologies to reverse climate change. It seems to me the reverse of climate change must be climate un-change. THAT is truly unprecedented! I am left to believe that Dr. Chu feels that before man came along and started belching C02 the climate was static.
George Orwell was right: some things are so stupid that you have to be an intellectual to believe them.

A "bad scenario" of atmospheric carbon could mean the loss of 70 percent to 93 percent, Chu said in an interview, citing published climate models.

I wonder to which "published climate models" Dr. Chu refers? I hope it's not this one.

Water levels in the snowpack now are at 29 percent of normal, the lowest in 20 years, and water districts are pleading for conservation and more storage to counter future dry years.

I'm definitely in favor of water conservation all the time. I remember the California drought from 1976 to 1978 where we were only allowed to flush the toilet once per day. That was one flush per household. Stinky? You betcha! Back then though I believe the culprit was Global Cooling. But I digress...

I give you the following from an article published in May of 2006. That would be one year ago almost to the day.

MOUNT ROSE -- Two men groaned and gasped Tuesday as they pulled a long, hollow metal pole from the snow near the 10,880-foot summit of Mount Rose, 20 miles southwest of Reno.

While a couple dozen people watched, one of the men measured the depth of the snow, weighed the sample that was pulled up inside the pole and then consulted his charts.

"It's looking good," said Dan Greenlee, the snow survey program manager for the Reno office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service. "Seventy-two inches of water. Fifteen feet of snow. I would consider this a drought-buster. Lake Tahoe is going to come close to filling."

The crowd, mainly federal government bureaucrats from Washington, hooted in approval. Greenlee excitedly explained the snowpack is 177 percent of normal for this time of the year and the fourth heaviest since they began measuring snow at the Mount Rose Ski Area site in 1981.

We notice that the snowpack is the fourth heaviest in the past 26 years. That means there were 3 even heavier snowpacks this time of year in the past 26 years. Nevermind that, Dr. Chu wants to focus on the fact that this winter is the lowest in the last 20 years. So we have a year that is 29 percent below normal on the heels of a winter where snowpack was 177 percent above normal. Somehow, this is alarming.

Back to the article.

Climate change may lead to more severe drought and higher flood peaks that could mean the loss of one-fourth of the snowpack by 2050, according to California's Department of Water Resources.

May lead to...could mean...
Let me get this straight. By the end of the century (as cited earlier) the snowpack could be almost completely gone. But by 2050, the snowpack could be 1/4 of what it is today. I wonder if that's 1/4 of 29% below normal, 1/4 of the average over some unmentioned time period, 0r the square root of 1/4 of pi r squared times the box office revenues of "An Inconvenient Truth"? And the Leisure Greenie crowd wonders why people like me refuse to submit to the "scientific community consensus".

"If I were emperor of the world, I would put the pedal to the floor on energy efficiency and conservation for the next decade," Chu said.

Indeed, one need not look too closely at the impetus behind the Green Revolution to see that there are many, many people that feel they should be emperor of the world.

Tackling energy waste in residential and commercial buildings is a high priority for Chu. He said new designs and technologies in that area could go a long way toward improving heating, ventilation and lighting systems and reducing energy consumption.

"Get rid of the wasteful habits and inefficiency and that by far and away will show the biggest gains in the short term," he said.

He's right about that. There's actually a program called LEED that certifies new buildings as environmentally friendly. That's a good thing ultimately. But I thought this article was about melting snowpacks?

Chu will oversee new energy programs at the Berkeley Lab under a program with London-based BP Plc, the third largest Western oil company, which has committed $500 million over 10 years to support a bioscience research institute to develop new biofuels for transportation.

BP is partnering with the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Illinois to develop new energy sources while improving the environment.

So it's about money afterall! Anybody in their right mind has to be in favor of discovering alternative energy sources, and if Big Oil is going to fund it that's fine with me. But it's rather ironic that on the one hand Dr. Chu is hyperventilating about carbon emissions and global warming and melting snowpack and on the other hand accepting money from one of the major contributors to this "catastrophe". Ah well, as long as he can sleep at night.

Here's a fun global warming quiz. Don't get too many right now ya hear? Al Gore might catch you and glue your eyes open and make you watch 100 continuous hours of his powerpoint presentation.