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Rain, drought, it's all terrible

19 Apr 2023 | News Roundup

Just like the drought that was going to last and kill all the crops, the New York Times reports that a vast lake called Tulare that reappeared due to rain in California, or rather due to “atmospheric rivers”, is going to last and, instead of bringing relief to a parched Golden State, will kill all the crops. Because it never rained there before, or went dry. The Weather Channel, in an unguarded moment, admits that the rain was good, captioning a pretty picture: “A woman sets off on her zipline over a superbloom of wildflowers at Skull Canyon Ziplines in Corona, Calif., on April 11, 2023. People are flocking to state parks for a glimpse of a spectacular superbloom following a historically wet winter.” But don’t worry. It stinks.

Thus, the Times groans that “the surprise barrage of atmospheric rivers that swept through California over the past three months already has saturated the ground, overflowed canals and burst through levees.” And they’re just getting the rhetorical hose turned on:

“Still, even longtime residents have been staggered this year by the brute swiftness with which Tulare Lake has resurfaced: In less than three weeks, a parched expanse of 30 square miles has been transformed by furious storms into a vast and rising sea.”

Staggered. Brute. Furious storms. It’s a disaster. Including the huge snowpack that it was a disaster not to have in previous years. “The fear now is that record walls of snow in the southern Sierra Nevada will liquefy in the intensifying spring heat into a downhill torrent that will inundate the Central Valley.” And it’s bad people against good Gaia, of course:

“In the lake’s revival, scientists, historians and growers see an epic rematch gathering between nature and humans. For now, nature seems determined to win in an era of climate change with extended dry periods followed by storms that deliver more water than anyone knows what to do with.”

Right. The same lake that used to be here because of all the dry periods then heavy rain until humans stupidly drained it. “Mammoths once sipped at Tulare Lake’s shores, and tule elk ranged in its marshlands.” But that was then and good; this is now and bad.

P.S. The Times also concedes that “California Economy Is on Edge After Tech Layoffs and Studio Cutbacks” and throws in the “atmospheric rivers” but leaves out lawlessness and skyrocketing energy prices driven by a mad rush to alternatives that don’t even include nuclear. It admits that the sudden plunge into a large deficit “could complicate the speed at which Mr. Newsom can carry out some of his ambitious, progressive policies. In announcing the deficit, Mr. Newsom scaled back funding for climate proposals to $48 billion, from $54 billion. The fiscal outlook also casts a cloud over progressive proposals, widely supported by Democrats, who have a supermajority in the Legislature.” Like the one for massive reparations for slavery in a state that never had it. But progressive policy is totally innocent and just weirdly expensive.

One comment on “Rain, drought, it's all terrible”

  1. Anyone who thinks that a "vast rising sea" can be contained in 30 square miles obviously has no sense of scale, and is not to be trusted with anything really big, like climate. The Caspian Sea, by contrast, is 144,000 square miles, or nearly 5,000 times as big as the Tulare mud puddle.

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