The Old Gray Lady‘s (aka New York Times) perennial climate alarmist reporter Justin Gillis eagerly reported a new paper, “Contribution of anthropogenic warming to California drought during 2012-2014,” published in Geophysical Research Letters, claiming that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) might have intensified the current California drought by 15 to 20 percent.

Alas, nasty facts get in the way, like these:

1. The drought started in 2012, but there’s been no statistically significant global warming (anthropogenic or natural) for 18 years and 7 months. Pretty hard to pin an effect on an absent cause.
2. If AGW intensified the drought by raising local temperatures, then since greenhouse gases (GHG) are supposed to cause AGW, the temperature trends in the affected area should be consistent with GHG as the cause. As University of Alabama climatologist John Christy points out, GHG-driven warming happens equally night and day. But NOAA’s temperature record for the San Joaquin Drainage region of California shows 0.0F/decade daytime (TMax) trend and 0.2F/decade nighttime (TMin) trend since 1895. I.e., the warming there isn’t driven by GHG, which means it’s not anthropogenic, which means AGW didn’t intensify the drought. (See the first two graphs below.)
3. The current California drought is a piker compared with others in the last twelve centuries, as Anthony Watts points out. Droughts in the American West were both more frequent and more severe from about 800 to 1500 AD than from then until now. (See the third graph below.)
4. Total “climate change” (= increase in global average temperature) since about 1880 is about 0.8C, and since the CMIP5 computer models on average simulate about twice the warming actually observed over the relevant period (some of which might have been natural), that leaves precious little of the “climate change” to blame on humans—perhaps some fraction of 0.4C.
5. The models lack skill at the spatial resolution necessary to attribute any of the drought’s intensity to AGW.

But don’t let facts cloud your judgment. No, no, never. Go ahead, waste $Trillions fighting AGW to spare California any more droughts.

 

 

 

Featured image adapted from image created by Encouragement, Creative Commons, used by permission.