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January
17
2023

Too Wet? Too Dry? It's All Climate Change!
Brian C. Joondeph

Climate change, as defined by the United Nations: “Refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, such as through variations in the solar cycle.” That’s actually a good definition.

But not willing to leave well enough alone, the UN goes further, spoiling a simple and straightforward definition with: “But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.”

It is amazing that before humans burned fossil fuels two centuries ago, it was only natural cycles that changed the climate, not backyard barbecues, gas stoves, and SUVs. Yet the UN does not explain how previous ice ages developed due to global cooling, followed by melting of mile-thick ice over the upper Midwest due to global warming, multiple times over the Earth’s history, long before there was any significant human activity.

It seems that a changing climate was a thing long before Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, and the UN thought they figured it all out. Not only does the climate change, based on both short- and long-term cycles, but much of it is also unpredictable. According to the Intragovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

Climate change had other names over the years. In the 1970s it was “global cooling” with predictions of a coming ice age. NPR, the guardians of all proper knowledge and thought, first used the term “global warming” in 1989. It doesn’t make sense, at least to most logical people, that the planet can be both warming and cooling on a global scale, outside of normal seasonal variations, so the term “climate change” was popularized to encompass all weather events.

“Climate change” was first mentioned in 1975, but this was a time when climate scientists could not decide if temperatures were rising or falling, attributing sinister causes rather than natural and cyclic warming and cooling trends which have long preceded humans and their activities.

Since then, climate change has engulfed more than temperature, adding weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, droughts, and flooding. It seems that any deviation from a sunny day with temperatures in the mid '70s with a light breeze is evidence of climate change and Republicans scheming to destroy the planet.

Democrats, the left, and the media have an uncanny ability to balance two contradictory propositions in their minds, believing both can occur simultaneously due to the same cause. It would be like Goldilocks finding all three beds or bowls of porridge just perfect, regardless of whether they were too hot or too cold, too hard or too soft.

The New York Times, in 2014, ran an opinion piece titled, “The end of snow?” predicting the demise of winter sports and the Winter Olympics due to global warming. Eight years later in 2022, the New York Times told us, “How climate change can supercharge snowstorms.”. Or also in 2022 how, “The deadly freeze that swept the United States was extraordinary, but while scientists know that global warming can intensify extreme weather, the effects on winter storm are tricky to untangle.”

Tricky indeed. Climate change causes both not enough and too much snow. How does that work?  But it’s not only snow but water, both not enough and too much, all due to omnipotent climate change.

Let’s look at droughts in California. 

According to the California Department of Water Resources,

California is no stranger to drought; it is a recurring feature of our climate. We recently experienced the 5-year event of 2012-2016, and other notable historical droughts included 2007-09, 1987-92, 1976-77, and off-and-on dry conditions spanning more than a decade in the 1920s and 1930s.

Paleoclimate records going back more than 1,000 years show many more significant dry periods. The dry conditions of the 1920s-30s, however, were on a par with the largest 10-year droughts in the much longer paleoclimate record.

Unfortunately, the scientific skill to predict when droughts will occur – which involves being able to forecast precipitation weeks to months ahead – is currently lacking. Improving long-range weather modeling capabilities is an area of much-needed research.

In a nutshell, droughts are nothing new in California, have been far worse in the past, before anyone talked about global warming or climate change, and they are impossible to predict, as the IPCC noted above.

Floods are much the same. The same California agency notes,

California is prone to potentially devastating impacts of periodic floods. All 58 counties have experienced at least 1 significant flood event in the past 25 years, resulting in loss of life and billions of dollars in damages.

Floods are naturally occurring phenomena in California.

Again, floods are normal and expected. They are nothing new. Here are photosof floods going back 150 years.

But look at media headlines claiming droughts and floods are new and due to climate change rather than natural phenomenon.

From National Geographic last month, “Climate change and California’s drought.” A local ABC News affiliate explained, “California Drought: New research ties specific extreme weather events to climate change.” They went further, “California Drought: How will climate change affect California's ski industry?”

Drought is due to climate change. Yet at the same time so is flooding.

Last week Vox claimed, “California’s floods reveal a likely climate change symptom: Quick shifts between opposing weather conditions.” Climate pseudo-scientist Ellen DeGeneres unsuccessfully weighed in, “Ellen DeGeneres mocked for video blaming California flooding on climate change.” USA Today at least asked a question, “Are California's storms normal, or is climate change making them worse?”

It seems all manner of weather is due to climate change, ignoring past far more extreme weather, when the world’s population and activity was much less than today. Perhaps historical perspective is necessary. After all, history didn’t begin when Greta Thunberg or writers at Vox or the New York Times came of age.

The climate has been changing for millennia, since the Earth was formed, and will continue to do so in the future. Most change is due to earth and solar cycles some of which we understand, none of which we can alter or control.

Market Watch reports: “Climate change has cost the government $350 billion” as of 2018 and that number is rising. Yet it’s still snowing in Colorado and both dry and wet in California. We are pissing away money we don’t have, ignoring far more important and fixable problems at home, attempting to fix the unfixable. Government at its finest.

Is this really about “saving the planet” or is the climate movement about money and control, similar to the COVID pandemic, the new homes of communism and tyranny?

 

 

 

Brian C Joondeph, MD, MPS is a Denver based retina surgeon with an interest in health care policy and writing.

 

www.americanthinker.com