One thing we know for sure. No matter how much rain falls, the official report will say that the drought is expanding and deepening.
Disrupting the Borg is expensive and time consuming!
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The US Drought Monitor is a joke, maybe we should consider doing our own.
You have to admit, this is an unprecedented, exceptional droughtflood! Worse than the Texas droughtflood last year and far worse than anyting in the 1930s (sarc).
Drought and global warming.
For reasons which are fairly obvious most greens do not wish to acknowledge the fact that cutting down vegetation and either turning it into farmland or worse, concreting over it, has a significant warming effect. They particularly don’t want to acknowledge that this de-wilderness-ing has been occurring worldwide, and therefore the warming effect is global (do I have to spell out that this is likely to be a significant contribution to 20th century global warming?).
So, let’s go back to see what is causing this. The reason cutting vegetation down has a significant warming effect is that around 50% of the heat lost from the earth’s surface is lost through evaporation. [Note, this is not an ongoing trend. It is a stepwise change, one that causes a change when the vegetation is cut down and then nothing afterwards. … which is why greens don’t want to admit this is a significant contribution because it is easily reverse and does not lead to their necessary doomsday warming scenario)
So, get rid of the plants, and you significantly reduce their cooling effect (which is why cities are so much warmer than the surrounding countryside). However, there are two knock on effects.
1. Less evaporation means less precipitation. That is to say, unless you have the vegetation pumping the water into the air, you get less water falling out the sky further downwind.
2. That water that used to be evaporated by the plants, has to go somewhere. The consequences are: that it sits on the de-vegetated farmland unless or until it can run off into the drains (aka rivers). Obviously, most farmers/householders faced with boggy farmland, simply put in drains, and with so much building leading to draining former boggy land, the result is that there is much more run off. Not only that, but the run-off occurs much faster because areas where it used to sit for a few days or weeks are now drained straight to the river and urban areas are particularly bad (it takes very little time to get from a tarmac road into the gutter, into the river and then flash flood).
So, what should we see from this changing global land-use:
1. Local warming (happening globally).
2. Warming … which stops if or when we stop cutting down wilderness
3. More draughts away from natural areas of water
4. More flash floods
Does that sound familiar? So why aren’t the greens doing anything about it? [Just a thought … Is it like the Unions bosses in the pay of the factory owners? Have the Greens been infiltrated by big business?]
OK, whilst the effects stated above are a lot of conjecture … it is pretty sound conjecture based on known scientific principles (unlike most global warming). Better still it can easily be tested, because it is a local effect happening globally, so e.g. we could just take 1000 square miles of farming land, and revert it to forest and see what effect it has on rainfall, flooding, temperature, in the area. … ideally repeating by cutting down forest to create farmland in a similar area …. it might even have happened by accident
Ah, you canny Scott! I see you are using that old rhetorical trick, “Western European, patriarchal, linear thinking”! It is the same trick which we used to call “rational analysis” many years ago.
Sorry to be pedantic but your post would have more meaning if you used the proper term. Transpiration is the plant cooling mechanism you are looking for, not evaporation – big difference.
I know this has been pointed out before, but it may be worth repeating. One of the reasons why honest alarmists (in my opinion, MOST (not all) alarmists are honest in their belief, just very mistaken) continue to argue with sceptics is that the two camps are using differing time frames and don’t realize it. How many times have we seen a post that points out the lack of warming in the last 10 or 15 years at some area, and then seen replies from warmists of the nature of “NO! We just had the eight hottest years and you say it is not warming!” Obviously. they fail to understand the use of gerunds and the difference between “warm” and “warming”, or the difference between past actions and present consequences. I think that at least some of the drought arguments are of the same form. The sceptics say “It is raining cats and dogs! Look at the maps! Look at the green fields!” and the warmists say “No! We are in a severe drought. We are still twelve inches of rain below average for the last two years!”
It is no panacea, but I try, when talking to warmists, to be VERY clear about what time frames I am referring to. It is a point which does help – just a little! — to move the conversation along.
Part of the drought problem is we have not had a hurricane/troical storm in years that can fill up reseviors etc. Some effects of hurricanes are beneficial.
How in the world does central Georgia have “exceptional drought” according to NOAA? Someone needs to contact them and ask for the reason why their drought monitor looks fraudulent.