The drought in Texas is huge, long, and heartbreaking. It’s been going on for many months; NPR had a couple of reports this morning, describing almost biblical suffering by cattle and wild animals, and the withering of the ranching industry itself.
The New York Times tries to connect the dots: Even though one can’t pin one weather event, or even one year’s worth of weather events, on climate change, climate change could be making such events a lot more likely. (Analogy: Baseball players have always hit homers, steroids or no. But steroids made for a lot more homers.)
“We can’t say with certainty whether this particular drought is in and of itself a product of climate change,” said David Brown, a regional official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
However, Dr. Brown added, these kinds of droughts will have effects that are “even more extreme” in the future, given a warming and drying regional climate. …
Drought and high temperatures are consistent with climate-change forecasts for Texas. According to John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist who was appointed by Gov. George W. Bush in 2000, about 80 percent of the models that were run for a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group overseen by the United Nations, predict declining precipitation for Texas.
And so it’s intensely, tragically ironic that a governor of Texas, a state suffering massively from climate-related issues, denies the facts in front of his nose, while at the same time he calls upon Texans to pray for rain. I could imagine history books showing this as the telling anecdote of our era.
hesterprynne says
brand of piety is utterly delighted to interpret God’s command in Genesis 1 to “be fruitful and multiply” as a license to trash the place and utterly unashamed to go running back to Daddy with the repair bill when it comes due.
dcsohl says
I love that baseball steroids analogy. I’m gonna have to remember that one!
stomv says
I might pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster for no rain. This way, if it doesn’t rain the next day, it’s proof that the FSM is superior to the Christian God.
Wait, what? It doesn’t work that way? You mean it’s smarter to use technology like low flow water fixtures and car wash water recapture; to make decisions like not to build golf courses in the desert, to use native plants and grasses, and not to turn on the automatic irrigation system for lawns and office parks at noon; to have policy which charges people for water and even more for less-important uses of water? No kidding.
A few years ago there was a drought in the Southeast. North Carolina ramped up policy — no watering lawns, no washing cars, eventually encouraging restaurants to use paper plates to save on dishwashing water. Georgia prayed for rain on the state house steps. Amazing.
lynne says
GRAY. WATER. Anyone in marginally arid or arid lands which has a landscape that needs watering needs their head checked; however if they do, they should never water with anything other than gray water. Honestly that should be the direction most households should go.
stomv says
but existing housing requires substantial plumbing changes to do it easily and safely.
There are all kinds of things that building codes could do to transition into sustainable living… gray water, solar hot water heaters, much higher insulation values, etc. Without a good building code, we’re spinning wheels. With a good building code, we’re transitioning in a cost effective manner.
seascraper says
.
hesterprynne says
And here’s why.
Kosta Demos says
But I bet that most texans, with their penchant for over-the-top, self aggrandizing verbiage, probably aren’t listing climate change induced drought at the top of the column marked “Huge, Long and Heartbreaking”.