But lots of signs are pointing to the current extraordinary dry spell, likely exacerbated by heat from human-driven climate change, taking California into conditions unexperienced since long before the state’s water-dependent economy exploded during Gov. Jerry Brown’s father’s terms in office (please read Justin Wm. Moyer’s great story on that era in the Washington Post).
Of course drier conditions, including protracted intense drought, are nothing new on a longer time scale, as scientists have been pointing out for decades. More on that below.
That’s why it’s great to see the press dig in on the state’s unsustainable practices, many of which are unaffected by Brown’s recent steps. For starters, read the Los Angeles Times article describing how his drought restrictions focus on urban water use while agriculture is by far the biggest water user.
[The Los Angeles Times has a fresh piece up covering Brown’s weak defense of his decision to give farmers a pass in water restrictions.] [Also read this important piece by Justin Gillis and Matt Richtel in The New York Times: “Beneath California Crops, Groundwater Crisis Grows.”]
There’s plenty of coverage out there, as well, of California’s options going forward. I enjoyed finding Daniel Potter’s KQED report on the prospects for, and limits to, desalination.
Settle in for a sobering overview with “California’s Drought Tests History of Endless Growth,” by Adam Nagourney, Jack Healy and Nelson D. Schwartz. Damon Winter’s photographs add jarring visual elements, as does the interactive map showing hot spots for domestic water use. The piece is the first in a series — The Parched West.
For Californians, none of this should come as a surprise. The science has been building for a very long time, and the media have been doing their job. Read this 1994 article on California drought research by my predecessor on the environment beat at The Times, Bill Stevens, to get the idea. The core line couldn’t be more blunt:
Relatively wet periods like the 20th century have been the exception rather than the rule in California for at least the last 3,500 years, and…mega-droughts are likely to recur.
Before scientists clearly revealed California’s incredibly dry past, the state’s vulnerability to warming from the building greenhouse effect was featured in my 1988 cover story in Discover Magazine. Some details have evolved, but the analysis at the time, by Peter Gleick, feels prescient now. Here’s an illustration from that story, by my friend Ian Worpole:
Across the West, communities should be taking note, of course, given the evidence from tree rings and other tracers of climate conditions that the entire region faces the same risks. See this analysis by a team at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory to get the idea (the researchers told me this morning they’ll have an updated version of the graph running through 2014 some time this summer):
As the policy debate around western water and climate change intensifies, it’ll be ever more important to discriminate spin from science in assessing factors shaping droughts, as Roger Pielke, Jr., of the University of Colorado has been trying to stress. Read his book on disasters, policy, politics and science for much more.
For those wanting more on the science, there’s no better starting place than a recent talk by B. Lynn Ingram, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-author of “The West without Water: What Past Floods, Droughts, and Other Climatic Clues Tell Us about Tomorrow.”
For more on the science, track the reporting of Andrew Freedman, Tom Yulsman and Jason Samenow (among others).
Given that music fits into my description of multimedia communication, here’s a suitable soundtrack for California’s efforts in months and years to come: “Dry Spell Blues,” written by Son House during a scorching drought in the South, performed by my former band Uncle Wade.
