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Comment by h2odragon | Hacker News Reader

Into the 80's, the Army Corps of Engineers supervised the building of flood control and water impoundment dams all over the USA. Then they stopped; and a decade later the floods started being a bigger problem and the water levels out west varied more with the seasons...

Probably no connection at all, tho, must have been climate change.

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Into the 80's, Queen were arguably the most popular band in the world. After Freddie Mercury's death in 1991, they slowly faded; and a decade later the floods started being a bigger problem and the water levels out west varied more with the seasons...

Probably no connection at all, tho, must have been climate change.

It seems like you're suggesting something but I can't tell what it is. What are you talking about?

I am not OP, but I believe the red herring they are pointing out is that maintenance of legacy systems by someone other than legacy maintainers led to disasters. Call it privatization, change, etc., the sentiment remains. As far as scapegoats relative to global climate change go, it is a relatively minor point that only focuses on reported issues (sharpshooter fallacy) and ignores the other evidence for climate change in favor of a minimal gish gallop of alternative hypotheses and tangents.

Ah OK, I guess the line of reasoning is that if the low water levels were due to low maintenance, then maybe there isn't really a drought.

Of course the enormous fires last year and the potential for a severe fire season this year suggests this line of reasoning is incorrect.

Thanks!

A conspiracy theory.

We used to spend effort on water management that we do not do, any longer. Those efforts had results, the lack of which isn't mentioned in "historic flood / worst ever drought" stories.

"Conspiracy theory" would be to suggest that these efforts were intentionally co-ordinated from the start to empower someone or something; I think its just normal human FUBAR politics.

Same thing with forest fires. In the last 10 years we stopped any sort of fire mitigation, and we have seen the fires get far worse.

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