Study finds Western megadrought is the worst in 1,200 years | Hacker News Reader

Study finds Western megadrought is the worst in 1,200 years

npr.org

It's only going to get worse from here on out. The weather models have consistently underestimated second order feedback effects. We're going to blow past 2C and there is very little anyone can do at this point.

I agree a 2C limit is probably impossible at this point but it's never too late to stop making things worse.

I agree it's never too late to stop making things worse but global CO2 output is increasing so it's only going to get worse. To make things better would require large scale changes to the economy and consumer habits which is not going to happen. Ask a random stranger on the street what sacrifices they would be willing to make for improving the habitability of the planet for future generations and you'll realize how far we are from doing anything about global warming and its consequences.

At some point food production is going to decrease because of increasingly violent and unpredictable weather patterns and historically that has never been an indicator of good fortune. For examples of what global warming is already doing to large human populations one only has to look at Madagascar and Afghanistan. What's happening in those places is going to become much more common in the coming decades. The major world governments are not prepared to deal with mass migrations and food shortages and given the nature of politics they won't do anything about it until its too late to do anything effective.

Some people think techno-optimism is the answer to these problems but given the scale involved there is no way to fix this with a new app or gadget. It will require major investment and cooperation across public, private, and commercial institutions which will not fit neatly into existing profit driven market dynamics. The entire social stack needs to be reconfigured and tech can't do that, it's fundamentally a social problem. The idea of an exponentially increasing prosperity through exponentially increasing economic growth and consumption was always a swindle, it's amazing it has gotten us this far but it's no longer a viable ideology for what's coming and too many people still believe in the old model and are unwilling to change their consumption habits.

> what sacrifices they would be willing to make

Hm - ok, for the sake of argument, what sort of sacrifices are you suggesting? I keep hearing politicians saying we need to do something, and it's going to be a lot, but never what it actually is.

Consume less in general and develop cooperatives that utilize local resources as efficiently as possible. This is going to become a necessity in the coming decades and the communities that start now will have a head start on the changes that will be required to survive in a much harsher world. This is why I said it's a social instead of technical problem. The neighborhood I live in is extremely affluent but other than churches has no other collective organizations. Places like that might weather the first few waves of instability but will eventually have to develop cooperatives just like everyone else. Resources are going to become more and more scarce so the communities that develop the skills to properly ration whatever is left to maximize the well being of their members will thrive, those that don't, well, just look at SF or other metropolitan areas, it ain't pretty.

That sounds more like prepping than staving off environmental disaster - I'm learning how to grow vegetables on the off chance civilization collapses and I'm left to provide for my family on my own, but... no, you're right, I'm not willing to live that way permanently until I have no other choice.

The #1 most important one is "whatever politicians and ideologies are holding us back or even slowing us down". Pragmatically speaking in America today that means anyone to the right of Bernie, and the ideological/zealous-religious-belief that the govt can't solve problems, that they must be solved via individual consumer choices in a market. This also includes the ideology of "centrism", which is simply the american word for conservatism. If nothing can be done until it is bipartisan, then that simply gives the side that doesn't want to do anything a veto over everything.

I could keep going with 2, 3, 4, etc but its incredibly rare for anyone to get past #1. In 2016 you could point to Bernie's climate plan and Hillary's and they were off by nearly a full order of magnitude. "Centrist" and "moderate" dems chose Hillary instead. In 2020 we had a very similar choice between Bernie's plan and Biden's. The "centrist/moderate" crew chose the guy with the weaker plan, and then a year later destroyed that too.

So it really is this simple. If we're ever going to truly address the problem, we need to elect the people proposing to actually do it. We consistently do not because everyone has their <pet political issues> that they will prioritize over a collapsing biosphere.

Aaaaand there it is. “The only way to solve climate change is to vote 3xtreme left”. I’ll continue to be skeptical.

"aaand there it is" skepticism in the face of blatant reality as a defense mechanism from admitting wrongness. Has anyone from the center or the right even campaigned on the issue? no. You can wish things were different, I do, but they're not.

I mean even just campaigning on an issue isn't enough, we need to drive enough of the people who campaign on it into office so that they collectively wind up having to actually do it, not just talk about it. So really when I say "Bernie" I mean "Bernie and 61 senators and 218 congress people".

Thats the system we live in. Those are the votes you need to enact meaningful policy, and climate change is so massive a challenge that it requires meaningful policy backing to be addressed at the requisite scale.

To put this in context, the US Military budget is around 700B a year, and the estimates of what it would have cost if we started ini 2016 to do the necessary domestic transition to do our part in avoiding 1.5C was about 1.6T/year for 10 years. Obviously that ship has completely sailed, but it doesn't meaningfully change the cost, it just means we have to spend around the same amount now to try and hold the line at 2.0C.

There are no other budgets or policy proposals that even come close. By all means link me to one if you think i'm wrong.

'never too late to stop making things worse' is good advice in many areas!

Is global warming the thing driving the western megadrought?

I would suspect not. "The worst in 1200 years" implies "it was worse 1200 years ago", and we're pretty sure global warming wasn't driving it then. There's more at play than just CO2.

According to the article, "Researcher Williams said roughly one-fifth of the current megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change."

No they haven't. They have consistently overshot on warming. Show me one model from one and two decades ago that underestimated warming.

All of them. The science is clear on this. Anthropogenic global warming is real and is currently a major existential threat that is not being properly addressed because people are in denial about what's coming and ignoring what's already here.

No, they've overshot dramatically.

The only model coming close to being accurate was the INM-CM4 model, which predicted a mild 0.1C increase per decade.

All of these models have done a poor job of predicting cloud cover albedo and sensitivity. There is no good model for predicting cloud cover over decades of time and it turns out it's one of the most critical factors in the climate system.

Anyways, to read more about these issues, see:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.102...

How can "the science" say that warming will be worse than all of the scientific models say it will be?

The science is not saying anything like that. I am the one saying things will be worse because the models have consistently underestimated second order greenhouse effects like ocean acidification and the collapse of the transatlantic currents and general slowdown of other ocean currents along with their effects on global weather patterns.

And yet they haven't. The past two decades haven't been indicative of runaway warming with feedback loops, but just a paltry 0.1C/decade trend.

If what you say is true, you should be able to pull up a model published in 2002 or 2012 and analyze its predictions from the observations.

That's science. A model is only as good as its performance against reality, and the truth is, 98+% of the models in the IPCC analysis from one and two decades ago overshot in their predictions.

Here you go: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/....

From the article:

> Today, the region is home to tens of millions of people, massive agricultural centers and some of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S. — all in an area where there's less water available than there was in the past, partially due to human-caused climate change.

I have a question: how are almond farmers doing in California?

Many almond groves have dried out and those remaining rely on dwindling groundwater. Game over, man.

Almond farms have always been on groundwater or imported water. If you see a dry orchard, it is because the water price went up, their contract was voided, or both.

Now even deep and expensive wells only bring up briny mud. The groundwater game is over. Yes, the almond farms have always been on groundwater. And that goes on until the groundwater goes away which is what is happening now.

Would be interested in seeing the data on that, Im sure it could be the case. The areas I am most familiar have 100+ years of water but are legally prevented from pumping.

What is a kilodrought, a centidrought and millidrought?

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