UCLA’s Hypothetical Droughts
By Paul Homewood
Man with computer model says:
The American West’s megadrought deepened so much last year that it is now the driest in at least 1,200 years and is a worst-case climate change scenario playing out live, a new study finds.
A dramatic drying in 2021 — about as dry as 2002 and one of the driest years ever recorded for the region — pushed the 22-year drought past the previous record-holder for megadroughts in the late 1500s and shows no signs of easing in the near future, according to a study Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The study calculated that 42% of this megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change.
“Climate change is changing the baseline conditions toward a drier, gradually drier state in the West and that means the worst-case scenario keeps getting worse,” said study lead author Park Williams, a climate hydrologist at UCLA. “This is right in line with what people were thinking of in the 1900s as a worst-case scenario. But today I think we need to be even preparing for conditions in the future that are far worse than this.”
Williams studied soil moisture levels in the West — a box that includes California, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, most of Oregon and Idaho, much of New Mexico, western Colorado, northern Mexico, and the southwest corners of Montana and Texas — using modern measurements and tree rings for estimates that go back to the year 800. That’s about as far back as estimates can reliably go with tree rings.
Williams used 29 models to create a hypothetical world with no human-caused warming then compared it to what happened in real life — the scientifically accepted way to check if an extreme weather event is due to climate change. He found that 42% of the drought conditions are directly from human-caused warming. Without climate change, he said, the megadrought would have ended early on because 2005 and 2006 would have been wet enough to break it.
https://apnews.com/article/climate-science-west-megadrought-f02449c2db4f0ebeb1557bb39504c62d
Perhaps hew should have checked with NOAA first:
https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/ca/
Even in New Mexico, which has been worst affected by recent drought, NOAA say droughts were much worse in the distant past:
But obviously Williams’ hypothetical world is real, and ours is imaginary!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
As former PMs of Oz, and UK described it, AGW is a load of cr@p and this article exemplifies.
CO2 at 0.04% of the atmosphere, is blameless, very nearly and dwarfed by water vapour @95% or more of the greenhouse gases. Water vapour is, like Earth’s temperature, controlled by the Sun. A Grand Solar Minimum is incipient.
We will be colder for many decades as solar activity declines.
I agree with all of that cajw. But how long do I have to wait for it to sink in to the brains of the numpties who run our world. I don’t have too many years left!!!!!!
Who funded the study?
It says:
We acknowledge funding from NSF AGS-1703029 (A.P.W.), AGS-1805490 (J.E.S.) and AGS-2101214 (J.E.S.); NOAA MAPP NA19OAR4310278 (A.P.W. and B.I.C.) and NA20OAR4310425 (J.E.S.); and DOE DESC0022302 (A.P.W., B.I.C. and J.E.S.). This work is possible due to many contributors of tree-ring data, largely through the International Tree-Ring Databank. Thanks also to J. Littell, who shared raw ring-width measurements that he produced from 18 sites in Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
So looks like taxpayer funded grant troughing. And look – tree rings again!!!
‘The study calculated that 42% of this megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change.’
They use a decimal point to show they have a sense of humor.
These “attribution” studies turn basic statistical inference on its head. I had my MP tell me that I am right when I said we cannot detect trends in long term indicators like drought, floods etc but at the same time we now have higher confidence that individual events are worse in magnitude and probability of occurrence because of man-made climate change.
Of course it is statistically absurd to claim we know more about individual events and their magnitudes than we can know about a series of such events, ether as a trend or probability. Knowledge about an individual event CANNOT have higher confidence than a set of such events over time – the claim completely overturns the established principal of statistical inference.
The claim is based on comparing a computer model of global warming (which only explains warming through anthropogenic effects a priori) to an outcome and then attributing the proportion of the event with and without the man-made part. This would only be true if the model were true ie it really was reality. It is madness that “scientists” and journals are now publishing such papers and that politicians and the general public now believe this crap.
Feynman will be turning in his grave.
Very true. It’s like claiming you know when a six will be thrown rather than that if you throw a dice 600 times you will get around 100 sixes.
But his models must also assume his conclusion. So he proves the model is right by using the model he is trying to prove is right as evidence it is right.
Don’t you just love modellers? They have absolutely NO self-awareness at all – whatever it is they model.
All our troubles in the modern world are model derived – You would think that Bunter Johnson might be beginning to realise how bad the Covid modelling was – and then think how much more difficult and complex the climate is to model???!!!!! Of course not, as Lord Sumption said the man is intellectually idle.
‘What’s the use of equations and other relations,
Or symbols drawn out in a line?
Thus, did Faraday cry, and they could but reply,
They are easy to teach, to the blind!’
42, eh? Must have been the mice (After Adams). 🙂
ASCII 42, whatever it needs to be?
You’re a star!!
Never let the truth get in the way of some creative modelling ( for money).
I wonder if he used the great M Manns Bristlecone pine tree ring data?
I am intrigued by his claim of an exact empirical number 42% of the drought being attributed to man made whatever. How on earth did he come up with that number, especially as there is no statistically empirical data of any kind in existence which supports the claim that any identifiable portion of the current welcome warming ( and by inference climate change) is caused by the liberation of CO2 back into the atmosphere by the actions of man. Given that fact he must be a very clever modeler but they all are, aren’t they!
You all do realise I hope that by his outrageous claim he is admitting that natural warming exists, in fact 58% being DUE TO NATURAL WARMING by his gestimate. He must be the first person in the last 10 years who actually admitted that that natural warming did not stop 100 years ago and still exists. We may disagree on the percentage but this is a start in the right direction. Indeed by stating this, is he not undermining most if not all of the whole net zero argument?
The climatemediosphere for more than 10 years has “forgotten” about the term natural warming to the point where the great unwashed has been led to believe that all warming is man made hence the asininity we are dealing with re Net Zero.
Seems the climate hustlers are getting braver and braver with their claims (well so would you if there is zero comeback for making unsubstantiated claims in aid of Project Climate Fear). No doubt as with the other term and claim inflation which besets the science free For Profit Climate Hustling Industry, that number will be grabbed, sexed up and start to rise until it goes past 100% care of some humanities graduate activist lovies.
Never let data get in the way of a good model….
And:
Torture the data until they confess.
Harry! I checked to see if I lost track of time and this was April 1! Yes I also saw some irony there!
In the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, Douglas Adams stated that ’42’ is the answer to the Ultimate Question of life, the Universe and Everything.
So now we know ……………..
Tree Rings, 1920s and 30s…
CLIMATIC CYCLES IN EASTERN OREGON AS INDICATED BY TREE RINGS’ By F. P. KEEN
“During the past two decades the ponderosa pine forests of eastern Oregon and northeastern California have been seriously depleted by drought and bark beetles.”
“All tree-ring measurements agree in showing that a very critical subnormal growth period has existed since 1917. This slowing down of the growth rate is undoubtedly the result of deficient precipitation and lowered water tables. As compared with other drought periods, the present one is the most severe and critical that the present forests have experienced in the last 650 years. Several other periods have exceeded the present one in duration of subnormal growth, but none has approached it for severity. Growth in 1931, the poorest year, was 68 percent below normal.“
Undoubtedly. Because they want it to.
There are other limiting factors to growth, such as TEMPERATURE. But it was undoubtedly precipitation.
California…1898:
“The drought of 1898 was, if possible, more devastating in its effects than previous droughts except that of 1862-1864. The southern half of the state was most severely affected, grasses drying as early as March so that cattlemen were in search of northern ranges early in the year. Lacking grazing facilities or the ability to transfer their herds long distances to better pastures, cattle producers found their stock dying in droves before the end of the summer. Even in the usually humid Pajaro Valley in Monterey County cattlemen resorted to the felling of trees in order to obtain the moss and browse from their branches, Tulare Lake, which had been the succor of thousands of cattle during the drought of 1862-1865, went dry during the summer of 1898.”
source: http://sandiegohistory.org/journal/1965/january/cattle/
“Williams used 29 models to create a hypothetical world with no human-caused warming then compared it to what happened in real life”
How did he decide how much human caused warming there is?
Just shows his model to show manmade Co2 caused it must have assumed that manmade C02 caused it.
So his modeling assumes what he’s trying to prove.
If ONE model were accurate, why would you do 29? The average of junk is not DATA.
So he built models that implicitly assumed climate change was responsible and lo and behold the models showed it was!
Let’s assume climate change didn’t make it longer. Oh look, my models showed it didn’t make it longer.
Do they not see the basic flaw in their “research”?
‘ Do they not see the basic flaw in their “research”? ‘
Probably not. Otherwise, they would have to admit that they are as ignorant as a child.
A thought occurred to me. People ‘in authority’ seem awfully certain about what Putin is going to do and when. Are they now employing Ferguson to computer simulate his mind?
I’ve seen a lot of pictures of empty reservoirs in California. Those are supposed to hold 5 years worth of water needs because its not uncommon to see 5 dry years for 2 wet years. But the environmentalists have now mandated “environmental dischargers” were up to 40% of the fresh water in the dams is run out to sea. So those empty reservoirs reflect a change in policy as much as any changes to the weather.
Is it just me, or has the GWPF lost its way with the recent rebranding? About a year ago they produced a report on “attribution studies”, only stumbled across it recently:
Click to access Briggs-Climate-Attribution.pdf
They still publish scientific papers as before as GWPF.
But the Net Zero Watch has replaced the GWP Forum, in order to sharpen up the PR side
What were the causes of the mega-droughts way back prior to 800 years ago?
The claim is that people were there (CA) so they must have enjoyed roaring cooking fires from at least 19,000 years ago
The ultimate causes of aridity in California are the cold currents flowing Northwards off the coast and the topography of the coast. It is always going to be the same. Drought is the norm. And why should any modern technological society care about it? Just another little problem for human ingenuity to take in its stride.
The world is greening mightily because of carbon dioxide increase. That seems fairly clear.
I should hope that the good people of Hollywood would be glad to ‘take one’ for Gaia. Mere collateral damage..
California is now experiencing net emigration. And not because of the weather!
Computer programs like this we used too call them “SISO”. For clarification; “S%%%e in S%%%e” out. Apologies if it seems crude, it was always a point of good humour reviewing results.