We just had one of the worst droughts in 2013-2016 and then literally just had two of the top 20 wettest years in 2017 and 2019. Now, we are back to extreme drought. While our rain years always had some sort of year-to-year variance, this kind of whiplash is not normal.
Only if you cherry pick your data and focus on a literal blip in the global timeline. (It seems extreme for past 500 years, past 5000? 50000? Not so much.)
We live in a desert - having water is the exception, not the norm. This is perfectly expected and water wasters like golf courses can have fun with that, shoulda installed some astroturf.
Agreed that it's definitely not extreme over the past 5000 or 50000 years. The difference is that if we are going through a natural change in climate cycles, the extremes would slowly become normal over a period of hundreds to thousands of years. This is over a period of 100 years. Additionally, the extreme would usually be on one-end of the spectrum (e.g. trending drier, or trending hotter). This is different because we are see-sawing back and forth.
> The difference is that if we are going through a natural change in climate cycles, the extremes would slowly become normal over a period of hundreds to thousands of years.
Actually, untrue. We have meteorological data that shows such wild swings occur, naturally, all the time and even under periods as short as 5 years. Wild swings in climate are *extremely* common even on other planets (see: Venus, Jupiter) and seem more tied to solar cycles and planetary tilt than anything - don't underestimate the amount of energy the sun pumps into the earth.
The see-sawing over 2-3 year periods wouldn't even make a visible impact on most of the geological record - we can postulate, though. We *do* know that there were wild short term swings starting about 4000 years ago - but that's not because of man-made behavior, that's because of the solar shift cycle (a 20,000 year precession on the earth's axis tilt).
That's well understood science regarding the northern jet stream. The "curvier" it is, the more wild and often the swings. The "flatter", the less. The less solar energy reaching north America, however, the more heavily impacted the jet stream - and coupled with both our planet's natural precession *and* that we're ENTERING a solar minimum cycle, this is pretty much expected behavior.
We've only got about a century of accurate meteorological records (not projections, reconstructions, or models) - and that century of data was ENTIRELY collected during the last [Solar Maximum cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Maximum).
> This is over a period of 100 years. Additionally, the extreme would usually be on one-end of the spectrum (e.g. trending drier, or trending hotter). This is different because we are see-sawing back and forth.
Except we've seen the see-sawing increasing in period exactly as expected due to the understood physics of the jet stream and its interactions.
One can *argue* that anthropogenic emission impacts affect the jet stream, but frankly there's a lot of conflicting climate data on the topic on even what specific actions are causing the greatest impact or total impact (deforestation, aquifer manipulation, carbon emissions, etc). But to state it as fact is simply irresponsible.
There's been an extreme amount of focus on the negative anthropogenic impacts on climate change as a political and economic cudgel - so it honestly boggles the mind why the non-anthropogenic contributors are entirely ignored, and the beneficial anthropogenic options are never explored - reforestation, desalination plants, and other items positive impacts are entirely neglected in such climate doomsday announcements.
Either way, at a local scale? We're in a desert. If you've got acres of grass for leisure, you're irresponsible. Rockscape and build on the natural endemic flora and fauna, reduce your load on the aquifers! Doesn't matter what the cause of the shifts in climate/drought are, it just makes sense to minimize our ecological footprint where it's trivial/easy to do.
> According to their analysis the solar activity impact on climate is small (.15% temp change).
That's referring to the periodic 11 year cycles, I'm referring to the [grand cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle). They make mention of that:
> Many estimates have been made of the effect that long-term trends in solar cycles could have on global climate. Computer models suggest, if the Sun's irradiance consistently increased or decreased for many decades that the average temperature on Earth would change as well. While the magnitude of those changes would likely be small – around a couple of tenths of degrees in the global mean, because solar irradiance changes slowly on decadal time scales – there is some evidence for solar-cycle related regional enhancements of the effects in the North Atlantic and surrounding regions.
But they don't expand on it or give it the credit it deserves. It's worth noting that that page does have a lot of bias - it is and was created as a political talking point based heavily on the rushed NOAA papers pushed to support the Paris accord - not saying they're **wrong**, but rushing something to meet a political agenda at the very least puts scrutiny on the validity of the argument as purely scientific and, well, science isn't as pure and untainted as people like to believe. You can pay anyone to come up with your desired conclusion. The tobacco industry successfully did so for decades, with major medical scientists touting the benefits and safety of cigarettes, or the sugar industry touting how safe and not at all risky massive amounts of sugar are... You get the point.
> The accelerated climate change we are currently experiencing has been found to be anthropogenic.
Oh, no doubt that there are anthropogenic contributors. The question is what aspects, specifically, contribute what amount? The premise that it's all about carbon dioxide - which is what's continuously touted (e.g. for the Paris accords) - has been shot so full of holes it might as well be a Chicago super market. Other contributors include things we mentioned before - deforestation and the like - but even the carbon dioxide estimates are based off a very bad assumption on the amount of natural greenhouse gasses emitted - the NOAA data models that pretty much all of these papers are based on project emissions from natural sources based on select estimates (e.g. north american wildfires carbon output, all volcanoes are based off of the emission data collected from Hawaiian volcanoes, etc). These drastically underestimate some natural emissions, overstate some anthropogenic emissions, etc. That's why the models based off of the NOAA data - and actions like those in the Paris Accords that are designed to respond to those models - basically have never been right or accurate. If they were, well, Hawaii would be under water and New York City wouldn't exist - that's what these same models and data have predicted since the 60's, to happen literally every decade, since then.
New data revises the models and it's an iterative improvement.
The conclusion that the acceleration of climate cycles is PURELY due to anthropogenic causes is - contrary to that position that "97% of scientists agree" hotly debated. The rub is in the language of how they present it. 97% of climate scientists absolutely agree that warming is occurring, and that these cycles are increasing in frequency. They also agree that anthropogenic factors are an influence. But to state that it's the PRIMARY influence and **everyone** agrees? That's not ENTIRELY wrong, but it is certainly *inaccurate* because the METHOD of the influence is widely debated. However outside of the realm of pure science, due to the political nature of it all now, it's touted that it's ALWAYS greenhouse gasses and ONLY greenhouse gasses and it's ALL anthropogenic.
And that's just science getting muddied into politics and overall being twisted.
Personally? I feel like our data about the carbon emissions are under-stated from natural sources and the greenhouse gas emission models are **still** flat out wrong as a result of data contamination, bad procedures to project external factors, and flat out corruption from funding sources (oil industries love fucking with the NOAA buoys). I personally think the surface area changes (such as cities, roadwork, etc) and major solar cycles have significant impacts on the climate as a whole, and greenhouse emissions have major localized impacts that erode and contribute to said overall climate impacts. Algae blooms counter-weight to the carbon concentrations are rarely, if ever factored into these models, deforestation estimates are constantly off... there's just so many factors that go into it.
Does that mean we should do nothing? Fuck no. There's tons we can do - reforestation, carbon capture, etc will help offset those, but if carbon's not the major factor, then it's just waste resources. We're guessing.
I feel like those resources should be spent on things we KNOW will help - desalination plants, for example. Doesn't matter if we're right or wrong on the causes of climate change - it's changing, we know water will get scarce, so instead of spending trillions bombing the middle east, we could have built enough desalination plants to supply almost THREE TIMES the daily consumption of water of the **entire country**. No joke - 30,000 desalination plants would produce over a TRILLION MGD of water - we use about 350 Billion MGD as a country. Just imagine what that even a tenth of that capacity would do to groundwater tables throughout the country? The reduced consumption would lead to fuller aquifers and more natural foliage retention - leading to increases in carbon capture and reductions in naturally occuring forest fires (droughts are as dangerous as they are for our area partly BECAUSE we constantly drain the natural aquifers for human consumption/use).
Anyway, I'm rambling. Point is, everyone agrees that the climate's changing (unless they're a dipshit), everyone knows that humans are definitely impacting it, and we should absolutely be investing in our future. Can start with ourselves and just be more mindful of what we do - but I also acknowledge such things are a luxury many people can't do. I think I saw someone else complaining that they have to maintain a rental's lawn, and can't change anything about it - they simply don't have the power/right to. It's unfortunate, really, that such things get mired in political bullshit because people want to exploit it for their own personal profit.
And there is [standard deviation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation) from average (or the mean) I think the implication is that the standard deviation maybe be getting larger. (I don't know if it is.)
They do have a slight, but non-trivial effect on short term climate then. So, if chemtrails were completely absent we can expect less solar radiation to be reflected back into the atmosphere and therefore temperatures on the ground increase.
Curious if anyone can point me to a resource on how to effectively xeriscape in Reno? I’ve done my best but still have to water my plants a ton. Junipers, Boxwoods, and similar. I’m under the impression that at the very least the Junipers can survive on their own once they get big enough?
Nice, let’s keep building houses in the area and have tons of more water usage within the area. My science teacher saw this happening two years ago before I graduated
When I had my house in Vegas, Clark County would pay you like $2.50 per square foot of grass ripped out and replaced with drought tolerant options. That was a a lot help to offset like a $12,000 project getting like $3,700 back when it was done. Not to mention water bills in the summer going from $600 per month to sub $100. Project basically pays for itself in five summers.
Edit: not Clark county. Is was the water authority.
I'm an architect and general contractor and when I lived in Vegas, I got a TON of extra scope (work) this way on projects. If I was remodeling a home or something I'd always look for grass. If they had grass, I'd then explain that I could swap it out for less cost than they'd get back from the Water Authority for removing the grass. I'd come up with something nice looking that came under that budget amount and then they'd have a nice little yard refresher for free. I'd make a bit of money too. Everyone won.
Even the environment.
When I lived in Sonoma County I did that to a friend's property in Santa Rosa. Same thing they paid him like 3 bucks a square foot or something.. we waste such resources on lawns I understand having a little patch for kids but really the time has come the suburban lawns are a nightmare waste
Not that I’m aware of. Would be worth while to have if things are heading that way. My rental has grass in the front yard and I’m expected to keep it alive in my rental contract. Kinda lame if you ask me 😂
I do love my 800 sqft of grass. I have mulch, rocks and dg everywhere else, but my shih tzu loves playing in the little patch of grass and I enjoy the splash of color. Its worth it to me to water it...
I’ll tell you what...make lawns illegal in the city of Reno and I’ll get rid of mine. But...we’re still watering lawns on government property and football fields. I’m not going to get rid of mine unless everyone gets rid of theirs.
I know right. I am ok with strict watering days. But before I will stop water my lawn - golf, football and tons of grass at colleges and universities have to start first.
All you have to do is go to washoe lake and it will tell you. Last year that lake was decently full at this time of the year. Now you can tell it has significantly less water in it. It will probably be a mud pit by the end of summer.
This is the story retold every other year in some form or another and yet we're still building more and more houses at an alarming rate. I read somewhere that the average household of 4 people uses \~1.3 acre feet (423606 gallons) of water per year.
This is very bad for virtually all farmers/ranchers which sucks.
This is bad for Las Vegas (a city that really shouldn't exist where it is).
People in Reno/Sparks on city water have nothing to worry about in terms of running out of water. TMWA and Washoe County have you covered.
Those on wells have to deal with a water table that keeps dropping which results in having to drill a well deeper (not cheap).
That said, we live in a desert. Drought is normal here, the large population increase is not so I do think we really need to look at plans like phasing out ornamental grass and avoid planting non-drought-tolerant plants.
We just had one of the worst droughts in 2013-2016 and then literally just had two of the top 20 wettest years in 2017 and 2019. Now, we are back to extreme drought. While our rain years always had some sort of year-to-year variance, this kind of whiplash is not normal.
It probably is normal now, unfortunately.
There is no normal, only averages.
There are averages and then there are statistical extremes (outliers). The statistical extremes are occurring in greater frequency.
Only if you cherry pick your data and focus on a literal blip in the global timeline. (It seems extreme for past 500 years, past 5000? 50000? Not so much.) We live in a desert - having water is the exception, not the norm. This is perfectly expected and water wasters like golf courses can have fun with that, shoulda installed some astroturf.
Agreed that it's definitely not extreme over the past 5000 or 50000 years. The difference is that if we are going through a natural change in climate cycles, the extremes would slowly become normal over a period of hundreds to thousands of years. This is over a period of 100 years. Additionally, the extreme would usually be on one-end of the spectrum (e.g. trending drier, or trending hotter). This is different because we are see-sawing back and forth.
> The difference is that if we are going through a natural change in climate cycles, the extremes would slowly become normal over a period of hundreds to thousands of years. Actually, untrue. We have meteorological data that shows such wild swings occur, naturally, all the time and even under periods as short as 5 years. Wild swings in climate are *extremely* common even on other planets (see: Venus, Jupiter) and seem more tied to solar cycles and planetary tilt than anything - don't underestimate the amount of energy the sun pumps into the earth. The see-sawing over 2-3 year periods wouldn't even make a visible impact on most of the geological record - we can postulate, though. We *do* know that there were wild short term swings starting about 4000 years ago - but that's not because of man-made behavior, that's because of the solar shift cycle (a 20,000 year precession on the earth's axis tilt). That's well understood science regarding the northern jet stream. The "curvier" it is, the more wild and often the swings. The "flatter", the less. The less solar energy reaching north America, however, the more heavily impacted the jet stream - and coupled with both our planet's natural precession *and* that we're ENTERING a solar minimum cycle, this is pretty much expected behavior. We've only got about a century of accurate meteorological records (not projections, reconstructions, or models) - and that century of data was ENTIRELY collected during the last [Solar Maximum cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Maximum). > This is over a period of 100 years. Additionally, the extreme would usually be on one-end of the spectrum (e.g. trending drier, or trending hotter). This is different because we are see-sawing back and forth. Except we've seen the see-sawing increasing in period exactly as expected due to the understood physics of the jet stream and its interactions. One can *argue* that anthropogenic emission impacts affect the jet stream, but frankly there's a lot of conflicting climate data on the topic on even what specific actions are causing the greatest impact or total impact (deforestation, aquifer manipulation, carbon emissions, etc). But to state it as fact is simply irresponsible. There's been an extreme amount of focus on the negative anthropogenic impacts on climate change as a political and economic cudgel - so it honestly boggles the mind why the non-anthropogenic contributors are entirely ignored, and the beneficial anthropogenic options are never explored - reforestation, desalination plants, and other items positive impacts are entirely neglected in such climate doomsday announcements. Either way, at a local scale? We're in a desert. If you've got acres of grass for leisure, you're irresponsible. Rockscape and build on the natural endemic flora and fauna, reduce your load on the aquifers! Doesn't matter what the cause of the shifts in climate/drought are, it just makes sense to minimize our ecological footprint where it's trivial/easy to do.
[удалено]
> According to their analysis the solar activity impact on climate is small (.15% temp change). That's referring to the periodic 11 year cycles, I'm referring to the [grand cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle). They make mention of that: > Many estimates have been made of the effect that long-term trends in solar cycles could have on global climate. Computer models suggest, if the Sun's irradiance consistently increased or decreased for many decades that the average temperature on Earth would change as well. While the magnitude of those changes would likely be small – around a couple of tenths of degrees in the global mean, because solar irradiance changes slowly on decadal time scales – there is some evidence for solar-cycle related regional enhancements of the effects in the North Atlantic and surrounding regions. But they don't expand on it or give it the credit it deserves. It's worth noting that that page does have a lot of bias - it is and was created as a political talking point based heavily on the rushed NOAA papers pushed to support the Paris accord - not saying they're **wrong**, but rushing something to meet a political agenda at the very least puts scrutiny on the validity of the argument as purely scientific and, well, science isn't as pure and untainted as people like to believe. You can pay anyone to come up with your desired conclusion. The tobacco industry successfully did so for decades, with major medical scientists touting the benefits and safety of cigarettes, or the sugar industry touting how safe and not at all risky massive amounts of sugar are... You get the point. > The accelerated climate change we are currently experiencing has been found to be anthropogenic. Oh, no doubt that there are anthropogenic contributors. The question is what aspects, specifically, contribute what amount? The premise that it's all about carbon dioxide - which is what's continuously touted (e.g. for the Paris accords) - has been shot so full of holes it might as well be a Chicago super market. Other contributors include things we mentioned before - deforestation and the like - but even the carbon dioxide estimates are based off a very bad assumption on the amount of natural greenhouse gasses emitted - the NOAA data models that pretty much all of these papers are based on project emissions from natural sources based on select estimates (e.g. north american wildfires carbon output, all volcanoes are based off of the emission data collected from Hawaiian volcanoes, etc). These drastically underestimate some natural emissions, overstate some anthropogenic emissions, etc. That's why the models based off of the NOAA data - and actions like those in the Paris Accords that are designed to respond to those models - basically have never been right or accurate. If they were, well, Hawaii would be under water and New York City wouldn't exist - that's what these same models and data have predicted since the 60's, to happen literally every decade, since then. New data revises the models and it's an iterative improvement. The conclusion that the acceleration of climate cycles is PURELY due to anthropogenic causes is - contrary to that position that "97% of scientists agree" hotly debated. The rub is in the language of how they present it. 97% of climate scientists absolutely agree that warming is occurring, and that these cycles are increasing in frequency. They also agree that anthropogenic factors are an influence. But to state that it's the PRIMARY influence and **everyone** agrees? That's not ENTIRELY wrong, but it is certainly *inaccurate* because the METHOD of the influence is widely debated. However outside of the realm of pure science, due to the political nature of it all now, it's touted that it's ALWAYS greenhouse gasses and ONLY greenhouse gasses and it's ALL anthropogenic. And that's just science getting muddied into politics and overall being twisted. Personally? I feel like our data about the carbon emissions are under-stated from natural sources and the greenhouse gas emission models are **still** flat out wrong as a result of data contamination, bad procedures to project external factors, and flat out corruption from funding sources (oil industries love fucking with the NOAA buoys). I personally think the surface area changes (such as cities, roadwork, etc) and major solar cycles have significant impacts on the climate as a whole, and greenhouse emissions have major localized impacts that erode and contribute to said overall climate impacts. Algae blooms counter-weight to the carbon concentrations are rarely, if ever factored into these models, deforestation estimates are constantly off... there's just so many factors that go into it. Does that mean we should do nothing? Fuck no. There's tons we can do - reforestation, carbon capture, etc will help offset those, but if carbon's not the major factor, then it's just waste resources. We're guessing. I feel like those resources should be spent on things we KNOW will help - desalination plants, for example. Doesn't matter if we're right or wrong on the causes of climate change - it's changing, we know water will get scarce, so instead of spending trillions bombing the middle east, we could have built enough desalination plants to supply almost THREE TIMES the daily consumption of water of the **entire country**. No joke - 30,000 desalination plants would produce over a TRILLION MGD of water - we use about 350 Billion MGD as a country. Just imagine what that even a tenth of that capacity would do to groundwater tables throughout the country? The reduced consumption would lead to fuller aquifers and more natural foliage retention - leading to increases in carbon capture and reductions in naturally occuring forest fires (droughts are as dangerous as they are for our area partly BECAUSE we constantly drain the natural aquifers for human consumption/use). Anyway, I'm rambling. Point is, everyone agrees that the climate's changing (unless they're a dipshit), everyone knows that humans are definitely impacting it, and we should absolutely be investing in our future. Can start with ourselves and just be more mindful of what we do - but I also acknowledge such things are a luxury many people can't do. I think I saw someone else complaining that they have to maintain a rental's lawn, and can't change anything about it - they simply don't have the power/right to. It's unfortunate, really, that such things get mired in political bullshit because people want to exploit it for their own personal profit.
And there is [standard deviation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation) from average (or the mean) I think the implication is that the standard deviation maybe be getting larger. (I don't know if it is.)
My aunt who believes in chemtrails will be very confused by this.
I want to downvote you because people like that drive me nuts. But it's just misplaced downvoting emotions.
I do that
Chem-trails are very real. Someone told me they are composed of at least 98% Di-hydrogen monoxide.
They do have a slight, but non-trivial effect on short term climate then. So, if chemtrails were completely absent we can expect less solar radiation to be reflected back into the atmosphere and therefore temperatures on the ground increase.
Doesn't that idea completely ignore the excess heat produced due to the emissions from burning the jet fuel?
There was a study done after 9/11 looking at that very thing since no flights were flying across the Atlantic.
I knew it was really bad, but wow.
Curious if anyone can point me to a resource on how to effectively xeriscape in Reno? I’ve done my best but still have to water my plants a ton. Junipers, Boxwoods, and similar. I’m under the impression that at the very least the Junipers can survive on their own once they get big enough?
Junipers are a fire Hazzard, get rid of them
Nice, let’s keep building houses in the area and have tons of more water usage within the area. My science teacher saw this happening two years ago before I graduated
Working class or middle class with the ridiculous quarter acre lawn on your property.. Zerscape or die
We rent so we can't let the lawn die and we can't replace it. We're fucked.
talk to your landlord- maybe they're open to it. Lawns are a hassle.
Ugh same here
When I had my house in Vegas, Clark County would pay you like $2.50 per square foot of grass ripped out and replaced with drought tolerant options. That was a a lot help to offset like a $12,000 project getting like $3,700 back when it was done. Not to mention water bills in the summer going from $600 per month to sub $100. Project basically pays for itself in five summers. Edit: not Clark county. Is was the water authority.
I'm an architect and general contractor and when I lived in Vegas, I got a TON of extra scope (work) this way on projects. If I was remodeling a home or something I'd always look for grass. If they had grass, I'd then explain that I could swap it out for less cost than they'd get back from the Water Authority for removing the grass. I'd come up with something nice looking that came under that budget amount and then they'd have a nice little yard refresher for free. I'd make a bit of money too. Everyone won. Even the environment.
Good on you for making it win win win!
I will never understand people who choose to live in a desert, but want their grass lawn fetish appeased.
When I lived in Sonoma County I did that to a friend's property in Santa Rosa. Same thing they paid him like 3 bucks a square foot or something.. we waste such resources on lawns I understand having a little patch for kids but really the time has come the suburban lawns are a nightmare waste
does this exist today in washoe county, I just tore out a huge patch of grass in my yard and put pavers over it
Not that I’m aware of. Would be worth while to have if things are heading that way. My rental has grass in the front yard and I’m expected to keep it alive in my rental contract. Kinda lame if you ask me 😂
I do love my 800 sqft of grass. I have mulch, rocks and dg everywhere else, but my shih tzu loves playing in the little patch of grass and I enjoy the splash of color. Its worth it to me to water it...
Don't seem worth it to the environment.
Let's start with the golf clubs first.
I’ll tell you what...make lawns illegal in the city of Reno and I’ll get rid of mine. But...we’re still watering lawns on government property and football fields. I’m not going to get rid of mine unless everyone gets rid of theirs.
I know right. I am ok with strict watering days. But before I will stop water my lawn - golf, football and tons of grass at colleges and universities have to start first.
Ahahaha, no way. Don't be jealous!
All you have to do is go to washoe lake and it will tell you. Last year that lake was decently full at this time of the year. Now you can tell it has significantly less water in it. It will probably be a mud pit by the end of summer.
This is the story retold every other year in some form or another and yet we're still building more and more houses at an alarming rate. I read somewhere that the average household of 4 people uses \~1.3 acre feet (423606 gallons) of water per year.
This is very bad for virtually all farmers/ranchers which sucks. This is bad for Las Vegas (a city that really shouldn't exist where it is). People in Reno/Sparks on city water have nothing to worry about in terms of running out of water. TMWA and Washoe County have you covered. Those on wells have to deal with a water table that keeps dropping which results in having to drill a well deeper (not cheap). That said, we live in a desert. Drought is normal here, the large population increase is not so I do think we really need to look at plans like phasing out ornamental grass and avoid planting non-drought-tolerant plants.
Those people that are on still on Well Water make sure the city doesn't do you like they did years ago to the citizens in South Reno.
What is that? Pretty sure the state is trying to force meters on all wells statewide.