It's funny how human beings, even the those who have convinced themselves that they are the most "enlightened" and secular among us, still have an innate tendency to seek meaning in something bigger than themselves.

The hypothesis of widespread, consequential, and human-induced "Climate Change" is the Catholicism of the modern-day, know-nothing "Progressive" ----.

It offers all of dogma, but none of the redemption.

One could also make the case that the Wuhan Institute of Virology recently nailed their 95 Theses to the door to create another spawn of "Progressive" Divinity, but that remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, the reaction to heretics is utterly hilarious to watch. The smug self-righteousness in it would put any old Southern Baptist scold to shame.

"How dare you?"

Can you tell us where the water went?
Maybe ask Pinche to help with that. He knows.

The Ogallala sits under shortgrass prairie in a semi-arid region. It's country meant for buffalo and cattle and should have never seen the plow. But it did, and so for decades big Cummins engines have been pumping water out to irrigate the food and fiber crops. The Ogallala is not a karstic aquifer (like the Edwards) and doesn't recharge rapidly and directly with widespread rainfall. Instead, water stored in natural playa lakes on the plains slowly, slowly, slowly infiltrates the water table.

It's a very simple water-balance calculation that, as Visitor so adroitly pointed out above, has ------- to do with "climate change" or "COVID" or California or whatever other existential crisis you've decided to flail your little wrists about this week. When you pump water out of a reservoir at a faster rate than it recharges, the levels in said reservoir are going to drop.

It's not so much that the Ogllala is literally "drying up" so much as it is the water table is falling below the (current) ability of mankind to extract it in an economically feasible manner.

Rwingers are more concerned about owning them a lib by focusing on why the climate is changing rather than the fact that it is.

What a stupid thing to say.

Of course "tEh cLiMaTe iS ChAaAnGiNg(!)"

It always has.

Fun Fact:

There's a reason you can find fossilized sea shells 200 miles inland from the Texas coast.

Hard Pill:

That reason has nothing to do with mankind's insufficient fealty to the nostrums of modern dumbass Progressives Climate Change Scripture.

Reservoirs are going to drop when there are massive droughts resulting from mankind releasing mass quantities of C02 into the atmosphere

No.

Reservoirs are going to drop when there are droughts resulting from prolonged periods of below-average rainfall.

Such periods have commonplace since long before your lineage oozed out of the primordial slime from whence it came and have continued to be commonplace ever since.

The unqualified hubris of the typical Progressive dumbass never ceases to amaze.

It's not fair to call a drought a drought. It's simply the amount of water is falling below the (current) ability of mankind to extract it in an economically feasible manner.

It's not a difficult concept, Obtoofy.

Will a drought impact the levels of an indirect recharge aquifer like the Ogallala?

It certainly will.

But the Ogallala has set there for millennia as the land above it experienced both bad droughts and wet cycles that refilled the playas that recharge it.

It wasn't until we started drilling high capacity wells into it a little over 100 years ago that it began to drop precipitously.

Therefore, using the aquifer level as a barometer of anthropogenic "climate change" is incorrect.

What about the idea that manmade carbon emissions (cattle, cars, etc.) can somehow destabilize climate during our "nanosecond on the scale of geologic time?"

That would require one to buy into the idea that there was ever such thing as a "stabilized" climate---or much stasis in the natural environment at all.

People who think that's the case are generally the people whose Birkenstocks have rarely left the pavement---and whose understanding of natural science was generally formed by Walt Disney movies and Salon articles.

so who cares about the world my daughter grows up in?

Oh ----.

You've procreated?

No other time in human existence has seen the climate change this rapidly.

LOL Really?

What does the NOAA data tell us about the weather trends on the High Plains around 800-900 AD?

You poor, hysterical little ----.

Put your mask on.

I mostly agree with that statement.

I don't really give a ---- whether you agree with it or not, to be quite frank with you.

maybe the area had to draw more water from the aquifer because the other menas of watering the crops (e.g., rain) were no longer sufficient.

That goes back to my earlier point about plowing under short grass prairie in a semi-arid ecosystem to cultivate crops requiring irrigation.

Yes, you will have have excellent summer rains some years and will therefore not be required to pump much.

But it's also the High Plains of North America---which has never been a place where you want to "bet" you're going to have consistent, adequate rainfall to sustain row crops.

Why do you assume that NOAA data is the only input of data that the climate scientists use?

Why do you assume the modeling of proxy data is sufficient gruel upon which to re-arrange civilized Western society?

I'm not quite sure I understand this reasoning.

I've no doubt we could spend half a lifetime musing over things you don't understand.

You're saying since rivers sometimes dry up in the course of history, which is certainly true.
But that seems like an even better reason to not take too much water from a river, in case it starts drying up, as sometimes happens in the course of history.

That's simple water conservation, Obtoofy. It's a good idea. Especially west of the 100th Meridian. That's why we have River Authorities and Groundwater Conservation Districts.

Why have the rains apparently dried up?

Why have the rains on the once lush High Plains dried up?

I mean, paleolithic cave drawings discovered in NW Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, and Nebraska depict scenes of hunting crocodiles and other tropical fauna from dugout canoes.

Coronado, when first passing through the area, bragged in his diaries of the abundance of water and thick jungle foliage on the Llano Estacado.

I guess it was all those Ford Explorers that suddenly made it quit raining out there.

Dumbass.

The effects of climate change are mostly a 20th and 21st century phenomenon.

No. They're not.

That's why we have Great Lakes and seashell fossils 200 miles inland.

U.S. Drought Monitor

I'm well aware of the drought monitor.

I used to help create it.

Drought has been a permanent and constantly shifting feature of Earth for millennia and will continue to be so for millennia.

Oh Look.

Cachuma Lake is Santa Barbara County is at capacity for the first time since 2011.

Apparently, the climate changed this week.