That may be the point, but it's false; before, during, and after the worst of the droughts in CA, scientists were projecting that extreme (relative to past patterns) weather patterns would be more common, that particular regions would see more droughts and others more rain, and they California is geographically positioned so as to be subject to both effects, with an uncertain net effect.
The present article, particularly, does not “call for 100 years of floods”.
It doesn't take a scientist to understand that the more heat that gets trapped in our atmosphere, and the more glaciers and ice caps that melt, the worse off we are going to be. I don't need a scientist to tell me that California might have 100 years of this, or Sahara Desert might turn into a tropical rainforest. It is enough for me to know that this will have a devastating impact on ecological systems across the globe, and the vast majority of people live near water, and sea levels are rising.
I live in a state where the majority of the population is rural and most people are farmers. I ask climate change deniers if they "believe" in greenhouses, and they look at me like I am silly. Then I explain to them that what we are doing is creating a very big green house. This usually does the trick.
I tend to watch a few websites every day to keep tabs on what's happening. There is so much crap being said on both sides that I've reverted to just watching the numbers to see where we are.
My list: http://spaceweather.com/ to watch sunspot activity, http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/ to watch arctic sea ice area and extent and arctic mean temperature, http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ for monthly temperatures, http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostu... to see where we are in the El Nino/La Nina cycle, http://sealevel.colorado.edu/ to see what the sea level graph is doing.
As a layperson, I always assumed that most weather we experience is in line with historical variability. Climate change causes (or is) small changes in the bias and variance of this weather. Saying that some of the drought is caused by natural variability and some of drought was exacerbated by GHG-induced warming seems like a perfectly consistent and reasonable position.