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Re:California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal ... by trhway on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @04:10PM (#9306500)
>The real problem here is we tried to turn a desert in to our national bread basket.

or may be that our national bread basket is turning into a desert? One needs 3 components - soil, sun and water. We're loosing the 3rd component :

http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_27070897/california-dr...

"The last three years of drought were the most severe that California has experienced in at least 1,200 years"

Everybody can just only guess why...

Edit: to the "jff"'s response below - a "guess" by the Stanford http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/september/drought-climate...

Re:California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal ... by jff on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @04:19PM (#9306555)
> Everybody can just only guess why...

NOAA says it isn't because of climate change, if that's what you're implying.

Re:California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal ... by nitrogen on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @04:43PM (#9306726)
NOAA says it isn't because of climate change, if that's what you're implying.

Should the word "anthropogenic" be in that sentence somewhere? Getting less water is indeed a change in the climate by the very definitions of climate and change.

Re:California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal ... by Dylan16807 on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @05:43PM (#9307140)
Not when it's just random chance. An X year drought by definition is supposed to happen every X years.
Re:California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal ... by nitrogen on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @05:54PM (#9307205)
What's the dividing line between a changing climate and a very highly randomly varying unchanging climate?

Also, minor nit, "X year event" doesn't mean the event should happen every X years, but that over a span Y >> X, the event happens Y / X times.

Re:California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal ... by Dylan16807 on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @06:04PM (#9307277)
Yes I meant on average.

The dividing line is simple; it's when the average changes. You can't objectively measure this, but you can get certainty bounds by using many data points. The smaller the change, the more data points you need.

A single huge drought in a place prone to droughts is not a very strong data point by itself. Unless it literally doesn't end, we'll need many more years of rain measurements to know if the baseline has changed.

If you go global it's a lot easier to take independent measurements and show climate change exists at all. But to ask whether the level of rain in California is from climate change simply can't be answered as quickly.

Re:California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal ... by abduhl on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @06:24PM (#9307385)
Actually, an X-year event means that an event of equal or greater size has a 1 out of X chance of occurring per year which is distinctly different from for Y >> X => Y/X occurrences.

For example, a 100 year flood has a probability of occurring (or being exceeded) of 1% per year which is distinctly different from "a 100 year flood is expected once every 100 years".

The law of large numbers implies your statement but that isn't what the term X-year event means.

Re:California Imposes First-Ever Water Restrictions to Deal ... by green7ea on Wednesday April 01, 2015 @05:16PM (#9306965)
We also seem to be losing the first component (soil). At least we're going to have plenty of sunlight left.