California Imposes "Unprecedented" Mandatory Statewide Water Restrictions

Speaking from a water-parched perch in the Sierra Nevadas that would normally be covered with five feet or more of snow, today California Gov. Jerry Brown announced unprecedented mandatory water use restrictions. ABC News reports:

For the first time in the state's history, the governor has directed the State Water Resources Control Board to implement mandatory water reductions across California, in an effort to reduce water usage by 25 percent. The measures include replacing 50 million square feet of lawns throughout the state with drought-tolerant landscaping, banning the watering of grass on public street medians, requiring agricultural water users to report their water use to state regulators, and requiring large landscapes such as campuses, golf courses and cemeteries to make significant cuts in water use.

The last four years have been the driest in California’s recorded history. As of March 24, more than 98 percent of California is suffering from abnormally dry conditions, with 41.1 percent in an exceptional drought, according the U.S. Drought Monitor, which estimates that more than 37 million Californians have been affected by the drought. The state’s snowpack, which is largely responsible for feeding the state’s reservoirs, has been reduced to 8 percent of its historical average, and in some areas in the Central Valley the land is sinking a foot a year because of over-pumping of groundwater for agriculture.

The snowpack in neighboring Nevada's Lake Tahoe water basin is reported to be at 3% of its normal size. For now, neither state is restricting water usage by private homes, but experts have warned that that is surely coming. Yesterday the water provider to the Reno area asked customers to cut their use by 10%.

Sen. James Inhofe Conclusively Disproves Climate Change By Tossing A Snowball Across The Senate Floor

Via Slate:

During rambling remarks Thursday afternoon, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, used a snowball as a prop on the Senate floor. The apparent purpose of this stunt: to show the recent spate of cold weather in the Northeast is a sign that human activity isn’t causing climate change. The snowball was brought to the Senate floor in a sealable plastic bag. Inhofe began his speech with the snowball at his side on the speaker’s podium. After he was introduced, he removed it from the bag, held it in his hand, and said, “I ask the chair, you know what this is? It’s a snowball, just from outside here. So it’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonal. Mr. President, catch this.” Inhofe then underhand tossed the snowball in the direction of Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was presiding over the Senate at the time.

Yesterday In The Senate

RELATED: From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

Decades ago, the majority of the Arctic's winter ice pack was made up of thick, perennial ice. Today, very old ice is extremely rare. This animation tracks the relative amount of ice of different ages from 1987 through early November 2014. Video produced by the Climate.gov team, based on data provided by Mark Tschudi.

2014: The Hottest Year On Record

Via the Washington Post:

It is official: According to both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the year 2014 was the hottest ever measured, based on records going back to the year 1880. It now surpasses all past scorchers, including 1998, 2005, and 2010. Indeed, except for 1998, says NASA, the 10 hottest years recorded have all occurred since the year 2000. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the new record is that it occurred even though 2014 was not an El Niño year, of the sort that usually powers the already up-trending global average temperature to new highs. The two agencies released a joint announcement this morning, following a careful collaborative effort in which experts closely compared analyses. Last year, NASA and NOAA also collaborated on an analysis of 2013, which wasn't as warm but still ranks within the top 10 hottest years on record.

An atmospheric scientist weighs in:

“If you are younger than 29-years old, you haven’t lived in a month that was cooler than the 20th century average. That’s a new normal that is a result of human activities on top of the natural varying climate that has global temperature trends moving very quickly towards a 1-2 C increase. While that may sound insignificant, it’s best to think of it as the difference between a low-grade fever and one just a few degrees higher that can have an impact on the body.”

NEW YORK CITY: 300,000 March Ahead Of United Nations Climate Change Summit

Via USA Today:

More than 300,000 people marched through the streets of New York City on Sunday in what organizers called the largest climate-change demonstration in history. With banners, flags, floats and drums, protesters at the "People's Climate March" overwhelmed midtown Manhattan in flocks of vivid color, demanding action ahead of the United Nations Climate Summit this week. "I'm totally passionate about our planet and what's happening with our life here," said Heather Snow, 57, a massage therapist from Wilmington, N.C. "The whole Congress, everyone has gone insane, and it's time to end the insanity. I don't know how, I don't know when, but it's got to happen soon. We're running out of time." The massive march kicked off at 11:30 a.m. on the ritzy Upper West Side along Central Park before winding its way through the city on a two-mile route. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, former U.S. vice president Al Gore, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and actors Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo DiCaprio joined thousands of protesters at the march.

Breitbart Headline Of The Day

This is how Breitbart is reporting on today's anti-climate change marches.

Jimmy Carter Slams "Nutcases" Who Block Anti-Global Warming Campaigns

“We’ve seen some countries devote themselves to renewable energy.  The United States is right at the bottom, with only 10 percent of our energy coming from renewable sources. So we still have a tremendous opportunity to do what we haven’t done. The biggest problem we have right now is some nutcases in our country who don’t believe in global warming. I think that they are going to change their position because the evidence of the ravages of global warming is coming or is already there." - Former President Jimmy Carter, speaking yesterday at a renewable energy summit. The people are Twitchy are predictably losing their shit at being called nutcases.

Climatologist: We Might Be Fucked

Climatologists such as the one above are not mincing words after a huge blow-hole appeared in the Siberian tundra. The deep cavern, they believe, was caused by the venting of methane. Via Salon:

The study concerns the large deposits of methane (CH4) — a greenhouse gas over twenty times more potent than CO2 — known to be buried beneath the Arctic. Stockholm University researchers found that some of that methane is leaking, and even making it to the ocean’s surface. They called the discovery “somewhat of a surprise,” which, according to [Jason] Box, doesn’t quite communicate its importance. “The Arctic is our most immediate carbon concern,” Box said, referring also to the CH4 escaping from the melting permafrost. But the sentiment can be expanded to all of climate change: “We’re on a trajectory to an unmanageable heating scenario, and we need to get off it,” he said. “We’re fucked at a certain point, right? It just becomes unmanageable. The climate dragon is being poked, and eventually the dragon becomes pissed off enough to trash the place.”

More from an Australian news outlet:

Siberia’s Yamal region contains some of Russia’s largest gas reserves. It’s little coincidence that the first vent hole appeared about 40km from the nation’s largest gas field — Bovanenkovo. Since then another crater has been identified nearby. This one is smaller: Some 15m in diameter. Locals first found it in September last year, but it has only now come to the attention of authorities. A third — this time only 4m wide — was found several hundred kilometres away on the Taymyr Peninsula. Russian scientists examining the first blowhole found it to be 60-80m wide and some 70m deep. It runs into the permafrost of ice and mud. There is an icy lake at its bottom. Methane. It’s the lasting remains of an event which happened some 50 million years ago. An outbreak of a tiny green weed transformed the Earth from a virtually lifeless greenhouse by sucking the carbon out of the air and pumping oxygen back into it. It was a process which took millions of years to create the world as we know it. But the methane left trapped under the Arctic permafrost is a ticking time bomb — set to send the world into a mass extinction and set the climate clock back by millennia. “We have been too long on a trajectory pointed at an unmanageable climate calamity; runaway climate heating,” Dr Box writes.

More Douchery From Pat Sajak

Rubio: Climate Change Isn't Manmade

This weekend Sen. Marco Rubio declared that he doesn't believe "human activity" is causing climate change. The Washington Post editorial board reacts:

It is one thing to invite a debate about the best policy to address rising global temperatures, a problem no country can tackle on its own. It is another to dismiss the evidence that “these scientists” have compiled — “a handful of decades of research,” Mr. Rubio derisively called it — to show that humans are driving much of that warming. On Sunday, Mr. Rubio insisted that he is ready to be president. We hope he does not count sidling up to climate change denial as a qualification. It is quite the opposite.

Tweet Of The Day - God

David Barton: Global Warming Is Actually The Judgment Of God

Al Gore On Global Warming

"I think the most important part of it is winning the conversation. I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, "Hey man, we don’t go for that anymore.' The same thing happened on apartheid. The same thing happened on the nuclear arms race with the freeze movement. The same thing happened in an earlier era with abolition. A few months ago, I saw an article about two gay men standing in line for pizza and some homophobe made an ugly comment about them holding hands and everyone else in line told them to shut up. We’re winning that conversation." - Al Gore, who has caused quite a stir by comparing global warming deniers to racists and homophobes.

Glenn Beck: I'll Fire Anybody Who Does Anything Because Of Global Warming

Rush Limbaugh On Global Warming

"Folks, if you believe in God, then intellectually you cannot believe in manmade global warming. You must be either agnostic or atheistic to believe that man controls something that he can’t create. The vanity! These people — on the one hand, ‘We’re no different than a mouse or a rat.’ If you listen to the animal rights activists, we are the pollutants of this planet. If it weren’t for humanity — the military environmentalist wackos — the Earth would be pristine and wonderful and beautiful, and nobody would see it. According to them we are not as entitled to life on this planet as other creatures because we destroy it. But how can we destroy it when we’re no different from the lowest life forms? And then on the other end, ‘We are so powerful. And we are so impotent -- omnipotent --that we can destroy — we can’t even stop a rain shower, but we can destroy the climate.’ And how? With barbecue pits and automobiles, particularly SUVs. It’s absurd." - Rush Limbaugh, speaking yesterday on his radio show.

Warmest Year Ever For New York City

Via Wall Street Journal:

New York City is poised to finish its warmest year since modern record-keeping began, with an average temperature projected to top 57.2 degrees. A Wall Street Journal analysis of federal temperature data from an observation station at Central Park puts 2012 on course to surpass the three-way tie for the city's warmest year, which is currently shared by 1990, 1991 and 1998. Temperature records at Central Park date back to 1869, the longest-running set of government weather data in the five boroughs. Eight of the 10 warmest years in that span have occurred since 1990. Tree-ring analysis and other proxy data compiled by climate scientists suggest 2012 might be the warmest since the Dutch opened the trading post of New Amsterdam in 1624, said William Solecki, director of the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities at Hunter College. "I think it is entirely possible that 2012 might be the warmest year for the city since its founding," he said.

"It snowed a few times in 2012, therefore climate change is a communist conspiracy concocted by leftists to destroy American capitalism," said every wingnut in Teabagistan.

On The Rising Seas

Today the New York Times posted interactive maps of a dozen coastal cities to demonstrate the flooding that will take place if the seas continue to rise due to climate change. Above is their prediction of what the New York City area might look like if the seas rise as much as 25 feet in coming centuries. (Miami would be almost entirely gone.) The accompanying op-ed piece is here.

Mitt Romney Vs Hurricane Sandy

Climate Activist Heckles Romney

And the sheeple drown him out with "USA! USA!"

Al Gore On Hurricane Sandy

"This week, our nation has anxiously watched as Hurricane Sandy lashed the East Coast and caused widespread damage--affecting millions. Now more than ever, our neighbors need our help. Please consider donating or volunteering for your local aid organizations.  The images of Sandy’s flooding brought back memories of a similar--albeit smaller scale-- event in Nashville just two years ago. There, unprecedented rainfall caused widespread flooding, wreaking havoc and submerging sections of my hometown. For me, the Nashville flood was a milestone. For many, Hurricane Sandy may prove to be a similar event: a time when the climate crisis—which is often sequestered to the far reaches of our everyday awareness became a reality. Sandy was also affected by other symptoms of the climate crisis. As the hurricane approached the East Coast, it gathered strength from abnormally warm coastal waters. At the same time, Sandy's storm surge was worsened by a century of sea level rise. Scientists tell us that if we do not reduce our emissions, these problems will only grow worse. Hurricane Sandy is a disturbing sign of things to come. We must heed this warning and act quickly to solve the climate crisis. Dirty energy makes dirty weather." - Al Gore, writing on his personal blog.