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> Paleoclimatological studies indicate that the last 150 years of California's history have been unusually wet compared to the previous 2000 years. Tree stumps

> Paleoclimatological studies indicate that the last 150 years of California's history have been unusually wet compared to the previous 2000 years. Tree stumps found at the bottom of lakes and rivers in California indicate that many water features dried up during historical dry periods, allowing trees to grow there while the water was absent. These dry periods were associated with warm periods in Earth's history. During the Medieval Warm Period, there were at least two century-long megadroughts with only 60-70% of modern precipitation levels. Paleoclimatologists believe that higher temperatures due to global warming may cause California to enter another dry period, with significantly lower precipitation and snowpack levels than observed over the last 150 years.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_California Welcome to normal. I think California is so young, many people living in California just don't have a realistic expectation for California's climate.

floren 6y ago
I've been reading Dan De Quille's "The Big Bonanza", about the history of the Nevada silver mines, and I was struck by a sentence from an early chapter: > Pointing out the blue peaks of the Marysville Buttes, seen far away in the smoky distance, [Kit Carson] said "Yonder lies the valley of the Sacramento!" This was in 1846; was it smoky because of persistent forest fires? Since it was still before the gold rush, the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas presumably weren't particularly populous.
- shoreofwonder 6y ago
  > The name "Smoky" comes from the natural fog that often hangs over the range and presents as large smoke plumes from a distance. Wikipedia, "Great Smoky Mountains".
  - floren 6y ago
    Good point, it could have just been a figure of speech to refer to natural fog or clouds.
  - mannykannot 6y ago
    The Great Smoky Mountains are part of the Appalachian chain, between Tennessee and North Carolina, across the country from the Sierra Nevada. I imagine that the latter might also experience haze from the same cause (terpenes emitted by living trees), but given that a large part of the current problem is the suppression of natural wildfires, it would not be surprising for there to be actual smoke despite there being few European settlers. Native Americans in the region also used fire to manage their environment, e.g. to create meadows, as in Yosemite.
    - kwk1 6y ago
      I'm pretty sure the comment you're replying to didn't intend to suggest any connection between the Sierra Nevada and the Great Smoky Mountains, but to show that the usage of "smoky" as an adjective for mountains does not necessarily mean literal smoke. The Great Smoky Mountains are just one example of this usage (thus "Great".) Similarly note the usage of "blue peaks" which probably doesn't mean the peaks were actually blue but that Rayleigh scattering was being observed.
- cameronfraser 6y ago
  Side note, Kit Carson, who is oftentimes celebrated as a folk hero, was responsible for many massacres of indigenous peoples and displacement of them. He was never really the schemer behind these atrocities, but he was one of the US governments best trigger man when it came to this. It was very odd considering he was married to a Mexican woman and had indigenous wives at other points in his life.
  - Baeocystin 6y ago
    It's only odd if you think of 'indigenous peoples' as a monolithic group. No one thinks it odd that europeans fought one another, even though they're all european, right? Same deal in the Americas. Cortez would never have prevailed against the Aztec without his Tlaxcalan allies, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaxcala#Conquest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaxcala#Conquest
- bigbubba 6y ago
  The fires are nothing new; > Before Europeans arrived (pre-1800), when the area was much more forested and the ecology much more resilient, 4.4 million acres (1.8 million hectares) of forest and shrubland burned annually.[1] > During the 2020 wildfire season alone, over 8,100 fires have contributed to the burning of nearly 4.5 million acres of land, making it the largest fire season in California's modern history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    Acreage isn't the only measure of a forest fire. 4.4 million acres of burn in an already historically thinned forest is going to be entirely different than the same area of burn in a mostly un-thinned forest. The damage to the forest, the CO2 produced, the smoke levels ... all could be at least an order of magnitude different.
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      Well California is not yet as dry as it once was a few centuries ago, so you should expect things to get even worse. You think it's bad now, but some day you'll look back on present conditions fondly. If that's not your cup of tea then I suggest getting out of the state because there are no political solutions to this. Even if by some miracle AGW were stopped dead and reversed, California would still be getting hotter and dryer. That's what the pre-industrial climate of California was typically like.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        I don't live in California. I live in a place that is likely to be even adversely affected (in terms of human living conditions) by the move out of the last several thousand years of relatively wet weather in the American southwest. Note that this change isn't expected to involve increasing temperatures of much note all by itself, just increasing dryness. AGW will likely do that, however. I'd also note that talking about the climate of "California" doesn't make a lot of sense. If state boundaries were based on biomes/climatic zones, CA would likely be at least 3 different states. The coastal zone of Northern CA is essentially unrelated, climate-wise or ecologically, to either Central Valley, the high Sierras or the start of the great basin to the east.
pkulak 6y ago
Get ready for the real fun when that aquifer runs out.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Not sure why you've been downvoted. For years Central Valley aquifers have been getting drained faster than they refill, it's unsustainable. Particularly in the case of 'fossil aquifers', named because the water in them is ancient and doesn't appreciably replenish on human timescales. Central Valley agriculture isn't sustainable. The lower their ground waters get, the more they'll try to pull from the rest of the increasingly dry state. Californian politicians have no answer for this because there is none (other than 'scale back or move out') and they probably know it.
lambdasquirrel 6y ago
True that, but where else would you live where non-competes are not enforceable?

floren 6y ago

I've been reading Dan De Quille's "The Big Bonanza", about the history of the Nevada silver mines, and I was struck by a sentence from an early chapter: > Pointing out the blue peaks of the Marysville Buttes, seen far away in the smoky distance, [Kit Carson] said "Yonder lies the valley of the Sacramento!" This was in 1846; was it smoky because of persistent forest fires? Since it was still before the gold rush, the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas presumably weren't particularly populous.

shoreofwonder 6y ago
> The name "Smoky" comes from the natural fog that often hangs over the range and presents as large smoke plumes from a distance. Wikipedia, "Great Smoky Mountains".
- floren 6y ago
  Good point, it could have just been a figure of speech to refer to natural fog or clouds.
- mannykannot 6y ago
  The Great Smoky Mountains are part of the Appalachian chain, between Tennessee and North Carolina, across the country from the Sierra Nevada. I imagine that the latter might also experience haze from the same cause (terpenes emitted by living trees), but given that a large part of the current problem is the suppression of natural wildfires, it would not be surprising for there to be actual smoke despite there being few European settlers. Native Americans in the region also used fire to manage their environment, e.g. to create meadows, as in Yosemite.
  - kwk1 6y ago
    I'm pretty sure the comment you're replying to didn't intend to suggest any connection between the Sierra Nevada and the Great Smoky Mountains, but to show that the usage of "smoky" as an adjective for mountains does not necessarily mean literal smoke. The Great Smoky Mountains are just one example of this usage (thus "Great".) Similarly note the usage of "blue peaks" which probably doesn't mean the peaks were actually blue but that Rayleigh scattering was being observed.
cameronfraser 6y ago
Side note, Kit Carson, who is oftentimes celebrated as a folk hero, was responsible for many massacres of indigenous peoples and displacement of them. He was never really the schemer behind these atrocities, but he was one of the US governments best trigger man when it came to this. It was very odd considering he was married to a Mexican woman and had indigenous wives at other points in his life.
- Baeocystin 6y ago
  It's only odd if you think of 'indigenous peoples' as a monolithic group. No one thinks it odd that europeans fought one another, even though they're all european, right? Same deal in the Americas. Cortez would never have prevailed against the Aztec without his Tlaxcalan allies, for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaxcala#Conquest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlaxcala#Conquest
bigbubba 6y ago
The fires are nothing new; > Before Europeans arrived (pre-1800), when the area was much more forested and the ecology much more resilient, 4.4 million acres (1.8 million hectares) of forest and shrubland burned annually.[1] > During the 2020 wildfire season alone, over 8,100 fires have contributed to the burning of nearly 4.5 million acres of land, making it the largest fire season in California's modern history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  Acreage isn't the only measure of a forest fire. 4.4 million acres of burn in an already historically thinned forest is going to be entirely different than the same area of burn in a mostly un-thinned forest. The damage to the forest, the CO2 produced, the smoke levels ... all could be at least an order of magnitude different.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    Well California is not yet as dry as it once was a few centuries ago, so you should expect things to get even worse. You think it's bad now, but some day you'll look back on present conditions fondly. If that's not your cup of tea then I suggest getting out of the state because there are no political solutions to this. Even if by some miracle AGW were stopped dead and reversed, California would still be getting hotter and dryer. That's what the pre-industrial climate of California was typically like.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      I don't live in California. I live in a place that is likely to be even adversely affected (in terms of human living conditions) by the move out of the last several thousand years of relatively wet weather in the American southwest. Note that this change isn't expected to involve increasing temperatures of much note all by itself, just increasing dryness. AGW will likely do that, however. I'd also note that talking about the climate of "California" doesn't make a lot of sense. If state boundaries were based on biomes/climatic zones, CA would likely be at least 3 different states. The coastal zone of Northern CA is essentially unrelated, climate-wise or ecologically, to either Central Valley, the high Sierras or the start of the great basin to the east.

pkulak 6y ago

Get ready for the real fun when that aquifer runs out.

bigbubba 6y ago
Not sure why you've been downvoted. For years Central Valley aquifers have been getting drained faster than they refill, it's unsustainable. Particularly in the case of 'fossil aquifers', named because the water in them is ancient and doesn't appreciably replenish on human timescales. Central Valley agriculture isn't sustainable. The lower their ground waters get, the more they'll try to pull from the rest of the increasingly dry state. Californian politicians have no answer for this because there is none (other than 'scale back or move out') and they probably know it.

lambdasquirrel 6y ago

True that, but where else would you live where non-competes are not enforceable?