Sierra Nevada snow hasn't been this bad since 1500AD

You'll read it everywhere - there hasn't been so little snow in California's Sierra Nevada for FIVE HUNDRED years. But how do they know? The first people possessing written language to visit the Sierras got there less than two centuries ago.

To be sure there will have been native Americans in the area back in the sixteenth century, but they'll have generally steered clear of the mountains in snow season - and in any case wouldn't have been able to keep any records of the possible terrible drought of 1515.

In fact, the research is based on tree rings – and as such can't really be relied upon.

“I’m curious and interested, but skeptical that they can really tell," biogeochemistry boffin Lucas Silva commented to the Los Angeles Times regarding the new research, just published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Tree rings have underlain various large claims made by those on the warmist side of the climate debate, and as such have been hotly criticised by sceptics. But, in fact, warmists might also be willing to accept that tree ring results must often be dismissed: peer-reviewed tree ring studies have also shown that the world was hotter than it now is (without benefit of carbon emissions) in Roman times; that global warming in the 20th century didn't actually happen in some large regions, and that the warming record may not jibe well with reality on the ground; and also that the Arctic actually cooled down to pre-industrial levels from 1950 to 1990, just as carbon emissions were seriously getting into gear.

In other words you can pretty much get tree rings to say anything you want, and no matter which side of the climate debate you're on you should probably take any study based on them with a large pinch of salt at the very least. Certainly you should do so when claims are made about the Sierra Nevada snowpack during an era when very few humans at all had set eyes on it, and those few had no written language.

Comment

So, sure, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is looking poorly this year - but "500 years" headlines are just sensationalism. And anyway, if California actually has a water problem, Californians could get their entire public supply from the sea for a few dollars per month per Californian - if they felt like actually doing something about the current supply problem other than pointless gesturing. Assuming the use of carbon-based energy to do this, California's carbon emissions would soar by a whopping one per cent or so in a normal year. This is less than normal annual variation. Set-up costs would be negligible for a state which on its own is currently ranked as the world's eighth largest economy.

Or alternatively everyone could just keep on wringing their hands. ®