Drought in the Southwest

Normally, I don't like to take apart what other media folks say or write. It's too easy to mangle what someone says. I know because it's happened to me. Sometimes I've taken criticism that was deserved and sometimes I've taken what was not deserved. But it goes with the territory.

Today, allow me to quote from a piece that aired on West Virginia Public Radio yesterday afternoon. The program is called "Living on Earth," and one segment had to do with water scarcity in the desert Southwest.

First, the newsreader says this:

But now there's trouble in the Southwest. The region is suffering through its eighth year of drought with little or no relief in sight. For much of its water the Southwest relies on the Colorado River to brings snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains. But snow patterns are changing and the Colorado is carrying a lot less water than it did a century ago. Overall it seems global warming is hitting the region harder than just about anywhere else in the country.

So it's the fault of global warming, which many people think is something that started a couple of decades ago, right? A few seconds, and the newsreader says this:

Scientists now believe that the West was settled during an unusually wet period. The people who built these reservoirs had unrealistic expectations for how much rain and snow would fall each year. Recent climate models predict further drying, less precipitation for the Southwest.

So we're not talking about global warming, but a decades-long change in rainfall and snowfall patterns, right? Maybe not. A few more seconds, and the newsreader says this:

Rising temperatures are already shrinking the mountain snow pack, which feeds Western rivers through the summer. In the future, by summer's end, there may be no more snow to melt.

How about this? You don't build your house right next to the creek in West Virginia and expect a lot of sympathy when you get flooded out after every heavy rain. Likewise, you don't move millions of people to the desert and allow them to recreate suburban Chicago.

When I listen to stories like the one mentioned above, I want to know which is it: global warming-induced weather changes or a simple natural cycle. Droughts have afflicted many regions of earth over the past few millennia, but not all were attributed to global warming. Global warming has become the easy source of blame for what may be natural cycles. That's why people like me doubt a lot of what we hear on the subject.