In preparation for a Presidential bid, failed CEO and failed Senatorial Candidate, Carly Fiorina, has been busy establishing her conservative credentials accusing liberals and environmentalists of causing the California drought. Yes, you heard that right folks, libs and tree huggers are to blame. Without any hint that she recognizes the irony in her statement, science denier Fiorina calls the drought "man made". She made her case to Glenn Beck.
'It is a man-made disaster,' she told Glenn Beck during a Monday radio interview. 'With different policies over the last 20 years, all of this could be avoided.'
“That’s the tragedy of California, because of liberal environmentalists’ insistence — despite the fact that California has suffered from droughts for millennia, liberal environmentalists have prevented the building of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades during a period in which California’s population has doubled,” Fiorina said. Politico
Now Fiorina is not a scientist, and neither am I, but her logic here is stunningly myopic. She is correct that environmentalists have opposed building new dams, for good reason. But of course Fiorina and other conservatives do not think that saving habitat for birds, frogs and fish are good reasons for allowing rainfall to run into the ocean.
"In California, fish and frogs and flies are really important — far more important apparently than the 40 percent unemployment rate in certain parts of central valley," Fiorina said. Newsmax
There are currently 36 reservoirs that contain over 200,000 acre feet (0.25 km3) of water at maximum capacity, and there are many more as well.
The state has more than one thousand major reservoirs, of which the largest two hundred have a combined capacity of over 41,000,000 acre feet (51 km3).[1] Most large reservoirs in California are located in the central and northern portions of the state, especially along the large and flood-prone rivers of the Central Valley. Eleven reservoirs have a storage capacity greater than or equal to 1,000,000 acre feet (1.2 km3); all of these except one are in or on drainages that feed into the Central Valley. The largest single reservoir in California is Shasta Lake, with a full volume of more than 4,552,000 acre feet (5.615 km3).
Republicans, including former Governor Schwarzenegger, have tried unsuccessfully to get more water storage capacity for the state in recent years, having not only been frustrated by environmentalists but also by costs. In 2009 Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought emergency and called for a 20% reduction in water usage and his 2006 water bond issue would have cost $35 billion.
The governor and Republicans in the Legislature have for several years pushed unsuccessfully for bonds to build new reservoirs. Some are calling for construction of a canal to divert water around the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin delta. LA Times
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Fiorina of course fails to mention that current Governor Brown did manage to negotiate a bi-partisan water bill, which included, to the dismay of many environmentalists, $2.7 billion for "water storage". Considering the thousand or so "major reservoirs" already in place, it is hard to believe two more storage sites would provide anything more than minimal relief for Fiorina's constituents, corporate farmers in the Central Valley who are growing water-intensive crops like almonds to ship to China. And many experts have argued that there really isn't enough water in California to justify building further water storage facilities. Newsmax
The Sierra Club, one of the liberal environmental groups Fiorina blames for the drought crisis, responded to Fiorina's claim that more storage would have mitigated the California drought, with facts.
"For more than 100 years, environmentalists have failed to stop the damming of nearly every significant river in California. And yet all of the hundreds of dams out there have done nothing to produce rain or snow pack over the last four years. That's because you can't store what's not there," said Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club's California chapter. "We simply don't have rain or snow pack and are suffering the worst California drought since water agencies and weather trackers started keeping records."
"What we are seeing is exactly what climate scientists have predicted would happen in California with the onset of human-caused climate disruption: Weather and precipitation would become less predictable and droughts would become more frequent and more severe," Phillips added. Huffington Post
How bad is the drought? After a somewhat hopeful December, January 2015 was one of California’s driest on record. San Francisco and Sacramento, for instance, each got zero precipitation for the month.
California experienced record temperatures during March 2015.
Scientists agree that record-high temperatures have exacerbated the current drought, sapping moisture from the soil and preventing snow from building up the “frozen reservoir” in the Sierra. The latest measurement had the Sierra snowpack at 6% of normal for this time of year. Drought Watch 2015
In spite of the fact that more water storage would have absolutely no impact on preventing the persistent California drought, this is the kind of talk that instantly catapults one into consideration as a serious candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, and Fiorina left no doubt -- well actually a little less than 10% doubt -- that she was going to enter the race. In an interview with "Fox News Sunday," Fiorina said there is a "higher than 90 percent" chance that she will run for president. She added she would make an announcement in late April or early May.