O’Connor, L. (2017, March 05). California’s Wild Climate Will Only Get More Volatile As
Temperatures Rise. Retrieved March 12, 2017, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-climate-temperature_us_58a49f38e4b03df370dca5cf
As California has almost come out a severe drought, researchers can see this is only a warning sign. Climate change is having an extreme effect on weather, and especially in California, with its large population. One recent example of the dangers of climate change is the failure of the Oroville Dam. This source of water was extremely dry and when heavy amounts of precipitation hit California, the dam overfilled. The problem is Oroville is not the only dam that is not fit for situations like this. Thankfully, California is ready to spend $400 million on fixing up dams and preventing more destruction.
This is related to environmental science because climate change is having a direct effect on weather patterns, causing unexpected amounts of water and costing millions of dollars. I think that we could definitely learn from this and hopefully people will see that climate change is real and ready to destroy. While it is good that we are almost out of the severe drought, we will only see lengthier and deadlier dry spells.
I agree with your sentiments Austin- yet another externalized cost of doing things that influence climate. However, you can imagine it’s hard to pin the failure of the Oroville Dam directly to climate change. Was human induced climate change the reason we had the extreme drought followed up by a really wet winter? Looking at historical records, we could argue these events have happened before all the massive amount of carbon have been released by people. Then again, it could be a result of climate change. I hope by following your topic this year you feel like you are informed on this issue- super important and one that won’t be going away anytime soon.
It is nice to know that California is taking measures to ensure that dams won’t fail again in the case of the weather we’d had this past winter. However, I agree with Mr. Powell in that it’s hard to blame the dam failure on climate change and human based activities. But that article is relevant and interesting to hear about!