From "California rains resurrect a long-dead lake in dry Death Valley" (WaPo).
Beautiful photographs at the link. But you're warned not to enjoy any of this. You can't abstract beauty out of its horrible context, the apocalypse we live in today. Experience it as "churning-churning." It's a "ghost" from the human-free past delivering a "message" that we're sinful and selfish... right when you're thinking of piling into the gas-powered F-150 and barreling across the continent to take a gander at this Lake Manly.
The lake itself was placid and shallow, tranquil and still. The water, steeping in a millennia’s-worth of minerals, was some five times saltier than the ocean and about 20 inches deep. In it were reflected the towering Panamint Mountains, with Telescope Peak — more than 11,000 feet above — capped in snow....
Oh, I want to go.
The ephemeral lake...is already shrinking. It may be deep enough to paddle for just another couple weeks and will dry up entirely when the weather warms. The fleetingness has fed something of a frenzy at a park that is not typically among the country’s most visited, stirring a run on kayaks....
Okay, forget it. I don't want to see a lot of people and their efforts at kayaking. I want to go back to Death Valley — I've been there twice — but I'd rather have no lake and no people than the lake and a lot of people.
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In a reality next door: "The continued failure of Lake Manly to reappear for X years is surely another sign of the ongoing climate catastrophe."
If you are going to Death Valley, Omaha is on the way.
These people can't stand beauty, humans, and happiness.
WaPo gooses their profits, and social psychosis, through misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation of a past, present, and future filled with apocalyptic images.
This is routine and common, and typical for the western US for millions of years.
See Mono Lake a few hours to the north in California and the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Mono Lake has spectacular scenery plus fairy shrimp, seagulls, and salt-landing flies. See the often-dry Owens Lake nearby with its water taken by Los Angeles. Basins without an ocean outlet do this all around the world. They rise, they fall, they grow salty, they dry up, they are used for driving cars fast and setting world records. Dried up ancient salt gets turned into white table salt or, if left impure, salt lanterns or expensive pink table salt.
i was JUST reading a lib post on X, that was "explaining" that the blizzard up by Tahoe, was..
WAIT FOR IT!
caused by climate change!
California's drought was PROOF of "climate change" California's rains and snows are PROOF of "climate change"
And, OF COURSE; climate change is:
a) BAD!
b) caused by EVIL MAN!!
right? or.. It never rains in southern california, but it pours.. man it pours
I didnt read the WP article, however since 2006, the beginning of the USGS monitoring of Amargosa "river" into Death Valley, there has been sufficient flow to produce at least 10 Lake Manlys. Too bad the flow record doesnt go back further in time.
Among my trips to Death Valley, in the fall of 2015 we saw a beautiful Lake Manly that seemed to span mountain front to mountain front. But it was probably gone in a few weeks, just like all of them.
What stupid and miserable people these progressive/green types are.
This proves that the science if real. Water flows to the lowest point probably due to gravity or something.
I love Global Warming.
If there's a drought, Global Warming is the cause. If there are floods, blame Global Warming. Is there a cold snap? Global Warming again. Global Warming is also the cause of any extended thaw. Global Warming causes heat waves, cold snaps, frequent hurricanes, rare hurricanes, windy days, still mornings, colorful sunsets, and the rain that falls on June weddings.
The only phenomenon more useful than Global Warming are Sacred Indian Burial Grounds that seem to spring up whenever and wherever someone needs some sympathetic publicity.
I have an idea. When Global Warming is presented as a problem, the usual proposed solution is some scheme where people who don't work for the government will lose more freedoms and pay more taxes and people who do work for the government will get more money and power.
Let's turn that around. Every time there's a flood or drought blamed on Global Warming, let's cut government salaries by 10%. I'll bet the whole problem just goes away by itself.
Take the time to swing south through Texas and you can simultaneously see the result of climate change in the massive and completely expected burn-off of mature mesquite & cedar scrub brush, and the former water sports resort Big Lake, which dried up due to aquifer depletion from farming. Big Lake, now a dry depression, is near to where Santa Anita #1, the first well of the Texas Panhandle oil rush, found crude. To see the oil rig itself, go to the campus of the University of Texas, Austin, where it sits today. UT derives it's operating funds from West Texas oil lease income to the state, sharing that vast amount of funding with Texas A&M.
If you're drying up lakes & having massive wildfires, we here in Texas expect to profit off the climate change changes.
Whoa, whoa, whoa... So you're telling me that rather than destroying humanity, one of the possible outcomes of "climate change" would be that barren deserts would again have lakes (followed by superblooms of flowers in Spring), and those of us in frigid winterlands would have not just random days but weeks or months of lovely 60-degree days and 40-degree nights in neowinters? Let's rethink these hasty carbon-destroying measures. Start by banning all electric vehicles. Maybe even require everyone purchase Hummers (or at least F-350 diesels) by 2030.
Looks like CO2 can be a good thing, and not just for plants.
What I'm hearing is that the planet has been through this before. It used to be like this. And maybe we're moving toward it again. California has had a ton of rain and snow over the last couple of years- throughout the state. Had they actually build some new reservoirs to keep up with their population growth over the last 44 years, they might not have had such awful droughts in key growing areas. But...sometimes there are other things to pay for. Like a high speed rail that was supposed to go from San Francisco to San Diego and cost $9 billion, and has now cost $128 billion, and will, if it ever gets done, run only from Merced to Bakersfield. That'll be swell.
Anyway...I've gotten off track. We are to be horrified at the beauty of Lake Manly because it's calling out our sure upcoming death.
Thank God we have people on the Left trying to keep us properly depressed to the point of believing a vote for a Democrat will not bring back Lake Manly. Or...that it will. Or won't? I dunno how I'm suppose to feel about it at this point.
Wapo's sign-up page won't let me take a look.
No worries. I goggled it
Climate change, is there anything it can’t do?
Nature's Beauty, oh, the horror.
Death Valley Daze.
It's called weather. Climate models can't predict the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) water temperatures for more than 6 months out. ENSO drives the weather on the West Coast, so how can they predict the climate for the next 20, let alone 100 years?
The El Nino is dying and by summer we'll be back in a La Nina conditions. Cooler temperatures, wetter/cooler Pacific Northwest and drier/warmer California. California, enjoy the wet weather while it last, Lake Manly will be gone by September.
The Democrat/Barbarians think they can control the weather by restricting fossil fuel burning. What arrogant bastards.
The re-appearance of Lake Manly is so unprecedented, it hasn't happened since . . . 2005.
OMG!
The WaPo and the rest of our click-bait media will latch onto any excuse to bolster the climate-change hysteria the Deep State uses to preserve and expand its powers.
If it is global warming, what produced Lake Manly "thousands of years ago". Can I even believe the assertion that this temporary lake hasn't formed once in even the last 10 years?
barreling across the continent to take a gander at this Lake Manly
Are we talking about goose hunting? Because if Althouse wanted to talk about people looking at a lake, she would just say "look," wouldn't she? Not gander. Some people might think a two-syllable g-word lends gravitas or grandeur to an otherwise plain expression, but we know our hostess is not that sort of person.
And is there some connection to n.n.'s goosing profits? I'm confused.
Althouse writes, "...but I'd rather have no lake and no people than the lake and a lot of people."
Given that concluding sentence, some might interpret Althouse as a grouchy "git off'n my lawn!" misanthrope. But they'd be wrong. Keep in mind those kayaking kooks are first and foremost Californians, i.e. a category not logically the object of misanthropy.
So MORE water is now a bad thing. It must be racist or sexist water.
Let's just say that on this issue (as on dozens of others) the WaPoo is simply all wet.
The West is full of "dry lake beds". They don't have a natural outlet--a stream or a river that goes to the ocean. When heavy rainfall comes along they fill up--now that might not be more than a foot or so of water--but they are lakes. Until they dry up. Then in the next rainy season (which may be next year or might be several years) they fill up again.
There's a lot about the Western U.S. that the swamp dwellers on the Potomac don't know.
" we're sinful and selfish"
well Seppuku is an option...
The lake is scenic. I'd love to see it. It's scenic in the photograph at WaPo that has ONE kayaker. Very serene.
But we are told places are selling out rentals of kayaks, so I bet your photo will have multiple kayakers. Picture that scene with 20+ kayakers. Imagine their yelling boat to boat. It's not serene. It's not picturesque. The people are ruining the aesthetics, and you are part of the ruination.
Where is the spiritual uplift? Maybe if you drove in from L.A. it will seem lovely, but I live by a lake that I'm used to seeing at sunrise, when it's super-serene.
@PJ
I'm garnering ganders.
Althouse goosesteps to transhumanane pastures in the mornings when she withdraws to enjoy silent lucidity. #MeToo
The desert bloom wildflowers are going to be off the hook this year. Plus 4th of July skiing on Mammoth Mountain. The Saline Valley to the north has a great network of hot spring pools and free campsites. The roads in and out however are excellent drivetrain busters, so Flatlanders beware.
Meadehouse
After you leave Omaha, you can stop in Kearney and see millions of Sandhills Cranes. Prehistoric.
Lake manliness is a ghost of its former self, reduced, seduced, refused by scientisties in a climate of unbridled furor to garner bids to rape the goose that lay the carbon ovum. Ironic and kinky. #NoJudgment #NoLabels
Yancy Ward writes, "If it is global warming, what produced Lake Manly thousands of years ago[?]"
Yancy Ward must understand the modern age is unprecedented. That's orthodoxy, as I learned when raising questions about many of the great sea powers of the ancient Mediterranean in some of my first classes in archeology, specifically, why are the remains of many of these thriving seaports of antiquity often miles inland rather than perched directly on the water's edge? The rote answer, the harbors silted up. Really?, I replied. Miletus was a naval power for at least 800 years, from the late Bronze Age until the rise of Macedonia. If the Meander was so prone to silting up, where is the evidence of all the dredging the Miletans must have done to keep their port in operation? Where are the mounds of dredge scraped from the harbor bottom? Why didn't the ancient writers praise the genius and industry of the Miletan hydraulic engineers who made their city rich and feared? And why is the Mound of Hisarlik nearly eight miles inland from the mouth of the Dardanelles? Homer tells us Troy overlooked a wide semicircular bay, what happened to it?
Slit, came the reply.
So how was that slit not carried away by the strong current flowing out of the Black Sea? What protected it long enough to accumulate?
Let's move on, please...
And then there's Carthage, and Tarsus... Aren't fluctuating sea levels a more parsimonious explanation than slit?
Moving on, as Herodotus notes in Book Three...
Althouse is a snob. Sorry. How dare the hoi polloi try to enjoy one of nature's wonders, and spoiling her serenity?
The climate changes, nobody seriously doubts that. It's debatable whether or not rolling back civilization will do much to alter that.
In Ohio, we've had snow this year, but I only had to shovel once. I'll take it.
Nature and the environment are not static. They never were. Nature doesn't exist to look pristine for us. It doesn't care about us. For now, Death Valley has a lake and I don't need snow tires. Adapt and appreciate.
According to dictionary.com, to take a gander "presumably came from the verb gander, meaning 'stretch one's neck to see,' possibly alluding to the long neck of the male goose."
I think dictionary.com is being a bit too literal. There's nothing especially long about the neck of a male goose compared to the female. I think gander as a verb came about because goose as a verb was already taken. We know what that means, don't we?
Althouse says she's garnering ganders. She should expect an outraged demonstration of frustrated geese picketing her house and shaking their feathery fists at her while honking the goose-talk chant "Free our husbands!"
Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated. What a scam!!!
"Maybe if you drove in from L.A. it will seem lovely..."
Proceeding from L.A. to anywhere is spiritually uplifting.
if the megadrought is ended and lake resurrected due to climate warming is that not a good thing?
nice use of resurrect at this time of year!?
There's a lot about the Western U.S. that the swamp dwellers on the Potomac don't know.
=================
is not swamp also lake without outlet
what fills The Swamp Lake?
keeping it full perennially?
"The Democrat/Barbarians think they can control the weather by restricting fossil fuel burning. What arrogant bastards."
Actually, the Democrat/Barbarians think they can control the *people* by restricting fossil fuel burning. "Arrogant" works as a description for them but there are many other words that would do the same.
Lake Manly — which dried up thousands of years ago
how many times has this lake "which dried up thousands of years ago" had water in it in the last 10 years?
5 times? 10 times? EVERY Time there is a wet winter?
dried up thousands of years ago; You keep using those words, i no think those words Mean what you think they do
@Enigma -- Mono Lake is astounding. I've only been once and only on a drive-by. You're right, though. What a place.
You should fly out there, Althouse. You could read Watership Down on the plane.
The comments are interesting (I used a DuckDuckGo generated email address in Epic browser to bypass the paywall)
References to 2000, 2003, 2005 etc about going Death Valley National Park and seeing, exploring parts areas of varying water capacity.
Something else jumped out at me. Desert Superblooms. As a photographer, this has held my interest as we get these in Texas and are just absolutely stunning when they happen. Professional nature photographers will wait years, decades even, for superbloom events due to their intermittent nature and the reliance on perfect weather conditions, conditions that are known and have happened for eons. Begs the question a bit on global warming/client change as these are known events and while a rarity on a human scale, very regular on a geologic era time scale.
I imagine some of the western deserts impacted by the atmospheric rivers will put on quite a show this year and look forward to the photos!
One thing that is fairly predictable from rising temps is more rain. This doesn't necessarily have much to do with short-term, regional or local events. Scaremongers constantly make that mistake or tell that lie. On the other hand, much of the world's population is directly affected by monsoons, and there has been a shortage of rain in recent years. Judith Curry asks: what if you asked those billions of people: would you take higher temps with more rain?
It wasn't a years-long mega drought. Average rainfall for the prior five years was only about two inches below normal--normal in California being a calculated average, not something you can set your watch by.
The NWS still uses "normal" in their tables, though since records were first kept in 1877, more than 60% of years were "below average" in Los Angeles, e.g.
The "end is nigh" people have a lot of sway here, but the only thing normal about weather in California--and history bears this out for anyone who knows how to Google--is that it's abnormal.
You know who understood this and wrote well about it? Joan Didion.
Our family is taking advantage of the current weather event in the Sierras. Snowboarding @ Heavenly Valley in Tahoe later this week. This snow event should replenish reservoirs and the rain down in Southern California should continue to benefit Lake Manly and other such bodies of water.
From the article:
Some 15,000 years ago, near the end of the last Ice Age, the climate in this region was far different — wetter, more temperate. And lakes dotted the landscape.
Lake Manly was particularly impressive. At 600 feet deep, 11 miles wide and 90 miles long, the lake covered a large part of Death Valley, according to some estimates. Over the following thousands of years, conditions slowly changed and the lake disappeared.
"Conditions slowly changed and the lake disappeared", with nary a cow or SUV in sight. And it was all completely natural. Imagine that.
"temporarily resurrected by the fast-changing, climate-churning present."
So if it doesn't rain enough, it's proof of climate change and if it rains too much it's proof of climate change.
Give me a break.
Why is it different this time? It happened in 2005, and before that in 1998, and probably 1995, per the paper I link here
Thereby, infiltration losses from the late-February storm were reduced. Flows over roads were observed where U.S. Highway 95 crosses Fortymile Wash, in the Amargosa Farms, State Line Road area, and at several river crossings on California State Highway 127. The combined result of widespread and prolonged storm runoff throughout the Amargosa River Basin was persistent streamflow that contributed to the formation of a small lake on the normally dry and barren Badwater Basin salt pan at the river terminus in Death Valley. - USGS
I could go looking further, but it seems like more warmey exaggeration. Yes, we had two events, an El Niño related "atmospheric river" which we didn't know about until the satellite age, and Hurricane Hillary, providing a one-two punch.
The whole global warming scare relies in a cohort of innumerate reporters parachuted in as science writers due to the acceptability of their politics.
Re "gander," I have worked in the UK and Australia, and neither uses the term "gander" for having a quick look, in the UK it's "have a shufty" (not sure how to spell it, since I only heard it, and in Australia it's "have a squiz" which spelling I also don't know, but when I mentioned to a Brit that we called it a "gander" he said "Oh yeah, goosey goosey gander! That makes sense."
Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady's chamber. - English nursery rhyme.
So I guess he meant it as an allusion to wandering by to check something out. It seems a little tenuous to me, but I had never heard the rhyme before, and he snapped right on it.
Fuck these climate psychopath fascists.
I ate Taco Bell last night and got indigestion...CLIMATE CHANGE!!!
It is a mental disorder of the highest order...
"But we are told places are selling out rentals of kayaks, so I bet your photo will have multiple kayakers. Picture that scene with 20+ kayakers."
Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded...
2nd peakaboo lake in California.
Couple years ago near Fresno, the immense Tulare Lake came back over some farmland.
Just disappeared again.
It is surprising that I rarely see speculation that the massive Hunga-Tonga eruption of 2002 might be increasing global rainfall.
It is estimated that the amount of water vapor shot into the atmosphere as a result of this eruption added about 10% to the typical amount found in the stratosphere. What goes up must come down.
Lake Abert is SE Oregon waxes and wanes over time. Last time I saw it, it was depleted. May have to check out the Burns birding festival this year.
Quaestor said...
"Maybe if you drove in from L.A. it will seem lovely..."
Proceeding from L.A. to anywhere is spiritually uplifting.
as a person who had relatives in Hemet, and others in Ontario.. I'd Beg to Differ about "anywhere" :)
Whodatsay our president emeritus doesn't speak clearly?
“I was indicted by Fani in Georgia… her lover, Nathan Wade, and they hired him for almost a million dollars because of his great, great experience,” Trump said.
Trump zinged the two corrupt prosecutors.
“He had experience in something else. You know, a lot of experience. And at that, I’m quite sure he was very good based on the fact that she called him 2000 times,” Trump said.
Last night speaking in Virginia. (Or NC?)
2 rallies in one day? Speak for an hour or more at each? Plus travel and all the making nice with locals? Not bad for an old guy.
John Henry
Oops. Wrong thread.
"It is surprising that I rarely see speculation that the massive Hunga-Tonga eruption of 2002 might be increasing global rainfall."
Not so surprising, when you realize the eruption can't be blamed on cow farts and SUVs. The only explanation for more rainfall (or less or the same amount- doesn't matter) that climate alarmists will accept is "manmade".
Urban heat islands, Green energy clear-cutting, catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform, and green environmentalists are first-order forcings of [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate change in local and regional effects.
Prediction: Global warming means more drought.
Reality: Higher than normal rainfall resurrects defunct desert lake.
Reaction: Panic anyway. All weather news is bad news.
My take: Fuck these people.
"This snow event should replenish reservoirs...
Irrelevant. California hasn't constructed a new reservoir in more than 50 years, even though the state's population has nearly doubled in that interval. The most of meltwater will spill over and into the ocean benefitting no one and overtaxing the Colorado River at the same time.
Okay, forget it. I don't want to see a lot of people and their efforts at kayaking. I want to go back to Death Valley — I've been there twice — but I'd rather have no lake and no people than the lake and a lot of people.
I'm with you. Remember the great blooms of lilys or whatever they were on the hillsides around LA? Hundreds of cars parked along the 405. The 5 and the 10 with people trampling flowers everywhere. California would be great if it wasn't for the people.
If you get the opportunity don't go to Big Bear. Another crowded tourist shithole with the same tchotchki you can get at the Dells.
So if it doesn't rain enough, it's proof of climate change and if it rains too much it's proof of climate change.
@loudogblog, think of it as scientifically-approved Creationism. Except that to a Creationist things are the way they are because God made them that way, while to Climate Change alarmists however things are, it’s due to Anthropogenic Global Warming.
@baghdadbob, if a Climate Change alarmist wishes hard enough and clicks his or her heels three times, all the water goes away.
Observation: Californians don’t like it when there’s a drought and they also get upset when there’s rain. What does that say about Californians?
"...a message from the warming climate..."
If only we would listen and eliminate the world's population, Gaia would be appeased.
I climbed Telescope Peak years ago. Not difficult, but a fantastic clear view.
Question for the climate crisis aficionados:
If the climate of Earth has always been in transition, and during many periods in the past it was warmer than now, and if those periods were much more biologically productive than now, then why is the particular climate of the 1800's the goal? And how do we think we could manage such a global mechanism without screwing it up, especially considering that the U.N. would be the masters of such an effort?
Our Solar System is in motion in a corner of a large galaxy that is spiraling through space. Our star, the Sun has cycles of high and low output, in addition it sends electrically charged solar flares and coronal mass ejections hitting a rotating Earth around it's wobbly axis. To make things more interesting the Moon exerts enough gravitational pull to create high and low tidal changes adding more complexity to a chaotic, dynamic weather and climate system supposedly thrown out of kilter by a trace gas measured in parts per million.
Forgot to mention the magnetic poles are shifting again. Which happens every 6000 years.
I support climate change. It's how we got where we are.
As to which direction, I can only hope, as I've often been too cold, but never too hot, and I live in Vegas. Some Like It Hot.
Bad weather is caused by bad people.
A crucial role of government is controlling bad people, so that we will have good weather.
This was understood by the ancients.
The last time that it is known that this occurred was Way Way Back in.. 2005. That is truly prehistoric.
Santa Rita #1, not Anita.
I wouldn't pay any attention to these global warming hysterics ... except they're trying to ruin my life with their insanity.
Mandated EVs? Natural gas ban? Banning small engines like lawn mowers, leaf blowers and chainsaws?
Fuck these people.
".........it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall"
went to Death Valley once
As close as I'll get to feeling like I was on another planet.
lot of driving, but glad I went
It was a lake. Then it wasn't a lake. Now it's a lake again.
The only constant is change.
"The last time that it is known that this occurred was Way Way Back in.. 2005. That is truly prehistoric."
For leftists, it is. Everything is new again for them, every morning.
"It was a lake. Then it wasn't a lake. Now it's a lake again."
"First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." - Donovan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcMM5-zBCEc
I love Global Warming.
If there's a drought, Global Warming is the cause. If there are floods, blame Global Warming. Is there a cold snap? Global Warming again. Global Warming is also the cause of any extended thaw. Global Warming causes heat waves, cold snaps, frequent hurricanes, rare hurricanes, windy days, still mornings, colorful sunsets, and the rain that falls on June weddings.
The only phenomenon more useful than Global Warming are Sacred Indian Burial Grounds that seem to spring up whenever and wherever someone needs some sympathetic publicity.
I have an idea. When Global Warming is presented as a problem, the usual proposed solution is some scheme where people who don't work for the government will lose more freedoms and pay more taxes and people who do work for the government will get more money and power.
Let's turn that around. Every time there's a flood or drought blamed on Global Warming, let's cut government salaries by 10%. I'll bet the whole problem just goes away by itself.
3/3/24, 8:37 AM
Global warming, there’s nothing it can’t do. I hear it’s even able to seek out the poor and non-white humans and make their lives miserable. God Inhate these morons.
It’s a low spot in the ground. When it rains water collects there. BFD!
They wish to return to those halcyon days, when California was a sheet of ice. I'm beginning to agree.
The only phenomenon more useful than Global Warming are Sacred Indian Burial Grounds that seem to spring up whenever and wherever someone needs some sympathetic publicity.
"Sympathetic publicity" is a funny way to describe shakedowns for bribes to the right tribal officials.
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