Do Californians Know They Live in A Desert?

Part of climate change hysteria is driven by Americans who live in deserts and don't know it. SF Chronicle: Mono Lake was supposed to have been saved from going dry. Now, the ‘white stuff’ forces a reckoning

The drought bearing down on Mono Lake and the rest of California picks up on a two-decade run of extreme warming and drying. It’s a product of the changing climate that has begun to profoundly reshape the landscape of the West and how people live within it.

Nope. You live in a desert.

Phys.org: Ancient Southwest marked by repeated periods of boom and bust

This is particularly important as droughts of just five or ten years were enough to prompt major shifts in the small niches where Pueblo people grew maize, their major crop.

The niches, said Kohler, were "woven together with a web of ceremony and ritual that required belief in the supernatural" to ensure plentiful rain and good crops. When rains failed to appear, he said, the rituals were delegitimized.

"Then there's a point where people say, 'This isn't working. We're leaving,'" he said.

That starts a period of exploration in which people look for new places to live and develop new ways of living, followed by a period of exploitation in a new niche with different behaviors and values.

"There's a new period of wealth creation, investment in architecture and culture change," said Kohler.

The researchers said the first period of exploitation, known as Basketmaker III, took place between 600 and 700 A.D. It ended with a mild drought and was followed by a period known as Pueblo I, in which the practice of storing maize in underground chambers gave way to storage in rooms above ground.

The researchers think this represents a shift from unrestricted sharing of food to more restricted exchanges controlled by households or family groups. The period ended around 890 with a slightly larger drought.

The exploitation phase of the Pueblo II period ran from 1035 to 1145 and was marked by large shared plazas and great houses—what we would today call McMansions—in the Chaco Canyon area south of Mesa Verde, Colo.

"We're talking some of the largest—actually, the largest—prehistoric masonry structures in North America north of Mexico," said Kohler. "These things are huge."

Wood for roofs had to come from 50 to 75 miles away, requiring an unprecedented level of coordination. The mix of large and small buildings also suggests a more hierarchal social structure with someone in charge.

Climate change is a big deal when you live in a place that has adequate rainfall and water supply for a few hundred years and then turns into a dry desert. Ignoring the reality of this cycle moves a society from one in deep trouble facing serious climate problems to one that exterminates itself with energy and economic policies that facilitate mass distribution of Darwin Awards.