Gavin Newsom and every Lefty environmentalist in the world have been screaming about how California’s deadly rainfall over the past few weeks is proof that the Earth is burning or something.

Not so fast, says the L.A. Times. California goes through drought and deluge weather cycles, and their existence predates any possible man-made climate change. It turns out that Gaia just loves to psych Californians out.

As California emerges from a two-week bout of deadly atmospheric rivers, a number of climate researchers say the recent storms appear to be typical of the intense, periodic rains the state has experienced throughout its history and not the result of global warming.

Although scientists are still studying the size and severity of storms that killed 19 people and caused up to $1 billion in damage, initial assessments suggest the destruction had more to do with California’s historic drought-to-deluge cycles, mountainous topography and aging flood infrastructure than it did with climate-altering greenhouse gasses.

Although the media and some officials were quick to link a series of powerful storms to climate change, researchers interviewed by The Times said they had yet to see evidence of that connection. Instead, the unexpected onslaught of rain and snow after three years of punishing drought appears akin to other major storms that have struck California every decade or more since experts began keeping records in the 1800s.

“We know from climate models that global warming will boost California storms of the future, but we haven’t made that connection with the latest storm systems,” said Alexander Gershunov, a climate scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “Assuming that these storms were driven by global warming would be like assuming an athlete who breaks a record was on steroids.”

Actually, we don’t even know that anthropogenic climate change, of whatever magnitude, will boost California storms because we are still figuring out what makes the climate tick. It certainly is possible that this is the case, and models indicate that it will be, but that is a far cry from knowing anything. The models are crude, and the climate is complicated.

But still, good point. Honest climate scientists will readily acknowledge that weather and climate are very different things. They are related, of course, but if they were the same thing then climate scientists could predict storms out into the indefinite future if their climate models were accurate. They can’t, even assuming their climate models are good enough at some macro level.

Mike Anderson, official state climatologist for California, suggested that the recent series of atmospheric rivers — long plumes of vapor that can pour over the West Coast — was a grim reminder that in a place so dry, sudden flooding can bring catastrophe.

“Each of the recent atmospheric rivers were within the historical distribution of sizes of atmospheric rivers,” Anderson said, “It will take further study to determine how warming temperatures influenced the sequence or the sudden transition from dry to wet and soon back to dry.”

In other words, nothing abnormal happened here, and any claims otherwise are merely attempts to alarm people.

What was actually revealed by the storms was not the dangers of climate change, but the failures of the California government to do anything about two other serious problems: 1) prepare for the regular fluctuations in the weather patterns that California always experiences in order to minimize damage, and 2) manage the capture of water so that when the inevitable droughts come they will have kept some of the trillions of gallons that came down and just flowed into the ocean.

Al Gore climate catastrophizing in Davos

No, oceans not boiling
No, you can't just claim a billion refugees

— in 2005 UN predicted 50m refugees by 2010

Didn't happen, got scrubbed from websitehttps://t.co/fCuKmPYVKb

We need smart climate policy, not catastrophizing https://t.co/ZqCoGt9H8Q pic.twitter.com/Q7xtGGb6nt

— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) January 19, 2023

It is criminal that California, which used to invest uncounted billions in ensuring sufficient water is available to its citizens and for agriculture, now spends an inordinate time fretting about climate change, about which it can do little. What California does one way or another about CO2 will make almost no difference to atmospheric levels of CO2, but the billions of dollars it wastes on fruitless climate projects could do some real good to solve the water capture problem.

The priorities, though, are not set based on delivering the goods to California citizens, but on ensuring that enough virtue is signaled to the greens who control the political cash in California. And the greenies hate dams, reservoirs, canals, and the like. They prefer ever smaller allocations of precious water to each citizen, who will stink and like it. If it’s brown, flush it down. If it’s yellow, let it mellow.

California is ground zero for climate insanity, and no amount of knowledge or reason will change anybody’s mind there. And no single story in the Los Angeles Times can counter the relentless propaganda that pours from the mouths of politicians, “scientists,” and TV commentators.

If sunlight is the best disinfectant, Sacramento must be overcast every day.