Climate Change Improving World Water Supply

The Obama Interior Department has issued a paper claiming global warming will harm water supplies in the western United States. The Obama administration claiming global warming is or will be a bad thing is no more newsworthy than Obama administration claiming higher taxes and more federal spending is a good thing. Nevertheless, the news media is running amok with the administration’s paper, citing it as more “proof” that global warming is a horrible crisis.

The news media is conveniently failing to report a few simple facts in its breathless claims that global warming is threatening western U.S. water supplies. First, global precipitation has increased since the planet began mildly warming at the end of the Little Ice Age, approximately 150 years ago. Second, global soil moisture has improved as the planet has warmed. Third, deserts have been shrinking as the planet has warmed. Fourth, much of the western U.S., and particularly the southwestern U.S., has been a relatively dry region since long before the planet began to warm.

A warming planet has certainly had an impact on precipitation, soil moisture, and water supplies. In contradiction to the self-serving claims of the Obama administration, however, those impacts have been, on the balance, positive. All the self-serving administration reports or rigged computer simulations in the world can’t change that simple fact.