5-14 IAN Odd Runoff

 Idaho’s spring runoff being challenged by climate destabilization.

 I don’t want to sound like chicken Little and I keep on doing little articles about this, but you just cannot deny the fact that there are changes in climate going on around the world. The term global warming has garnered a bad reputation because in the beginning everybody denied it on the conservative side, I. E., Rush and his colleagues, so alternative terms have come into play such as climate destabilization or just simply climate change. All of that said big article in the Idaho Statesman the other day and the headline was: climate change accelerating, complicating Idaho’s spring runoff. The gist of the article was that global warming, and that’s their term, is making it more difficult for reservoir managers to control floods and manage flows for irrigation, recreation and fisheries. Dr. Douglas Muchoney is Senior Scientist for forest, carbon and climate  at USGS  talks about dramatic changes in our forests as a result of… Global warming, climate change, climate destabilization, whatever you want to call it: “what’s happened is because of climate change and exacerbated by land use change and human pressure the forests are changing in severe ways and ways that are not necessarily predictable.” So whether it be spring runoff in Idaho, forest changes that are severe or pieces of the polar ice caps breaking off, it can’t be denied. We may be getting  up to our backsides in alligators.