Persuasive Essay On California Drought

The issue of the California drought is one that has recently become front and center on the minds of its citizens. For the last couple of years California has been experiencing a drought noticeably hotter and drier than anything that we who live here are used to. In fact, the first six months of 2014 were the hottest California has experienced since 1934, the previous “hottest year”, beaten out by a whole degree. In fact, the NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reported that 95 percent of California is in severe drought conditions and nearly 60 percent of the state is listed as D4, the worst drought conditions possible (Jahad, 2014). That is quite a margin of difference seeing as changes in temperature are usually measured in smaller, fractions of degrees. With this large change in temperature the thought on everyone's mind is what could be causing this drastic change in climate. …show more content…
Others argue it is the worst drought California has endured in the last century. Some experts claim that California is in the midst of a “mega drought” roughly defined as a drought that lasts two decades or longer (Fountain, 2015). This current dry spell is thought to be caused by El Nino 17 years ago, yet people are looking to the new El Nino on the horizon to drench California and help fix it. Other experts claim that this California returning to its normal weather patterns and that we have been living through a small “wet period” that has now ended. Even with all this disagreement with what is causing the drought most seem to agree on one thing, that we need to manage our water