Today's San Diego Union-Tribune has an article on the shrinking Arctic ice and its potential to cause drought in Southern California.

A few thoughts:

First, Southern California is a desert. I've lived in San Diego County for most of my life and there have been drought conditions more often than not. This time we apparently have a new bogeyman to blame.

Second, wacky climate models:

Three years ago, computer forecast models predicted that in 2050, the reduced ice mass would cause climate shifts that would result in a drought in the western United States.

But the ice is melting far faster than climatologists thought it would.

So much ice has disappeared that the Arctic today looks much like what scientists thought it would in 2050. It's as if the atmosphere hit the fast-forward button.

The predicted climate changes also may have arrived, with much of the West in the midst of the kind of severe drought that geoscientist Jacob Sewall had envisioned for 2050.

Note the way the "logic" appears to be working here: The climate model is accurate, the atmosphere hit the fast-forward button.

In the real world, if the climate model was off by 43 years, you might want to reconsider the belief that the model was mimicking anything resembling the real world.

Now, it's possible that something drastic and completely unforseen has happened in the last three years to invalidate their climate model, but if so they don't mention it.

Instead, they continue to operate as if all of their models are accurate. They're off by 43 years, but they're sure that this is what's causing the drought this time.

Most climatologists agree the loss of Arctic ice will probably change weather patterns.

Yeah, and global warming was supposed to result in an increase in severe hurricanes the past couple of years in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

The truth of the matter is that no one has a clue. Climatology is a discipline in its infancy. "We just don't know" isn't the type of response that's going to get you grant money nowadays, so too many scientists go about their scaremongering in search of a buck.