Big oil and gas companies are partly responsible for Californias water woes, study finds

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Set us as preferred In the last few years, multiple studies have shown that global warming is intensifying drought and worsening water scarcity in California and the western United States.Now, scientists have found that a group of polluters is responsible for a large share of this drying.In their study, published this week in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, the researchers estimated that climate change has shrunk the peak annual snowpack in 11 Western states by 36% between 2014 and 2024, and reduced the flow of rivers and streams in spring and summer by 13% compared to a world without human-caused warming.They found that nearly half of those declines were caused by the planet-heating gases released into the atmosphere by 122 of the world’s largest fossil fuel and cement companies.Climate & Environment New research shows global warming has become the dominant driver of worsening drought in the western United States.This group, which researchers refer to as the “carbon majors,” includes big producers of oil, gas and coal, both private corporations and state-owned enterprises in countries such as Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.“Collectively, they constitute a really big source of human-caused climate change,” said Emily Williams, the lead author and a climate scientist at UC Merced.The researchers used climate models to examine the effects of the companies’ carbon dioxide emissions since 1950.They also found that global warming, by drying out the soil and making crops soak up more water, has increased irrigation water demand by 4%, and that this group of companies is responsible for about half of that.

Climate & Environment With days left in the legislative session, California lawmakers are considering several high-stakes energy and environment bills.The remainder of planet-warming gases ar...