Oh geez Allen you know exactly where I'm coming from there are all kinds of examples that the left has used without any significant evidence to prove that thier predictions were accurate and every single example is used as fear porn for the vulnerable easily minipulated sheep. You don't always have to be an argumentative putz all time.
While your last statement is probably true, one need not be a climate expert to recognize that things are not the same today as they were 30, 50 or 70 years ago. Any and every hunter and angler has noticed the change in ND. Our growing season is now 10+ days longer than it was in the early 1900s, winter seems to be dragging out longer in the spring nowadays (ice off on the Missouri at Bismarck was around April 9th this year), but the fall's are becoming warmer and wetter. I caught the WDAY morning show early last week and the meteorologist on there was talking about last winter's stretch of days not getting above 40 degrees as the 2nd(?) longest on record, only to be followed by the longest stretch of days where the low temperature never fell below 40 degrees. Individual records aside, anyone who has driven across the state over the past 20 years can all now recognize one of the effects of a shift in climatology, and that is the growth in water on the countryside. Most Prairie Potholes have grown in size to the point a great number of them are now decent fisheries, whereas 30 years ago they had no chance of being a fishery because they were too shallow. Even the layperson can see this, evidenced by a ring of dead trees in the water that now provide fish habitat and roosts for cormorants.
Here is a graphic showing the amount of water (volumetric) passing by Jamestown on the James river over the past 100 years. Again, one needn't be an expert in hydrology to see that something is now different.
20 years ago, I wasn't convinced that what we've been seeing isn't out of the range of normal for our semi-arid climate, but the evidence is stacking up that we're now outside the range of what we grew accustomed to when this neck of the woods was settled by Europeans.
This is the data we have on actual measurements of the Devils Lake water surface. It seems kind of stark in appearance, but does fit better in what the longer, reconstructed water levels of DL were in the subsequent image.
So, the above is what comprises that narrow sliver of time in the blue shaded part of this longer perspective of things.
What this would suggest is that it's not necessarily unusual for ND to go rapidly from one extreme to the other, but I'm not sure people like you really understand what it was like around here during those "dry" periods of the above graphic. Take the Sheyenne National Grasslands as an example. At one point it was so dry that this area of ND was literally a desert with very little vegetation and sand dunes (you can still see the shape of the sand dunes if you look hard enough, or if there's been a wildfire that recently moved through the area.
Obviously, when we are looking back 1000s of years, those were "natural" shifts in the climate, but given the average human only really cares about the past 30-50 years, this is quite the difference observed during one's lifetime.
Personally, I don't really care very much about the debates over how much of this is human induced or natural, I just really don't. But one can't shove their head in the sand and ignore that things change. Humanity spread across this planet because we were able to adapt to a wide variety of environments. That's where the discussion should be focused. What are the upcoming changes? What can we do to minimize the negative effects, and take advantage of the neutral and positive effects?
Not everything needs to be a name-slinging opportunity to poke those who aren't your political allies. You took a perfectly fine video and used it to make some kind of a political point. Just let the video stand on its own, we don't need you to poison the well before we watch it.
