Drought for Activist Dummies

We wonder if irrigation causes droughts, too. Gordon?

Perhaps the most common logical fallacy known to man is the assumption that correlation implies causation. This form of oversimplification of complex events is a favorite of demagogues and politicians, right up there with post hoc, ergo propter hoc: "after the fact, therefore because of the fact." Freelance dummies like to trot out this sort of simple-minded logic, too. Take the example of Gordon Rupe (writing under the pen name gordon) at DailyTwoCents.com when he penned a little note he called "Did Fracking Cause California’s Drought?"¹

Gordon did some homework and a little math. Then he drew a conclusion based on his math -- or, rather, he pointed his readers at the conclusion he wanted them to draw. Here's how it went down, with our comments

• "...a fracking well can use anywhere from 2-8 million gallons of water. For the sake of this article, we will average it out to 5 million per well." Don't you mean "fracking a well"? and 5 million gallons is an overstatement; the median is closer to 4 million.
• "We know that there are at least 650 fracking wells in California"  We still don't know what a "fracking well" is, Gordon.
• "Six hundred and fifty multiplied by five million equals three billion two hundred fifty million. (650 x 5,000,000 = 3,250,000,000)"
• "These wells can be harvested many times over, up to ten times per well." "Harvested"? how do you "harvest" a well? 
• "That is thirty two billion, five hundred million (32,500,000,000) gallons of water." Gotta say, Gordon, you manage a calculator well.
• "Now, there are an estimated 38 million people who live in California, an average person uses about 80-100 gallons of water a day." Wrong on both counts: the estimated population of California is 40 million, and the average Californian uses 73 gallons per day
• "That means that the state of California roughly goes thru [sic] three billion eight hundred million (3,800,000,000) gallons a day." No, that means that residential use in California is approximately 2.92 billion gallons per day.

Gordon expanded even further: "So, keeping with our mathematical theorem, If all 650 wells were fracked in the same day (for the sake of argument.), that would roughly equal one days worth of household usage. Now include regular household water usage and that would mean that two days worth of the state’s water consumption has been used.  Now, since fracking wells can be harvested up to ten times per well, that would be almost 9 days worth of regular household water use. Incorporate that with regular water usage, and that is almost 20 days worth of water."

Ignoring for now more of that "harvesting" bullshit, Gordon sort of made his point here. Where he displayed the most dumbassery was in the limited scope of his research. Some of the facts he neglected to include are:

1. About 80% of California's water usage is agricultural. The remaining 20% is split among residential, government and business uses. So residential use accounts for a small percentage of overall water consumption.
2. By some estimates, half of all water used in residences is poured out on the landscape. 
3. According to an NPR story, the golf courses in Palm Springs consume approximately 55 million gallons per day, 365 days a year (the math, gordon-style: 20.75 billion gallons per year).

In other words, Gordon flipped out over fracking (the villain du jour in many quarters) and gleefully constructed an illogical but ideologically-pure scenario: he overestimated water usage in fracking; did not even consider the increasing use of recycled water in fracking; and pretended that it's logical for all 650 fracked wells to be stimulated ten times in one day, all on the same day (as opposed to over a period of years). Then he ignored any statistics or facts that were "inconvenient" to the conclusion he wanted his readers to reach. Small wonder he's our Dumbass of the Day...

Of course, the most ridiculous suggestion of all is that fracking could "cause" a drought: drought is a climate phenomenon. Anyone with a brain (which, we realize, leaves out the Dumbass of the Day) realizes that water usage in fracking stresses the local water supply; but if a person has even a moderate grasp of the definition of drought, he or she knows that fracking can contribute to water shortages - but it can't "cause a drought"! Anyone who thinks the logic of this rubbish makes that point is an even bigger dumbass than Gordon!

¹ This website is now defunct and the post was never archived at the archive.org Wayback machine. No loss...

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