People who don’t know much about the hydrologic cycle automatically think that droughts are caused by “global warming” or “climate change.” After all, this is the junk science nonsense that’s repeated in schools by science teachers who often don’t know much about science in the first place. In reality, it’s the clear cutting of coastline forests that halts the water respiration and evaporation cycle that helps bring rainfall to inland areas.

The more forests near the coasts that are cut down for cattle ranching, soybean production and monoculture food cropping, the worse the droughts become inland. In effect, this is REAL “climate change” because the human activity of cutting down trees really does reduce freshwater rainfall inland. However, it has nothing to do with carbon dioxide or burning fossil fuels. It’s all about the fact that croplands don’t re-release moisture back into the atmosphere the way forests do.

My Health Ranger Science video, shown below, was filmed in the Central Texas Lost Pines forest and summarizes this knowledge with a short discussion.