[Mr. Jeeves]

Can they even explain why in the early 1540s, according to accounts of Juan Cabrillo's trip up the continental West Coast, there was SNOW on the mountains along California's Big Sur coast? When's the last time that happened?

Actually, the Coast Ranges get some snow almost every winter - just takes the right kind of cold Gulf of Alaska storm to produce it. It probably lasted longer back in Cabrillo's day, though.

[Finny]

Lasted longer because there was more of it and it was colder? How long does the snow last there? I remember one rare year as far south as below San Simeon where there was a decent layer of snow in the hills behind, even to build snow men. But it was a rare thing. Saw snow up on those hills (way south of Big Sur) a few times over the decades, but it was thin and didn't last long.

Apparently there's other evidence as well that the climate was quite a bit colder even as little as 500 years ago. This is an interesting look with interesting links.

Considering that 500 years is really an infinitessimally tiny sample of a graph in time where a million years is a small fraction, it's perfectly conceivable that starting tomorrow, we could go on a steep trend back down where indeed the Big Sur Coast regularly has snow, and where the many millions of people who live in California, and the many millions more who depend on the food grown in California, would suddenly find themselves in crucial need of things remedied by electricity and gas. Folks who are too dim to perceive that "saving the earth" is a quaint and primitive fantasy can be enlightened by the math to understand that it's okay to use the earth's resources in order to survive and thrive.

Anything and everything that happens on this planet is temporary.