If you had of read the paper, progs, you'd know that this is another strawman.

Quote:

I'm sure Pat Michaels will be submitting his rebuttal for publication any day now 

Unlike WattsUpHisArse, Hansen's paper has been published and will stand or fall on its merits. And the yapping at the heels of people being sought out for commentary by the media will have zero influence over that. Deniers fight in the sphere of public opinion, scientists fight in the sphere of evidence, that's the critical difference.

Oh bumbling, catastrophic hansen, you did it again.

More climate alarmism

James Hansen is at it again. Hansen, who runs NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, is usually billed as a climate scientist – not to mention the godfather of the current global warming concern.

But Hansen knows spends as much time marching in demonstrations and petitioning governments for action on climate change as he does doing research. He engages in plenty of unscientific rhetoric, such as calling trains taking coal to electrical generating stations “death trains” because of the carbon dioxide given off by burning coal to generate power. He has even testified in court in Britain on behalf of environmentalist vandals who sought to infiltrate a power plant and cause it to shut down.

Hansen and two other authors published a study this week that claims extreme weather events, especially droughts, are increasing in frequency and intensity and that it is “99% certain” that the cause is manmade global warming.

Nice conclusion – if your intent is to scare the public and politicians into action. But even many scientists not known as global warming sceptics have shaken their heads in disbelief at the sloppiness of Hansen’s latest work.

Hansen and his co-authors contend that the chances of having a drought such as the one that has gripped much of the continental U.S. this summer was just one in 300 in the years between 1950 and the 1980s, but the chance now is one in 10. This change, Hansen insists, can only be due to the negative effect human carbon emissions are having on climate.

But to arrive at their conclusions, Hansen and his colleagues had to “cherry-pick.” They had to carefully select the past years they compared to today. The period from the 1950s to the 1980s are well known for being substantially cooler than today. It makes the contrast look much more dire when you take a reasonably warm period such as the past 15 years and compare it to a notably cool period.

It may well be that droughts are much more common now than they were during the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. But that doesn’t tell us much about why.

For instance, as much or more of the globe was under drought conditions in the 1930s as it is today. But if Hansen et al admitted that, they might also have had to admit there are possible causes other than manmade emissions.

Much of the world was even warmer in the 1930s, but the cause couldn’t possibly have been idling SUVs and belching coal-fired power plants. To add the ’30s into the mix raises the possibility that other causes are at work or that, perhaps, extreme weather events are cyclical – recurring over time according to natural rhythms.

Martin Hoerling, a climate researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who specializes in extreme weather, told the New York Times he felt Hansen was making too much of the certainty of the connection between possible climate change and drought.

Hoerling, who explains that he is also concerned about unnatural climate change, has published papers explaining that the devastating Russian heat wave of two summers ago was a naturally occurring weather event. The Times reports he has another study coming soon showing that natural factors are also behind the current American drought.

Hoerling insists Hansen confuses drought (which is a lack of rainfall), with heat waves. “This isn’t a serious science paper,” he told the Times. “It’s mainly about perception … (and) perception is not a science.”

Don’t take my word for it. I’m as biased on the sceptic side as Hansen is on the alarmist side. But you can believe Hoerling.


http://www.edmontonsun.com/2012/08/10/more-climate-alarmism

I'll let Hoerling tell you why hansen is up to his old climate tricks

Martin Hoerling on James Hansen’s ‘game over’ thinking

This is a word document prepared by Dr. Martin Hoerling of NOAA and provided to the New York Times is response to Dr. James Hansen’s “Game Over for The Climate” essay. Since much of the full response has not seen daylight, I asked Dr. Hoerling if I could republish it here and he graciously agreed.  – Anthony

Guest post by Dr. Martin Hoerling

Too much to post here, you will need to follow the link, but I will give his summaries.

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Summary

The claim in the Hansen NYT piece that the Midwest would be a dustbowl in coming decades thus runs contrary to peer reviewed literature and recent assessments by the U.S. Global Research Program that emerged from the synthesis of current understanding by an expert team of scientists.



Figure 1. The relative change in runoff in the twenty-first century expressed as the ensemble (arithmetic) mean of relative change (percentage) in runoff for the period 2041–60, computed as 100 times the difference between 2041–60 runoff in the SRESA1B experiments and 1900–70 runoff in the 20C3M experiments, divided by 1900–70 runoff. Based on Fig. 4 from Milly et al. (2005). [Milly, P, K. Dunne, A. Vecchia, Nature, 438, 2005, doi:10.1038/nature04312]. Left-side illustrates runoff change for drainage basin scale, and right side for geopolitical state scales.

Regarding observed changes in climate of the Great Plains, I stated:

“Indeed, that region (Great Plains) has seen a general increase in rainfall over the long term, during most seasons (certainly no material decline).  Also, for the warm season when evaporative loss is especially effective, the climate of the central Great Plains has not become materially warmer (perhaps even cooled) since 1900.  In other words, climate conditions in the growing season of the Central Great Plains are today not materially different from those existing 100 years ago.  This observational fact belies the expectations, from climate simulations, and in truth, our science lacks a good explanation for this discrepancy. “
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Summary

The certainty language expressed in the Hansen NYT piece about the coming dustbowl fate for the Great Plains region and Midwest is contrary to the low confidence of regional climate change projections for coming decades as documented in USGCRP and IPCC reports. Not only are various regional patterns of trends that have been observed over the last century poorly understood, but the projections of regional changes in coming decades are highly uncertain.



Figure 2. The 1901-2010 trends in summertime (June-August) daily averaged surface temperature (°C/110 yrs; top) and rainfall (% of change over 110 yrs, bottom). Trends are plotted at available station sites, using the GHCNv3 data. Cooling (warming) trends shown in blue (red), and increased (decreased) rainfall shown in blue (red).
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Summary

The global warming signal is much smaller than the typical daily variability of surface air temperature over the United States. Most of the magnitude of daily weather extremes owes its causes to natural internal fluctuations and not to global warming. A possible exception could be imagined if global warming were also to increase the variability of daily temperatures (and not just increase the mean temperatures), but no compelling evidence to such effects has been shown. While globally averaged temperatures have risen during the past century, the cause for which is very likely human-induce climate change, the signal of this change is still barely audible among the loud noise of daily, backyard weather fluctuations.

Weather, of course, is more than temperature variability. While this discussion has involved temperature, weather involves rain, storms, winds, severe convection, clouds among others. In this regard, it is important to reiterate the statement in IPCC SREX (2012) in their Executive Summary which states that “many weather and climate extremes are the result of natural climate variability”, and that “even if there were no anthropogenic changes in climate, a wide variety of natural and weather extremes would still occur”.



Figure 3. The daily surface temperature variability during 1901-2010 averaged for all months during January-December (°C, top), and the ratio of that daily variability to the magnitude of the observed global warming signal (nondimensional). The variability is the standard deviation of daily temperature fluctuations calculated for each calendar month, and averaged across all months. The global mean warming signal of +0.51°C is derived from the NCDC analysis of the 2011 annual mean global averaged surface temperature departure relative to a 20th Century climatology (see http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2011/13)
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Summary

Analysis of various forced model simulations indicates that human influences did not contribute substantially to the magnitude of the Russian heat wave. Even accounting for a possible stronger warming signal, as suggested by Rahmsdorf and Coumou, these were still appreciably smaller than the peak magnitude of the event (which reached 10°C over Moscow during July). Barriapedro et al. (2011) conclude that the magnitude of the 2010 event was so extreme that despite an increase in temperatures due to human climate change, the likelihood of an analog over the same region remains fairly low until the second half of the 21st century. These results are thus consistent also with the Hawkins and Sutton (2012) results regarding the time of emergence of a climate change signal at local scales.
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more
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/13/martin-hoerling-on-james-hansens-game-over...

MOTR wrote on Aug 14^th, 2012 at 7:36pm:

Hey, you like scientists, a scientist giving you the answer to your question. Never satisfied are you.

On why NOAA's Martin Hoerling was completely wrong on his attack on James Hansen'

The response by NOAA’s Martin Hoerling to James Hansen’s recent op-ed does not reflect the scientific literature.

I’m traveling, so let me focus first on Hoerling’s incorrect statements — posted on this blog and DotEarth — about drought. As readers know, the journal Nature asked me to write a Comment piece on the threat posed by drought after they read one of my posts examining the latest science on prolonged drought and “Dust-Bowlification.”

The Nature article, which is basically a review of recent drought literature, is here (subs. req’d). Most of the text is here.

The research I did for that article — along with the comments of the expert reviewers I sent it to — is why I know Hoerling is quite wrong. Hoerling begins by quoting Hansen’s recent New York Times Op-Ed piece:

“Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.”

Hoerling then asserts:

He doesn’t define “several decades,” but a reasonable assumption is that he refers to a period from today through mid-century. I am unaware of any projection for “semi-permanent” drought in this time frame over the expansive region of the Central Great Plains. He implies the drought will be due to a lack of rain (except for the brief, and ineffective downpours)…
But facts should, and do, matter to some. The vision of a Midwest Dustbowl is a scary one, and the author appears intent to instill fear rather than reason.

That’s a very serious attack on Hansen — if it were true. But it isn’t, and it should be retracted.
The fact is that the recent literature examining warming-driven drought in America could not be clearer in warning about a “semi-permanent” (or worse) drought in both the South West and the Central Great Plains and “More and more of the Midwest.” Here are two studies that lay things out starkly:

Aiguo Dai of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, “Drought under global warming: a review” (2010)

Michael Wehner et al., “Projections of Future Drought in the Continental United States and Mexico” (2011)

I would also add the 2010 Environmental Research Letters article “Characterizing changes in drought risk for the United States from climate change.”

And that’s not even counting the Journal of Geophysical Research study that Hansen himself co-authored in 1990, “Potential evapotranspiration and the likelihood of future drought,” which projected that severe to extreme drought in the United States, then occurring every 20 years or so, could become an every-other-year phenomenon by mid-century.

As an important aside, contrary to what Hoerling states, Hansen was not implying the drought will be due to lack of rain (by itself). Everyone seriously writing about warming-driven drought knows we are talking about a combination of factors, ones that I laid out in my Nature article:

Precipitation patterns are expected to shift, expanding the dry subtropics. What precipitation there is will probably come in extreme deluges, resulting in runoff rather than drought alleviation. Warming causes greater evaporation and, once the ground is dry, the Sun’s energy goes into baking the soil, leading to a further increase in air temperature. That is why, for instance, so many temperature records were set for the United States in the 1930s Dust Bowl; and why, in 2011, drought-stricken Texas saw the hottest summer ever recorded for a US state. Finally, many regions are expected to see earlier snowmelt, so less water will be stored on mountain tops for the summer dry season.

Obviously, since Hansen coauthored an article titled, “Potential evapotranspiration and the likelihood of future drought,” we know he understands the drought conditions are driven by more than precipitation changes. The whole point of that 1990 paper was to examine the impact of warming-driven evaporation on soil moisture and drought.

It is quite surprising that Hoerling doesn’t appear to know the drought literature given that, as Revkin notes, he “runs an effort by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to assess the forces contributing to extreme weather events!”

When we enter an El Nino cycle and we start to get quite spectacular evidence of Global Warming, will that be enough to convince you, I wonder?