Hayhoe Denies The Science
By Paul Homewood
It seems as if Katharine Hayhoe has been at it again. In the documentary “Years of Living Dangerously”, she tries to persuade viewers that the Texas drought of 2011 was brought about by rising levels of CO2.
Only one slight problem, Katharine, droughts have occurred regularly in the past in Texas, and sometimes more severely. In particular, the drought years of the 1950’s were both longer lasting , and more severe than the recent drought, as NOAA’s drought index shows.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us
And there is a very well understood reason for these regular occurrences – ocean cycles.
With regards to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, NOAA themselves tell us that:
Recent research suggests that the AMO is related to the past occurrence of major droughts in the Midwest and the Southwest. When the AMO is in its warm phase, these droughts tend to be more frequent and/or severe (prolonged?). Vice-versa for negative AMO. Two of the most severe droughts of the 20th century occurred during the positive AMO between 1925 and 1965: The Dustbowl of the 1930s and the 1950s drought.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/phod/faq/amo_faq.php
And currently, surprise, surprise, we are in the warm phase of the AMO.
And then there’s the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. You will not be surprised to learn that:
Positive PDO values are usually associated with wetter conditions in the Southwestern United States, while negative PDO values are suggestive of persistent drought in the Southwest.
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/oceananddrought.html
Or that we are currently in the negative phase of the PDO, just as we were in the 1950’s. (Note that the 1930’s were in the positive PDO phase, which helped to ameliorate the 1930’s droughts in Texas – this was not the case further north, over the Great Plains and Mid West; there is a useful map of this here.)
Katharine Hayhoe must surely know all of this, that is what she is paid to do.
So why is she trying to convince the public otherwise?
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
She is a propagandist. The story about her tells how a professor recognized her ability to “communicate the science” – in other words, he recognized her ability to spin a story. There have been many books written on the practice of winning an argument, even when the facts are against you, and she has obviously received training. If you look closely, she spends much of her time invalidating her ideological “enemies”. Note the way she brings out arguments against their religion, their politics (conservatives especially), and their gender. I suspect she does the same with race, but I won’t bother to read any more of her drivel to confirm. The point is, she is a textbook case for what to do when the facts do not support your argument. Distract, deflect, obfuscate, marginalize, etc. Honestly, she is more boring than dangerous.
Texas wetter than normal during warm pdo… the 7 years behind pdo flip in late 1940s had Palmer index more severely in drought by Feb 1955 than now. As usual clueless hysteria by another in this ilk that prove that they never have actually studied the weather
BTW, when has She, or any of these other giants of science ever made a forecast that had to verify to pay their bills.. where something is on the line.
Ho hum Hayhoe.
“Katharine Hayhoe must surely know all of this, . . .”
Either:
1. She does not know the science, or –
2. Follow the money.
Actually, I suppose it could be both.
She knows it alright, but I suspect the motives of her handlers go further than Carbon taxes
the US was covered by Prairie Grass and grazed by Bison, both adapted and adept at withstanding long droughts ( Prairie grass can even flower during a drought) until the big white man with the big steel plough came and ploughed it up and killed the Bison and planted with crops that do not survive droughts. Then along come the preaches of drought to tell us that droughts are man’s fault.
That’s all you need to know about the US and droughts.
You hear all the hysteria, but whenever you look at actual “unadjusted” data, there is very little reason for concern. So the conclusion is that this has nothing to do with science and everything to do with a political agenda and grant money.
Texas annual precipitation record/trend – from NOAA’s Climate at a Glance:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us/41/00/pcp/ytd/12/1895-2014?base_prd=true&firstbaseyear=1901&lastbaseyear=2000&trend=true&trend_base=10&firsttrendyear=1895&lasttrendyear=2013
Darn that increasing trend.
Plainview, TX. Historic Temp record – from GISS:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=425004170790&dt=1&ds=14
Looks like a warming cycle, a cooling cycle, and another warming cycle – just like the other warming cycle. Finally made it back to where we were during the late 1930’s.
About the AMO … whats your thoughts on how that would affect the ice in the Arctic
There does seem to be some element of a warm AMO leading to less ice.
This does not mean that all the ice melt is due to that, but that part of the melt is a cyclical affair. There’s an interesting paper on this.
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/3/034011/article