From Jo Nova
How many images have we seen of drought-stricken cracked land, or been told this is the future? How many headlines have suggested that global warming causes droughts?
Since the end of World War II humans have produced some 85% of all their CO2 emissions, but here is a new study showing that for all those emissions, and for all that warming, droughts back then were just as bad globally as they are today.
Essentially, researchers thought that the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) was the way to measure global drought levels, and they thought that warming would increase global drought conditions. But the PDSI considers only temperature, not humidity, sunlight and wind. This paper shows that when these factors are included, worldwide drought is about the same now as it was in 1950.
Researchers are finally accounting for the fact that a warmer world usually means more evaporation (especially from the ocean) and thus more rain. It’s good to see that someone has crunched those complex numbers on a global scale. Credit to Sheffield, Wood & Roderick.
It’s good to see this being reported on The Conversation, ScienceNews, and NewScientist. Naturally, this dangerous information could be misinterpreted (unlike most previous drought studies eh?) so caveats are rampant on The Conversation. The caveats take the usual meaningless and vague catch-all approach:†this paper should not be misconstrued as evidence that climate change is not happening†type of warning. Where were these caveat-writers when all the photos of cracked plains were showing on the evening news?
Make sure to head over and read all the excerpts and quotes Jo provides over this stunning scientific report, which, as Collide-a-scape is pointing out, is being completely ignored by the same media and “environmental” reporters who would otherwise provide breathless scary stories about drought killing us all. What it shows is that there has been no escalation of drought over the past 60 years.
Oh, and C3 Headlines points out that the oceans have cooled the last 10 years, per NOAA data. And the global temperature has gone down over the past 10 years, per HadCRUT data.
Wait, so even the CAGW data gatherers are starting to point to a non-increasing and maybe decreasing temperature trend over the last 1-2 decades?
Oooooo that’s gotta hurt.
I am still laughing at the fact that over these last few years as storms and storm intensity has decreased, which means fewer storms for the media to report on, they are actually over-hyping those few storms as examples of MORE storms.