Haven’t read the paper but I will. I get GRL. Gerry might have a real good argument for choosing the population he did. On the other hand Rich Keen, a seasoned weather observer, analyzer, teacher, and writer seems to have embraced the proper, objective statistical requirement: as many data points from the population as you can obtain.

Mainstream narratives about the Dirty 30s are incomplete (if not misleading).

“Dust Bowl” was just the central-North-American manifestation of a _global_ pattern that played out over 2 decades (with the Southern Ocean & Antarctica in anti-phase to the North Atlantic / Arctic).

For those wondering about the aberrations of PDO over this interval, keep in mind the differing NAO & ALPI / NPI components of NAM.

There is a staggering amount of ignorance about the geophysical patterns of 1920-1940. There’s a big clue in plain view.

Insightful comment. I’ll add the following:

It is important to look at summaries across _all_ time-integration bandwidths (1mo, 2mo, 3mo, … up to the length of the series).

“Scale-dependent pattern” messaging is hammered like a sledge-hammer by brilliant pioneers in disciplines like landscape ecology & physical geography, but it is evident that many disciplines have not yet clued in to the broad arrays of insights that lie only a few data-analysis algorithm-modifications away.

If they dare go that far, that will be a very telling indicator.

Any alarmists who rail against the 30s probably don’t have a clue about the EOP (Earth orientation parameters) record.

Sacrifices of credibility in spectacular shows of cross-disciplinary ignorance should be documented.

1) Seasons don’t follow the calendar for one, making the ridiculous assumption that the number of days in each season stayed the same, a shift as much as 4 hours in the season cycle would probably cause broken temperature records. I’m not sure how much study has been done on seasonal cycles and their relative stability, but rarely does nature follow a calendar or a calendar year.

2) To the argument that says the 1930′s records are hard to break and a lot of highs are being broken regardless therefore it is warming. AGW theory absolutely requires that 2009 breaks -more- record highs than the 1930′s did, and that the 1950′s do the same, and the 1970′s do the same, because industrialization ( Anthropogenic co2 ) is the primary driver of climate. AGW theory absolutely requires that right now be hotter than then.

3) Related to 2, AGW theory (( especially the runaway warming bit )) requires that the ratios of record highs to record lows trend higher since industrialization, it requires also that the absolute number of record lows go down, and the absolute number of record highs go up. Saying Co2 affects climate is one thing. Saying it is the
-primary- driver of climate is another.

There were no jet planes in the 1930s.

REPLY: Greenfyre aka the Canadian bug man, doesn’t rate a response due to the nasty labels and invective he uses to describe me and others. His language has branded him as hateful towards people with views contrary to his. But thanks for the tip. – A

The ‘Grapes of Wrath’ should be required reading for pro climate changers. Unfortunately, too many people today don’t read literature or try to understand the world before their present occupation of it.

Gene Nemetz (07:20:47) :

It must have been a difficult time to live through the depression, drought, and the dust bowl. It makes me sympathetic to my grandparents for always yelling about me cleaning my plate, every drop, when eating because, they said, not everyone used to have a full plate of food to eat.

My grandparents on my mothers side moved to Colorado in about 1917, and my Mother grew up in the heart of the depression years. She told me that she ate oat meal for breakfast every day for years, because it was the cheapest filling breakfast my Grandmother could make for her. She also tended to be frugal with food, and saved things that might be useful or repaired rather than throwing them away and buying new.

As I was growing up, I did not really appreciate the seriousness of the dust bowl years until the 1970′s when I lived down in Rocky Ford Colorado for a time. This area is on the north western edge of the area we now call the dust bowl.

I was poking around the Pawnee National Grasslands near Rocky Ford and south of La Junta when I found myself in the middle of an abandoned dust bowl era farm. The fence posts only had a few inches protruding above the ground, having been buried by 4 ft deep drifts of blowing dust. The remaining buildings were buried to their window sills in dirt. It was very sobering to walk around that homestead and realize that someone worked that property for years before it was buried in blowing dust and dirt in a matter of weeks/months.

Even today in that area blowing dust is still a major problem. My front door on the house I rented faced west and following wind storms, I would sweep up several dust pans filled to the brim with dust that got past the doors weather seals. When the wind was really blowing the front door would howl a dull moaning sound as the brass weather strip vibrated from the wind blowing past it. If you opened the front door when the wind was blowing, it would pressurize the house enough to blow the access panel for the attic all the way to the opposite end of the house’s attic.

It was a miserable gritty time, even in a relatively modern home, I cannot imagine living with that sort of conditions day in and day out for months or years.

The classic pictures of walls of blowing dust from the dust bowl era were taken just a few hours drive south east of where I lived. It is very easy to imagine the conditions created by over grazing, and poor land management of the period after living in that area for a while.

When you realize what you are looking for, you can see the signature of that era even today all over that part of the country. Lines of very short fence posts, the tops of wheels of farm equipment poking out of the ground, and the clear pattern of dust dunes in the fields that have not been plowed for agriculture since then. That pattern was most visible right after a very light dusting of snow or heavy frost when the sun thawed the south east face of the dust dunes first as it came up in the morning but the back side of the humps were still covered with white.

Larry