“This is what global warming looks like” turned out to be nothing but incorrect opinionated hype by AP Science correspondent Seth Borenstein and Dr. Michael Oppenheimer.
From the “we told you so department” and NOAA’s Drought Task Force, which makes it pretty clear all the hype about last summer’s drought was nothing but that: hype.
NOAA asks: What caused the 2012 Central Great Plains Drought?
NOAA’s answer: The central Great Plains drought during May-August of 2012 resulted mostly from natural variations in weather.
• Moist Gulf of Mexico air failed to stream northward in late spring as cyclone and frontal activity were shunted unusually northward.
• Summertime thunderstorms were infrequent and when they did occur produced little rainfall.
• Neither ocean states nor human-induced climate change, factors that can provide long-lead predictability, appeared to play significant roles in causing severe rainfall deficits over the major corn producing regions of central Great Plains.
Downloads available:
Click here for more information about the report, the Drought Task Force, or the Modeling, Analysis, Predictions, and Projections (MAPP) Program
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UPDATE: here’s Seth’s latest: (h/t Sam)
By SETH BORENSTEIN | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Last year’s huge drought was a freak of nature that wasn’t caused by man-made global warming, a new federal science study finds.
Scientists say the lack of moisture usually pushed up from the Gulf of Mexico was the main reason for the drought in the nation’s midsection.
Thursday’s report by dozens of scientists from five different federal agencies looked into why forecasters didn’t see the drought coming. The researchers concluded that it was so unusual and unpredictable that it couldn’t have been forecast.
“This is one of those events that comes along once every couple hundreds of years,” said lead author Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Climate change was not a significant part, if any, of the event.”
http://news.yahoo.com/report-global-warming-didnt-cause-big-us-drought-211545586.html
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Is Borenstein answerable to anybody for his violation of journalistic principles and his blatant advocacy?
“This is what global warming looks like” turned out to be nothing but an incorrect opinon by AP Science correspondent Seth Borenstein.
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Actually Anthony you are being too kind.
Borenstein was speaking as men have done since time immortal…
from bias and ignorance.
It’s not like they check for the facts…
They just make them up or run with whatever they are told with no need or desire to question, review or verify the truth.
cn
Borenstein has made a living off the global warming hype. It’s time he found a new career.
John W. Garrett says:
April 11, 2013 at 8:21 pm
not too anyone that will do something about it.
@ur momisugly Jesie, as long as it does not involve writing!
so sorry 🙁 , @ur momisugly Jesse of course
I’m not going to say anything and Anthony knows why.
It’s the dumbing-down, as ever, anthropogenic process.
Nothing to see here, move on………………Downdates available every second Tuesday of each month etc etcetera
We expect comments like Borenstein’s from folks such as Al Gore, who never set foot inside a science classroom, but folks with credentials in the scientific arena who make such blunders
look almost criminal. Borenstein can’t really be this stupid, now can He? He has all the makings of a NY Times journalist, all of whom are scientifically illiterate.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
Keep this in mind, fellow Sooners. Despite the wonderful precipitation we have had recently, the drought is probably not over. Weather tends to cycle, and this cycle probably isn’t half through. So, stay prepared, and pray for rain.
Seth Borenstein should quit writing and become a fertilizer salesman. Few people are as full of it as he is.
Krugman and Thomas Homer-Dixon will have to issue a correction to their fearmongering articles… LOL we can wait for a while…
Kevin Trenberth (shocker!) is blasting the study and is saying the natural variations were caused by man made global warming.
arthur4563 says: April 11, 2013 at 8:58 pm “We expect comments like Borenstein’s from folks such as Al Gore, who never set foot inside a science classroom, but folks with credentials in the scientific arena who make such blunders look almost criminal. Borenstein can’t really be this stupid, now can He? He has all the makings of a NY Times journalist, all of whom are scientifically illiterate.”
But, but, but, he has a BS from Boston University…….in journalism.
Oh well, got caught on that one so lets make another one up.The New York Times April 11, beats up a story about Heatwaves and Hotter Wildfires in Australia based on a story from NASA which is itself grossly misleading.The NASA writer has obviously written the article without contacting anyone in Australia. Apart from mixing up Victoria with Australia he uses plumes of smoke photographed from space and a DSE website to paint a picture to suggest that everything is going up in smoke here. I can assure him it is not.Most of the smoke he mentions is comng from the slow burning fire up in Kosiosko territory with other smoke coming from a series of burn offs. I suppose anything to support warming but NASA looks pretty foolish! link [url=http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/nsfc-fiv041113.php]here[/url]
Or, they’re just not nearly as good at forecasting as they think they are. Can’t get the weather right 2 days out, you’re not going to get it right a year out.
This report has deprived Borenstein and the Warmistas of yet another of their Climate toys and they will be very sulky for a while. I just love the idea that Kevin Trenberth says that the study is wrong and that the natural variations were caused by man made Global Warming. Clearly there is nothing that Global warming does not cause: hot, cold, wet dry it’s all the same, it’s in their game..
“This is one of those events that comes along once every couple hundreds of years,” said lead author Martin Hoerling, a research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
===========
Don’t tempt Her.
We’ve seen very little, of Her proclivity to stir the pot.
Borenstein is absolutely typical of AP reporters: he is a left-wing activist.
This would have been a super drought at the start of 1000AD that must have lasted for 300+ years in western USA and Canada.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PDO1000yr.svg The user here used NOAA data to construct the graph of 1000 years of the PDO.
Of course in eastern Australia we would have been drowned during that period with many super cyclones as well.
What you’d call real extreme NATURAL climate change and then came a very long warm phase of the PDO.
In the journal Nature Climate Change, University of East Anglia “climate expert” Manoj Joshi predicts increased turbulence over the North Atlantic will affect air travelers as carbon dioxide levels rise. http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_22993115/study-more-pollution-means-more-air-turbulence
In the article, the following is stated as fact: “The aviation industry is the world’s fastest-growing source of carbon dioxide emissions, a major factor in human-driven climate change. Solutions including plant-based jet fuels and carbon offsets have been considered, but politicians, aviation companies and international travelers have so far failed to significantly blunt the environmental impact of air travel.”
So much of the article begs comment, but the mention of plant-based jet fuels as a solution popped the top off the “ridiculous” meter. Just as Nancy Pelosi displayed ignorance that natural gas is a fossil fuel, the scientists or science writers responsible for this article appear to think that burning fuel made from contemporary green plants is fundamentally different than from ancient green plants. Will they be shocked to find that the combustion of both produces carbon dioxide? Come to think of it, there are fundamental differences. Fuel derived from oil made by Nature from ancient plants does not require natural gas to make fertilizer, huge quantities of land and water for its growth, farm equipment to plant it, weed it, harvest it, and transport it to refineries, where more energy is needed to transform it to fuel. Oil does not take food and water from the troughs of animals, or from the tables of families, nor does its production disturb ground that then results in release of dreaded carbon dioxide.
Another article predicted huge dislocations of West Coast vineyards by 2050 because of global warming (they didn’t use the climate change weasel words).
The spasm of recent doomsday articles reminds me of the death throes of great beast, lashing out in all directions without aim or purpose, not knowing what its problem is or how to remedy it, only knowing something terrible is being experienced.
So it was that bad without CO2 being implicated?
Gosh, think how bad it’s going to be WITH?
It’s even worse than we thought…
These guys are hilarious!
On one hand we have this:
i.e. my model is perfect, and if I couldn’t find a reason for it, it must be random.
Then along comes Kevin:
i.e. global warming is true, I tell you, so everything must be caused by it!
hype = lies
Not a “mistake”. Not a “misjudgement”. Not “misinterpretation”. Not “misspeaking”
Lies.
Last summer California current was ‘cooler’ than normal, hence less evaporation. There ara number of reasons why that could happen, I would suspect the Kuroshio-Oyashio and Alaskan currents system. NOAA itself states:
“The Kuroshio Current (red arrow) runs off the coast of Japan. It is a strong and very large warm surface oceanic current travelling 40 to 121 km/day at 1.6 to 4.8 km/h. At latitude of. about 35N it divides to form an eastern branch flowing nearly to the Hawaiian Islands and a northern branch that skirts the coast of Asia and merges with the waters of the cold Oyashio Current to form the North Pacific Current.
The Oyashio Current (green arrow) is a cold subarctic current that flows south and circulates counter-clockwise along the western North Pacific Ocean. The two currents collide near eastern shores of Japan forming the North Pacific Current.”
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/np/images/maps/KuroshioOyashio.jpg
Any change in the balance of these currents of the coast of Japan will reach Canada in just over a year and California few months later.
It is likely that the current systems was temporarily disturbed by tectonic movements during earthquake magnitude 9 of Japanese island of Honshu in March of 2011.
.Wikipedia lists seven strong earthquakes of M8+ in the area since 1920s (I added coincidental major US droughts, occuring a year or so later) :
01 September 1, 1923 M8.3
March 2, 1933 M8.4 – Major drought 1934
December 20, 1946 M8.1
March 4, 1952 M8.1 – Major drought 1953-4
May 16, 1968 M8.2
September 25, 2003 M8.3
March 11, 2011 M9.0 – Major drought 2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Japan
Any March (spring equinox time) Japan’s major earthquake ( 3 out of 3) has a high probability of causing major drought in the USA 16 months latter, the time required for cold currents to reach California coast. This could be just a coincidence, but NOAA could do well to imitate a further research, since the US could get a year + warning, for the farming communities of possible impending drought.