Paying the price for climate change
By ANDREW DESSLER
Texas Gov. Rick Perry stirred up controversy on the campaign trail recently when he dismissed the problem of climate change and accused scientists of basically making up the problem.
As a born-and-bred Texan, it’s especially disturbing to hear this now, when our state is getting absolutely hammered by heat and drought. I’ve got to wonder how any resident of Texas — and particularly the governor who not so long ago was asking us to pray for rain — can be so cavalier about climate change.
As a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, I can also tell you from the data that the current heat wave and drought in Texas is so bad that calling it “extreme weather” does not do it justice. July was the single hottest month in the observational record, and the 12 months that ended in July were drier than any corresponding period in the record.
I know that climate change does not cause any specific weather event. But I also know that humans have warmed the climate over the past century, and that this warming has almost certainly made the heat wave and drought more extreme than it would otherwise have been.
I am not alone in these views. There are dozens of atmospheric scientists at Texas institutions such as Rice, the University of Texas and Texas A&M, and none of them dispute the mainstream scientific view of climate change.
I did grad school at Rice, and (apparently unlike some Aggies) I know how to search the Internet. Horrific droughts and heatwaves have been hitting Texas for as long as there has been a Texas.
http://news.google.com/newspapers
There has been no trend in Texas temperatures since records began in 1895. Dessler has no factual basis for his claim of warming. One hot summer is not climate – it is just weather.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/tx.html
All proof of man made climate change!
Except for the part where it all happened, you know just before the times when people were not so full of S**T.
“As a born-and-bred Texan, it’s especially disturbing to hear this now, when our state is getting absolutely hammered by heat and drought.”
“I know that climate change does not cause any specific weather event. ”
Does not compute.
Tbis summer was the record hottest in Shreveport, College Station and several other surrounding cities. Not to mention two straight record hot Julys in DC and the hottest summer on record for the state of Oklahoma. Could be nothing, but when you break long standing records from the Dust Bowl by a fairly wide margin in mutiple places, it does get your attention.
Andy DC:
Sorry but the historic records have been corrupted to an extent that is not known. Prior to some of the later corrections the thirties were warmer. But there was a need to arbitrarily “FIX’ historic records and cool the past.
The current drought records only go back 12 years because they now have a new and improved method of determining drought that has little to do with ground moisture content or even average rain fall for the region.
http://www.real-science.com/uncategorized/weather-climate-texas
Andy, no long standing records have been broken.
The only thing broken is the time line.
They changed the definition of “drought” and started counting again only about a decade ago.
Dessler is a tool of the AGW establishment and like the AGW politburo, believes that meteorological history began in the 1970′s.
Found this updated at Dr Spencer’s site…
“UPDATE #3: At the end of the Guardian article, it says Andy Dessler has a paper coming out in GRL next week, supposedly refuting our recent paper. This has GOT to be a record turnaround for writing a paper and getting it peer reviewed. And, as usual, we NEVER get to see papers that criticize our work before they get published.”
It’s not what (you think) you know, it’s who you know.
Yep, the AGWers have too much political-economic personal issues at stake in it to let it die in infamy. Every trick of the hide-the-decline spin are in play. They still hope enough sheeple are willing to follow the wolves in climate science disguised skin to the haircut shearing pens.
Hey, I’m a Climate Scientist! It says right here on my Al Gore Certificate of Accredited Institute of the Church of Climate Science, certified by GISS of NASA. You can argue with God but not me.