The recent firestorm over “Little change in global drought over the past 60 years” has inspired me to compile the following collection
of links to recent articles since they examine a recent paper that “obfuscationists” are trumpeting as more proof that global warming is nothing to be concerned about.

The paper being:
“Little change in global drought over the past 60 years”
Justin Sheffield, Eric F. Wood & Michael L. Roderick
Nature 491, 435–438 (15 November 2012) doi:10.1038/nature11575
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Worth reading reviews and explanations of this study can be found at:

Counting Drought
by John Nielsen-Gammon
~ ~ ~
Tree rings and Drought Indices
by Kevin Anchukaitis
~ ~ ~
Drought area changed little over recent decades
by Freya Roberts
~ ~ ~
Climate Change Is Already Worsening Droughts In Many Ways: Nature Gets It Wrong–And Right
by Joe Romm

But, I do want to share these thoughts:

The thing that frustrates me the worst is how well the denialist camp manages to get everyone to focus on minute details. 
All intended to keep us from learning to appreciate what we do know.  Our weather is the product of our planet’s climate. 
GHGs are a central component of that global heat distribution engine.  GHGs ARE sequestering more heat.
Anthropogenic global warming will manifest itself in many ways, many of which we don’t fully understand. 
But, the fact that we don’t fully understand every aspect has nothing to do with the fact of the warming. 

So when will we freak’n stop arguing about the veracity of scientific consensus of the reality of
what our fossil fuel burning has done to our atmosphere and get on with getting real about dealing with it?

cheers CC
http://citizenschallenge.blogspot.com/2012/11/has-there-been-little-change-in-global.html

PS. uncertainty does not equal not knowing

An excellent article CC and keep em coming. Climatologists and their supporters still have an uphill battke to fight though. Have you sent your blog to your congressmen? We should all be pressuring them to at least admit the problem and stop uselessly debating the facts.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=house-repubs-vote-that-earth-is-not-11-03-16

Also a bit dated but still relevant:

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/big_picture_solutions/clean-air-act.html

Cap’t Jack

citizenschallenge.pm - 24 November 2012 11:48 PM

So when will we freak’n stop arguing about the veracity of scientific consensus of the reality of
what our fossil fuel burning has done to our atmosphere and get on with getting real about dealing with it?

When people see the personal benefits of dealing with it. Most of us are too wrapped up in our own problems to think beyond that.

Stephen

A little change in which direction?

So what if there has only been a little change if it is in the wrong direction.

How much has the world population changed in 60 years?  How much will a little change in the wrong direction hurt us?

1950   2,556,000,053
2010   6,848,932,929

psik

The article was about little change in drought in the past 60 yrs.  It suggested (in my reading of it) that the intensity of drought increase was not as much as previously thought, because of other factors which could be factors of climate change, themselves, e.g., changing level of winds and humidity. 

People often read headlines and tend to jump to erroneously generalized conclusions.