Hansen said this in 1999
Empirical evidence does not lend much support to the notion that climate is headed precipitately toward more extreme heat and drought. The drought of 1999 covered a smaller area than the 1988 drought, when the Mississippi almost dried up. And 1988 was a temporary inconvenience as compared with repeated droughts during the 1930s “Dust Bowl” that caused an exodus from the prairies, as chronicled in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
There is no indication that droughts are getting worse. Romm speaks from the perspective of an unwell individual trying to project his neuroses on to a wider group.
Climate science has been reduced to manufacturing a problem when no problem exits.
We should act now to lessen the impacts of floods and droughts. Why are we not building reservoirs, dams, levees, drainage systems, seawalls, and other tried and true engineering endeavors?
So basically the claim is that Hoerling is unqualified… here is part of his BIO:
“Dr. Martin Hoerling is a research meteorologist, specializing in climate dynamics, in NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory located in Boulder, Colorado. He is the Convening Lead Author for the US Climate Change Science Plan Synthesis and Assessment Report on “Attribution of the Causes of Climate Variations and Trends over North America,” released in 2009. Dr. Hoerling is Chairman of the US CLIVAR (Climate Variability) research program. Dr. Hoerling served as Editor for the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate, and has published over 50 scientific papers dealing with climate variability and change.”
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/people/martin.hoerling/
But somehow, Romm thinks Hansen is qualified, although it’s not clear what qualifications Hansen has in this area, if any. In Romm’s words “…Hoerling [views] does not reflect the scientific literature.” The small sticking point here, is that it looks like Hoerling wrote most of that literature himself…