What was done
The authors measured a number of parameters throughout sediment cores removed from three North Dakota lakes to reconstruct a history of drought in a portion of the Northern Great Plains over the past 2000 years.

What was learned
In the words of the authors, their data "suggest that droughts equal or greater in magnitude to those of the Dust Bowl period were a common occurrence during the last 2000 yr."

What it means
Climate alarmists, radical environmentalists, and many politicians and government functionaries continue to insist that earth's weather will become ever more extreme in response to the warming predicted to result from the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content; and drought is one of the meteorological phenomena that is invariably included in their collection of natural disasters destined to increase in both frequency and severity.  As this paper demonstrates, however, these dire predictions have absolutely no basis in fact.  Real-world data continue to demonstrate that, if anything, the modest warming of the globe that has released us from the chill of the Little Ice Age has initiated a period of less frequent and severe droughts.  Yet falsehood continues to prevail in the fodder that is fed to the public by the aforementioned proponents of Kyoto-style regulations designed to reduce CO2 emissions.  The truth, however, will ultimately prevail, as studies such as this one continue to be published.