Global warming, anyone?

[Elhuero]

Do people really put weight into anything NYT says? Really?

unfortunately, they do.

the NYT is fighting tooth and nail to hold on to what little is left of the influence they had fifty years ago.

newspapers are on the downward slide to obsolescence.

[ERNO]

NYT, sun., Nov. 28, 2010

by Jack Hedin--who is a farmer


Rushford, Minn.
"The news from this Midwestern farm is not good. The past 4 years of heavy rains and flash flooding here in southern Minnesota have left me worried about the future of agriculture in America's grain belt. For some time computer model's of climate change have been predicting just these kinds of weather patterns, but seeing them unfold on our farm has been harrowing nonetheless.
My family and I produce vegetables, hay and grain on 250 acres in one of the richest agricultural areas in the world. While our farm is not large by modern standards, its roots are deep in this region; my greatgrandfather homesteaded about 80 miles from here in the late 1800's.
He passed on a keen sensitivity to climate. His memoirs, self-published in the wake of the Dust Bowl of the 1930's, desribe tornadoes, droughts and other extreme weather. But even he would be the erratic weather we have experienced in the last decade.
In Aug. 2007, a series of storms produced a breathtaking 23 inches of rain in 36 hours. The flooding that followed essentially erased our farm from the map. Fields were swamped under churning waters, which in places left a foot or more of debris and silt in their wake. Cornstalks were wrapped around bridge railings 10 feet above normal stream levels. We found butternut squashes from our farm two miles downstream, stranded in sapling branches five feet above the ground. A hillside of mature trees collapsed and slid hundreds of feet into a field below.
The machine shop on our farm was inundated with two feet of filthy runoff. When the water was finally gone, every tool, machine and surface was bathed in a toxic mix of used moter oil and rancid mud.
Our farm was able to stay in business only after receiving grants and low interest private and government loans. Having experienced lesser floods in 2004 and 2005, my family and I decided the only prudent action would be to use the money to move over the winter to better, drier ground eight miles away.
This move prescient: in June 2008 torrential rains and flash flooding returned. The federal government declared the second natural disaster in less than a year for the region. Hundreds of acres of our neighbors cornfields were again underwater and had to be replanted. Earthmovers spent days regrading a 280-acre field just across the road from our new home. Had we remained at the old place, we would have lost a season's worth of crops before they were a quarter grown.
The 2010 season has again been extraordinarily wet. The more than 20 inches of rain that I measured in my rain guage in June and July disrupted nearly evrry operation on our farm. We managed to do a bare minimum of field preparation, planting and cultivating through midsummer, thanks only to the well drained soils beneath our new home.
But in two weeks in July, moisture-fueled disease swept thru a three-acre onion field, reducing tens of thousands of pounds of healthy onions to mush. With rain falling several times a week and our tractors sitting idle, weeds took over a 7-acre field of carrots, requiring many times the normal amount of hand laborto control. Crop losses topped $100,000 by mid-August.
The most recent onslaught was a pair of heavy storms in late September that dropped 8.2 inches of rain. Representatives from FEMA again toured the area, and another fed. disaster was narrowly averted. But evidence of the loss was everywhere: debris piled up in unharvested cornfields, large washouts in fields recently stripped of pumpkins or soybeans, harvesting equipment sitting idle.
My great-grandfather recognized thet weather is never perfect for agriculture for an entire season; a full chapter of his memoir is dedicated to this observation. In his 60 years of farming he wrote that only one season, his final crop of 1937, had close to ideal weather. Like all of other farmers of his time and ours, he learned to cope with significant, ill-timed fluctuations in temperature and precipitation.
But at least here in the Midwest, weather fluctuations have been more significant during my time than in his, the Dust Bowl notwithstanding. The weather in our area has become demonstrably more hostile to agriculture, and all signs are that this trend will continue. Minnesota's state climatologist, Jim Zandlo, has concluded that no fewer than three "thousand-year rains" have occured in the past seven years in our part of the state. And a University of Minn. meteorologist , Mark Seeley, has found that summer storms in the region over the past two decades have been more intense and more geographically focused tan at anytime on record.
No two farms have the same experience with the weather, and some people will contend that ours is an anomaly, that many corn and bean farms in our area have done well over the same period. But heavy summer weather causes harm to farm fields that is not easily seen or quantified, like nutrient leeching, organic-matter depletion and erosion. As climate change accelerates these trends, losses will likely mount proportionately, and across the board. How long can we continue to borrow from the "topsoil bank," as torrential rains force us to make ever more frequent "withdrawals?"
Climate change, I believe, may eventually pose an existential threat to my way of life. A family farm like ours may simply not be able to adjust quickly enough to such unendingly volatile weather. We can't charge enough for our crops in good years to cover losses in the ever-more frequent bad ones. We can't continue to move to better, drier ground. No new field drainage scheme will help us as atmospheric carbon concentrations edge up to 400 parts per million; hardware and technology alone can't solve problems of this magnitude.
To make things worse, I see fewer acres in our area now planted with erosion-preventing techniques, like perennial contour strips, than there were a decade ago. I believe that federal agriculture policy is largely responsible, because it rewards the quantity of acres planted rather than the quality of practices employed.
But blaming the goverement isn't sufficient. All farmers have an interest in adopting better farming techniques. I believe that we also have an obligation to do so, for the sake of future generations. If global climate changes a product of human use of fossil fuels-and I believe it is-then our farm is a big part of the problem. We burn thousands of gallons of diesel fuel a year in our 10 tractors, undermining the very foundation of our subsistence every time we cultivate a field or put up a bale of hay.
I accept my responsibility for my complicity in this, but I also stand ready to accept the challenge of the future, to make serious changes in how I conduct business to produce less carbon. I don't see that I have a choice, if I am to hope that the farm will be around for my own great-grandchildren.
But my farm, and my neighbor's farms, can contribute only so much. Americans need to see our experience as a call for national action. The country must get serious about cliomate-change legislation and making real changes in our daily lives to reduce carbon emissions.
The future of our nation's food supply hang's in the balance."

[RARGUNS]

He's a farmer not a scientist. But still better than NYT.

[ERNO]

Ocean water temperature increase's are likely, and will exceed natural variability. The ocean also absorbs Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere, which forms carbonic acid in the water and is making seas corrosive to certain species.

Cancun- Some low-lying island nations face the "End of History" due to rising sea levels unless the world takes stronger action to slow Global Warming, a spokesperson said at UN climate talks on Monday.

[RARGUNS]

On November 15, 1969, Science News quoted meteorologist Dr. J. Murray Mitchell Jr. "How long the current cooling trend continues is one of the most important problems of our civilizations." Where have we heard that before? Mitchell continued: "If the cooling continues for another 200 to 300 years the earth could be plunged into an ice age." On January 11, 1970, the Washington Post ran the headline "Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age," The story read "Better get a good grip on your long johns cold weather haters, the worst may be yet to come." Fortune magazine reported in February of 1974 "It is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude." Sound familiar? In its June 24, 1970 edition Time magazine wrote "Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age." Newsweek, on April 28, 1975, wrote that "The Earth's climate seems to be cooling down."

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/...#ixzz16tj4jR00

[jerrymrc]

Last I knew ERNO isn't even in Colorado. And I doubt he owns any firearms.

He is in Baltimore.

[cebeu]

foxtrot "...endless copypasta from the internet (with no validity and no accreditation)...The best response is...

This message is hidden because ERNO is on your ignore list.

[ERNO]

"Excuse me, while I wipe the sweat off my brow. Cause I'm gonna jump and shout, tell the world what's it all about"---- Jimi Hendrix

[68Charger]

This message is hidden because ERNO is on your ignore list.

Winner! I wonder if it bothers him the we don't even see his drivel anymore... for about 2 seconds, then I smile.

[funkfool]

Winner! I wonder if it bothers him the we don't even see his drivel anymore... for about 2 seconds, then I smile.

I just start doing the Maxwell piggy "Whee" routine from the Geico commercial!