Monday, April 14, 2008

Climate change ruins crops

Is the right-wing intelligentsia still going to insist climate change is a big hoax? I'm not even a climate scientist, yet even I could see weather patterns are different in my area now from what they were only 5 years ago - which in turn were different from what they were 20 years before that. I hate to dwell on it, but Corporate America's denial of climate change can be shot down with several stories just from today or yesterday.

The money worshipers' latest talking point is that the late spring is proof climate change is a hoax. Quite the contrary. Global warming doesn't make it warmer in every region. It's easy to see how the opposite can happen when heat builds clouds or fires up storms. In Kentucky, flooding rains have destroyed crops, and a killing frost looms tonight. Yes, frost in April. Farmers couldn't plant when the soil was too wet - and now the crops they have planted are about to freeze. One farmer says half his farm is underwater, and the rest is too wet to use, as water still oozes from the soil.

This only compounds the last few years of extreme weather. Remember the dangerous heat waves of 2006 and 2007 everyone has forgotten? You know, the ones where I had to leave my apartment for days because it was too hot?

What's happening in Kentucky now is also happening in Iowa, where a 71-year-old gardener said, "I've never seen spring come this late."

Just last May, an unusual series of storms in South Africa set 54 records for temperatures and rainfall.

If the "no regulation" types still insist climate change isn't real, then their ideology is nothing short of a cult, like Answers in Genesis. They might as well just build a goofy museum that everyone laughs at.

(Source: http://www.kypost.com/content/news/commonwealth/story.aspx?content_id=c6991d77-e7fc-4f03-89bc-1dc621ad0851;
http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/17646694.html;
http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3844594)

2 comments:

  1. I did my part to help speed up global warming today by driving around the block a couple extra times. Tonight I'm going to turn on every light in the house. I might stop recycling. Maybe tomorrow I'll chop down a few trees in the back yard. The temperature is only around 45 degrees today. I'd like it to be much warmer in April.

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  2. While we're on the topic of global warming, Scheff, how about if you set fire to your computer?

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