About half the population of Oklahoma fled the state in the 1930s because of the heat and drought. PBS has been trying to blame the 1930s heat and drought on “bad farming practices” by farmers.
They somehow forgot to mention that the Dust Bowl only covered a small percentage of Oklahoma and the drought area.
No! They will be rewarded with still more money taken out of the pockets of we tax payers. With government programs, failure is rewarded and success is punished. How else can they justify taking still more wealth. enacting still more laws and regulations, and growing the government? If the problems were actually solved and the programs actually worked, none of that would happen. As a consequence, government would shrink to the necessary minimum. Hence, failure is the only option and success is to be prohibited at all costs up to and including the destruction of our economy and civilization.
Me cynical? No. It is just government doing what government has always done since the very first government. Government is by definition the application of physical force to get what it wants from the people it governs and to make sure the people do what the government wants, the way the government wants, and for the reason the government wants. Individual choice? That means to do it the government way or off to the gulag with you to be trained to be a “good” citizen or die. There are only a few shining brief moments in the history of government where this was not the case.
The bottom line is: we are governed by a gang of thugs, for the gang of thugs, and of the gang of thugs. That it is superficially legal based upon a fiction of due process is only a smoke screen.
Yes. Sad but true. Governments have traditionally claimed to have a monopoly on the lawful use of aggressive force. The brilliant attempted solution of the early US (though we no longer follow it) was that the founders tried to severely restrict the ability of the government to inflict violence. The first line of defense was the Constitution, an agreement to specify very limited areas of government action. The second line of defense was to effectively disarm the government and to have the majority of force concentrated at a State or Militia level.
Both lines of defense have failed. The US public has some very hard decisions to make.
It is amazing how a few farmers in the Great Plains nearly destroyed the entire planet. But if they were anything but white males, they would not have such evil powers.
I have not seen the program in question, but I am assuming that it is faulting tillage practices. This is not a false premise. Much to the horror of the greens, low tillage chemical farming does a lot to retain soil moisture and reduce desertification. I farm in SW Saskatchewan, and we are borderline desert. We had all the huge dust storms and negatives of the dust bowl during the 30’s. But as time has gone on, we have seen less blowing soil with each new drought, due to better soil practices. But also remember that tillage alone won’t cause the dust bowl, it needs drought too. And the 30’s were very dry. Farmers did not cause, the drought and dust bowl, but they probably did make it worse. We are starting to see more blowing soil again due to organic farmers using more traditional farming methods. It is not hard to find 2 fields side by side, one using no tillage spraying and the other worked more for organically, and seeing the organic field blowing and the other not blowing at all. If they had chemicals and low soil disturbance equipment in the 30’s, it probably would not have been as bad. But we would also have quit trying to grow crops as things started to look worse and planted fields to try and keep the soil anchored and maximize moisture retention. Despite all the greens rants about farmers being too stupid to understand how nature works, we have a far better grasp of the natural world than they do. We actually care for our soils and work hard to keep the land healthy.
Locally, my grandfather before he died, said that there has been no new weather that he hadn’t seen before. That was enough for me to start looking into AGW more closely. And he was right, shine a light on it and it turns out to be smoke and mirrors.
You are missing the point.
The Dust Bowl covered a small percentage of Oklahoma and an even smaller percentage of the drought area.
Again, I have not seen the program, so I do not know what they are claiming. But it is wrong to claim that soil tillage practices cannot worsen or accelerate desertification of soils. I am not claiming anything about temperatures or causes. Also Saskatchewan had conditions just as bad during the 30’s as the dust bowl. To be accurate, you should point out that tillage can accelerate desertification of the soils.
Skeeter must have learned geography the same place as PBS, our public schools…
“LENO: You mentioned infrastructure. Why is that a partisan issue? I live in a town, the bridge is falling apart, it’s not safe. How does that become Republican or Democrat? How do you not just fix the bridge? (Laughter and applause.)
SKEETER: I don’t know. As you know, for the last three years, I’ve said, let’s work together. Let’s find a financing mechanism and let’s go ahead and fix our bridges, fix our roads, sewer systems, our ports. [You know], the Panama [Canal] is being widened so that these big supertankers can come in. Now, that will be finished in 2015. If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia, or Jacksonville, Florida — if we don’t do that, those ships are going to go someplace else. And we’ll lose jobs. Businesses won’t locate here.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/07/did-you-catch-the-presidents-u-s-geography-fail-on-leno-tuesday/