1986 : Tom Karl Told Congress That Severe Drought Is A Normal Climate Fluctuation In The US

2 Responses to 1986 : Tom Karl Told Congress That Severe Drought Is A Normal Climate Fluctuation In The US

1. Dave N says:

   March 6, 2014 at 3:36 am

   Karl recanted on his death (of funding and scientific community acceptance) bed

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2. Gail Combs says:

   March 6, 2014 at 2:22 pm

   1986 was the most severe drought???

   Haven’t these idiots ever read Steinbeck?

   Or had an American History class?

   …The Dust Bowl got its name after Black Sunday, April 14, 1935. More and more dust storms had been blowing up in the years leading up to that day. In 1932, 14 dust storms were recorded on the Plains. In 1933, there were 38 storms. By 1934, it was estimated that 100 million acres of farmland had lost all or most of the topsoil to the winds….

   “The impact is like a shovelful of fine sand flung against the face,” Avis D. Carlson wrote in a New Republic article. “People caught in their own yards grope for the doorstep. Cars come to a standstill, for no light in the world can penetrate that swirling murk… We live with the dust, eat it, sleep with it, watch it strip us of possessions and the hope of possessions. It is becoming Real.”

   The day after Black Sunday, an Associated Press reporter used the term “Dust Bowl” for the first time. “Three little words achingly familiar on the Western farmer’s tongue, rule life in the dust bowl of the continent – if it rains.” The term stuck and was used by radio reporters and writers, in private letters and public speeches.

   In the central and northern plains, dust was everywhere….

   The impact of the Dust Bowl was felt all over the U.S. During the same April as Black Sunday, 1935, one of FDR’s advisors, Hugh Hammond Bennett, was in Washington D.C. on his way to testify before Congress about the need for soil conservation legislation. A dust storm arrived in Washington all the way from the Great Plains. As a dusty gloom spread over the nation’s capital and blotted out the sun, Bennett explained, “This, gentlemen, is what I have been talking about.” Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act that same year.

   http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html

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