Climate experts say that Oklahoma farmers caused the 1934 drought, which covered 80% of the US. Apparently they have been doing this for thousands of years.
A 1998 study by federal scientists, for instance, found that droughts as widespread and severe as that of the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s, when 65 percent of the country was affected at the drought’s peak in 1934, have occurred once or twice a century over the last 300 to 400 years. A decade-long drought, the study found, occurs about once every 500 years.
More recent analyses of tree-ring data have identified a 16th-century megadrought that affected much of the continent for years, far outstripping any drought of the 20th century in persistence and severity. It was during this drought that the first English colony in America, at Roanoke Island in North Carolina, disappeared, and experts now believe the drought is what killed it off.
The report, by Dr. David W. Stahle, a tree-ring analyst at the University of Arkansas, Dr. Edward R. Cook, an analyst of ancient climates at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, and six colleagues, appeared in the March 21 issue of Eos, a scientific publication of the American Geophysical Union.
Megadroughts lasting a century or two are known to have occurred in what is now California over the last 3,500 years. Droughts of similar severity have also been implicated in the downfall of the empire of the Maya in Central America a millennium ago; the Akkadian empire (the world’s first) in Mesopotamia 4,200 years ago (that drought lasted 300 years) and several pre-Inca cultures in South America.
It’s the Schrodinger’s Cat Syndrome. Navel gazing at its best.
With Prairie grass , a drought resistant plant, able to withstand decades of drought, can even flower during one, once covering vast regions of the US, I would imagine drought would be a common occurrence in the US.
So in 1934 co2 was called oklahoma farmers?!
I guess H.L. Mencken was right when he said that the politics only exist to keep populace alarmed(and hence clamorous to be led to safety)
by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins,all of them imaginary.
Nice article debunking Ken Burns Dust Bowl:
http://www.garynorth.com/public/10354.cfm
Farming methods made the dust bowl worse. But yes, it was caused by the sun being very active and yes, it happens regularly enough for the plants and animals to evolve for long droughts. This is true also of the Russian Steppes and Mongolia, too.
forget about it Jake, it’s Chinatown.
Regardless of whatever farming methods were used, the 1930’s heat and drought would still be in a class by themselves, at least since the settlement of European people.
In south Florida we are so concerned about sea level rise, we keep building very expensive homes right on the beach. That’s how concerned we are.
Sort of like in the Maldives.
That was posted in the wrong place. Please delete! I had two windows open.
Drought would have happened regardless; the dust bowl was exacerbated by the abrupt beginning and abrupt ending to FDR’s questionable wheat subsidy program(s). They even turned the attention away from another one of FDR blunders by nominalizing the people who were receiving loans for tractors and other farming implements (aka corporate hedging); we call them the “suitcase farmers”.
Steven, if you would like a photograph of a 50+ year old Douglas Fir tree that was felled today; to use for a specimen, send me an email and I can provide the necessary statistics for an analysis. .