Summer forecast doesn’t hold water (new Dust Bowl on the Plains?)

[NickB79]

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/apr/18/summer_forecast_doesnt_hold_water/

"A dire weather forecast issued Monday calls for a hot, dry summer across the Plains reminiscent of the 1930s — the era of the devastating Dust Bowl drought.

The Pennsylvania-based forecasting service AccuWeather.com predicts a high-pressure system will be parked across the central United States much of the summer. The system would lead to scorching-hot days and prevent moisture from coming into the region — something that in turn causes even higher temperatures."

Tell me again where we're gonna grow our ethanol-producing crops now that climate change is turning our breadbasket into a dust bowl?

[Deja Q]

1. Ethanol is a joke.

That's why government promotes it.

It requires a lot of OIL and GAS to fuel the machines to plant and harvest the crops.

[OneTwentyoNine]

4. BS.....

Farm equipment can be run on Bio-diesel,you don't need Exxon/Mobile premo fuel for a tractor. Ethanol plant are going up everywhere,five or six are planned here in Kansas. E85 fuel sells for .20-.30 less than reg unleaded and thats without it being made in mass quanity.


BTW,you don't think it requires a lot of Oil and Gas to drill a 5,000 foot hole and extract crude from it?

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

5. It CAN be run on bio-diesel, but is it?

Is the infrastructure there to do it? I don't think so.

[jwirr]

6. While I see the use of ethanol as one of our options there

is still the issue of food vs. fuel in the land use problem. I would like to see some intensive work done to use the food source as food and the waste as the basis for fuel. That cannot be done at this point.

[Canuckistanian]

9. A big study came out a few months ago- it is viable

The net energy gain is definitely positive. And with new crops and harvesting techniques, it's profitable, too.

[Joey Liberal]

2. I live in Oklahoma

It's pretty bad here. I think it's already turning into a dustbowl. The temperature has already reached 103 degrees. Yet, one of our Senators calls global warming a hoax.

[hatrack]

10. Yes, the same stupid SOB who called in Michael Crichton . . .

As an "expert witness" no less.

My sincere condolences on Inhofe as a senator. He makes Ashcroft look like the voice of reason.

[depakid]

11. That would be Inhofe

Although Tom Coburn is likewise delusional.

Seems to me that Oklahoma (and the surrounding areas to the north and south west are going to be in for a rough rise in the coming years- the kind that will feed right into the privations of those End Times stories.

[OneTwentyoNine]

3. Living here in Kansas I believe it.....

Its rained or snowed maybe 3-4 times since last SEPTEMBER here in Wichita. We set a record high a couple of days ago of 96,it was 92 the next day setting another record. Its damned hot for April bone dry and the wind blows a gale almost every day.

Of course farming methods are different than the dust bowl days but the weather is exactly the same. 1936 was the hottest year on record in Wichita,and that 96 temp beat a record dating back to 1936. It doesn't look good.

[DELUSIONAL]

7. Tree belts were supposed to prevent another dust bowl

but many of the tree belts planted thanks to funding from FDR via Eleanor Roosevelt have been cut down.

My grandmother always predicted that there would be another dust bowl when the tree belts were cut and farmers returned to plowing fence line to fence line.

My mother lived through the dust bowl in Kansas as a child -- when day became night because of the blowing soil.

[jwirr]

8. Unless there has been a drastic change since the 1970s

farm practices now are worse than in the 1930s. We have fewer trees/brush to stop the winds from blowing the soil away and we are farming what would be called marginal areas that traditionally suffered from drought. Many in Iowa and Minnesota have been trying to move to more conservation conscious methods but I do not know it they have acted fast enough.

[phantom power]

12. Loss of snowpack is going to cream the western US.

And it's going to be effectively permanent. Unless we get lucky and THC shutdown re-cools the northern hemisphere.