Climate Change for Real?

I guess it is fall, the calendar says so. It is kind of hard to tell when the temperatures are this hot. Of course, I know that by writing this column and complaining about the temperature I am causing it to change. By the time you read this it will probably be snowing and we will have freeze warnings. I know we live in Kansas, where if you don’t like the weather all you need to do is wait five minutes. However, snow in May, cool temperatures and lots of rain in August and 100 degrees in September, that is extreme even for Kansas.

All of this is making me a believer in climate change. Last summer we had extreme heat and even more extreme drought, surely we were in the grips of global warming. Soon we would be toasted, roasted and hung up to dry. The polar ice caps were melting and the Okies would be selling ocean front property. We needed to go green or everything would turn brown.

Then in the midst of the global warming apocalypse came last spring in all of her chilly glory. I am not sure that I attended a baseball game or track meet without a heavy winter coat. Spring planting was delayed because of cold soil temperature, moisture and snow in April and May. Maybe that snow drift in Montana was the southern edge of the polar ice cap. The next ice age was upon us.

Even more evidence of the return of the ice age was county fair season this year. I have never seen so many coats and gloves adorning the spectators of a beef show in July. I, myself, started to shiver and turned the heater/defrost on after judging one show this summer. I fully expected to be judging yak shows next year. I envisioned opening a snow cat dealership.

But as quickly as it started the next ice age melted away in late August and early September.  As cool as our county fairs were, I think the first weekend of the Kansas State Fair had to be one of the hottest weekends ever. A tax on iced tea and bottled water would have funded the state of Kansas for a whole year.  Global warming again reared its ugly, fiery head.

So what does it all mean? Are we going to freeze or is it getting hot in here? Where is Al Gore when we need him? My prediction is that by the time you read this column there is a fifty percent chance that it will be hot and a fifty percent chance it will be cool. We may or may not have had precipitation and that precipitation will take the form of rain, snow, sleet, hail or all of the above.

I know the Old Farmer’s Almanac has predicted a cold wet winter. They may very well be right. I would guess they are right just as many times as any other “expert”. Maybe I ought to go into meteorology. After all, it is the only profession you can be wrong in most of the time and still have everyone hang on your every word. Shoot, you can even change your mind midstream and make your predictions right.

OK, my weather predicting friends don’t get too mad at me. I know it is an inexact science, one that works with the unpredictability of wind currents, cold fronts, upper level moisture among many factors. I understand inexact, unpredictable studies; I have a degree in agricultural economics. I can’t predict the direction of the markets with any accuracy, but I can draw a graph to prove I am right.

It all boils down to something Dad tells me nearly every day. The weather is something we have no control over. We should worry about things we can control and not worry about what we can’t, like the weather. Don’t misunderstand me; I think it is a good thing to protect our environment. We should make sure we leave it cleaner and better for our kids, conserve our natural resources; but I just can’t buy into the idea that we cause changes in the weather.

I guess, in the end, variety is the spice of life. If we didn’t have really hot days, the first cool day of fall wouldn’t be so refreshing. You also have to admit that the first really warm day of the spring feels pretty darn good too. So I guess in the spirit of being prepared I will put on my stocking cap and coveralls over my short sleeve shirt and shorts, who knows I may need them all today.

No Dust Bowl

In the past week I have been from North Eastern Kansas to South Central Kansas and my official diagnosis is that it is really, really dry. I think that astute observation might be enough to get me a job as a weatherman. All kidding aside, this drought is getting to levels that most of us if not all of us have never seen before. On top of that there seems to be no relief in sight.

I have also seen in recent days that the local PBS station has been showing a documentary about the Dust Bowl. I would really like to have seen the program but I just haven’t been able to watch TV when it was on and I cannot seem to program the DVR to record it. It would be interesting to see how close we are coming to being in the same weather pattern.

My guess is that we are fairly close to having another Dust Bowl. I know temperature levels have reached all time sustained records and we are somewhere around 11 inches short of rain for the year. I also know that my friends in Western Kansas have been mired in this drought for a couple of years longer than we have.  All of this leaves people wondering if we are headed into another Dust Bowl. I would contend that we may be right in the middle of it.

Oh there have been some pretty bad dust storms recently in Western Kansas but nothing like they had in the 1930s. So if we are in the second, third or even fourth year of record highs coupled with drought like conditions why are we not seeing Dust Bowl conditions? The answer is because we learned from our mistakes in the thirties and modern agriculture does an incredible job of conserving top soil.

Agriculture in the thirties viewed the topsoil as a never ending commodity; the soils were too deep and rich to ever disappear. We were also in an era of needing to increase our agricultural output, so we plowed every available acre. Little thought was given to soil conservation, after all, why conserve a never ending resource.

Well, we found out why. Years of not worrying about leaving residue on the top of the soil led to soil erosion from wind and water. Soon the less productive sub-soil was left exposed and it did not allow the crops to grow as well and leave as much residue. Without the residue the exposed soil was more at risk.  A series of dry years exasperated the situation and the Dust Bowl was born.

Fast forward to now. We are just as dry and the drought has lasted just as long. What is the difference? We have adopted no-till and reduced till farming practices. We leave residue on top of the soil to buffer the wind and absorb the rainfall. The resulting organic matter leaves the soil healthier. We have learned how to preserve our precious top soil and even build it back to levels near that of the unplowed prairie. We have been able to do all of this because of the new technology developed in the past couple of decades. New technology like the much maligned genetically modified organisms or GMOs coupled with a better knowledge of the soils. In short, round-up ready crops maybe what has prevented a Dust Bowl this time around.

GMOs have allowed us to control weeds while not disturbing the soil and leaving organic matter and residue in place. I know we all know that, but this is the time that we all need to be telling the public about gmo crops and how they save our soil. Instead we allow other people to speculate about problems gmo crops might create sometime in the future when the reality is that they are saving our environment and helping us feed a growing world population. The truth is that all of us in agriculture from the scientists to the farmers have prevented a Dust Bowl.

The only group of people that I can see that gmo crops causing problems are the documentary film makers who will not get to produce a film about the second Dust Bowl. To them, I apologize. However, we are facing a never before seen combination of record heat and terrible drought conditions without the terrible dust storms of the thirties. All the while we are still producing a crop (yes, a reduced crop, but still a crop), that is just another reason I am so proud to be one of the many proud farmers and ranchers raising the food we all need.