Dramatic video footage and eye witness accounts from Oklahoma
on Thursday tell the story of a scene right out of the Depression-era
'Dust Bowl days' as a massive wind-swept cloud of 'reddish-brown' dirt
made invisibility impossible on a stretch of Interstate-35 between
Oklahoma City and Kansas City, Mo.
(Photo By The Ponca City News, Rolf Clements)
The mid-western states have experienced some of the
highest temperatures on record this year and a
severe drought has devastated corn crops and turned once thriving fields to brown. Scientists
make direct connections between these trends and the growing impact of climate change fueled by human-caused climate change.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Jodi Palmer, a dispatcher with the Kay County Sheriff’s Office, told the
Associated Press.
“In this area alone, the dirt is blowing because we’ve been in a
drought. I think from the drought everything’s so dry and the wind is
high.”
“You have the perfect combination of extended drought in that area
... and we have the extremely strong winds,” said Gary McManus, the
Oklahoma associate state climatologist, also speaking with
AP.
“Also, the timing is bad because a lot of those farm fields are bare.
The soil is so dry, it’s like powder. Basically what you have is a
whole bunch of topsoil waiting for the wind to blow it away. It’s no
different from the 1930s than it is now.”
Experts have warned for year about the impact of top soil erosion
caused by an over-reliance on industrial farming practices, including
heavy use of chemical fertilizers.
As science journalist April Kelsey, writing for
Suite 101,
explains:
The chemical fertilizers and pesticides commercial farmers rely on to produce high single-crop yields kill many of the essential microorganisms
and insects that aerate and build the soil, while heavy farming
machinery destroys soil structure through compaction. Chemicals also
leach water from the soil, making it salty and acidic and leaving crops vulnerable to drought. Dry and damaged soil erodes much faster than healthy soil.
Experts estimate that 66 percent
of U.S. soil degradation and erosion has resulted directly from these
kinds of agricultural practices. The corn fields of the U.S. Midwest are
"an area of particular local concern," where as much as 75 percent of
the topsoil has been lost to erosion.
A report by Bloomberg this week, headlined
Warming climate sends US corn belt north,
described how large agribusiness giants—the same companies that have
fueled the great monocultures and destructive farming practices in
mid-western—are already making large investments further north to
prepare for the dwindling ability of now debilitated croplands further
south.
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