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THEWEATHER IN 1983
this year put the loss in Australia
alone at US $7,500,000,000! Aus–
tralian per capita farm income is
expected to plummet from last
year's US $1 0,500 to as low as
US $2,000. Many farmers there
feel that because of crop damage
three years normally experienced.
Tbe last of the five, Veena, was the
worst cyclone to hit French Polyne–
sia in 70 years.
Fro m Drought to Flood
While much of Africa, South Asia,
ter t hat didn't want to end. At the
same time, planting in the Midwest
was seriously delayed by unseasonal
rains. In June, Mississippi bad esti–
mated t h at crop losses there
amounted to $312 million with
some 600,000 acres of land under-
water .
Role
appeared in news accounts
in the West. This was
because, for the most part ,
the Western media in !he
1930s were either enamorad
of the Great Soviet
Experiment or under direct
governmental pressure not
to be critica!. One might
recall that the United States
gave diplomatic recognition
lo the Soviet Union in 1933,
the year !he famine reached
its height.
was very definilely no! a
resull of any natural
disaster , such as
exceptional drought or flood,
because it was the general
teslimony of !he peasants
that the harvest of 1932,
although not satisfactory,
would have left them
In South America, 260
died in ftoods in Ecuador
alone. The damage there
of
Politics
•
n
Famile
M
ost of us think of famine
as the result of a
continuing drought,
large-scale flood or sorne
other natural disaster.
enough nourishment, if the
state had not swooped
down on them with heavy
requisitions."
is put at more than
US $200 million. Floods
in Peru were not the only
damage done to that
nation. The important
anchovy and tuna fishing
industry was badly crip–
pled because there were
s imply few fish to catch
in the normally bountiful
so u theastern Pacifi c.
Few of us consider that
man can be an active
participan! in the famine
process.
For example, the Nigerian
Civil War (1967 to 1970)
caused thousands to perish
in a famine in the state of
Biafra. Similar tragedies
befen Uganda.
Sorne reports did,
however, gel oút. For
reporters like William Henry
Chamberlin, who managed
lo gel off the beaten
As punishment for
Ukrainian resistance to farm
collectivization, the Stalinist
regime expropriated much of
the UkrainP.'s grain. The
resulting man-made food
shortage caused between
five and seven million deaths
according to !he best
They were driven off by
an unusually warm off–
shore current.
When one begins to
assess the damage, the
question that must be
asked is how could all of
this bappen on such a
path of showcase tours, the
lamine was indeed very
real.
estimates.
wide scale? The answer,
But few famines in recent
times can compare lo the
man-made Great Famine in
the Ukraine in 1932-33.
lgnorance of this tragic
event abounds because little
In a story that appeared
in the May 29, 1934, issue
of
The Christian Science
Monitor.
Mr. Chamberlin
recorded !he cause of this
disasler.
"What lay behind this
major human cataslrophe? lt
This year marks the 50th
anniversary of the Great
Famine in the Ukraine and
should stand as a warning
to all people thal polilical
decisions can wreak great
havoc.
many meteorologists be–
lieve, líes in a cyclical
change in pressure sys–
tems over the Pacific
Ocean t hat allows a warm
water current called "El
N iño" to wreak havoc
full recovery from the drought
won't be possible for about seven
years. Though Australia is ex–
pected to be able to meet its grain
export obligations, it will almost
certainly lose its fourth-place rank–
ing for wheat exports to Argentina.
Additionally, it will take years to
rebuild herds of cattle and sheep to
predrought levels.
Neighbor ing New Zealand has
also been hard hit by drought.
Sheep ranchers there were unpre–
pared for the length of this drought
and faced a fodder sbortage
because of the failure to cut back
on the size of their Aocks earlier.
Elsewhere in Oceanía, Cyclone
Osear was the worst natural disas–
ter to beset Fiji in more than 50
years. To the east of Fiji, Tahiti
was struck by five cyclones this
year, far above the usual one every
24
Australasia and Oceanía were suf–
fering from drought, large areas of
Weste rn Europe, parts of the
United States and South America
were being deluged with heavy
rains and ftooding.
In Western Europe, rain swollen
rivers caused ftooding in France,
Belgium, the Netherlands and
West Germany. Soggy ground
there also hampered planting
efforts this year.
ln t he United States earlier t his
year, ftoods inundated the lower
Mississippi val ley area whi le a com–
bination of s torms and high tides
ravaged the California coastline.
Heavy rains plus quick thaws of
winter snow caused flooding in
Utah and Colorado. Much of t he
fru it crops in Georgia, the Caro–
linas, Tennessee and Arkansas was
lost to a late spring freeze in a win-
with our weather.
The Natur e of Our Problems
There are many unusual phenom–
ena in weather . Few are more mys–
terious than the effects of the warm
water current in the southeastern
Pacific known as El Niño-Spanish
for "the boy child"- so-called
because it was first observed in
1795 off the coast of Peru by fish–
ermen around Christmas time.
Scientists do not, as yet, seem to
know what causes El Niño. They
do know that a major contributing
factor to the development of this
water current is a huge atmospher–
ic pressure and ocean temperature
seesaw phenomenon called the
Southern Oscillation. According to
Gene Rasmusson, Chief of the
Diagnostics Branch of t he U.S.
National Weather Service C limate
Analysis Center, this weather phe–
nomenon shifts the atmospheric
The PLAIN TRUTH