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HUMAN
SURVIVAL .
W ILL CHANGING WEATHER BRING
MASS FAMINES?
Omlnous changes In tiiiOifd westher
petterns are teklng place. E1tperts
are tesrful thst msj or crop fsf/ures
wlthln the decllde could lmperl/
the flves of hundreds of mlfll ons
of peop/e.
E
vidcnce abounds that the world's
weather is cbanging
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a less be·
neficcnt nonn. Telltale sigos are
everywhcrc.
- lo 1975, as
in
1972. the Soviet
Uoion sufl'cred dcvastating crop losses
from an unusuaUy cold winter and be-
1ow normal prccipitation in vital grain·
growing
arcas.
Permafrost is moving
south into agneulturalland.
- ln
rcccnt years, monsoons have
failed or dropped far less than average
rain in India and parts of China. while
Bangladesh and other nations in South·
east Asia
are
frequcolly clobbered witb
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devastating rains and ftoods .
~
....England's growing season has been
cut altitost two weelcs since the early
19SOs.
- Arctic ice and snow cover incrcased
12% in 1972 and has persisted since.
- Fishermco from lcclaod complain
they can't push as far oortb as thcy
used
to due
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pack ice.
- Whilc the Northern Hemisphere is
showing extcnsive cootiog, the average
temperature at lhe equator bas nsen a
fraction ofa degree.
- The Sabara Oesert is rapidly
marcbing south. Drought in six recenl
years brought
mass
devastation and
starvation to sub-Sabara nations.
- Tbe weirdesl weather condhions of
the century gouged and soaked Austra–
lia last year.
:
-
Winters in America•s Mtdwest
breadbaskct are geuing more severe,
even wbile other arcas of tbe U.S. havl'
had receot mild wlntcrs. Sunshine
rea cbing tbe ground in tbe conunental
U.S. dccreased 1.3% between 1964 and
1972. lo some p1aces summers are a de·
gree or two cooler, winters as much
as
four degrees cooler.
- An uousual sbortfall ofrain
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Cali–
fornia's ricb agriéuhural valleys has
produced financia! disaster for many
farmers.
- Weather in many arcas ofthe world
a
showing grea1er seasonal variauons of
heat and cold, wetness and dryness.
Eartb's
CoollngTreed
Many of the unusual weather ehanges
have beco blamed on
a
global cooling
trend, partieularly in the Northern
Hemisphere. Meteorologists and cli·
matologists disagree about the cause or
duration of the trend. None are rore·
casting a full -scale "Ice Agc" soon.
Whether 1be cooling trend cootinues or
MAilCH 1976
by
Oonald D.
Sehroeder
reverses itself, leading weatber olllcials
almost universally agree that more vari·
able and extreme changes in
regional
tern·
peratures and rainfall will appear. This,
they fear, will upset agncultural produc–
tiV'ity in many arcas for mucb of the
ccn1ury and jeopardiz.e the world's abil·
ity
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feed itself.
J. Murray Mitcbell Jr., of the U.S.
Na tional Atmospberic and Oceanoc Ad·
ministralioo, reflects
a
growing con·
sensus when be says: "from the
agricultural produetivity point of view,
the climate's not goiog to get better. 1t
can only. gct worse. ... lf there's any·
tbing we can be reasonably confidenl
about in terms of proJections of future
climate, it
os
1hat the ehmate ofour crop·
¡¡rowing arcas will . become more vari·
able tban it has beco in the receot
past.~
Average global cooling
has
been less
than
a
degree over the past
30
years. To
thc layman, relatively small changes in
weatber can be bighly misleading, but
in
meteorological terms tbey are bigbly sig·
nificanL Only a little more than a degree
decrease in average temperature on tbe
Canadian or oortbern U.S. prairies
could result in a
10%
decrease in crop
yield. A slightly greater decline could
wipe out sorne crop varieties altogether.
" lt
will not 1ake an apocalyptie event
sucb as the onset of a new ice age to
bring human sutfering from famine,"
says Heory Lansford of the National
Center for Atmospheric Researcb near
Boulder. Colorado.
"Even if no long·term ehanges in cli·
mate are forthcomiog," he says. "the im·
mediate potential appe.ars to be ·deadly
serious. The elimate ttends that sorne
scientists are predicting could bring us
to
a
point of catastrophic consequences
between the increasing population and
inadequate food supplies mucb sooner
than many people expect.
~
Moder,n Farmlng May
Fall
The world has witoessed a respectable
amount of incltmenl weather in the past
few decades. Still, in the overview of
wcalher history, mucb of the world and
patticularly North America had com·
paratively liltle variability in weather
and grain productioo bc1wecn the mid·
19SOs and the earty seventies,
As a result. almost everyone devel·
oped a dangerous atlitude lltat this gen·
erally favorable weather was
a
more or
less permarnent feature.
New seeds, crop vo.neties. ferttliurs.
pesticides, and fanning tcchnology were
optimiz.ed to the oarrow spectrum of fa·
vorable tcmpera1ure changes and rain·
fall thal prevailed. The marriagc of
favorable weather and advaneed tecb·
oology prOduced impressive yields -
100% for corn alone. All this could weU
fail wíth a re1urn 10 more normal -
meaning more adverse and uoreüable -
weather conditions.
The U.S. government's leading cli·
matologist, J . Murray MitcheU Jr.. said
the unifonnly good
U.S.
crop-growing
weather of the
past
1
S
years is "almost a
ftuk~.
in a climate tbat over the looger
run has varicd mucb more than that."
Reid Bryson. climatologis1 at the
U
ni·
versity of WISCOnsin,
says
the favorable
weather period we have just lived
through "has beco the most abnormal of
tbe last thousand years."
James MeQuigg,
a
govcmment cli–
matologisl at the University of Missouri.
adds that " the probability of getting an·
other 15 conseculive years (as produc–
tive as the past 15 years) is about
on~
in
/0,000."
Early last year, a National Academy
ofSciences report said: "We are becom·
ing increasiogly dependent on the stabil–
ily of our present seemiogly 'normal'
dimate. Our vulnerabilny to climatic
change is seen lo be all the more serious
wben we recognizc that our present cli–
male is, in fact,
highlyabnomu:Jiand
that
we may already be producing climatic
changes as the result of our owo activi·
ti
es."
Oimat~
Cbuees
a
Mystery
Wbat causes tbe onset of major or
minor climate ftuctuations remains
mostly a mystery. The global weather
macbine
is
tncredibly complex. Wcather
science is still quite young and nebulous
despile advances in computers and
weatber satellites.
Weathermen l:now the sun, atmo–
sphere, oceaos, land surface, cloud
cover, and many other factors play im·
portant roles in determinmg clima te and
weather pauerns. but few of these roles
and their interconnections are 1hor·
oughly understood.
Through core sa mpliog.s of permanent
snow
fields.
occan
beds, aod tree rings.
as weD as study of ma.nkind's va.rious
written records, climatologists have beco
able to chart numerous cooliog and
warmiog spells in the eartb's bistory.
Overall, weather during tbe past several
thousand years has been more agricul·
turally unfavorable than weather in the
first balfoflhe tweotieth oentury.
The period from tbe sixtecnth ccntury
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