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There are ominous signs that
the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these
changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious
political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food
output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions
destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and
the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient
tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia
– where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate
so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In
England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since
1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to
100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the
equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas
can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of
tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused
half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance
signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree
about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on
local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the
trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the
climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting
famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic
and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the
National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production
and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the
present century.”
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in
average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968.
According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a
sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of
1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the
amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by
1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine
can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out
that the Earth’s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about
seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present
decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age
average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the “little ice age”
conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America
between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that
Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River
almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery.
“Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary
as our data,” concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. “Not only
are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do
not yet know enough to pose the key questions.”
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the
return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in
overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper
atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate
areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of
local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes,
delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a
direct impact on food supplies.
“The world’s food-producing system,” warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of
NOAA’s Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, “is much more
sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago.”
Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national
boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their
devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any
positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its
effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such
as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic
rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the
scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to
take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of
climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The
longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with
climatic change once the results become grim reality. From Newsweek
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