"Dry Times Pose Tough Questions"
"In southern Illinois, farmer Jim Unverfehrt steered his pickup beside a corn crop already lost, then hopped out to search for the soybeans he planted six weeks earlier."
"In southern Illinois, farmer Jim Unverfehrt steered his pickup beside a corn crop already lost, then hopped out to search for the soybeans he planted six weeks earlier."
"WASHINGTON -- This probably comes as no surprise: Federal scientists say July was the hottest month ever recorded in the lower 48 states, breaking a record set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s."
"LINCOLN, Neb. -- Thousands of fish are dying in the Midwest as the hot, dry summer dries up rivers and causes water temperatures to climb in some spots to nearly 100 degrees."
"The relentless, weather-gone-crazy type of heat that has blistered the United States and other parts of the world in recent years is so rare that it can't be anything but man-made global warming, says a new statistical analysis from a top government scientist."
"OKLAHOMA CITY -- More than 64 temperature records were broken in Oklahoma during a scorching July, and additional ones fell across the state Wednesday on the first day of August, according to the National Climatic Data Center."
"The earth is performing an enormous disposal service for the human race. About half of the carbon we are dumping into the atmosphere does not stay there and is instead taken up by the oceans and land. Were this not the case, scientists say, the earth would probably be warming far more rapidly. One of the biggest questions in climate science is: How long will that disposal service last?"
A Senate Environment Committee hearing on climate science Wednesday only exemplified the political deadlock that keeps the United States from basing policy on established science.
"A byproduct of the ongoing heat wave, increased smog, may ultimately bring more and longer-lasting annoyance than the heat itself. The heat wave will eventually break, but Wichita’s smog reports probably already have been damaged to the extent of triggering some mandatory -- and potentially costly and inconvenient -- pollution controls like those in other big cities."
"Retail food prices are predicted to rise as soon as this fall due to the high temperatures, low rainfall and 70-year record drought across the Midwest that have boosted commodity prices for corn, soybeans and other field crops, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today."
"Welcome rains provided some relief to heat-stressed cities and worried farmers in the U.S. Midwest on Tuesday, but reports of failed crops, wildfires and other fallout from the worst U.S. drought in more than 50 years tempered any optimism."