Drought in the lower tier, Upper Peninsula

by: Eric B.

Mon Jul 16, 2012 at 12:03:01 PM EDT

If you follow climate politics, by now you're probably seen that sorry old fop George Will give his, "It's summer, things are hot" explanation for this year's savage, savage drought. As bad as it is here in Michigan, and it's really bad in the lower tier of counties in the Lower Peninsula (last week, when checking on drought conditions, the entire lower third was colored an angry, angry red), it's been much worse elsewhere in the Midwest.  I saw a headline this morning to a story claiming that in parts, things haven't been this bad since the Dust Bowl.

First things first, the same conditions that gave us a mild winter kind of predicted a hot, dry summer.  In fact, those of us who rely on gardens to feed us were anticipating a bad summer in those terms (it's been terrible for growers of squash, because the mild winter allowed huge numbers of squash bugs to survive the cold). So, there is some truth to Will's obtuse whining about hot summers.

The problem, however, is that while weather is weather, climate is also weather. Or, rather, weather trends extended out over long periods of time. And, climate change refers to changes in those long-term trends. We've mentioned this before in this space, that the relationship between climate change and weather is that climate change "loads the dice" in favor of extreme, hot weather (what else, with a phenomenon called global warming). In other words, most of us knew this was going to be a hot, dry summer. We just didn't realize it was going to be a record-breaking string of super-hot days punctuated by a horrible drought (well, horrible for most of you, I live where things are still technically normal -- and I'm able to water my garden daily, which has meant good things). We rolled the dice without realizing how badly the game is rigged (and here, the craps game analogy for me breaks down, since I've never played). This plays out in the pretty well fleshed out statistically evidence that it is now much more likely for there to be a record hot day than a record cold (I believe, 10 times as likely was the number).

There is some early talk about connecting climate change to the extreme heat we've seen this summer. A direct connection, that is, and not a vague, "This is the sort of weather we've been warned to expect sometime in the future." It remains controversial, but it's also important to keep in mind that changes in glacial ice are taking place faster than expected.

When changing channels last night, I caught the tail end of an interview with USDA secretary Tom Vilsack who said that the federal government is more poorly positioned to deal with widespread drought today than in the past. That is, farmers will still have to deal with the immediate impacts, but there will be less money for relief loan programs and other such things intended to reduce the impact of a volatile physical world on people. The causes of this are probably pretty obvious, starting with nonsensical shouting about the debt ceiling and holding it hostage in favor of draconian cuts in discretionary, non-defense spending. In short, farmers are in greater peril of surviving as economic entities today because the Tea Party is ignorant of the difference between spending money and paying bills (not to mention where money for federal disaster relief programs comes from or how importance it is).