Is it normal that the midwest is turning into a desert?

68% Normal
18 Comments

Throughout history, weather patterns change... and lush, tropical rainforests turn to dust and sand, with or without our help.
This year, I've witnessed some of the richest farmland in the world, Iowa and Nebraska, suffer from a year of 105+ degree temps without rain. I see cornfields turn black and rot in desert-like conditions. I see dry creek beds and lakes turned to cracked pits of clay where once flowed streams and pools thriving with life.

I think this threatens the human race. Anyone who knows anything about human history knows that weather patterns change suddenly...and permanently. It happened to the Mayans and Egyptians among many others. Palentologists constantly uncover footprints of creatures who, millions of years ago, walked across wet grounds that dried up and turned to stone.
Am I an alarmist? Are we witnessing the next catastrophic change...rendering yet another civilization, or maybe an entire race of beings, extinct?

Is this normal to think this way? It's painful to see.

Voting Results
68% Normal
Based on 38 votes (26 yes)
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Comments ( 18 )
  • NeuroNeptunian
    11 years ago

    I think that it is good to talk about this and I do not think that it makes you an alarmist.

    I worry about a lot of things. I worry about how the next generation of children is going to turn out considering that most of them are being half-raised by half-stepped out parents, being pumped full of sugars and pills and made to sit in a classroom for 8 hours with 40 other students and worn out teachers who are being burdened with their duties of teaching academia AND being expected to teach good morals, almost have to RAISE an upwards of 200 students and discipline them effectively while keeping them from feeling bad and keeping angry parents off their backs.

    I worry about the environment and what is going to happen if we keep reproducing and consuming without teaching our kids regard for life or recycling or to value what they have rather than tossing it out willy nilly to go into a landfill and just buying another.

    I worry about the economy and what is going to happen to the poor and underprivileged when shit gets so expensive that they can barely live and jobs become so scarce that welfare goes from an "entitlement" to a necessity. I worry about the fact that it is inevitable that people who can't afford to "Go Green" WON'T and it will end up doing more damage to the environment or that government standards for environmental issues will become so high that shit like gas and food prices will sky-rocket leaving them double screwed because they can't afford the green products OR the regular products.

    So no, you are not an alarmist. People need to talk about this kind of thing. Climate change is real, no matter what caused it, it is real.

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    • [Old Memory]
      11 years ago

      Well said...

      If I could take it a step further, and back on target, you may or may not agree with points following:

      Releasing vast amounts of carbon into the thin shell of atmosphere of our planet deserves attention...but I'm not convinced that's the sole contributer to warming. Especially when one steps back and looks at a 500,000 year spectrum of patterns. We are reaching the peak of a reoccuring warming cycle.

      Now...government mandates an elimination of incandescent bulbs? That's nothing more than a feeble attempt, which will have little or no effect on carbon emissions, at the risk of mercury by-products leaching from the disposal of flourescent bulbs into our landfills for the sake of saving face..."look! we're doing something that will fix global warming!" ...meanwhile trucks and cars continue to belch toxic fumes from their tailpipes...
      ...and working class families go broke trying to keep their homes lighted.

      Every generation lives in fear of what we are leaving behind for our children. Every point you made is valid...and often mirrors mine.

      I've always admired the scepticism you look at the world with. If more of us did so, we wouldn't follow the herd and the world would be a better place.

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      • NeuroNeptunian
        11 years ago

        No, I agree with you and I know that our government has more information regarding climate change phenomena than they are letting on. I believe that a lot of what they are going could probably be linked to economic benefits for SOMEONE but I won't speculate much further than that.

        The sad but true fact about the United States government is that you can figure out why and what by tracing back the money source to who.

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  • howaminotmyself
    11 years ago

    It's pretty amazing to notice a shift in patterns. I see it where I live. Over the past decade I have noticed the winters getting colder and the summers getting hotter, if we even experience a summer.

    But humans are migratory by nature. We will follow the fertile land. However it can only sustain so many lives. And people are dumb, several will have to die before others will wake up.

    We are definitely witnessing a great change. And that is life. It is nothing to freak out over. Just be conscious of what you do, and what is going on around you.

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    • [Old Memory]
      11 years ago

      If the winters keep getting colder, and the summers hotter where you live, that still maintains a ballance. The world is 4.5 billion years old and fluctuations are normal. "Normal" is nothing more than the average of extremes.

      The human race has been resilient because of nomadic lifestyles for millenia, but the odds of 7 billion people moving to more productive climates is slim...and the fact remains that where I live is some of the most productive farmland in the world. It feeds hundreds of millions, if not billions of people. We have cornfields the size of small countries.

      Things change, and the human race will get past it, as we have through history. I guess I agree, but it doesn't make it any less disturbing.

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      • howaminotmyself
        11 years ago

        True, 7 billion won't migrate. And that 7 billion can't, this planet isn't meant to sustain those numbers. However rising water will displace people regardless of what the weather is doing.

        And don't fool yourself into thinking that all that corn is feeding people. Much of it isn't intended for human consumption.

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        • [Old Memory]
          11 years ago

          Despite wasting much of it on ethanol production, look through your cupboards...read the ingredients. I was actually surprised to learn that considerably more corn goes to food than I ever imagined. Much of it feeds livestock too.

          Soybeans are the other crops dying in the fields in this area too...they're just slightly more drought resistant.

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          • howaminotmyself
            11 years ago

            Nothing in my cupboard has corn on the label. I'm allergic to corn and my food options are very limited. It means I don't eat processed foods. But sometimes I want a fucking potato chip! And they also use it as a non caking agent for many medications. I have even seen it on toothpaste labels. And soy is just as bad.

            Also, cows aren't meant to eat corn.

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            • [Old Memory]
              11 years ago

              That would suck.

              And for cattle not being meant to eat corn...it sure does well for them. It's in dog food too...and dogs are almost strictly carnivorous. I've had more than a few dogs live 15+ years on corn based dog food. It's not a native food to humans either for that matter...but the biggest mistake Native Americans made was showing European settlers how to grow it. It kept them from starving. I's about as complete of a nutrition source as one can get.

              I've now devolved into a spokesman for corn. My God hahahaha

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  • dappled
    11 years ago

    Patterns do change suddenly but "suddenly" means over about a thousand years. What you're noticing is a higher incidence of "hot days" because of a slight temperature increase shifting the distribution of probabilities and making "hot days" more likely. It both not as bad as you're seeing (in a small time window) and actually much, much worse.

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    • [Old Memory]
      11 years ago

      "Suddenly" can mean thousands of years, or tens of thousands of years respective to the planet's lifetime..

      ...but my point was that it can also mean 10 years...or a year. Dinosaurs' footprints were left in wet sand that dried up so "suddenly" that they fossilized and became the subject of paleontologists interest. Several civilizations prospered to the point of excess many times in human history (like the examples I gave), only to fall within less than a generation's time...

      I get your point completely...but these things wear on me because I know enough about how climate change works to cringe when I look across fields that, at this time of year, should be a sea of green...but all I see are withered stumps of grassy looking death.

      Will it happen now? Probably not...but history proves that it could...and that make the hair on my neck stand up.

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      • dappled
        11 years ago

        True, but mud the size of a dinosaur footprint can be acted on more quickly than the climate of an entire planet.

        Climate change is like an ocean liner where, even when the engines are put into full reverse, it sails on for four miles before stopping, never mind reversing.

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  • 7udv8
    11 years ago

    You puny insignificant carbon blob. Your short term observations mean nothing, earth has been, is, and will be in constant change. I for one, miss the massive glaciers that covered parts of what would be usa. I remember riding the free ranging wooly mammoths thinking this fun will never end. We had such fun poking the giant ground sloth and running away because it was so slow. Were are they now?
    Change is normal. You wouldn’t be here if things stayed the same.
    Signed,
    one old dinosaur

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  • dirtybirdy
    11 years ago

    I suggest getting a horse with no name.

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  • Goomats
    11 years ago

    I live in Iowa. I've noticed a difference. Sometimes, I feel like I'm living in a dry part of Africa.

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  • squeallikeasacofpigs
    11 years ago

    Climate change mother fuckers. Better start taking care of the planet or we're all going to have to start living underground away form the blistering heat/freezing cold.

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  • jermath35
    11 years ago

    That's why we need to grow food in giant greenhouse domes! Create our own perfect climate... Sorry football we need ur domes!

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  • [Old Memory]
    11 years ago

    All i know is, chinchillas will one day attempt to take the world from us, and we won't let them.

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