A 1930s drought was severe. But made devastating by mismanagement done by man. Facts explained in Ken Burn's PBS documentary:
The Dust Bowl
Essential to averting disaster is science. Science to predict a disaster before it happens. And science to change mistakes so that a drought does not become a disaster.
Long ago, the informed had discussed a problem with a drying aquifer, too much unproductive farm land, and other problems on land that is now at environmental risk. One rather respected solution was to buy out many farmers. Convert acres of land back into prairie grass reserves. To protect or refresh ground water. To let soils recover from heavy farming. To protect rivers from top soil runoff. To diminish flooding (as now expected in the Dakotas). And a long list of other potential solutions.
But let's remember who was running our government then. Wacko extremists who even invented a mythical Saddam, destroyed the American economy, all but protected bin Laden, and uselessly massacred almost 5000 American servicemen. With leaders like that, then doing better science was all but impossible.
An array of satellites necessary for that science were canceled or quashed in proposal by an administration that hates science.
One example was a satellite that wackos called GoreSat. Due to extremist hate of science, reality, and Democrats. Making victims or creating bogeymen is how extremists maintain power.
As described in
Bush's Shrinking Safety Zone:
Quote:
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Top political appointees in the NASA press office exerted strong pressure during the 2004 presidential campaign to cut the flow of news releases on glaciers, climate, pollution and other earth sciences, public affairs officers at the agency say.
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The irony: farmers today are doing well due to welfare from corn ethanol and crop insurance. Farm land prices are at all time high. Some layman only assumed drought means agricultural failure. Others who learn from recent history know otherwise. A drought does not automatically create agricultural failures or bankruptcies.
However, when farming was so prosperous and land prices so high (during a previous dry period), too many business school types ignored long term thinking. Resulting in severe agriculture downturns years later.
You cannot assume a drought and bad crops result in agricultural hardships. But we know one fact from so many previous droughts (including the 1930 Dust Bowl and the Ethiopian famine). Most of the problems are created by human mismanagement - not by the drought. Therefore we need more environmental science necessary for any long term agricultural planning. Not less as still advocated by George Jr's wackos and their legacy the tea party.
Space from Earth only discusses one example of the problem. Names include Aqua, Aura, Terra, and POES. But research into avoiding environmental disasters was subverted by George Jr. After all, it might discover who is really creating global warming. Wacko extremists today are continuing that effort by subverting new science in the name of their political fears, propaganda, and cost controls. Even advocate welfare to agriculture - ie corn ethanol. You would think they learn from the 2008 world wide food shortage. But they said they wanted America to fail.
Two recent examples were demonstrated by a near zero hurricane Sandy and by another serious low pressure system that followed three months later. Having been starved of funds, then American weather models did not accurately predict accordingly. More accurate on both storms were European weather models. Why did Europeans do better weather forecasting? Their governments and science are not subverted by wacko extremists who fear research into anything (including gun violence) and who prefer to enrich the rich. The European supercomputer was even better. Extremist legacy remains in numerous science tools (ie satellites, computer models, etc) that cannot happen in America.