Here in Missouri, on those hot and humid summer days, right before a storm, you can almost taste the salt air when the moisture from the Gulf rolls over us. Hurricanes ride right up on top of us; we may not get all the wind but we get the water. All of the oil and dispersant that is floating and submerged in the Gulf will be mixed and vaporized over the coming months, sent aloft to ride the storms right through the center of the country, poisoning everything in their path.
What will happen to crops and water supplies as this chemical brew washes down over us? I don't know but the possibility of a dead zone of undetermined duration seems a possibility. I wonder if the story below is just the first of many we'll see over the coming months?
Pray, pray, pray!
"Something is killing crops, trees, even weeds and nobody can explain why.
Farmers are scratching their heads and some are worried their crops may be lost to the mysterious plague.
It's happening along a large swath of land near the Shelby and Tipton county border along Herring Hill Road and elsewhere near the Mississippi River bottoms.
It's happening along a large swath of land near the Shelby and Tipton county border along Herring Hill Road and elsewhere near the Mississippi River bottoms.
Tiny dots appear to have burned onto leaves of all types of plants, and they appear different depending on the plant.
On corn stalks, the dots seem to turn white in the center.
On other plants, a white dust speckles the leaves and then destroys the green life underneath.
"We found it all in the herbs, in the flowers, in the plum tree, in the weeds," said organic farmer Toni Holt. "It's apparently in everything."
Holt grows organic produce that she sells at area farmers' markets.
As she and other farmers inspect the new growth covered in the perplexing plague, they fear their entire crop may be lost.
Less than ten miles from Holt's crops, the damage could possibly hit hundreds of acres of corn at Wilder Farms.
It appears to have hit everything in its path.
There does not seem to be anything in common with the affected plants.
The Holts raise organic crops, so they don't spray pesticides on any of their fruits and vegetables.
The first thought among some was a new parasite or insect caused the damage, but Wilder farms sprays pesticides and the damage there is exactly the same.
Farmers first noticed the damaging dots over the weekend.
Then Holt came home to find baby birds dead in their nests.
"There are two dead birds hanging out of two different bird houses, so we're concerned about that. We don't know if it's related, but it's alarming," said Holt. "We've got horses, we're concerned about the horses on the grass. We've got chickens. We sell our eggs at the market."
Farmers we spoke with are convinced something in the air caused this damage.
They're asking the USDA and other experts to look into the problem, and so are we."
H/T The Coming Depression
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I think God is letting us punish ourselves.
ReplyDeleteSomeone at another forum called me paranoid because I am so outspoken about these things.
I guess, then I am in good company!
Then is one time in my life when I really hope I don't get to say, "I told you so."
ReplyDeleteLet's not get hysterical before we can be sure. And let's not jump on the Oil Spill bandwagon, if it is airborne, folks should remember we have had a volcano in Iceland spewing out tons and tons of gas and particles that have become airborne for months now.
ReplyDeleteJust because we've been lucky so far with this Icelandic volcano doesn't mean it doesn't have the potential to screw with our whole world.
ReplyDeleteFrom http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/15/iceland-volcano-weather-french-revolution
Just over 200 years ago an Icelandic volcano erupted with catastrophic consequences for weather, agriculture and transport across the northern hemisphere – and helped trigger the French revolution.
The Laki volcanic fissure in southern Iceland erupted over an eight-month period from 8 June 1783 to February 1784, spewing lava and poisonous gases that devastated the island's agriculture, killing much of the livestock. It is estimated that perhapsa quarter of Iceland's population died through the ensuing famine.
Then, as now, there were more wide-ranging impacts. In Norway, the Netherlands, the British Isles, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, in North America and even Egypt, the Laki eruption had its consequences, as the haze of dust and sulphur particles thrown up by the volcano was carried over much of the northern hemisphere.
Ships moored up in many ports, effectively fogbound. Crops were affected as the fall-out from the continuing eruption coincided with an abnormally hot summer. A clergyman, the Rev Sir John Cullum, wrote to the Royal Society that barley crops "became brown and withered … as did the leaves of the oats; the rye had the appearance of being mildewed".
The British naturalist Gilbert White described that summer in his classic Natural History of Selborne as "an amazing and portentous one … the peculiar haze, or smokey fog, that prevailed for many weeks in this island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known within the memory of man.
"The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust-coloured ferruginous light on the ground, and floors of rooms; but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. At the same time the heat was so intense that butchers' meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic … the country people began to look with a superstitious awe, at the red, louring aspect of the sun."
Across the Atlantic, Benjamin Franklin wrote of "a constant fog over all Europe, and a great part of North America".
The disruption to weather patterns meant the ensuing winter was unusually harsh, with consequent spring flooding claiming more lives. In America the Mississippi reportedly froze at New Orleans.
The eruption is now thought to have disrupted the Asian monsoon cycle, prompting famine in Egypt. Environmental historians have also pointed to the disruption caused to the economies of northern Europe, where food poverty was a major factor in the build-up to the French revolution of 1789.
Volcanologists at the Open University's department of earth sciences say the impact of the Laki eruptions had profound consequences.
Dr John Murray said: "Volcanic eruptions can have significant effects on weather patterns for from two to four years, which in turn have social and economic consequences. We shouldn't discount their possible political impacts." Greg Neale is founding editor of BBC History Magazine