Adapting to climate change will take more than just declaring it does
not exist, scientists attending a three-day conference at the
University of Missouri said during a discussion of how to make the
public aware of the issue.
In the Midwest, climate change has meant more big storms and longer
growing seasons, experts say. Those verified effects can mean more soil
erosion, less time to plant in soggy fields and the opportunity to grow
crops where they could not survive in the past.
The answer, they said, is not to adopt the North Carolina strategy of
passing laws banning the science that shows an accelerating change in
the climate. In that state, lawmakers are considering a bill that would
bar the state's coastal commission from using a climate model that
projects a 39-inch rise in sea levels over the next century.
Most scientists agree the climate is warming, causing changes that must be addressed, said Don Day of University Extension.
"If I took a child to a number of doctors, and 80 to 90 percent of
them said the child had a disease, I would treat that disease," Day
said.
Titled "Adapting to Climate Change: Claiming the Advantage," the
conference brought researchers from Iowa, Virginia, Ukraine and
elsewhere to the MU campus. Over three days of sessions, the need for
public education that focuses on the local consequences of climate
change became clear, Day said.
During a session yesterday called "Taking it to the People," the
discussion focused on the facts that show climate change is real and
there's a need to get unbiased information to the public. Climate change
has become a divisive, partisan issue, in part because of the advocacy
role former Vice President Al Gore assumed, said Peter Scharf of
Agricultural Extension.
"There is still a lot of resistance to the idea of climate change among the farming community," he said.
But when clear evidence such as the recently revised plant hardiness
maps or the news that soybeans are being grown successfully in North
Dakota is presented, people can be convinced, he said.
"We are not hearing the right stuff from the right people in a format people will accept," Scharf said.
In a keynote address this morning, climate scientist Christopher
Anderson of Iowa State University said the frequency of extremely wet
springs in the Midwest has increased from an average of once every 20
years in the 100 years before 1970 to once every five years.
The number
of flooding rains, producing 4 inches or more within 24 hours, has
increased by 50 percent in the past 40 years, he said.
"We may have a wetter spring, but we may not be able to get out in the fields to plant," he said.
Anderson also attributes wetter summers to climate change. Droughts
that limited crop yields were regular occurrences from 1870 to 1976, he
said. Since 1976, there has not been a dry summer comparable to the ones
in the previous century, he said.
And wet summers are wetter, he said, causing crop-destroying floods
that affect markets worldwide. When major flooding hit Iowa in summer
2010, he said, the price of corn jumped from about $4.50 a bushel to
$6.50 a bushel.
The trend will only continue, Anderson said. Out of 120 climate
models projecting precipitation in the Midwest for the next 100 years,
all but five predict that the Midwest will get significantly wetter.
Iowa farmers are putting in more drainage structure and buying bigger
equipment to speed fieldwork when it is dry.
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