Hot Enough For Ya?

60% of the US is in drought:

An area stretching from south central North Dakota to central South Dakota is the most drought-stricken region in the nation, Svoboda said.

"It's the epicenter," he said. "It's just like a wasteland in north central South Dakota."

Conditions aren't much better a little farther north. Paul Smokov and his wife, Betty, raise several hundred cattle on their 1,750-acre ranch north of Steele, a town of about 760 people.

Fields of wheat, durum and barley in the Dakotas this dry summer will never end up as pasta, bread or beer. What is left of the stifled crops has been salvaged to feed livestock struggling on pastures where hot winds blow clouds of dirt from dried-out ponds.

Some ranchers have been forced to sell their entire herds, and others are either moving their cattle to greener pastures or buying more already-costly feed. Hundreds of acres of grasslands have been blackened by fires sparked by lightning or farm equipment.

There are immediate short-term effects to drought conditions. Ask the Ethiopians.

And then take a look at this:

The vast Amazon rainforest is on the brink of being turned into desert, with catastrophic consequences for the world's climate, alarming research suggests. And the process, which would be irreversible, could begin as early as next year.

Studies by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre, carried out in Amazonia, have concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down.

Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere, including Britain, and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences, spinning out of control, a process that might end in the world becoming uninhabitable.

Alarmist, to be sure, but there are undeniably immediate short-term consequences to drought conditions, especially if one is taking place in the Amazon rain forest, the "lungs of the planet."

Amazingly, today British Prime Minister Tony Blair completely sidestepped the federal government and went right to California to strike a deal on combating global warming. The Bush Administration has been made totally irrelevant through their antipathy to science. They sit around arguing about who or what is responsible.

WHO CARES? We need results instead of debates. And there's still time, regardless of the doomsayer talk. We stopped acid rain ('member that?) and we can stop global warming. It only requires will and desire for action.