Climate change, real or not, has dramatic effects on lives

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – The debate on climate change has raged for decades, with staunch advocates for the science and others who refuse to believe humans have anything at all to do with climate.

Climate change refers to significant, long-term changes in the global climate, said Dr. D. Michael Shafer, professor emeritus of Political Science at Rutgers University.

“The global climate is the connected system of sun, earth and oceans, wind, rain and snow, forests, deserts and savannas, and everything people do, too,” Shafer said in an article published on WarmHeart Worldwide. “The climate of a place, say New York, can be described as its rainfall, changing temperatures during the year and so on.”

He describes global climate to include rising temperatures of the Pacific, which feeds typhoons – which blow harder, produce heavier rainfall, and cause more damage.

“But it also shifts global ocean currents that melt Antarctica ice, which slowly makes sea levels rise until New York will be underwater,” Shafer said. “It is this systemic connectedness that makes global climate change so important and so complicated.”

On the Pew Research Center’s website, it states most Americans say the Earth is getting warmer, including a narrow majority – 53% – who believe it is doing so because of human activity – and view global climate change as a serious problem.

According to the Pew site, evangelical Protestants largely identify with the Republican Party, and Republicans are less likely to say Earth’s warming is mostly caused by human activity.

“Evangelicals and Republicans also are less inclined than the general public to see climate change as a serious problem, as well as to say various negative consequences are likely to occur in the coming decades because of global warming,” states the Pew site. “Meanwhile, atheists and adults who identify with other non-Christian religions are mostly Democrats, who tend to be much more alarmed about climate change and supportive of government actions to combat it.”

Local farmers are dealing with not just the heat over the past weeks, but destructive storms destroying their infrastructure.

“Everything is crispy and crunchy, and I can’t get out there with the tractor to break the soil because it’s so dusty,” said Ben Berry with Burning Bush Farm. “So I haven’t been able to plant a lot lately because I can’t till dust; it’s really bad for the soil.”

He said the heat and lack of rain has been brutal, and when a farmer’s livelihood is tied to severe weather and conditions like the heat wave Oklahoma has been experiencing, their futures can start looking bleak.

Paul Thornton, co-owner of Heaven Sent Food & Fiber near Welling, said the storm Aug. 17 took out a lot of the infrastructure on their farm.

It took out their greenhouse, the high tunnel, the back of the barn, half of the chicken and turkey coops, and flipped the small market trailer across the pasture.

“It took out a bunch of trees on fence lines and a bunch in the middle of the pasture,” Thornton said. “And got a few gates, which trees landed on top of.”

Thornton said his neighbor’s barn has been destroyed three times over the past decade, and this storm pushed the barn in a straight line until it was obliterated.

Thornton said no agency has been out to survey the damage, except for his insurance company.

“Judging from the damage, they have a lot of people to talk to, because we were out of power until Wednesday night [after the storm on Monday],” Thornton said. “On a stretch of road by our place, two power poles were snapped and two other places where trees had the lines down.”

He said he saw about 10 broken power poles in his area.

“I’ve been through hurricanes – I lived in Florida – and I’ve never seen this one thing happen,” Thornton said. “Have you ever seen a power pole with the transformer stripped off? I did in this one, and it left the pole.”

Mike Underwood, director of Cherokee County Emergency Management, said despite reports the storm Aug. 17 was a tornado, it was, in fact, straight-line winds.

Thornton had told the Tahlequah Daily Press that on his property, the wind came from one side, circled around and came back from the other direction. This made him believe a tornado had hit his farm.

“What he experienced was probably due to terrain; it is similar to how water travels,” Underwood said. “You’ll have like a stream traveling straight, then part jags off then comes back and rejoins.”

He said the storm wasn’t very impressive until it reached Wagoner County.

“Then it was as if it gained some energy from the lake and other things, then it really started growing,” Underwood said. “When it went through Hulbert – I had a guy there with a meter, he never got anything over 40 mph winds.”

By the time it got to the Stick Ross area, the storm increased to about 80 mph, and when it got past the city limits on into Petit Bay, it sped up to 90.62 mph, Underwood said.

“Straight-line winds, especially in Northeast Oklahoma, are way more common than a tornado, as far as damage,” Underwood said. “It does hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage in any given area, whereas a tornado rips through and it might be a quarter of a mile wide and a mile long.”

He said straight-line winds can go from one edge of a county to the outer edge and beyond, and this one went into Arkansas.

Johnny Raincrow, with Raincrow Farms, who is well-known for his okra and red potatoes, said the lack of rain and the heat have affected his crops.

“I tried to get some cucumbers and squash going, but I can’t get anything going now; too hot, I guess,” Raincrow said.

A little rain fell out in his area recently, and he tilled the ground to get the moisture into the soil, because he said if he didn’t, the ground would have gotten “hard as a rock.”

He has been watching the radar, but rain always seems to miss the area where he farms south of Tahlequah.

“I’d like to plant some turnips but haven’t yet; can’t get no rain, you know,” Raincrow said.