State Pols Fear Warming While Crops Freeze

Maybe Michigan farmers suffering from low crop yields from yet another cold Midwest growing season can recoup their losses by renting out their fields to combat global warming with state-subsidized wind farms?

Reports continue to trickle in about agricultural damage this year (and last, and the one before that) from an unusually cold and rainy growing season. In addition, data showing that Great Lakes levels are up and global temperatures are flat since 1997 contradict the climate alarmism coming from Lansing and Washington, D.C.

"Cool, wet weather rendered Michigan's pumpkin crop smaller this year," reported The Detroit News Thursday. Farmer Gary Whittaker told The News: "Heavy rain and not a lot of warm nights - I definitely didn't have a good yield." Strawberries, wheat, and asparagus are also hurting.

The Traverse City Record-Eagle reports that Nikki Rothwell, director of the Northwest Michigan Horticultural Research Station, "checked local vineyards last week and said the region's crop is 'having a hard time' ripening after a cool, damp summer."

Meanwhile, Gov. Jennifer Granholm is deep-sixing coal plants in favor of windmills, and Michigan's entire Democratic Congressional delegation is cheerleading a massive federal cap and tax bill that draws a bull's-eye on state manufacturing and utilities.

These pols cling to the green belief that Michigan is frying, as outlined by a widely publicized Union of Concerned Scientists reported published - incredibly - this September.

"The Midwest climate is already changing," says UCC report co-author Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, in contradiction to all evidence on the ground. "We've seen higher average annual temperatures, more frequent downpours, longer growing seasons, and fewer cold snaps."

"Crop yields also would suffer," reads her report that cherry-picks from one summer's data. "In 1988, (the) heat wave reduced corn yields in Michigan that year by more than 75 percent. By mid-century, under the higher emissions scenario, all Michigan summers are projected to be hotter than 1988."

And the Great Lakes? "Great Lakes water levels are projected to decline. This primarily would be the result of increased evaporation caused by higher temperatures and a decrease in winter lake ice."

One wonders if these folks have ever been to Michigan. Good thing Washington is mandating expensive regulations on the state's Number One industry, autos, to save its Number Two industry, agriculture, from global warming.

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