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If summer heat and drought were jeopardizing crops in the Midwest,would a climate change obsessed media be having a field day(pun intended)reporting the news whilst connecting it to manmade global warming?24 hours a day, seven days a week,right?CNN,ABC,CBS,and NBC would likely have correspondents in the cornfields giving daily updates about the gravity of the situation.Yet,further south in Texas,there's a crop very important to Americans in tremendous danger that has gotten almost no attention.Why?Because abnormally cold summer temperatures are threatening it,and that just doesn't fit the current media agenda.As reported by the AP Friday (h/t NB reader Phillip A. Smith):
Brad Heffington has farmed cotton in West Texas for nearly two decades but he and other producers in the world's largest growing patch say this year has been odd.The weather has been cooler than Heffington can remember in his 19 years of growing the fluffy fiber,with temperatures so far failing to warm enough to optimally encourage cotton's fruit-its bolls-toward maturity."This is really an odd year,"Heffington said.The cooler temperatures are "not exactly ideal for cotton.It's not a major concern right now but it could have real serious implications down the road."The result could be reduced yields at harvest,which begins,at the earliest,at the end of September."It could stand to be sunnier and warmer,"Plains Cotton Growers spokesman Shawn Wade said.Heat units,the measure of accumulated warmth on cotton plants throughout the growing season,are down 16 percent from normal for the three-month period that ended Tuesday,Randy Bowman,a cotton agronomist with the Texas Cooperative Extension,said.
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The National Weather Service in Lubbock recorded below normal average temperatures for all but three days in July.The AP issued its first version of this article around 5AM EST Thursday. Yet,Google News and LexisNexis searches identified almost no print coverage.As for television news outlets,I can find no mention of this matter whatsoever.It appears the potential for weather related crop damage is only newsworthy in America if it can be reported as evidence of anthropogenic global warming.
What a disgrace.
—Noel Sheppard is an economist, business owner, and a contributing editor to NewsBusters
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/08/04/abnormally-cold-temperatures-texas-threaten-cotton-crop
As in the days of Noah...
