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to our episode. Each

3:01

week we decide who's to blame

3:04

for historical tragedy. And

3:06

each week you tell us if we

3:08

got it right. My name

3:10

is Rebecca Delgado-Smith and this is

3:12

The Aftermath. Hey

3:17

everyone, thanks for tuning into this episode

3:19

of The Aftermath. Today we're speaking with

3:21

Dr. Gabby Hegerl. Dr. Hegerl

3:24

is a professor of climate

3:26

system science at the University

3:28

of Edinburgh School of Geosciences.

3:31

She has written and contributed to many

3:33

articles about the Dust Bowl and how

3:35

it relates to modern times. Let's

3:37

hear what she has to say about the Dust Bowl. Hi,

3:40

Gabby. Thank you so much for joining us today. Hello,

3:43

thank you. So I

3:46

was hoping that we could start talking about

3:48

the Dust Bowl by way of what

3:50

the climate was like in the

3:53

Great Plains before

3:55

this huge migration

3:58

gets there. before the

4:00

huge migration that happens. How

4:03

is the ecosystem working together

4:06

to just thrive? Yeah,

4:11

so in the 20s,

4:14

it was quite a wet climate

4:16

and people started to plow

4:18

up the prairies and grow wheat, which went

4:20

spectacularly well. The prices were good, so they

4:22

made a good profit and it was a

4:24

very good thing to do. In

4:28

the 1930s, the drought set in and that

4:30

region in the Great Plains has

4:34

decadal droughts, wetter and

4:36

dryer period recurring. So it's a

4:38

period that's a bit temperamental in terms of how

4:41

wet or dry a year is and the 30s

4:44

were overall quite dry. There

4:47

are some reconstructions of climate on longer

4:49

timescales based on which it was a

4:51

dry period but not a

4:53

completely outrageously dry period, but it was

4:55

dry. That meant that the wheat

5:00

farmers had a bit of trouble with

5:02

having enough rain for their crops and

5:04

so they didn't do

5:07

so well and to make

5:09

a profit, they had to just

5:12

grow more. So they plowed up some more

5:14

prairies. And that

5:16

was the problem that basically there

5:18

was a lot of the very

5:20

tough prairie grass replaced by wheat,

5:23

which is more sensitive to drought

5:25

and it was managed in a way that

5:28

was sensitive, that made it sensitive to drought.

5:30

And so the wheat

5:32

died and the farmers

5:35

lost their harvest and

5:37

the land lay bare. That was

5:39

basically what made the dust bowl

5:41

so spectacular that the

5:43

land surface was lay bare when the

5:45

wheat had died and

5:47

when a lot of the crops had died. And

5:50

so there was all this bare

5:54

soil on the ground which meant

5:56

when there was wind there were

5:58

dust storms. So people

6:00

got sick from the dust storms. Yes.

6:05

And this process of farming,

6:07

how did that really contribute?

6:09

How did the farming contribute

6:12

to the dust, I guess?

6:15

The changing of what

6:17

was there before and how

6:20

did farming change

6:23

the way the area kind

6:26

of like mitigated the dry

6:29

spells and the wet spells? So

6:32

the prairie grass has very

6:34

deep roots and is quite tough. And

6:37

in the summer it gets brown but it comes

6:39

back. So it's kind of

6:41

a vegetation used to dry

6:44

and wet periods and

6:46

that it can help you not update to deal

6:48

with it. But of course, drops are

6:50

not as robust. And

6:52

so when they die off, then

6:54

there is just the soil left.

6:58

And if you have a large area of

7:00

land that has been basically had initially

7:02

crops on it and then the crops

7:04

died and there was just the bare

7:06

soil, then it's kind of exposed to

7:08

the wind and the wind can carry

7:10

the soil away and can cause problems

7:13

for health for people. So there was

7:15

huge dust storms. And

7:18

people in the capital didn't believe it initially. They

7:21

thought all the farmers are moaning again until

7:23

the storms reached all the way to New

7:25

York and washing, which got them, even them

7:28

to pay attention that this might actually be

7:30

a real thing that's going on in the

7:32

Great Plains. And what drove my attention at

7:34

first was that I studied heat waves in

7:36

the over the United States. And

7:39

I looked at record heat and where

7:42

record heat occurred and at what time

7:44

and found that this particular region, the

7:46

central Great Plains, had the hottest ever recorded

7:49

temperatures and that might be

7:51

already beaten or might be beaten soon, but up

7:53

to recently, that was the hottest ever

7:56

days recorded were in the 1930s. was

8:00

basically came from the from the angle of

8:02

how do I explain these crazy temperatures, what

8:04

happened here? And that's

8:07

what got me to find

8:09

that the only way to explain them is

8:11

if you take the vegetation away, then it's

8:14

quite easy in a for example, a climate

8:16

one to get such high temperatures. So

8:18

it's basically you replace a

8:21

prairie, a grass prairie with a

8:23

parking lot, more or less, and

8:26

then water. So it will

8:28

be all the energy

8:30

from the sun will go into heating the air

8:32

rather than rather

8:34

than doing something rather

8:36

than evaporating moisture from

8:38

the vegetation or feeding the

8:41

ground or something if you're if you have baked

8:44

dry soil, it gets much water. I

8:47

see. So that actually contributed to

8:49

the heat wave that

8:52

occurred for multiple years. Yeah,

8:54

there were several really record for years in 1936, 1934,

8:56

and years

9:02

that you cannot easily explain as

9:05

particularly unusual atmospheric weather

9:07

patterns. So there were a bit, the

9:10

weather patterns certainly contributed, but you can't

9:12

use them alone to say that's why

9:14

it was so hot. And

9:18

there was a saying that they

9:20

used to sell farmland or encourage

9:22

farmers to continue to farm in

9:24

the plains. They would say the

9:26

rain follows the plow. Does

9:29

it? Not

9:34

so sure it does. I

9:39

think there's some interesting studies about irrigation,

9:41

like if you irrigate the land that

9:44

it will, the moisture evaporates and then

9:46

it can rain down somewhere else, but that

9:48

means that you have to irrigate it. If

9:50

you don't irrigate it, if you just hope

9:52

for it to grow, I don't really see

9:54

how that would happen. And

9:57

what would have been some warnings to like

10:00

would there have been any warning

10:02

signs that the people

10:04

in the area could have,

10:06

you know, heated, you

10:11

know, because it feels like at what

10:13

point were they like, oops, I

10:15

think we might have screwed up here. And

10:17

would there have been any signs that they

10:19

could have then changed the course of

10:21

what they were doing? So

10:26

I think what they

10:28

would have needed to do

10:30

is look at what rainfall

10:32

patterns look like in that region and

10:35

grow something that's robust to occasional drought.

10:38

So it's so irrigated, of course, but

10:42

that's a totally different approach. But

10:45

there's, depending on what you grow,

10:47

some things are more resilient to

10:49

drought. So, but

10:51

it would have been difficult in the time and

10:54

it has been difficult for farmers in that region

10:56

because it does tend to have

10:59

these kind of patterns of dry and

11:01

wet periods that tend to be more

11:03

than just a single year or so. Was

11:07

this, were these dust

11:09

storms something that were,

11:12

you know, unseen before or, or

11:14

have, you know,

11:17

dust storms been around

11:19

for some time period?

11:22

If you don't have the soil there,

11:24

then it's, then you don't get so

11:26

much dust blowing. So the

11:28

fact that they had kind of Milan was

11:30

plowed up, which hadn't happened before, it was

11:32

just covered in this thick prairie grass that

11:35

went all dry in a drought and

11:38

brown in a drought, but it didn't

11:40

expose the soil to the same extent.

11:42

So I think it

11:44

was something that was definitely encouraged

11:47

by the agriculture. And they came

11:49

in with land management suggestions before

11:51

like harvesting new land and things

11:53

like that to address it when

11:55

the extent of the disaster

11:58

was clear, then the my story

12:00

to instruct farmers what to do and support

12:02

them, which not

12:05

all of that was well received because farmers don't

12:07

like being told what to do. But it was,

12:09

I think they tried

12:13

to manage that a little bit to make

12:15

sure that the soil doesn't blow away because

12:17

that's really bad. That's not only bad for

12:19

the farmers who lose their soil, but it's

12:21

also really bad for healthy stuff storms and

12:23

they were really dangerous. And

12:26

they, and so they

12:28

really did not want them to continue. What

12:31

were some of the steps that they

12:33

took to mitigate this giant

12:36

dust problem? How did

12:38

the government get involved? So

12:41

they made suggestions on how to

12:43

manage their farms, how to terrace

12:45

them. This is not something I

12:47

know a huge amount about, but

12:49

they did change land management to

12:51

address, to protect the soil and

12:53

prevent it from blowing away. You

12:55

can do that with

12:57

dependent on which direction you plow

12:59

and things like that. But I don't

13:01

know exactly how they addressed it.

13:03

I think what was

13:07

also a factor was, I

13:09

think there were socioeconomic factors

13:11

that made it a difficult period with the

13:13

banks owning the land and people being in

13:17

debt. And so they in debt, the

13:20

smaller farmers that were more in debt, that

13:22

they had less wiggle room when things didn't

13:24

go well. And so that's the ones that

13:26

got repossessed first. And I

13:28

think there's all

13:31

I know about that one I

13:33

read in Steinbeck. Yes, many

13:35

of us. And there's also a book

13:37

about that kind of, I think there's

13:40

several good books about the dust wall

13:42

period and what

13:44

exactly happened and how that

13:47

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ACAST. Yeah. As

17:04

you were saying, 1934, 1936, there

17:06

were some of the hottest years in

17:08

recorded history and it feels

17:10

like lately we've been going through

17:13

a very hot time.

17:17

Are we breaking those records or

17:19

on track to? Where

17:22

do you see the current state heading

17:25

towards? I think we

17:28

are definitely breaking lots of

17:30

records because it's just warmer and

17:32

so if you have the same

17:35

rainfall patterns but it's warmer, then you

17:37

evaporate more of the moisture out of

17:39

the ground and so it gets drier

17:41

and so the ground gets drier and

17:43

the vegetation gets drier and so everything

17:45

can get hotter because you lose, it

17:48

can't hang on to moisture so well and

17:50

that also means that if you

17:52

have the exact same rain but the hotter condition

17:54

you can for example burn it easier. So

17:57

it is the case. The

18:00

way the planet is warming right

18:02

now is definitely a concern.

18:06

The Great Plains are not warming

18:08

as much and as rapidly as

18:10

some other regions, and there are

18:12

some interesting ideas about that. It

18:14

could be with the land surface,

18:17

again, so that the irrigation has

18:19

been counteracting some of that warming

18:21

by just bringing in the moisture.

18:24

But of course, the water table is not

18:26

steady, and so this is not something that

18:28

can go on forever. So

18:31

it's quite tricky. For me,

18:34

this was studying

18:36

the dust bowl and finding out what

18:39

had been the origin of these heat

18:41

waves, which I thought would probably have

18:43

been, which I went into studying, thinking

18:45

there must be some interesting meteorological patterns

18:47

or something, and came out realizing that

18:50

it's all about the land surface in this case.

18:53

And that makes me concerned also about global

18:55

warming, because under warmer conditions,

18:58

it's easier to

19:00

make the vegetation dry out, lose

19:02

vegetation or kill forests. So which

19:04

then is hard to get back

19:06

and has long-term ramifications. So for

19:09

me, that was a reason to

19:11

worry about tipping points

19:13

in vegetation and tipping points in

19:15

how the planet responds to climate

19:17

change, where not always things are

19:19

just slowly getting a bit warmer.

19:23

And the dust bowl was a period where it didn't get

19:25

a little bit drier. It got drier,

19:27

and then a whole chain of events

19:30

unfolded. Yes.

19:34

Now have

19:36

we learned anything since

19:38

the dust bowl? Do

19:42

you think we are

19:44

prepared for a

19:47

scenario like that right now? We

19:50

can much better predict the probability

19:52

of cloud generation. We can't predict

19:54

how dry exactly it's going to

19:56

be, but we know what happens

19:58

in the ocean surface temperature. just

20:01

how they make drought more or less likely.

20:03

So I think we get much, much better

20:05

early warning signs. So we would not be

20:07

like the farmers at the time just from

20:09

day to day, hoping that the rain would

20:11

come tomorrow, but we would be

20:13

much better able to see how likely is

20:15

it that this drought is gonna continue. That

20:19

said, we have all watched the

20:21

California drought with the ridiculously resilient

20:23

ridge, which took a long time

20:25

to break and is

20:27

still a threat to my

20:29

understanding. So we

20:32

still can't exactly predict when a drought sets in

20:34

and when it stops, but we are in a

20:36

much, in a place where we can see a

20:38

lot more. What

20:41

can someone like me, like

20:43

many of our listeners, do

20:45

to enact some kind

20:48

of change when it comes to

20:51

climate change? Because sometimes it feels like

20:53

it's very big, it's very

20:56

much out of our hands, out of our control. Can

20:59

you help us help

21:01

you? So

21:04

I think it's always worthwhile

21:06

thinking about

21:10

this molescale stuff. So in my

21:12

garden, I like to have nice vegetation

21:14

and it's nice to have some

21:16

trees and some local vegetation. So

21:18

I think the lesson of that

21:20

the native vegetation can actually deal

21:22

with this, whereas maybe a green

21:26

carpet lawn might not deal so well, that might

21:28

be a good lesson. Also,

21:34

well, we can support the transition

21:36

away from fossil fuels, which

21:38

is, I think is quite important.

21:41

So I drive an electric car and

21:43

I have to say, it's fun to drive. The

21:46

reason I bought the one I bought was because my

21:48

friends in the States that

21:51

have that said, it's always gone because everybody

21:53

in the family loves this car. And

21:56

so I do enjoy it. It's not

21:58

actually painful at all. So

22:01

we can support the transition, we can

22:03

vote for politicians that

22:06

think, that take it seriously.

22:10

We can do a whole lot of things and

22:12

we can just make our own little area, give

22:15

it a place for nature, give

22:17

the birds or the wildlife a

22:19

chance and just help be

22:22

our own little oasis of where we

22:24

have an influence, nice and close

22:27

to nature. So

22:30

at the end of the day, we ask

22:32

all of our guest experts the same

22:34

question. If you had to

22:36

pick a person or a thing, it

22:38

could be a concept that you think

22:40

is to blame for the dust bowl.

22:43

Who or what would that be? Oh,

22:47

oh dear. Oh dear.

22:51

Again, it could be a concept. It

22:56

could be something larger.

23:00

Yes, I think we need to

23:02

respect the planet and

23:05

nature and we need to think, we

23:08

need to understand how it works and

23:10

how we can work with it and

23:13

consider it in our decisions. I'm sure

23:15

the Native Americans knew that there is

23:18

dry and wet periods. So I'm sure

23:20

some people knew how the prairies work

23:22

and it would have been good

23:24

to first listen and then plow them up and

23:26

not the other way around. Oh

23:29

yes, they needed a new

23:31

catchphrase. The

23:36

listening follows the plow instead of the

23:38

rain follows the plow. Yes,

23:40

the first thing then act. Well,

23:45

thank you so much, Gabby, for

23:47

joining us today and helping us

23:49

understand the climate and everything

23:51

surrounding the dust bowl. Thank you.

23:54

And we're going to head over to Patreon right now and

23:56

discuss this further. post-interview

24:00

discussion and final verdict, head over

24:03

to Patreon and subscribe. Your

24:05

support is greatly appreciated. Check out our

24:07

show notes for a link or head

24:09

over to patreon.com slash

24:12

The Alarmist. And stay

24:14

tuned because next week we'll be

24:16

discussing the Chris Benoit murder

24:18

suicide. The

24:24

Alarmist. Oh,

24:27

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