A Biblical Dust Storm Comes to Washington

Dust Storm

     Few things motivate politicians like impending doom.  One of the most peculiar natural phenomena to strike the Washington area was a gigantic dust storm blowing in from the Great Plains.  Years of environmental mismanagement on the Great Plains set the stage for a natural calamity. 

In 1931, a drought hit the Great Plains. Crops died and because the ground cover keeping the soil in place was gone, the naturally windy area began whipping up dust.  Dust storms became problematic and continued to grow in intensity. In 1934 an enormous storm drove 350 tons of silt across the Great Plains as far as the East Coast.  Ships three hundred miles off shore in the Atlantic reported collecting dust on their decks. 

In April 1935, a dust storm arrived in Northern Virginia from the Great Plains. A dusty gloom spread over the region and blotted out the sun.  Meanwhile, in downtown Washington, conservationist Hugh Hammond Bennett was testifying before Congress about the need for soil conservation.  Bennett explained, (pointing to the darkened skies over Washington)  “This, gentlemen, is what I have been talking about.” Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act the same year.

Wars and Invasions (Four alternative history stories)

Gifts for Dog Lovers

A Civilization Collapses: The Strange Case of Easter Island

Scientists now believe that Easter Island was colonized by the Polynesians in the fifth century A.D.  At first there were perhaps twenty or thirty colonists on the island.  As the population grew closely related households formed clans, each with its own religious and ceremonial center.  Competition between the clans produced the giant statues of Easter Island.  At each ceremonial site the clan members erected between one and fifteen of the huge stone statues that survive today.

The statues were carved using only stone tools.  Each statue is the same, carved to resemble a male head and torso. On top of the head was placed a 'topknot' of red stone weighing about ten tons. The carving was time-consuming rather than a complex task. The real problem was transporting the statues, most at least twenty feet high and weighing several tons, from the island’s quarry across the island and then standing them up straight on the clan’s ceremonial platform.  The solution to the transportation problem sealed the fate of the island’s people.  The statues were moved by human labor using tree trunks as rollers.

The population grew steadily from twenty or thirty in 450 A.D. to some 7,000 by 1550 A.D.  As the population grew, the number of competing clans grew and the competition to create ever larger and more numerous statues intensified until by 1600 there were over six hundred huge stone statues dotting the island.  When the society was at its peak, it suddenly collapsed because of massive environmental degradation brought on by the deforestation of the whole island.

The most demanding requirement for wood came from the need to move the large statues to ceremonial sites around the island. Larger and larger quantities of timber were required as the competition between the clans to erect statues grew. As a result by1600 the island was almost completely deforested and statue erection was brought to a halt leaving many stranded at the quarry.

The deforestation of the island spelled the end of statue building and the sophisticated ceremonial life of the island.  It had even graver consequences.   The shortage of trees forced people unable to build huts to live in caves.  Canoes could no longer be built so people could not leave the island.  Removal of the tree cover badly affected the soil of the island.  Crop yields dwindled.  The food base could no longer support the population. Conflicts over diminishing resources resulted in a state of almost permanent warfare between the clans. As the amount of food available fell the population turned to cannibalism.

By the time the Europeans discovered the island, the primitive islanders could no longer remember what their ancestors had achieved and could only say that the huge figures had “walked” across the island.

The real mystery of Easter Island is not the giant stone statues but the question: Why were the Easter Islanders, knowing that they were isolated from the rest of the world and totally dependent on the limited resources of the island, unable to find harmony with their environment when disaster was staring them in the face?

Link to: Secrets of Mysterious Islands

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Environmental Disasters: The Dust Bowl

The recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not the first time that America has faced an environmental catastrophe of historic proportions. In the 1930s, Washington had to pay close attention to the disaster, however, because it arrived, literally, on Washington’s doorstep.

The most peculiar natural phenomena ever to hit Washington D.C. was a gigantic dust storm blowing in from the Great Plains. Years of environmental mismanagement on the Great Plains set the stage for a natural calamity. In 1931, a drought hit the Great Plains. Crops died and because the ground cover keeping the soil in place was gone, the naturally windy area began whipping up dust. Dust storms became problematic and continued to grow in intensity. In 1934 an enormous storm drove 350 tons of silt across the Great Plains as far as the East Coast. Ships three hundred miles off shore in the Atlantic reported collecting dust on their decks. In April 1935, a dust storm arrived in Washington from the Great Plains. A dusty gloom spread over the region and blotted out the sun. Meanwhile, in downtown Washington, conservationist Hugh Hammond Bennett was testifying before Congress about the need for soil conservation. Bennett explained, (pointing to the darkened skies over Washington) "This, gentlemen, is what I have been talking about." Congress passed the Soil Conservation Act the same year.



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Cars and the Environment

In September 1895, the Duryea brothers established the first American company to manufacture gasoline-driven cars, the Duryea Motor Wagon Company. In 1904 the Ford Motor Company produced 1,695 cars, and by 1907 had increased its production to 14,887. America’s love affair with the automobile had begun in earnest and has never stopped, as demonstrated by the fact that by 2006 there were some 251 million registered passenger vehicles in the U.S. owned by a population of 298 million. There is now a car for virtually every man, woman and child in America. Overall passenger vehicles have been outnumbering licensed drivers since 1972 at an ever increasing rate. New York City is the only place in the country where more than half of all houselholds do not own a car.



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The best reading experience on your Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows 8 PC or tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone.