Some people have heard the occupation , “ pelting follows the plough . ” It ’s become a poetical way to say that the world will provide , given a somebody puts in the work . Once upon a time , it was actual climate skill . It did not prove correct .
During the later 1800s and early 1900s , a burgeon population and a steady stream of immigrants into America pushed people out of city and found husbandry territories . For much of United States story , the people who reached the Great Plains kept going right on through . for certain there were hoi polloi who set up farm there , but they clustered around creek and rivers . The dry , treeless land did n’t hold much hope for people accustomed to bed wetter nation and the water - loving plants that grew there .
mass were select a second spirit . With few tempt territorial dominion left , they were forced into the more waterless role of the plains . astonishingly , this turned out well . Climatology was in its infancy . The United States Geological Survey had just started taking measurements of the rainfall in the less - populated country . Although people know that the plains were lite on moisture , they noticed a strange thing when citizenry started produce in dry areas . Rainfall got sullen , the world was wetting agent , and crops thrive .
Without much in the way of experience , and without the data necessary even to more experienced climatologists , they began to think that factory farm so changed the environment that rains became backbreaking the moment enough of a bandage of solid ground was farmed . This was not a fringe theory . Sure , the phrase “ rainfall follow the plough , ” was coined by a land plunger , but genuine agronomist agreed . They also agreed that the ground would “ hold open ” some water for dry geezerhood , so that as rainfall decreased , there was no causa for alarm .
Unfortunately , agronomist and land speculator judgment does n’t exchange the weather . It just changes the amount of people who are willing to bet that wrong rains are go to last . Rain was follow by drought , and homesteaders lose their crops and , finally their domicile . The approximation that we can change the weather with wishful thinking , however , remains .
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