Who is to say an idea is crazy?

I recently read about an idea to create a shade in space to block the sun to slow down or reverse global warming.

In this world of cussing and discussing causes and solutions for climate change and global warming, ideas as to how to fix, stop, or reverse climate issues have been around for as long as man has walked this Earth, including those that first came to the Texas Panhandle.

Periods of wet and dry, abundant rainfall and drought have cycled for tens of thousands of years here in the Texas Panhandle.

106 miles southeast of Amarillo, Texas, near the small town of Post, Texas, an experiment to break a period of severe drought was conducted from 1911 through 1914 by the millionaire, C.W. Post, the town’s founder and yes, the same C.W. Post of Post Cereal fame.

There is a Texas Historical Marker near Post, Texas, that reads:

Site of 1911-1914 dynamiting to produce rain, carried on by C.W. Post, Texas farm colonizer and cereal foods millionaire.

After reading that rain often accompanies cannonading in war, Post planned “battles” to relieve droughts. He thought vertical air currents would condense vapor in atmosphere and cause rain. He first used dynamite airborne by kites, but soon replaced this dangerous method by setting off explosions on edge of Caprock?

Post’s experiments were said to have been 40% effective, and cost $50,000. He battled drought on farms until his death, 1914.

Erected 1967 by State Historical Survey Committee. (Marker Number 602.)

The Caprock mentioned above is a geological formation, an escarpment or cliff of red and tan rock, fifty to one hundred feet high that runs in a 175-mile line through the Panhandle of West Texas.

It can be seen in Briscoe, Floyd, Motley, Dickens, Crosby, Garza, and Borden counties. Post, Texas is in Garza County.

Archeologists and anthropologists have postulated that people have come into this area over the last 13,000 years during periods of abundant rain filling the millions of shallow playa lakes only to have those people disappear some generations later as the area became drought stricken again and surface water dried up.

These cycles of rain and drought have been shown by various different scientific methods to last anywhere from 20 to 55 years.

C.W. Post’s efforts are documented in the book, Heaven’s Tableland - The Dust Bowl Story by Vance Johnson. The book was published in 1947 and is now considered to be a rare book. It is a most excellent read.

Heaven’s Tableland also describes this area as the epicenter for the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The dust bowl was created by decades of man plowing up the prairie to plant wheat without any effective soil conservation practices despite the decades of warnings as far back as the 1880s coming from agriculture experiment stations located in Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

When World War I broke out, even more land was plowed up when the U.S. entered the war.

“Wheat will win the war!” was the mantra.

The drought continued into the 30s with more and more land plowed up for wheat and cotton production.

The incessant wind would pick up the exposed soil during the drought times and blow it into enormous haboobs known as “black blizzards”.

The Worst Hard Times, a Ken Burns PBS Special is an excellent series on the Dust Bowl, especially describing the human hardship.

My parents and grandparents lived in this region during the Dust Bowl era and never said a word about it. I learned about it as a 7th grader during Texas Geography class.

Those generations didn’t complain much about hardship. Tough times make tough people.

The rains started regularly again during World War II.

I am by no means a climate alarmist however I do know that homo sapiens is the only species of animals that can change or damage his environment.

Homo Sapiens can also fix it. We can be quite creatively constructive when we want.

—

A few more interesting factoids about the Texas Panhandle region of northwest Texas:

This is the last part of the lower 48 states to be occupied by white settlers. This was Comanche Indian country and was avoided until the late 1800s.

?The Clovis Culture was discovered 100 miles southwest of Amarillo near Clovis, New Mexico and long thought to be the oldest settlement in the lower 48 states dating back some 13,000 years.

Today, 35% of the nation’s fed beef comes from the Texas Panhandle. Cattle probably outnumber people four or five to one.

Cattlemen fed their cattle everything from the natural grasses to Johnson grass, bindweed, and tumbleweeds all of which are now considered invasive species and toxic. Yes, the tumbleweed proliferated here because they were thought to be good cattle feed. The seeds of the Russian Thistle passed through the cattle that pooped the seeds wherever they were thus allowing for proliferation.

The tall concrete grain silos that still dot the landscape throughout the Texas Panhandle were built in the 1930s as part of the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps. These same agencies also strategically planted trees on the prairie as a soil conservation effort. Those stands of trees are still here today.

Many historic battles between the US Cavalry and the Comanche were fought in the Texas Panhandle and gave rise to Hollywood’s conception of that genre of western movies.

The Comanche were fierce warriors to be respected. In Texas’ war for independence there was fighting between Texas, Mexico, and the Comanche nation, something not mentioned in older history books. The Comanche were known to raid all the way down to the Texas Gulf Coast.