Last summer s drought was significant only in the amount of media attention it garnered. It roughly was centered on the Nation s Capitol and spanned the media nexus along the Atlantic seaboard. Yet, even as press coverage of the drought peaked, less than three percent of the United States was experiencing extreme drought . In an average summer, about 4.4 percent of the nation experiences extreme drought conditions . The media hyperbole and visual images of seared crops and bottoms of reservoirs that looked like pottery shards rivaled pictures taken at the height of the Dust Bowl when more than fifty percent of the country was enduring extreme drought .
Climate is complex.
In fact, the high temperatures of the late-1990s were associated with moisture surpluses and diminished drought frequency. Nor do actual human mortality rates bear out the President s concern for increasingly deadly heat waves. On the contrary, observations bear out that, in general, there is a negative relationship between temperature and mortality. In other words, more people die when it s cold than when it is hot. Therefore, a general warming brought about by an increased greenhouse effect would save lives rather than take them.