Poultry farmers in the United States passed their soaring feed costs on to consumers, raising retail chicken prices 40 percent. This was the kind of science that interested Wall Street. Around this time, scientists discovered the warming in Peru was linked with the weather in Asia. The Kid could shut-down the monsoons in Asia, bringing drought and famine to India, Indonesia and Malaysia. Little fish and chicken feed had exploded into a curiosity about the workings of the Earth's global climate.
Scientists fit the largest pieces of the climate puzzle together first.
The winds and the waters communicate with each other half-way around the world. In a normal year, the trade winds blow from South America to Asia, pushing warm water to the far reaches of the western equatorial Pacific. Farmers in Peru were up to their eyeballs in rain. Fires scorched Borneo. Droughts hit Australia.