Death In The Sahel

By Paul Homewood

In 1977 Reid Bryson and Thomas Murray published Climate of Hunger, a book about changing climates:

https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/114865

This of course was during an era of falling global temperatures, and Bryson’s introduction made clear about the effects:

Climate is changing. Parts of our world have been cooling. Rain belts and food-growing areas have shifted. People are starving. And we have been too slow to realize what is happening and why. In recent years, world climate changes have drawn more attention than at any other time in history. What we once called "crazy weather," just a few years ago, is now beginning to be seen as part of a logical and, in part, predictable pattern, an awesome natural force that we must deal with if man is to avoid disaster of unprecedented proportions. Along with drought in some places and floods in others, both caused by changing wind patterns, average temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere have been falling. The old-fashioned winters our grandfathers spoke of might be returning. In England, the growing season has already been cut by as much as two weeks.

We commonly hear that global warming is making droughts worse, but Bryson’s book is a reminder that the opposite is the case, with a chapter devoted to the terrible Sahel drought of the 1970s and 80s.

It is well worth a read, not just for its historical approach, but also for its clear analysis of why the droughts occurred: