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The Rural Voice, 1979-05, Page 12information was utilized by farmers in both Perth and Huron counties. Then in November 1978, a government cutback resulted in the line to London weather office being discontinued. Brad Finch, of the London weather office, said his office can still get the radar information from Toronto once an hour, but the information is less detailed than when they received it directly from Exeter. VERY DETAILED He said the information his office received prior to the cutback was so detailed that if a farmer could tell weathermen where his farm was, then they could tell him if showers were predicted, in that immediate area. When the service was cut back Lloyd Moore of Palmerston, owner of Moore's Produce in Listowel, was one of several people who submitted briefs objecting to the cutback in service. Mr. Moore said, "The radar weather coverage from Exeter is now only sent to Toronto, where it is decoded and a generalized summary is sent back to London every hour. London weather is not able to pinpoint the storms with this information and by the time they get it is outdated. It is hard to get a phone line free at Toronto, but when you do they do not pinpoint the weather for you and seem to be only interested in I.F.R. airline traffic." The brief said the detailed weather information from the London office was used by construction firms, by farmers, transports and buses who can reroute or cancel trips with the available weather information and by schools who used the information to know when students should be sent home in the winter to avoid serious storms. Mr. Finch said if the weather radar service wasreinstated, it "is an area where we could improve short term forecasting in the local area." He said his office has received "multi" complaints about the cutback of the service from farmers, local industries, pilots and other groups in the community. Exeter weather station to be re -instated Mr. Finch had already heard a rumour the service would be re-established when contacted by The Rural Voice. This was confirmed later by George McPherson of the Atmospheric Environment Service. The radar recorder will be going back into the London weather office in the near future - hopefully sometime in the next few months. When the service is re-established, farmers can again either phone the London weather office for the forecasts directly or tune into radio stations which broadcast the more detailed forecasts. The case of the weather radar information seems to be one example where pressure on MP's and MPP's paid off, and the government decided the minimal amount of money they were saving wasn't worth the problems it was creating. Today, technology, better plant breeding and sprays for disease and insect control have somewhat lessened the effects of the weather for individual farmers. THE OLD DAYS Vincent Lane, a retired farmer who lives in St. Columban, remembers the days when the weather played a very major role in farming. For one thing, today, he said the land in Huron and Perth counties is better drained, so farmers can go on it sooner than they could it the days when he started farming. When Mr. Lane and his father, the first to own a tractor in their area, were .doing custom work in the 1920's, Mr. Lane recalls he ran into a lot of wet spo is where he'd get stuck during the spring planting. PG. 10 THE RURAL VOICE/ MAY 1979 "You couldn't trust the fields then the way you can now," Mr. Lane said. Although Mr. Lane doesn't claim to be a scientist, from his own observations he believes winters today are less severe than they were in this younger days. But he does remember one winter that was an exception to even this observation -in either 1929 or 30, the land didn't freeze until mid-February and the horses and buggies were mired in mud up to their axles. Mr. Lane has seen a number of changes in farming since he started in the 1920's. In those days, oats and barley were the common crops, with only a bit of corn planted. Mr. Lane said when he did grow corn, he often didn't get it harvested until the next spring. Then as land became more expensive and earlier maturing corn varieties were developed, cash croppers switched to corn. How did Mr. Lane and his father predict the weather during planting season? Their secret was the equinoxal winds which occured on March 21 or 22nd and approximately the same time in September. Mr. Lane said if the wind was blowing in the south, then they could count on a good spring until June. However, if the wind was in the north, it was a sign of a cool spring and "you'll seed all right, but you'll wear your overcoats." Acid rain and the greenhouse effect We exhale carbon -dioxide (CO, the trees inhale it and exhale oxygen we learned at school. This giving and taking keeps the trees growing and the human race alive. All burning inhales some of our oxygen and emits carbon dioxide thus doing the same thing that we, humans and in fact all animals do. The fast increasing world population, particularly inthe developing countries, is cutting down whole forests at an alarming rate. Since they can't afford to buy coal or oil or gas to cook on, they use manure and wood. This would be alright, if they replanted the cut trees. But they don't. Neither do we. Drive through Northern Ontario and see the ravages of the pulp and paper companies. How many of our proponents of renewable energy realize that trees are burnt but not replaced? So the used energy is not renewed. Scientists are becoming concerned that there may be too much carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere and the so-called "greenhouse effect" will take place. This is like a one-way mirror. The sun's heat can come in, but a carbon dioxide layer will prevent it from leaving. If that should happen, the world would become too hot to live on within hours, and would be destroyed. Another, more immediate danger with carbon dioxide happens when the sun shines on it. Then it becomes, through a photo -chemical process, ozone. Bean producers have seen their crops destoryed by ozone, within a day. The burning of hydro -carbons when combined with weather has other undesirable effects. A byproduct of the smoke• emissions from coal and oil fired devices is sulphur and sulphur dioxide. When it rains, this sulphur dioxide combines with water molecules to form acid rain. When this comes down in the oxygen we breath, on our plants, on our automobiles, corrosion occurs. The corrosion in our lungs is slow and insidious. But the lakes of Northern Ontario, that are now devoid of fish, because of acid rain, show us that it is no idle concern. Lest we become complacent, let's repeat the words of the great environmental scientist, Dr. McTaggart -Gowan: ... region after region is being destroyed by a succession of insignificant increments; which, added together are total disaster, although each one individually might be quite acceptable."