PART ONE

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Floods and Droughts in Living Memory

Climate matters. It mattered to the Vikings, who settled Iceland, explored the New World, and were lured north to Greenland during a period of unusually warm weather a millennium ago. Climate mattered to Oklahoma farmers during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, when many people headed west as much of their soils headed east on the withering winds. Today, with floods and drought, feast and famine, climate matters to many of us much of the time.

RICHARD ALLEY, The Two-Mile Time Machine