BROWNING SAYS NEW MEXICAN DESERT WILL BECOME FERTILE CORN COUNTRY

ALBUQUERQUE -- New Mexico climatologist and inventor Iben Browning has ended his brief hiatus following the New Madrid earthquake debacle with a fresh batch of "projections."

At a recent Albuquerque civic group gathering, Browning said there is a 70 to 80 percent "probability" that the city will receive twice as much rain within 50 years as it gets today, transforming New Mexico's desert into corn fields.

But experts say the scientific evidence points in the opposite direction and it's probably Browning who is all wet.

Browning, a 73-year-old biophysicist and inventor, is a former Sandia National Laboratories staff member whose "projection" for a major earthquake in Southeast Missouri, along the New Madrid fault, missed the mark late last year.

Browning dodged the media for weeks as the time for the probable earthquake approached. But he surfaced recently at an Albuquerque Rotary Club luncheon, producing more than a few new tremors.

He gave 300 Rotarians his latest "statistical projections," including global chilling caused by extreme volcanic eruptions. The atmospheric cooling, he said, would double rainfall in Albuquerque and turn the barren desert into fertile corn country.

He said the volcanic eruptions would be stimulated by intense friction within the earth caused by severe tides, driven by a rare alignment of the sun, moon and Earth.

The Earth-encircling cloud of volcanic ash and sulphuric acid droplets will reflect sunlight and cool the planet, he said. At one point, he attributed communism's failure to the weather.

"By the middle of the next century, this area around us will cease being a desert and we will get about 16 inches of rain per year," he said. "By 2020 you will be able to grow corn anywhere sagebrush grows today."

Charlie Liles, National Weather Service manager in Albuquerque, said that, based on the past 100 years of record-keeping, the highest annual rainfall on record was 16.3 inches in 1958, with the modern record set in 1941 at 15.88. The current 30-year norm is 8.12 inches.

Experts such as University of New Mexico Provost Paul Risser, an internationally renowned biologist, say that the evidence, still being debated, generally suggests that the earth is warming, not cooling.

And they say the reason has less to do with celestial mechanics (movements of the sun and moon) than with atmospheric pollution, primarily carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels like coal and gasoline.

"And in this part of the country," Risser said, "this probably means we are going to experience some reduction in rainfall."

Risser, who is vice chairman of the U.S. National Committee on Global Change for the National Academy of Sciences, said Browning sounds "like a guy coming out of left field."

Among Browning's other "possible probabilities" he mentioned at the Rotary group gathering:

The hundreds of burning oil wells in Kuwait will have "no effect on the environment." As a pilot, Browning saw plenty of fires during World War II, he said. "It's no big deal."

Officials should begin planning now because the increased rainfall next century will mean an exploding population for Albuquerque.

Since the rainy cycle is only expected to last about 100 years, the next problem will be "finding a way to get rid of 'em (all the people)."

Half the world's population will be dead of AIDS by about 2045. "I used to think a cure would never be found," he said teasingly. "I'm a bit more optimistic now: They'll maybe have one in 1,000 years."

"I tell the environmentalists to be of good cheer because the people will go away."

Browning also said his so-called earthquake prediction last year was never anything of the sort, and that the media and public misinterpreted it.

"I never make predictions," he insisted in a post-speech interview. "I said there was a 50-50 chance of an earthquake at that time and it didn't happen."

This article was compiled from a Scripps-Howard News Service story.