Dear Editor: Your article "Farmers high and dry" missed a golden opportunity. You missed calling attention to the cause of unprecedented hot and dry weather, early freeze and other behaviors of Mother Nature. It is simply global warming. If you stick pins in Mother Nature, it should be no surprise that we suffer consequences.

Scientific literature, such as Discover magazine and Scientific American, have been trumpeting the basic facts of global warming for the past 10 years. Real Al Gore's book.

Global warming has arrived. It destabilizes the climate causing more violent weather (hurricanes, tornados), hotter summers and disturbances of weather patterns.

There is one simple and powerful solution - solar power. California is well down the road to implementing it. Carbon dioxide is a large part of the causes of global warming. It is a very potent greenhouse gas. Almost all of our electric power comes from either gas-fired or coal-fired generators. If we eliminate all that CO2, we can reduce enormously our greenhouse emissions and improve air quality.

California requires the power companies to buy solar power from any homeowner who has it to sell. That now approaches 70 percent of homeowners.

Homeowners cover their roofs with solar shingles that look like and are installed like ordinary shingles. But they convert sunlight to electricity that can be used to power home electronics. Homeowners can sell the excess to the power company. Their solar power production is highest during hot summer days when air conditioners are going full blast. That is when the power companies have their peak demand.

Power companies strongly support the plan because it saves them money because they do not have to purchase expensive generating equipment. They have a new, cheap source of electric power when they need it most.

Homeowners love it because it saves them big bucks in electric bills, and at night they simply buy power back from the power company.

Those concerned about the future of our planet and global warming love it. It is time to start converting to renewable resources and stop depending on non-renewable energy legacies from the geologic past.