Well, not you, in particular. But the picture shows a deteriorating situation in the mid-west which we reported on last week. Given remarkably little coverage in the British media, the Wall Street Journal picks it up today in an editorial, likening the record floods to the mid-west version of Katrina.

View full article here

According to Anthony Watts's site and the NYT, The Goracle is backing Obama so that should be alright then!

Another good reason for hoping he does not win!

I'm currently in the Mid-West and the damage from tornadoes, lightening and flooding is merely a passing mention in the press globally, it seems. I guess nobody really cares when there're no black people clambering on rooftops, scapegoated to condemn the present administration.

Nope, people here are just packing bags full of sand, day in and day out, doing there best to push the waters out and looking forward to a potential week of quiet, warm weather. Life goes on, somehow, in the heartland...

"it seems. I guess nobody really cares when there're no black people clambering on rooftops, scapegoated to condemn the present administration."

That's where a President Obama would come in,as a former Community Organiser,he could fix this.

Quite true, but this very real disaster will be used as a pretext for gettinganother failed Leftist policy off the hook. Just watch how the floods will be used as the sole and exclusive reason for food shortages and high prices, as well as for the rapidly-rising prices for biofuels. The ideologues will do whatever they can to make the rest of us forget that pinko policies have played a major part in current, major unhappiness and shortages. Just watch.

There are a number of lines in the Telegraph article that need to be looked at in the light of absent sunspot activity.

"Some agriculturalists say that by the time the water recedes in the next week or two, it will be too late for crop recovery or replanting."

"However, farming leaders are being optimistic, insisting that the Midwest has merely fallen foul of a cyclical weather pattern that will not happen again for years."

Ron Litterer said: "Corn can catch up if we get the right weather, so the jury is still out."

The start of Sunspot cycle 24 is yet to be announced by Anthony Watts, so it's reasonable to postulate a cool, poor summer, both in America and the UK. Crops need the sun's warmth and where is it? Just look out the window!. Wimbledon (the annual rainmaking ceremony) starts next week, so expect more of the same. Worldwide, a poor harvest in 2008 will be compounded with a worse one in 2009, just in time for the European elections. The "colleagues" are ignorant about sunspots, so they won't appreciate the reality of global cooling, just as they didn't foresee the valiant Irish "No". I believe "Gaia decomposes the EU" will be a great headline.

Interglacial periods last 10,000 years on average. Our present Holocene Interglacial is 11,400 already years old, Could another Stadial, such as the Little Ice Age be about to start? If so, look out! Glaciers in the Swiss Alps advanced, gradually engulfing farms and crushing entire villages, in the mid 17th century. Finland lost perhaps a third of its population to starvation and disease. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

The EU has nailed its rag flag to the mast of AGW. That will be its downfall.

It is going to be very difficult to underestimate the potential for change that the financial, economic, food, fuel and global cooling crises could cause.

As for the last one and potentially by far the most serious, the Sun does seem to have it.

In 1801 Sir William Herschel, astonomer, (an ex resident of Slough like myself but I am digressing) inquired whether any relation could be traced in the recurrence of sun-spots, regarded as evidences of solar activity, and the varying seasons of our planet, as exhibited by the varying price of corn. His reply was inconclusive but given the lack of modern tools and how the question was posed, his lack of a strong conclusion is not that surprising.

Although the Sun-Earth-climate relationship is not yet fully understood, there is now a sufficient body of scientific work to build a prima facie case, much stronger than for AGW. E.g., in a mathematical model, if the assumptions on which it has been built are duff then so are its conclusions. Any mathematical model that cannot model where we have been (looks like all climate models) is no good for predicting where we are headed.

I have the feeling of living in an Earth/Sun experiment and the feeling is not very nice. However, if at not too great a cost it screws the EU once and for all, it will be a case of every cloud having a silver lining.