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US Drought Could Trigger Higher Food Prices

Steve Baragona
Voice of America
Tue, 10 Jul 2012 07:03 UTC
Image
© APThe ground is cracked at the edge of a corn field near England, Arkansas, where oppressive heat is affecting the crop.
World food prices are likely to rise in the coming months in the wake of record-breaking temperatures and drought in the major maize and soybean producing regions of the United States, economists say.

It would be the third spike in food prices in the past five years.

Previous hikes - during 2007 and 2008, and again in 2010 and 2011 - triggered riots and social instability in dozens of countries around the world.

Whether rising food prices will again trigger unrest is unclear, especially since different crops are affected.

Crops shrinking

Despite early predictions of a record maize crop, estimates have plummeted after a string of record-high temperature days and dry conditions stretching across the farm states of the U.S. Midwest.

"We need rain, and it doesn't look like we're going to get it," says Iowa State University economist Dermot Hayes.

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Sun

U.S. Corn Growers Farming in Hell as Midwest Heat Spreads

Jeff Wilson
Business Week
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 06:55 UTC
Image
© Erik M. Lunsford/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/MCT/Zuma PressCorn in Belleville, Illinois.
The worst U.S. drought since Ronald Reagan was president is withering the world's largest corn crop, and the speed of the damage may spur the government to make a record cut in its July estimate for domestic inventories.

Tumbling yields will combine with the greatest-ever global demand to leave U.S. stockpiles on Sept. 1, 2013, at 1.216 billion bushels (30.89 million metric tons), according to the average of 31 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. That's 35 percent below the U.S. Department of Agriculture's June 12 forecast, implying the biggest reduction since at least 1973. The USDA updates its harvest and inventory estimates July 11.

Crops on July 1 were in the worst condition since 1988, and a Midwest heat wave last week set or tied 1,067 temperature records, government data show. Prices surged 37 percent in three weeks, and Rabobank International said June 28 that corn may rise 9.9 percent more by December to near a record $8 a bushel. The gain is threatening to boost food costs the United Nations says fell 15 percent from a record in February 2011 and feed prices for meat producers including Smithfield Foods Inc. (SFD)
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Cloud Lightning

Floods damage Russian grain export routes

Melissa Akin
Reuters
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 05:46 UTC
Floods that hit Russia's Black Sea coast have wrought chaos on major road and rail links to its main grain export outlet, but stocks at the port of Novorossiisk are high and may delay any impact on exports, traders and analysts said on Monday.

The effects were likely to be short-lived but laid bare the infrastructure risks faced by Russia as it attempts to secure and strengthen its status as a dominant global wheat exporter by exploiting its vast reserves of farmland.

Russian Railways said it had halted rail traffic to the port of Novorossiisk to repair a bridge southwest of Krymsk, the town hardest hit when floodwaters came crashing down suddenly in the early hours of Saturday, killing at least 171 people.

The state rail operator said the rail bed also was washed out in places. Later in the day it said traffic had resumed between Krymsk and Novorossiisk, but only southbound trains were moving and passenger trains had priority.

The Russian government has an ambitious target for grain exports to rise to 40 million tonnes a year. Russia emerged from a catastrophic drought in the 2010/11 crop year to export a record 28 million tonnes in the year to June 2012, IKAR analysts said on Monday.

The biggest obstacle to export growth is infrastructure. Novorossiisk, the main grain export port, has two terminals that are linked to the wheat fields north of the Caucasus mountain foothills by a single rail link and by mountain roads.
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Powertool

Earthquake-damaged Washington Monument may be closed into 2014

Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 05:37 UTC
Image
Source: National Park Service. Cristina Rivero/The Washington Post. Published on July 9, 2012, 7:55 p.m.
Repairs that could keep the earthquake-damaged Washington Monument closed into 2014 will require the exterior and part of the interior of the 555-foot structure to be shrouded in scaffolding, the National Park Service has announced.

The estimated $15 million project will necessitate the temporary removal of part of the granite plaza surrounding the monument, and the bracing of huge stone slabs that now rest on cracked supports near the structure's top.

Robert A. Vogel, superintendent of the Park Service's National Mall and Memorial Parks, said the project also may require the temporary removal of some of the plaza's flagpo
les and benches.

The marble and granite monument was extensively damaged by the 5.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the area last Aug. 23.
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Arrow Down

45-foot deep sinkhole closes US 24 north of Leadville, Colorado

Randy Wyrick
Vail Daily
Tue, 10 Jul 2012 05:28 UTC
Image
© Vail DailyA 45-foot hole under the highway between Red Cliff and Leadville will keep US 24 closed indefinitely.
A 45-foot hole under the highway between Red Cliff and Leadville will keep road closed indefinitely

Leadville - A 20-by-30-foot round sinkhole that is at least 45 feet deep is keeping U.S. Highway 24 north of Leadville closed indefinitely.

Forty-five feet is as deep as Colorado Department of Transportation crews could measure Monday afternoon before engineers and geologists arrived, said Ashley Mohr, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation.

After about 45 feet deep, the hole starts to curl back under the highway, sort of like an asphalt-eating serpent. They're not entirely certain how far it curls under the highway, Mohr said, they're just certain that it does.

The hole puts the highway, and motorists, in danger. CDOT closed the highway Monday afternoon to traffic in both directions.

It'll stay closed until they can figure out what happened and how they might fix it.

Comment: It might be 'your' second sinkhole in recent years, but in the meantime Sott.net has received hundreds of sinkhole reports from all over the globe. Search 'intitle: sinkhole'...

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Arrow Down

Sinkhole nearly swallows car on Manchester, New Hampshire street


WMUR9
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 05:24 UTC
Manchester, N.H. - Manchester police said a sinkhole has shut down a section of Langdon Street between Elm Street and Canal Street.

Police said the sinkhole opened up late Sunday night, nearly swallowing a car that was parked nearby. They said the sinkhole was caused by a water leak.

Crews were able to fix the leak early Monday morning, but they are still working to repair the road. Officials said Langdon Street will be shut down all day Monday.

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Igloo

Cooling Trend Calculated Precisely for the First Time


ScienceDaily
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 16:27 UTC
Ice Age
© Institute of Geography, JGUThe reconstruction provides a high-resolution representation of temperature patterns in the Roman and Medieval warm periods, but also shows the cold phases that occurred during the Migration Period and the later Little Ice Age.
An international team that includes scientists from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has published a reconstruction of the climate in northern Europe over the last 2,000 years based on the information provided by tree-rings. Professor Dr. Jan Esper's group at the Institute of Geography at JGU used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees originating from Finnish Lapland to produce a reconstruction reaching back to 138 BC. In so doing, the researchers have been able for the first time to precisely demonstrate that the long-term trend over the past two millennia has been towards climatic cooling.

"We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low," says Esper. "Such findings are also significant with regard to climate policy, as they will influence the way today's climate changes are seen in context of historical warm periods." The new study has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Was the climate during Roman and Medieval times warmer than today? And why are these earlier warm periods important when assessing the global climate changes we are experiencing today? The discipline of paleoclimatology attempts to answer such questions. Scientists analyze indirect evidence of climate variability, such as ice cores and ocean sediments, and so reconstruct the climate of the past. The annual growth rings in trees are the most important witnesses over the past 1,000 to 2,000 years as they indicate how warm and cool past climate conditions were.
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Bizarro Earth

Close Shark Encounters On U.S. Coasts

Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 11:37 UTC
Shar Attack
© YouTubeA great white shark follows a kayaker near Nauset beach in Orleans, Mass.
Great white sharks are making their presence known on both U.S. coasts now, with recent attacks reported in Massachusets, Florida and California.

One of the most dramatic encounters happened Saturday afternoon, when a 12 to 14-foot-long great white was seen following a kayaker. The image, featured in the video below, has since gone viral on the net.

For visitors at Nauset Beach in MA, it was like a scene out of the movie Jaws.

"All of a sudden, we saw this person in a kayak, and we saw a fin 10 feet from it," Lizzy Jenkins told WHDH in Boston. She and others ran onto the beach to get away from the toothy shark.

As they watched in horror, the kayaker kept moving along in a relaxed manner, unaware of what was seemingly stalking him.

"There were hundreds of people on the beach, and they were all at the edge, yelling paddle paddle, paddle!" said Dave Alexander.

Another beachgoer, Haley O'Brien, said, "Everyone was screaming."
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Bizarro Earth

Aurora Surprise Over Canada


SpaceWeather
Mon, 09 Jul 2012 13:55 UTC
July 9th began with a brief but beautiful display of auroras over North America. "I had gone out to search for noctilucent clouds, but instead I found these Northern Lights," says Robert Snache of Rama First Nation, Ontario:
Aurora
© Robert Snache
The source of the display was not an explosion on the sun, but rather a fluctuation in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). The IMF near Earth tipped south, briefly opening a crack in our planet's magnetosphere. Solar wind poured in and ignited the lights.

More auroras could be in the offing. A CME that left the sun on July 6th might deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field on July 9-10. NOAA forecasters estimate a 25% to 30% chance of polar geomagnetic storms if and when the cloud arrives.
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Meteor

Propaganda Alert! US Department of Homeland Security Warns of Terrorist Wildfire Attacks


Dark Government
Wed, 20 Jun 2012 18:56 UTC
Image
They've got to be kidding, right? Nope, apparently not. This really is an image from the most recent issue of Inspire magazine, which is reportedly produced by 'al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula'. Several articles in the magazine advocate the use of wildfires as a terrorist tactic.
The Department of Homeland Security is warning that terrorists are planning large-scale wildfires attacks near densely populated areas across the country.

An image from the most recent issue of Inspire magazine, which is reportedly produced by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Several articles in the magazine advocate the use of wildfires as a terrorist tactic.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security and fusion centers around the country are warning that terrorists are interested in using fire as a weapon, particularly in the form of large-scale wildfires near densely populated areas. A newly released DHS report states that for more than a decade "international terrorist groups and associated individuals have expressed interest in using fire as a tactic against the Homeland to cause economic loss, fear, resource depletion, and humanitarian hardship." The report notes that the tactical use of fire as a weapon is "inexpensive and requires limited technical expertise" and "materials needed to use fire as a weapon are common and easily obtainable, making preoperational activities difficult to detect and plot disruption and apprehension challenging for law enforcement."

Comment: Here is the DHS report:


Reign of Fire: Meteorites, Wildfires, Planetary Chaos and the Sixth Extinction

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