Another fogged early morning here on California’s northern coast and most-likely, too, another cool, moist day as the ‘June Gloom‘ continues on into the summer.
Up here, we’re more gloom than doom as opposed to the southern part of the state — fog is near-about a natural part of our environment.

If one could pry oneself away from the hilarious antics of Mitt Romney long enough, the dry air across the US could stifle all humor — 1,016 counties in 26 states have been designated as natural disaster areas off a massive drought within the country’s mid-section — the consequences soon to appear at grocery stores.

(Illustration found here).

And this ain’t no normal dry spell.
Via Reuters:

Nearly two-thirds of the nine-state Midwest region was in some stage of drought in the week ended July 10, up from just over 50 percent a week earlier, according to the Drought Monitor, a weekly report on drought throughout the country compiled by U.S. climate experts.
A third of the region was in severe to exceptional drought, up from about a quarter of the region a week earlier, it said.
…
The whole of Iowa was classified as abnormally dry as of July 10 and 12.7 percent of the top corn and soybean producing state was in severe drought, up from 0.8 percent the prior week.
Harder-hit Illinois, the No. 2 corn and soy state, was 66.28 percent under severe drought or worse, up from 40 percent the previous week.
Severe to exceptional drought covered 80.15 percent of Indiana, versus 68.84 percent the prior week.
Conditions in Missouri also deteriorated, with 82.54 percent of the state in severe drought or worse, compared with 78.83 percent the week before.
Rain was expected to move across the Midwest over the next 10 days, including parched southeastern areas, but coverage may be spotty, forecasters said on Thursday.

This is the explosive-laden elephant in the room: This disaster declaration makes farmers eligible for disaster assistance, but lawmakers will continue to remain silent on the root cause: Climate change. The year of record heat isn’t a chance occurrence, but comes from a climate system on steroids, “juiced” by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

New reports this week confirmed the ugly — one “…found that man-made global warming made the 2011 Texas heat and drought 20 times more likely to occur compared to the 1960s.”
How long will it take?
The powers that be are political shitheads — this view from Discovery News:

“My guess is that the GOP will largely ignore climate change this election season, in large part because I expect the Democrats won’t make it a central issue,” said Aaron McCright, a sociology professor at Michigan State University.
“The Obama Administration has never really tried to do much on the topic of climate change,” said McCright.
“So, while protecting the environment and dealing with climate change is part of the general Democratic platform, it is not something that Obama has specifically pushed in his original campaign or at any time during his presidency.”

In other words, f*uck you!

Maybe after this transfers to the grocery store shelf will eyebrows be raised a bit — all those areas infested with drought are also the biggest farming spots on earth with corn the biggest U.S. crop (valued at $76.5 billion in 2011), followed by soybeans ($35.8 billion), and wheat ($14.4 billion) and all these are getting thrashed by the heat.
Via Bloomberg: Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut its outlook for domestic corn output by 12 percent, a month after predicting a record harvest. The U.S. soybean crop will be the smallest in four years, and global wheat production will be 1 percent less than forecast in June, the agency said.
This shit moves quickly from ha-ha to ho-ho, nearly overnight.
A food crisis is coming and it, too, ain’t gonna be pretty, one that’s a real “time bomb.”

And us is to blame.
Mankind was chill for a shit-long-time, according to this at New Scientist on how the earth was on a cooling trend until we started cranking up the heavy industry, then all down hill from there:

Human activity seemingly snuffed out the natural cooling, caused by orbital wobbles, that was carrying us into the next ice age.
We may or may not regard that as good news.
But we cannot deny that our hand is still on the thermostat, and is cranking it in the wrong direction.

We’re all going to get dry gulched soon, but not any of these kinds, either.