A miserable domestic agriculture harvest in 2007 due to heavy floods in August is being fingered for the spike in the price of food and severe food shortages. ‘’Based on the most recent government estimates, total cereal production in 2007 is about three million tonnes, a significant reduction from the four million tonnes of the previous year,’’ states the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

The country saw a drastic drop in maize—650,000 tonnes less, 33 percent down from the previous year—and rice—400,000 tonnes less, or 25 percent down from the previous year, adds the Rome-based U.N. agency. ‘’With this low 2007 production, the cereal deficit for the 2007/2008 marketing year is estimated at 1.6 million tonnes.’’

Note that biofuels is conspicuously absent as a cause.

This may be a year in which many things change.  The governments of the worlds insistence in tampering with markets to artificially increase the demand for biofuels plus massive subsidies to farmers has no doubt caused harm.  However, that harm is often overstated:

Ethanol is an easy target for the sensationalists. The pun is more accurate than the accusation: A maze of interrelated factors affect the price of maize and most other foodstuffs. The growing economies of India and China require energy, and demand from these two Asian giants as well as sustained demand from other advanced economies has spurred a long-term rise in oil prices. Higher oil prices bump food prices; it takes energy to raise and transport food.

And that does mention weather and the effects that this has had.

Finally, Angela Merkel ways in, Bad policy, not biofuel, drive food prices

Bad agricultural policies and changing eating habits in developing nations are primarily to blame for rising food prices, not biofuel production as some critics claim, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday.

Environmentalists and humanitarian groups have stepped up campaigning against biofuels, arguing they divert production away from food and animal feed while contributing to sharp rises in the price of cereals and milk products.

But Merkel, whose country is Europe’s largest biofuel producer, said the rise in food prices was not mainly due to biofuels but to “inadequate agricultural policies in developing countries” as well as “insufficient forecasts of changes in nutritional habits” in emerging markets.

“If you travel to India these days, then a main part of the debate is about the ‘second meal’,” Merkel said.

“People are eating twice a day, and if a third of one billion people in India do that, it adds up to 300 million people. That’s a large part of the European Union,” she said.

“And if they suddenly consume twice as much food as before and if 100 million Chinese start drinking milk too, then of course our milk quotas become skewed, and much else too,” she said

The truth is the primary causes of rising food and oil prices are systemic in origin.  There is no quick fix.

The best we can do is reduce government interference with the market, rather than mandate (as our Democratic candidates want) more government interference.

China has already overtaken the US as the world’s “biggest polluter”, a report to be published next month says.  The research suggests the country’s greenhouse gas emissions have been underestimated, and probably passed those of the US in 2006-2007.

Could you have a better illustration of why climate treaty models that don’t address CO2 emissions from developing nations are deeply flawed?  If human-generated CO2 is such a threat, how does ignoring the primary region where emission rates are increasing make even a little bit of sense???

Even for people who are willing to accept the claims of the global warming advocates, the fact that so many of them supported the Kyoto protocols should give one pause.  If they are this wrong on this one issue, the crucial issue of what do we do about it, what does this say about their judgement of the underlying science?

I understand it was shot by a US soldier serving as an advisor for an almost all Iraqi patrol moving into Basra at night time.  Some amazing footage.

In case you guys haven’t heard, the battle is not going well for the Mahdi Army.  They are outnumbered and outgunned and have lost a significant portion of their force strength.

Via Instapundit, it is reported that “Six days after the Iraqi government launched Operation Knights’ Charge in Basrah against the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed Shia terror groups, Muqtada al Sadr, the Leader of the Mahdi Army, has called for his fighters to lay down their weapons and cooperate with Iraqi security forces.”

In layman’s terms, that’s called “surrender”.

I have no doubt the battle will go on, there are many who no longer fall Sadr and will wish to martyr themselves pointlessly.  But their ignoring his order to surrender will only further undermine his position beyond what this gamble of his to resist governmental forces has already cost him.

I’m sure the liberals in the crowd can conjure reasons why this is bad news, though.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The number of Iraqi citizens not killed by Saddam Hussein has reached 200,000, the U.S. military said on Monday, just days after the fifth anniversary of a war that President George W. Bush says the United States is on track to win.

The U.S. military said in a statement that the grim milestone was reached when 200 civilians were not murdered by Iraq’s tyrannical dictator late on Sunday when no large groups of people were rounded up and shot in the head for making statements critical of their government. No one was wounded in the non-attack.

Non-tragic non-victims of yet another Saddam Hussein non-killing spree.

The non-deaths came on a day when the very dead Uday and Qusay Hussein were unable to pick women at random to rape and slaughter, owing largely to their inability to breathe, circulate blood, or stop being eaten by bugs as their bodies rotted in the ground. [...]

Read the whole thing.

I mean it.

I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership’s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions. I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won’t make the same mistake again.

[...]

As I noted, I initially believed you shared that goal. But I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party’s effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn’t always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, Senator.

Sincerely,

John McCain
United States Senate

What is the “new” that Obama wants to bringing to the presidency again?

PRINCETON, NJ—A sizable proportion of Democrats would vote for John McCain next November if he is matched against the candidate they do not support for the Democratic nomination. This is particularly true for Hillary Clinton supporters, more than a quarter of whom currently say they would vote for McCain if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee.

I would guess this is because Hillary is viewed as more moderate than Obama, so McCain is picking up the moderate Democrat vote.  Shades of McGovern or Mondale?

Berlin - German soldiers are overweight, smoke too much and do not engage in enough sports, according to a report published Tuesday by the parliamentary commissioner for the defence force. “Male and female soldiers are too fat, partake little in sports and pay too little attention to what they eat,” Reinhold Robbe said in his official report to parliament. He called the situation “shocking.”

There is plenty more, but the historical record speaks volumes.

Atlantic Storm landfalls:

Eastern Pacific Storms.:

In either case, the pattern is a reduced number of storms making landfall overtime.  The link above also summarizes the theoretical findings that explain why one would expect this to be the case.

Sunspot Cycle Predictions Solar physicists believe the speed of a massive circulating current of hot plasma within the Sun predicts the amplitudes of sunspot cycles approximately twenty years into the future. In recent years that speed has become lower than ever before observed. Based on the plasma-speed/future-cycle-amplitude theory, a team led by physicist Mausumi Dikpata of the National Center for Atmospheric Research predicts Cycle 24 will be intense. NASA solar physicist David Hathaway agrees, but predicts Cycle 25 will be extraordinarily weak. Dikpati’s team prediction for Cycle 24 is shown above in pink. Hathaway’s Cycle 24 and 25 predictions are shown in red.

Global Cooling comes back in a big way

Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago—and it signaled a solar event known as a “Maunder Minimum,” along with the start of what we now call the “Little Ice Age.”