I'm still not hearing either presidential candidate talk about global warming. Oh wait, Mitt Romney did make a joke about it - does that count? In any event, it sure seems like it's something voters are ready to discuss in a serious way, especially in the central part of the country, where houses are now falling apart:

Carol DeVaughan assumed her suburban St. Louis home was simply settling when cracks appeared in the walls. When she noticed huge gaps between her fireplace and ceiling, and that her family room was starting to tilt, she knew she had bigger problems.

Like thousands of other Americans getting stuck with huge repair bills, DeVaughan learned that the intense drought baking much of the country's lawns, fields and forests this summer has also been sucking the moisture from underground, causing shifting that can lead to cracked basements and foundations, as well as damage above ground. Repairs often cost tens of thousands of dollars and can even top $100,000, and they are rarely covered by insurance, as shocked homeowners have been discovering.

DeVaughan, a retired Presbyterian minister, said she expects it will cost more than $25,000 to fix the split-level home in Manchester, Mo., where she's lived for 27 years.

"I had retired," said DeVaughan, 70, who has stayed busy filling in at the pulpit for vacationing pastors. "I guess I'll keep working."

Home repair businesses, especially those specializing in repairs to basements and foundations, can barely keep up with demand. Drought-related home damage is reported in 40 of the 48 contiguous states, and experts say damage to homes could exceed $1 billion.

Dan Jaggers, a board member of the Basement Health Association, a Dayton, Ohio trade group for basement and foundation repair businesses, said this year's drought is probably the worst for homes since the late 1950s. Houses in the central United States - from Louisiana up through the Dakotas - are getting the worst of it, but significant damage is being reported across the country, he said.

"It's not only basements but crawl spaces and slabs," Jaggers said. "Wherever the soil is interacting with the foundations."

The lack of moisture in the ground has been causing the soil to crack open and pull away from homes' concrete bases.

It's strange, isn't it? Politicians have no problem telling us we need to sacrifice to fix imaginary problems (like the deficit), but they just can't bring themselves to talk about energy conservation, even in a climate emergency.

A year ago, Mitt Romney said he believed in man-made global warming. Not so much lately!

I wonder if any of the moderators in the presidential debates will ask any questions about global warming, because it's really strange that neither candidate will discuss the cause of our current profound drought. Via Salon:

A much-anticipated crop report from the USDA released Friday confirmed what everyone who has been gasping at pictures of parched fields already guessed: The drought is hammering corn and soybean production. Corn yield estimates are in free fall. Three months ago, the USDA was predicting 166 bushels per acre — today, that number dropped to 123.And those numbers will continue to fall. The drought is ongoing; in the areas that have already been hit worst by high temperatures and lack of rainfall, conditions are continuing to deteriorate.Farmers may well have to adapt to the new abnormal. According to a new paper published this week in Nature, climate change will result in more of the same:

I conclude that the observed global aridity changes up to 2010 are consistent with model predictions, which suggest severe and widespread droughts in the next 30–90 years over many land areas resulting from either decreased precipitation and/or increased evaporation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who believes scientists and their stupid “models,” anyway? Certainly not the politicians whom voters might want to entrust with the job of protecting America’s agricultural bounty from rising temperatures. Neither Obama nor Romney has dared mentionthe words “climate change” as they barnstorm around the country.

Neither man is ignoring the drought. Both candidates are talking about how Congress should get its act together and pass a farm bill to speed aid to farmers affected by the drought — a job, by the way, that puts Romney in the rhetorically challenging position of simultaneously advocating less government intrusion in the agricultural sector while steering billions of disaster aid to farmers. But connecting the dots between the warmest July in the North American historical record and human activities? Not a whisper from either Democrats or Republicans.

Now remember, a lot of other foods are dependent on corn. The bulk of corn grown in the U.S. is consumed by livestock, poultry, and fish production. Approximately 12% of the U.S. corn crop ends up in foods that are either consumed directly or indirectly, and has many industrial uses including ethanol. So this is not good news at all - and will most likely translate into much higher food costs. (Like milk and cheese.)

Good thing the administration has taken such bold moves to prevent further global warming, huh?

CHICAGO, July 17 (Reuters) - U.S. corn production has shrunk 7 percent versus the government's downgraded estimate a week ago, a Reuters poll found on Tuesday, with a worsening drought likely to cause more damage before the month is out.

As the worst drought since 1956 begins to expand to the northern and western Midwest, areas that had previously been spared, analysts are slashing corn yield estimates by the hour. Some analysts are also starting to cut their forecasts on the number of acres that will be harvested as farmers opt to plough under their fields to claim insurance.

What began the season as a potentially record corn crop as farmers planted the biggest area since 1937, may now be the smallest in at least five years. Soybeans, which enter their key pod-setting phase later then corn, are increasingly at risk. The poll of 13 analysts pegged the average estimated corn yield at 137.2 bushels per acre, down 6 percent from USDA's current forecast of 146 bushels.

The USDA dropped its yield estimate by an unprecedented 20 bushels per acre in its report on July 11. Corn production was pegged at 12.077 billion bushels, the smallest in 5 years, down 6.9 percent from USDA's outlook. "We're losing more yield with the additional stress now in the northern areas which up until now had been pretty good," said Shawn McCambridge, analyst for Jefferies Bache.

When you see some of the crazy "issues" being raised in this presidential election instead of leadership on climate change, doesn't it make you want to scream? Not only are we going to have massive crop failures as a result of this ongoing drought, we aren't even able to ship the crops we have when shipping channels like the formerly-mighty Mississippi are drying up:

Companies operating along the Mississippi River are seeing a drastic cut in business as severe drought lowers water levels and makes shipping increasingly difficult.The drought, which now covers more than 1,000 counties across the US, has dropped water levels 50 feet below last year’s levels in some places. Last winter’s lack of snow, the absence of any major tropical storms from the Gulf of Mexico, sweltering temperatures, and the lack of rain this spring and summer are to blame for the shallow water.

The Mississippi is a major trade conduit through the central U.S. Barges, which are often cheaper to operate than trains or trucks, carry goods such as grain, corn, soybeans, steel, rubber, coffee, fertilizer, coal, and petroleum products in and out of the interior of the country.

As the water levels fall, barges have run aground near Vicksburg, Mississippi, where the water is already less than 5 feet deep, and shipping companies have been forced to curtail their business. The Wall Street Journal reports:

‘It’s causing headaches all up and down the river system right now,’ said Martin Hettel, senior manager of bulk sales for AEP River Operations, a St. Louis-based barge company.Mark Fletcher, owner of Ceres Barge Line of East St. Louis, Ill., said about 70% of his 220 barges aren’t being used now. First, the drought cut crops, reducing demand for shipping. Now, low water levels are making it more costly to ship.

‘It’s not good if you are in the barge business right now,’ he said. ‘In the last 60 days, you’ve watched a whole lot of money go out the window.’

Some river ports have been forced to close temporarily or shut down parts of their operations because of the low water levels. At the port of Rosedale in the Mississippi Delta, port director Robert Maxwell Jr. said water levels are about 50 feet below what they were last year, when flooding shut down the port. If the water falls any lower, there was a ‘high likelihood’ he would have to close, he said. One of the port’s public loading docks is inoperable, with equipment normally in the water now hanging the air. The Army Corps of Engineers is supposed to come this week to dredge, where heavy equipment is used to dig out sediment from waterways to make them passable for shipping.

This particular grass was not a GMO strain, the problem is actually more likely to be caused by global warming. That's because certain kinds of grass can form prussic acid under "stressed" conditions - like drought:

(CBS News) ELGIN, Texas - A mysterious mass death of a herd of cattle has prompted a federal investigation in Central Texas.

Preliminary test results are blaming the deaths on the grass the cows were eating when they got sick, reports CBS Station KEYE.

The cows dropped dead several weeks ago on an 80-acre ranch owned by Jerry Abel in Elgin, just east of Austin.

Abel says he's been using the fields for cattle grazing and hay for 15 years. "A lot of leaf, it's good grass, tested high for protein - it should have been perfect," he told KEYE correspondent Lisa Leigh Kelly.

The grass is a genetically-modified form of Bermuda known as Tifton 85 which has been growing here for 15 years, feeding Abel's 18 head of Corriente cattle. Corriente are used for team roping because of their small size and horns.

"When we opened that gate to that fresh grass, they were all very anxious to get to that," said Abel.

Three weeks ago, the cattle had just been turned out to enjoy the fresh grass, when something went terribly wrong.

"When our trainer first heard the bellowing, he thought our pregnant heifer may be having a calf or something," said Abel. "But when he got down here, virtually all of the steers and heifers were on the ground. Some were already dead, and the others were already in convulsions."

Within hours, 15 of the 18 cattle were dead.

"That was very traumatic to see, because there was nothing you could do, obviously, they were dying," said Abel.

Preliminary tests revealed the Tifton 85 grass, which has been here for years, had suddenly started producing cyanide gas, poisoning the cattle.

"Coming off the drought that we had the last two years ... we're concerned it was a combination of events that led us to this," Dr. Gary Warner, an Elgin veterinarian and cattle specialist who conducted the 15 necropsies, told Kelly.

What is more worrisome: Other farmers have tested their Tifton 85 grass, and several in Bastrop County have found their fields are also toxic with cyanide. However, no other cattle have died.

So will Texans still chant the right-wing "no such thing as global warming" mantra, or will they finally wise up and start demanding their officials do something to save what's left of our ability to survive on the planet? Oh, and grow crops, too:

Electricity officials in heatwave-hit Texas have warned of impending rolling blackouts from power shortages as the U.S. state struggles to cope with the relentless scorching temperatures.

Texans have turned to air conditioners in huge numbers in a bid to beat one of the hottest summers on record in America's second most populous state.

But bosses for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) say the soaring power demand in the face of the brutal heatwave has left the state one power plant shut-down away from rolling blackouts.

Temperatures in Texas are currently topping 100F (37.8C) and have been soaring for well over a month. Record highs have also been recorded this week in nearby states Oklahoma and Arkansas as the relentless heatwave spreads across southern America.

In Forth Smith and Little Rock, Arkansas, the mercury hit 115F on Wednesday.

ERCOT, which runs the power grid for most of Texas, cut power to some large industrial users after electricity demand hit three consecutive records this week alone. The grid operator now faces rolling blackouts similar to those which hit Texas during a bitter cold snap in February.

In Dallas, Texas, a pensioner died from 'heat-related' causes after her air conditioning unit was stolen from her house.

Power usage in ERCOT reached its highest level ever on Wednesday at 68,294 megawatts, almost four per cent over last year's peak.

The Texas grid faces at least one more day of extreme stress before temperatures cool slightly over the weekend.