This not the diary I had planned, or the time I planned on posting it, but it looks to me like the fecal matter is hitting the air handler, and I felt a warning should be given. Excuse the formatting, as I am a relative novice at this, and I find the subject matter of what I must convey terrifying.
Well it's hot folks, I can't even imagine what things are like in a big heat sink like NYC, but the real area of concern, crossing all boundaries of pigeon holed interests should be rural. The deaths and heat strokes in the cities is getting all the press, but what of rural america's response to global warning and the "unusually hot summer". Well, things are worse than in the cities, and the first time most people are going to notice that is probably this fall.
To start off, please realize that everything in modern agribiz is tied to everything else, which makes any story hard to relate, as each connection feels like a digression.
Dairy animals dying and drying off in california. to date there have been 16K+ heat related animal deaths, and production losses (for the next 12 months) of 40% normal production. This relates to the north east, in that recent production increases in california and the midwest (and a great ad campaign) have resulted in the lowest milk prices (paid to farmers) since 1979. Earlier this summer, before the worst of the heat, the northeast also got record rainfall, right when the first of the forage crops should have been coming in. This resulted in a 30-40% loss of these feed crops, and a projected loss of 30-40% of the late cutting crops. Still following? To simplify, california put the northeast out of business (with an assist from the weather) then gets driven down to 60% production for the next year by runaway climate/weather...what's it all mean? I believe you are going to see sharply higher dairy and dairy product prices starting next month, and on going for the next year....
But wait, there's more... courtesy of tacet we have http://www.dailykos.com/... ...and guess what, weather since early june is worse than usual, at least if you are a cornstalk. Current word of mouth has the loss at 40%+ ...you are probably saying now, this doesn't apply to me I'm a vegetarian, or so what...I don't eat corn. Wrong again, maybe you are vegan, but your neighbors probably aren't. According to the USDA, americans consume 3 lbs of corn per day, in the form of meat, chicken, processed products, and well, corn. If the price of all of these products doubles (or more), you are going to be hard pressed to find much affordable anything in your neighborhood grab and gulp.
And lets not forget, the outstanding and politically approved method for getting free of foreign oil dependance...that's corn too.
Unfortunately all of the USA's eggs are in one agribiz basket, and agribiz has been snipping away at the safety net of local farms for so long that the net looks more like a cobweb
In summary, even without the coup de grace of a gulf hurricane, The economy will be great, as long as you don't have to eat, or drive, or well, LIVE kinda sums it up I think.