As the media watchdog prepares to investigate talkback host Alan Jones over his climate change coverage, Bob Beale says Jones's numbers just don't add up.

We knew Sydney radio host Alan Jones was influential, but who would have guessed he could pull off a miracle?

Not by turning water into wine, but he has managed to transform something into nothing. That something is carbon dioxide. You know? It's the gas in the bubbles in your beer.

Jones wants us to believe that what is true for a glass of grog applies equally to our entire planet - carbon dioxide is just a harmless bit of fizz that enlivens the brew then, poof! It's gone and of no further consequence.

No wonder he has agreed to be the founding patron of Australia's newest and arguably most extreme climate-science denier organisation - the paradoxically titled Galileo Movement.

This group's leaders aren't merely sceptical about mainstream climate science - they outright deny that the world is warming (the thermometers are in the wrong place). They scoff at the idea that human activity can cause warming (carbon dioxide is just plant food); and they even reject that global warming could be harmful (relax, do nothing - it's natural).

Instead, they fervently believe that it's all part of a secret ideological conspiracy by corrupt scientists using fake data to collude with greenies, socialists, libertarians and the United Nations to falsely alarm the gullible and enrich themselves by stealing our money and sovereignty. Fair dinkum.

I did not know there was a caption competition for the cartoon above like they do at the New Yorkers and used to do at the New York Times... When I did the toon at top, I was looking for a Joyce "bon mot" for which he is famous when putting his foot in it... or is it his foot in his mouth?... Then I decided against giving him a funny voice... But a smart arse in my little head argued that there should be a bubble thought nonetheless above his head where he ponders: "to pee or not to pee..."

Quite bad, but very much in line with Joyce's toilet paper humour. Any other ideas?

More than half the people in a small Iowa town fled on Monday as the Army Corps of Engineers worked to build an emergency levee to hold back the rising Missouri River, officials said.

The Missouri is expected to reach record levels in the next few weeks because of melting snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, heavy rainfall and releases of water from upstream reservoirs in Montana and North and South Dakota.

On Sunday, the river temporarily breached a levee in Atchison County, Mo., leading the authorities to direct about 600 residents in low-lying areas of Hamburg, Iowa, to leave within 24 hours. The Red Cross set up a shelter at a nearby high school.

The levee was repaired Sunday evening after National Guard troops in a Black Hawk helicopter dropped 22 half-ton bags of sand to shore it up, said John Benson, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

“It appears at this point that they’ve got it stopped,” Mr. Benson said on Monday.

But as a precaution, the Corps of Engineers was building a makeshift berm on Monday to back up the levee in case it failed or was topped by water, officials said.

Water levels in the Missouri and some tributaries have been rising for weeks. Flooding has already occurred in Montana and the Dakotas and along the Platte River in Nebraska.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/us/07flooding.html?_r=1&hpw=&pagewanted=print

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Meanwhile in the sticks:

An Arizona wildfire continued to grow on Monday morning, as firefighters contending with strong, dry winds remain unable to contain the blaze.

The Wallow fire, the third-largest in the state's history, has already consumed 301 sq miles (780 sq km).

More than 2,300 firefighters from across the country have joined the fight, with residents evacuating towns in the fire's path.

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has described the fire as "horrific".

The fire, which started on 29 May, is threatening mountain communities in the east of the state.

Smoke from the burning pine forests can be seen in the neighbouring states of New Mexico and Colorado.

Most residents of the resort town of Greer, in the White Mountains, left on Saturday, packing their belongings in to vehicles as the Wallow Fire moved closer.

The few who remain in the town, just seven miles (11km) from the fire's front line, are under a pre-evacuation order, ready to leave at short notice.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13673567

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while the food bowl will shrink:

CIUDAD OBREGÓN, Mexico — The dun wheat field spreading out at Ravi P. Singh’s feet offered a possible clue to human destiny. Baked by a desert sun and deliberately starved of water, the plants were parched and nearly dead.

Dr. Singh, a wheat breeder, grabbed seed heads that should have been plump with the staff of life. His practiced fingers found empty husks.

“You’re not going to feed the people with that,” he said.

But then, over in Plot 88, his eyes settled on a healthier plant, one that had managed to thrive in spite of the drought, producing plump kernels of wheat. “This is beautiful!” he shouted as wheat beards rustled in the wind.

Hope in a stalk of grain: It is a hope the world needs these days, for the great agricultural system that feeds the human race is in trouble.

The rapid growth in farm output that defined the late 20th century has slowed to the point that it is failing to keep up with the demand for food, driven by population increases and rising affluence in once-poor countries.

Consumption of the four staples that supply most human calories — wheat, rice, corn and soybeans — has outstripped production for much of the past decade, drawing once-large stockpiles down to worrisome levels. The imbalance between supply and demand has resulted in two huge spikes in international grain prices since 2007, with some grains more than doubling in cost.

Those price jumps, though felt only moderately in the West, have worsened hunger for tens of millions of poor people, destabilizing politics in scores of countries, from Mexico to Uzbekistan to Yemen. The Haitian government was ousted in 2008 amid food riots, and anger over high prices has played a role in the recent Arab uprisings.

Now, the latest scientific research suggests that a previously discounted factor is helping to destabilize the food system: climate change.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/science/earth/05harvest.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print