Time magazine removes its Pakistan story — titled “Through Hell And High Water” (!) — from the cover of its U.S. edition

The Great Deluge in Pakistan passed almost unnoticed in the United States despite President Obama’s repeated assertions that the country is central to American security.  Now, with new evacuations and flooding afflicting Sindh Province and the long-term crisis only beginning in Pakistan, it has washed almost completely off American television and out of popular consciousness….

The likely tie-in of these floods (of a sort no one in Pakistan had ever experienced) with global warming was seldom mentioned. Unlike, say, BBC Radio, corporate television did not tell the small stories — of, for instance, the female sharecropper who typically has no rights to the now-flooded land on which she grew now-ruined crops thanks to a loan from an estate-owner, and who is now penniless, deeply in debt, and perhaps permanently excluded from the land.  That one of the biggest stories of the past decade could have been mostly blown off by television news and studiously ignored by the American public is a further demonstration that there is something profoundly wrong with corporate news-for-profit.  (The print press was better at covering the crisis, as was publically-supported radio, including the BBC and National Public Radio.)

The great Pakistani deluge did not exist, it seems, because it was not on television, would not have delivered audiences to products, and was not all about us.  As we saw on September 11, 2001, and again in March 2003, however, the failure of our electronic media to inform the public about centrally important global developments is itself a security threat to the republic.

That is U. Michigan history professor Juan Cole in a piece for TomDispatch.com, “The Great Pakistani Deluge Never Happened:  Don’t Tune In, It’s Not Important.”

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August tied for hottest in UAH satellite record*

Last month, NASA reported it was the hottest January-July on record, along with a terrific analysis, “July 2010 — What Global Warming Looks Like,” which noted that 2010 is “likely” to be warmest year on record.

This month continues the trend of 2010 outpacing previous years, according to NASA:

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This is a Wonk Room cross-post.

During her debate with Sen. Barbara Boxer last week, GOP Senate nominee Carly Fiorina was repeatedly asked whether she supports Proposition 23, a ballot initiative that would block implementation of AB32, the landmark California climate change law. Fiorina was non-committal at the debate, but two days later released a statement in support of Prop. 23:

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