AP: Fires, Floods Perfectly Track Predictions

The 'great cow' at Racenna in great trouble,
Led by fifteen shut up at Fornase:
At Rome there will be born two double-headed monsters,
Blood, fire, flood, the greatest ones in space.

Oh, wait, they don't mean every third quatrain of quack prophet Nostradamus.

Oh dear no -- they mean science.

Floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat: From smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Iowa and the High Arctic, the planet seems to be having a midsummer breakdown. It's not just a portent of things to come, scientists say, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way.

The weather-related cataclysms of July and August fit patterns predicted by climate scientists, the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization says - although those scientists always shy from tying individual disasters directly to global warming.

Um-- yeah, they "shy away" from that. They call an easy-lay AP reporter and feed him the story, and then say "but don't quote us as claiming a connection, because that would be unscientific; but by all means -- you make the claim which we cannot."

"There is no time to waste," because societies must be equipped to deal with global warming, says British government climatologist Peter Stott.

He said modelers of climate systems are "very keen" to develop supercomputer modeling that would enable more detailed linking of cause and effect as a warming world shifts jet streams and other atmospheric currents. Those changes can wreak weather havoc.

No time to waste. It's gonna be bad, people:

The New Land is scorched in the year 20 and 9,
The people cry out for mercy, but death does prevail,
Summer’s heat and drought is unrelenting through September,
The people cannot escape, tens of thousands die.

By all means, let's get some more of that "modeling" going on supercomputers because everyone knows that supercomputers are smart and don't, say, just regurgitate your starting assumptions back to you.

Thanks to Dr. Spank.

posted by Ace at 07:21 PM

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