This winter, the UK has experienced some of the wettest and stormiest weather ever recorded.These storms and floods raise the question about whether or not they are linked to climate change. Today, a more pertinent question has arisen:
Why did the Met Office actually forecast a dry winter with below average precipitation?
To answer this question we need to recall the two very dry winters of 2011 and 2012.—Benny Peiser,The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 25 February 2014
Its predictions of a “barbecue summer” heralded one of the most miserable holiday seasons ever.
Now the Exeter-based Met Office is scrambling to reclaim its reputation after it was revealed that the agency predicted a “drier than usual” winter – ahead of one of the wettest, stormiest periods in living memory.
As Prime Minister David Cameron was urged to lead a revolution in flood planning by a panel of experts, the weather forecasters were explaining how they got it so very wrong.
“It’s a bit like the science-equivalent of factoring the odds on a horse race.”—Western Daily Press, 23 February 2014
The shocking truth is that these floods were not a natural disaster, but the result of deliberate policy… This was where November’s forecast came in, because it led the Environment Agency deliberately to flood Southlake Moor in the expectation of a dry winter. When those December and January rains poured down, this large expanse of water-sodden ground blocked the draining to the already horribly silted-up Parrett of a very much larger area of farmland to the east.—Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 23 February 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment