Interesting piece on The Times today by Philip Eden regarding the way certain weather events are "spun" to give the impression that what is happening with our climate is somehow unusual - which it isn't.
Take the summer floods of 2007, which turned Tewkesbury into an island. Much was made of the claim that May, June and July comprised the wettest such three-month period in 242 years of records.
Sounds truly exceptional, doesn't it? It allows ministers to use the U-word - "unprecedented". But it was only the wettest May-to-July period. If you look at all the three-month periods on record, May-July 2007 was merely the 42nd wettest.
Eden article actually laments the way the various agencies - he cites the Met Office and the Environment Agency - who should be providing "objective information" - are "selecting the statistics their political masters want to hear" - something he describes as "data dredging".
Eden attributes this politicised manipulation of the weather stats as being motivated by government wanting to disguise their failure to get to grip with certain tasks - such as flood defences - which is very true, but it is also due to the fact that they want to portray our climate as becoming more "extreme" so that can justify more taxation on the basis of "climate change".
Calling such events "unprecedented" provides an excuse for failure for those we pay to maintain the infrastructure. Sadly, as someone once said: "Thirty years ago, these people had the grace to look thoroughly uncomfortable when they lied to us; now, they lie with a smile on their face."
They lie with a smile because they think they can blame someone else - us!
But it is still lying.
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