It always happens when you try to do some good, doesn't it?
You try to help an old lady cross the road, and she looks at you harshly and says, "So I look old to you?" You tell that special someone that you love her, and she tells you that she's actually enjoying the company of your best friend.
Such is the painful, ironic circumstance at the United Kingdom's Met Office. ("Met" is short for "meteorological.")
You see, according to the Daily Mail, the agency's large weather brains decided to invest in an even larger IBM brain in order to accurately predict gaseous happenings of climate change.
I have no reason to believe these miserable wet people are from the Department of Communities and Local Government.
(Credit: CC Stevie-B/Flickr)This metal mastermind can make a quadrillion calculations in the time in takes you to utter a consonant. In the technical world, this is "petaflop" performance. But it might as well have been a Fosbury Flop to some buzz killers.
For along came some bureaucrats from the Department of Communities and Local Government, declaring that the incredibly intelligent hulk is one of the worst polluters in the United Kingdom. For some reason, they were looking at the emissions in all of the nation's public edifices.
All right, so the climate-calculating colossus produces about 75 percent of its own carbon footprint. I fancy that there are several members of Parliament who may do the same. And the supercomputer really can see into the future, whereas some members may not be able to see much beyond lunch.
The beautifully named Barry Grommett from the Met Office told the Mail: "We would be throwing ourselves back into the Dark Ages of weather forecasting, if we withdrew our reliance on supercomputing. It's as simple as that."
Quite. The U.K. bureaucrats have done so much in their attempt to return to the Dark Ages (before climate change?) that the weather men must make a stand.
I always thought a stray meteorite would just smack into the world in, oh, 2020, and that would be that.
Or, perhaps, around 2015, everyone would become a celebrity and have a simultaneous nervous breakdown, brought on by excessive drug abuse, causing a Koresh-like disappearance of humanity.
But no, the year to prepare all your insurance policies for is 2030.
By that year, according to Professor John Beddington, the U.K. government's chief scientist, food and energy demand will have risen by 50 percent and fresh water by 30 percent. And the global population will have risen to around 8.3 billion.
(Credit:
CC L*u*z*a Lack of Inspiration)
Professor Beddington said at the Sustainable Development UK conference today that it will be a "perfect storm." Because today's storm is, of course, so frightfully flawed.
Here's the good news. For the United Kingdom, at least: "We're relatively fortunate in the U.K. There may not be shortages here, but we can expect prices of food and energy to rise."
Yes, Britain may, again, rule the world. Now that would, indeed, be perfect.
It's not that I'm pessimistic, but does Professor Beddington really believe that, given the way things have been going lately, there will even be a world by 2030? I worry that he doesn't watch enough TV.
Live for today, people. Tomorrow may not be another day after all.
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