The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Because Only Living Birds Can Fly
“Why Did 4,000 Dead Birds Drop From the Sky in Arkansas”–headline, Washington Post website, Jan. 3
Chilling Effect
The Met Office, Britain’s counterpart to the National Weather Service, “warned ministers to expect an ‘exceptionally cold winter’ but then kept the prediction secret from the public,” London’s Daily Mail reports:
The forecaster decided not to reveal the information because it was embarrassed after wrongly predicting a ‘barbecue summer’ in 2009, BBC analyst Roger Harrabin said. . . .
The disclosure raises questions over whether transport authorities and councils could have been better prepared for the cold snap which brought chaos before Christmas.
As temperatures fell to a record low, train services were badly disrupted, roads were covered by snow and thousands were stranded at Heathrow as flights were cancelled and the airport struggled to clear the backlog.
This is the same Met Office that, as we noted in December 2009, persuaded 1,700 scientists to sign a petition attesting to the “professional integrity” of the climate scientists whose shenanigans were laid bare by the Climategate emails.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
