The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Bottom Stories of the Day
- “Kennedy Remembered for His Visits to D.C. Dog Park”–headline, WTOP-FM Web site (Washington), Aug. 27
- “Al Qaeda Video Calls on Muslims to Support Militants”–headline, CNN.com, Aug. 28
But Can It Predict the Winner of Last Year’s World Series?
“The Met Office has caused a storm of controversy after it was revealed their £30million [about $49 million] supercomputer designed to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters,” reports London’s Daily Mail. The Met Office is Britain’s equivalent of the National Weather Service, though with a greater emphasis on so-called climate change:
The massive machine–the UK’s most powerful computer with a whopping 15 million megabytes of memory–was installed in the Met Office’s headquarters in Exeter, Devon.
It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run–enough to power more than 1,000 homes.
However the Met Office’s HQ has now been named as one of the worst buildings in Britain for pollution–responsible for more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
It says 75 per cent of its carbon footprint is produced by the super computer meaning the machine is officially one of the country’s least green machines. ….
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.
