Essays in Idleness

My thoughts had turned to “eastern” (i.e. Central) Europe, where the climate alarmists were reporting terrible storms and floods, when I received this sensible report. It was from a couple returning to Moravia from Prague. They saw rivers and creeks that had overflowed their banks, including a marvellous sight on the River Elbe (“Labe”), but nothing to suggest the end of the world.

“Inhabitants of this land living fortunately in a place rarely visited by real natural disasters have developed a certain yearning for the excitement they believe such events provide. This time their hopes were pinned to weathermen’s predictions of apocalyptic floods. I suspect they were a little disappointed, although a few houses were destroyed beyond repair. However, this showed that only a fool would place his trust in a meteorologist.”

Here, in America, too, we must expect severe weather reports, and apocalyptic climate warnings, a few times each year. These seem more plausible in the hurricane season, although (did you notice?) we’ve had only drizzle this year. So the prognosticators say, “Don’t let the quiet fool you.”

They know what we don’t know: that they are only wrong 99 percent of the time. On the 100th occasion, they may correctly predict an inundation, over perhaps one percent of their reporting area; though nothing to compare with their boasting about it. Tsunamis and asteroids would make us much happier.

The Devil, who controls the media, promotes anxiety over the wrong things: principally those that seldom happen, which we cannot possibly avoid when they do. As a reactionary “mediaevalist,” I wish that we would spend more time laughing at the Devil, than he spends laughing at us.