Simian-poop journalism, as I'm now calling it, means if you fling enough shit at someone pretty soon they begin to smell. The concept of climate change has been under prolonged, egregious attack. Would you believe it, the attack is beginning to take its toll. Fewer and fewer people are willing to acknowledge the threat of climate change; I'd say 'believe in climate' change, but they know it's happening.
George Monbiot noticed recently that the national press's tendency to sensationalise and manipulate stories about the weather (barbeque summer, sleighbell winter etc) has led the Met Office to stop issuing long-range weather reports.
Where do the likes of the Mail and the Express get their forecasts now? Monbiot's been doing some digging, and found some interesting characters:
This month, I questioned the credentials of the alternative weather forecasters used by the Daily Mail, the Express, the Telegraph and the Sun. I suggested that their qualifications were inadequate, their methods inscrutable and their results unreliable. I highlighted the work of these two companies: Exacta Weather and Positive Weather Solutions (PWS).
OK, so what are these companies like? Who does their forecasting?
A sharp-eyed reader has sent me a screenshot he took from the PWS website at the end of last year. As you can see, it shows eight people whom the company lists as its forecasters and experts. (Well, seven and a cup of tea, currently standing in for its chief assistant forecaster). They have, the website claims, produced PWS's forecasts and written its blogposts. They have also been quoted in the Daily Mail.
So who are they? A picture search suggests an impressive range of talents. Take "Serena Skye", for example, listed by PWS as a "contributing weather forecaster". She also turns out to be a mail-order bride, a hot Russian date and a hot Ukrainean date. How she finds time for it all we can only guess.
"Emma Pearson", as well as working as PWS's assistant weather forecaster, also features on 49,800 hairdressing sites, modelling an emo hairstyle. (Emo, m'lud, is said to be a form of music, popular with certain members of the younger generation).
"Kelly Smart" has a remarkably busy life: as an egg donor, a hot date, a sublet property broker in Sweden, a lawyer, an expert on snoring, eyebrow threading, safe sex, green cleaning products, spanking and air purification. Perhaps more pertinently, she's also a model whose picture is available via a company called istockphoto.
No. There's clearly nothing fishy going on and you'd have to be a LeftieLesbianMuslamicEurocrat to think otherwise.