If Hurricane Charley has taught us anything, it's that we need to just get rid of the National Weather Service. I know a lot of people would disagree with this, but I'm only basing my statement on the pronouncement of the governor of Florida, one Jeb Bush. The exact quote here was:
"God doesn't follow the linear projections of computer models. This is God's way of telling us that he's almighty and we're mortal."
I'll just bet that made a lot of new fans of God in Florida. But seriously, let's sit down and think this statement through a bit.
The day before Charley landed in Florida, the National Weather Service and the Hurricane center were working hard to gather as much data as they could on what was happening in the storm. The information was used to feed computerized models of the storm in an effort to predict what its path would be. After all, it was a huge storm, capable of killing an awful lot of people and causing huge amounts of damage. There's nothing you can do about damage to most property. Just board things up and get out of the way. But people can and should be moved to safety. So the meteorologists worked as best they could to figure out as close as they could who was in the greatest danger.
That Friday morning, the storm veered to the east, and hit a spot of Florida about 100 miles south of the original prediction. 20 people, who didn't bother paying attention to the hurricane warnings in their area, were killed. The next day, the governor, and possibly future president, said the quote above.
So what was this man saying? It sounds to me like he thinks God wanted to tell people in Florida that he can do whatever he damn well pleases with a hurricane. To make the point, he moved the storm away from Tampa, where most folks had evacuated, and deaths would be minimized, and purposely killed 20 people living in mobile homes, just to make a point. Good one.
If I was God, I'd cordially ask Jeb Bush to stop trying to be my press agent. He sucks at the job.
But look at the first sentence. The man has not the first clue what he's talking about. Who told him that weather modeling software is "linear"? But that's beside the main point here. Anyone who takes this idiot Bush seriously really ought to think a little more deeply about this. The logical conclusion to be drawn here is that weather is by nature completely unpredictable, being directed by a being that is so capricious that it would just as soon kill 20 people with a storm as to make it rain gently for an hour to water the flowers.
If the weather is under the control of a being that likes to "send messages" to people using rain and what-not, there's no point in trying to predict the weather. The world becomes a place of unpredictable chaos, and humans need to cower in fear at the whims of this being in the clouds that has notihng better to do than juggle deadly stoms in order to talk to us.
I don't know about you, but I sure don't want any religious idiots of this sort to be in charge of this country. Listening to them, we will end up tossing away all science as worthless, and become convinced that nothing can be predicted or understood. We have enough problems, thank you.