Thousands of people in Britain were left stranded in villages and towns Monday during the worst flooding in 60 years, which Prime Minister Gordon Brown linked to climate change.
Swathes of central and western England were submerged as rivers swelled and burst their banks during four days of heavy rain, leaving thousands without clean water or electricity and facing the prospect of more rain.
The largely rural counties of Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Oxfordshire were the worst hit, forcing Royal Air Force (RAF) helicopters to evacuate around 150 people in the RAF’s biggest-ever peacetime rescue.
Speaking after a helicopter visit to the area, Brown linked the floods to climate change and pledged 200 million pounds (298 million euros, 411 million dollars) extra funding, plus a review to address future issues.
“Like every advanced industrialised country, we are coming to terms with the issues surrounding climate change,” he said.
Traditionally, Brown added, Ireland absorbed much of the rain that is now affecting the English countryside, but with a burgeoning economy “they are apparently less likely to accept rotten weather as a fatalistic matter of course,” and are instead “deflecting unwonted quantities of rain to England.” He accused them of having become a “race of mollycoddled shirkers” with “no sense of responsibility to the European community.”
Brown appealed to Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern, who succinctly replied, “Bollocks,” and ordered another pint, heightening tensions between the two island nations.
 (Cross-posted from Bloody Scott)
Not like the Irish to pass up a good soaking.
I kid!
It would have never rained in Ireland if it were not for those dastardly homo sapiens.
Is there anything that cannot be blamed on global warming, or now “climate change” ?
What a fucking convenient term, climate change. Anytime the weather gets colder, hotter, more snow, less snow, more tornadoes, less tornadoes, literally anything, they can blame it on man.
Given Brown’s prior usage of language, it is surprising that he was so willing to come out and lay blame at the feet of climate change. He should have referred to it as “any variance whatsoever in the Earth’s climate as a result of noxious gasses, combustion engines, and civilization in general.”
*groan*
Now lazar and drsteve will be along to write lengthy back and forth tomes on data stuffing or physics twisting or rounded curveball scatter streams and other such sundries that will be like watching “Hero” without the subtitles.
Damn my ignorance!!!!!
Good on you, Bernie Ahern. Bollocks is a fine word.
God decided to give the Irish a bit of joy, by letting Paddy Harrington pull that out yesterday, or rather, gave me a bit of joy in allowing Sergio to puke all over himself and blow the Open Championship.
JD:
It botht the convenience and the propoganda value of AGW that ir is the mutogenic metal of issues. Everything climate related can be blamed on AGW.
Didn’t get the memo from the Goracle?
Global warming. What can’t it do!
The above sentence brought to you by my Ivy League education.
The Ivy League!! Pretentious and Overrated!!!
Funny. We’re in a world where, in spite of pictures and witness accounts, it’s not only perfectly acceptable but laudable to question whether planes were flown into the WTC on 9/11, yet we’re expected to believe, with the entirety of our hearts and minds, that man controls global cooling warming Climate Change and not question the prevailing orthodoxy of the last 30 seconds and its claim to be the keeper of immutable truths…
I do not get it. Is AGW now responsible for cooling as well? Call me crazy, but blaming cooling on warming seems preposterous.
Before humans started burning stuff on a wholesale basis, the climate stayed exactly the same all the time. Yup. Never changed at all. The ice age? Proto-humans making too many fires. The warming after the ice age? Proto-humans making too many fires. The little ice age that wiped out the grape crop in Europe and made everyone switch to beer instead? Humans making too many fires. The warming that followed? Humans making too many fires.
See how it works?
God he’s dumb.
Yep….St. Paddy….has to be….getting the bloody Brits back for the snake thing…
If it wasn’t for the obscene amount of money spent already and about to be spent shortly , this would all be good for a great good laugh .
So why’d it rain so fucking much 60 years ago? And why not since?
TW: Grover bones Zoe?
Of course the last time it rained this much in the British Isles, the potato crop in Ireland failed, and the reverbrations of that can be seen in the US today. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Teddy Kennedy.
So mock if you like the prophesies of Global Disaster, but you have been warned!
Growing up, I remember being told that when you could see the hills of Clare across Galway Bay, it was about to rain. When you couldn’t, it was.
Hi Big Bang Hunter,
St. Patrick was actually English. To the extent that you could be English circa 400 AD, that is. He was captured by Irish pirates and forced to work as a slave laborer in Ireland. After he escaped slavery he returned the favor by foisting Christianity on the Irish.
One more reason to hate the Brits.
Patrick
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AGW is like the Hawai’ian word ‘aloha’, the Smurfish word ‘smurf’, or the Marklar word ‘marklar’. It means everything, and therefore nothing.