From where I’ve been sitting – with cool breezes, sunny blue skies and mountain greenery – I’d say Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction for an early spring in 2016 was correct. Now I don’t live in western Pennsylvania, so your call may be different.
Even so, Phil’s accuracy rating is given as 39%. (Several websites quote this figure; for example, see Livescience.com). Speaking as a one-day wonder has-been in the WxChallenge (a weather forecasting competition) I’d say Phil’s score as a general forecaster is not very good. But, in his position as (to quote a character in Ground Hog Day) “seer of seers, prognosticator of prognosticators” he’s going well. Certainly Phil the Punxsutawney Prophet scores higher than the Des Moines Doomsayer, HWA.
In the pages the Painful Truth, some 300 false prophecies of HWA and his minions are listed. And that doesn’t include those of prophecies of splinter leaders who followed in his wake. But – how many of his predictions actually have come to pass?
In the words of HWA’s grandson, he was touted as an insightful prophetic wonder. From memory, I think he was credited with about three or four good calls. To begin with, the USA never had a direct military conflict with Russia. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, and limit that to the now defunct USSR, and give him a point.
Germany reunited. Well, the majority of it was, but if HWA’s WWII prophecies had come to pass, Germany wouldn’t have any need to reunite. But, give him another point.
Trouble in the Middle East – ignoring his early claim that the modern nation of Israel wasn’t going to happen, give another point. And give him a bonus point for the “prophecy” of the Six-Day War, which he wasn’t expecting to happen in 1967. And let’s ignore the Radio Jerusalem contract.
So we’ll give HWA four points for the accuracy of his undated predictions. Out of 300, that makes his accuracy rating less than 2%. Maybe he was better than that, but nowhere near Phil’s score.
Of course, Phil makes specific weather predictions. In the standard repertoire of titles in the splinters, one may find a booklet, article or sermon with a title like God Controls the Weather. The tone used by different COGs varies from God using weather favors or disasters for specific reasons, to God micromanaging the climate down to every drop of rain that falls (whether a flower grows or not).
The best splinter “predictions” for weather events – apart from generalized future events – have been in hindsight: why things occurred. So we are told Katrina hit New Orleans because it was a wicked city, drought in California was because legalizing same-sex marriage, and so on. And I’m not going near the different takes on Global Climate Change. They seem to forget that prophets such as Elijah warmed specifically what would happen before it happened.
So perhaps God actually has Phil’s ear – he made a prediction that came to pass, and not an excuse for something that already happened.
Shortly after this was posted, Bob Thiel put up an article about COP21 – a conference in Paris, part of the UN Framework on Climate Change. The highlight was that the US and China will both sign an agreement to limit emission of certain greenhouse gases. This goes back to Kyoto, where China was exempted, and the US refused to sign due to China’s exemption.
Possibly playing on the Pope’s urging international cooperation on climate change, Bob claims this is an example of man’s futile last-chance attempt to solve the world’s problems, and another step in the New World Order, the Universal Agenda, etc. Attempts to solve large problems are shown as denying the Kingdom. So, it’s better to do nothing, rather than clean up our own mess?
A small factual correction – in a short video, Bob lists some weather events: “tornadoes, tsunamis, hurricanes”. Sorry, a tsunami results from a sudden movement of the seafloor, usually due to an earthquake or volcanic eruption, or a large undersea landslide – or the odd massive meteorite, not from extreme weather.
There are certain problems affecting modern mankind that more or less require a global effort in order to manage them. Pollution, and the future of the planet is certainly one of these. Most nations act in their own interest, and expect all others to sacrifice. So the problem becomes, how do you launch such global management, without ushering in everyone’s worst definition of the new world order?
Anyone who has ever read Revelation or the secular book “1984” is going to be paranoid regarding a global, big brother type government. The world has already been time-bombed regarding global solutions.
BB
BB said:”So the problem becomes, how do you launch such global management, without ushering in everyone’s worst definition of the new world order?”
We could all help to avoid that problem, if we all choose to better understand the other side’s information in contrast to the info we haven’t discovered yet through science.
DBP