Nothing makes you feel smarter than getting a few predictions right. While my predictions about what would happen following Hurricane Irene weren’t exactly Nostradamus-esque, it was interesting to see a few of them come true.

 

On the Friday before the storm I made four simple predictions. The first was that someone will claim Irene was a direct result of global warming. The second was that Rush Limbaugh will use Irene to attack the global warming crowd. I also predicted a religious extremist would say Irene is punishment for “bad behavior.” My last prediction was that this storm would somehow be blamed on President Obama.

 

So how accurate was I? Well let’s just say that if this were baseball, I’d be in the Hall of Fame. The prediction that seemed to generate the strongest reaction was the fact that I said people will say Irene was a result of global warming. I felt especially vindicated when Bill Nye the Science Guy went on television and said that Irene was a result of a warming planet. For the record, I never said the storm and climate change were unrelated, I just said someone would make the argument. Nye stepped up to the plate, though Fox Business gave it their best, non-biased effort, to make him uncomfortable in the process.

 

My prediction about Rush Limbaugh was a bit of a different story. Limbaugh has been his vocal self following the hurricane. While the radio host has yet to take aim at the science behind climate change, he has made several comments about Irene that we can examine in a moment.

 

The prediction that someone would bring religion into the Irene debate was also a bit easy to make. This one came true thanks to our friends Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck. Bachmann made headlines when she said, "I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?'” She has since said she was simply trying to make a joke. As for Beck, he couldn’t hold himself back. Beck took a more subdued tone when he compared the victims of the Norway shootings last month to Nazis. This time he simply said God was using Irene as some sort of reminder to keep our bomb shelters stocked. "If you've waited [until now], this hurricane is a blessing," he said. "It is God reminding you, as was the earthquake last week...you're not in control.”

 

As for my prediction that someone would blame President Obama for the storm, I thought that was unlikely to happen since the storm wasn’t as bad as forecasted. But that is where my pal Rush comes into play. Limbaugh decided to take aim at the president anyway. He said, "Obama, I'll guarantee you this. I'll guarantee you Obama was hoping this was gonna be a disaster as another excuse for his failing economy. If he's out there blaming tsunamis, earthquakes and whatever other natural disaster there are, this one was made to order, but it just didn't measure up."

 

My predictions were not too shabby for someone who has never even been to a fortune teller. Perhaps if this blogging thing doesn’t work out, I can get a job as a meteorologist.