Global warming killed Nessie

FROM MY STACK OF STUFF:

Now we’ve done it.

If we weren’t doomed before by virtue of our causing global warming, surely God will strike us dead now.

We’ve killed Nessie.

Seriously. Well, maybe.

Robert Rines, who once saw the legendary beast’s hump during a Loch Ness cocktail party in 1972, has been searching for the elusive creature every summer since, at the urging of his wife, who apparently likes to have her husband out of the house.

But Rines, now 85, thinks Nessie is gone, possibly a victim of global warming, according to the Daily Record, which knows about such things.

Rines, who holds a degree in physics and a law degree, took the famous flipper photos in the 1970s. He says at least two Nessies were alive in the loch back then. His first experience with Nessie was via a sonar contact in 1971, a year before the cocktail party sighting.

But Rines — a sonar expert who has worked with scientists from MIT and other respected universities and is credited with helping develop several new underwater technologies — has failed to pick up any sonar contacts of the fast-moving creatures since the 1980s and now focuses his attention on locations where he hopes he may find remains of one of the creatures.

Out of some 100 suspicious spots on the loch’s floor, Rines was able to explore five before he suffered a stroke recently. Not one to give up on this ultimate “honey-do” item, he plans to search again this summer.

After years of searching, he doesn’t have the sort of conclusive evidence demanded by skeptics of Nessie’s existence, which is still more than the global warming scammers have.

But in Rines’ world, incredible things can happen. Last year, one of his underwater cameras caught on film a common toad surviving 342 feet down, well below its normal range. That find reinvigorated his determination to find solid proof of Nessie.

“Admiral Peary had to make 28 trips before he got to the North Pole,” Rines told the Boston Globe. “What am I to do, forget what I saw?”

If Rines finds her, maybe Al Gore could use Nessie to bring credibility to his next film. …