Ken Ring is a 68-year-old long-range weather predictor based in Auckland, New Zealand. Renowned and controversial since the mid-1990s, the “Moon Man” has also been predicting long-range weather for Ireland since 2009.
No two New Zealanders share the same opinion on the Moon Man: many farmers claim he has an 80-85 per cent accuracy rate, though others, such as author and MetService broadcaster Erick Brenstrum, claim Ring has only a 1:40 hit rate.
When
did you get interested in long-range weather prediction?
"It was in the 1970s. I discovered a thing called the Maori fishing calendar, where you fish at certain times of the moon. Because I was living beside the sea, I started to notice that the highest tides in each month were accompanied by storms, and I thought that there must be a connection.
“Because the Maoris didn’t mention any weather calendar I decided to plot it myself and I really got into it because a pattern seemed to emerge. I couldn’t find anything in books about the moon and the weather, but I reasoned that the sea and the air were one system – they were joined.”
Do you know of anyone else who does long-range weather prediction?
"We have an online group called astrometeorologists. They combine planets, sun spots and the orbits of the moon, and it's a work in progress. The amazing thing is the orbits of all extraterrestrial bodies are interconnected like a giant clock.
“The old astrology was a calendric system for working out seasons using the moon and its movement through the heavens. In fact, the word ‘moon’ and the word ‘measure’ have the same etymological root. With the moon you only lose 10 seconds a year, or 20 minutes after 150 years: if you had a watch which did that you’d be very pleased.
“What I’m doing is plotting the moon, and saying that because the sea and air are joined as one system therefore if you accept that there is a sea tide with its own pattern and a mathematical configuration for working it out, then there must be an air tide that’s exactly the same for that spot. So by measuring the sea tide you’re also getting the air tide.
"So that's all I'm doing. I'm getting the tidal pattern for one area, I'm overlaying that on to weather data for that area, then I'm going back a couple of moon cycles to see what patterns there are, and I'm just bringing it forward. The difference between me and a meteorologist is that he's the guy who stands in water lapping up to his ankles and yells out 'the tide is in!' That's the meteorologist. I'm the one who sits at home and has worked out where the tide will be two years beforehand."
You've no shortage of critics: how do you handle them?
"Well, I don't mind really. Everybody is free to have an opinion. I respect that and think that it's healthy. There are some who disagree, but those have detractors too – and then I find that I have supporters I didn't know I had before. But I appreciate that people are scared by things they don't understand, and so their first reaction is always 'No! It can't be'.
“Go to our history and you’ll see why we’ve lost these skills. It was Christianity in the form it was 2,000 years ago that led us away. The new idea was that only God was allowed to know what happens or you’d be labelled a false prophet .”
Do you believe that humankind is capable of influencing weather patterns?
"Not at all – not one iota. Global warming was an idea funded by Maggie Thatcher in the late 1970s because she needed an excuse to close down coal mines in order to ease the entry of British Oil nuclear generators in return for funding her election campaign. When you have half of the world in freezing winter at the same time as the other half
is suffering heat waves, and when half of the world is in night time and the other half in daylight: what is the global temperature at that moment?
“There isn’t one. It’s like talking about global happiness. You can’t say it’s either decreasing or increasing because there’s nothing to compare it to. They’ve only been taking valid measurements since the 1950s or so because of the standardisation of weather systems and the verification of them. And even now they’re not truly standardised: they’re sometimes on rooftops or at airports next to jet engines.”
