3 Q's: Michael Brown: MSU meteorology professor

The climate is very cyclical and we simply can't link a short period of warmer conditions to climate change. Unfortunately, global warming, global cooling, climate change and such are shifting from being scientific investigations and are instead an indictment of political affiliation.

Probably not the ‘hottest year’

James Hansen of NASA, an ardent believer in man-made warming, announced recently that “The 12-month running mean global temperature in the Goddard Space Institute analysis has reached a new record in 2010 . . . NASA, June 3, 2010. The main factor is our estimated temperature change for the Arctic region.” The GISS figures show that recent temperatures in the Arctic have been up to four degrees C warmer than the long-term mean.

Should we be alarmed? Probably not very.

My esteemed colleague Art Horn, at the Energy Tribune blog, has blown the whistle on Hansen and GISS. He points out that GISS has no thermometers in the Arctic! It has hardly thermometers that are even near the Arctic Circle.

EU Referendum: A perverse set of priorities

But as long as we are in the grip of the climate zealots, those being killed by the weather now are less important that the lucrative funding opportunities arising from predicting future disasters. How perverse it is that potential deaths in the future get more money than real deaths now – a sad reflection on human priorities.