Today, Queen's Management School is launching a charity partnership with Tayto, the third largest snack manufacturer in the UK, and Marie Curie. As Head of School, I'm very keen to develop socially-responsible students who think about others and look beyond themselves. Our students (and staff) are going to be fundraising over the next few months with the aim of raising substantial funds for Marie Curie to help support their network of nurses caring for those with terminal illness.
The Berkeley Earth Project , an independent study of global warming, has found that the earth has become a degree warmer over the past half century. However, the statistical uncertainty surrounding pre-1920 estimates makes it very hard to say much about long-term trends - click here for graph . This is one of my concerns with the global warming debate - we simply don't have trustworthy long-run data which looks at temperature changes over the last millennium (or two). My second concern with the global warming debate is that it is very hard to prove any sort of casual link between global warming and human activity. The scientists may be able to show correlation between global warming and our production of carbon dioxides etc., but correlation is not causation. My third concern with the debate is that those who are sceptical or agnostic are stereotyped as flat-earthers or intellectually-challenged crackpots. This only stifles debate and the progress of science itself.