A 'cop-out' in the UK

Some British lawmakers are claiming that recent flooding in the UK is evidence of climate change but one climatologist is pouring water on that. 

Like President Obama and other government leaders, British Prime Minister David Cameron has long believed that climate change is real, causing big and more frequent severe weather events that will only worsen without action.

Cameron told a crowd in 2008 that most people accept that floods are likely to be more frequent due to climate change.

In recent days, the Daily Mail and other news outlets have reported Cameron and other ministers have pointed to climate change as contributing to flooding in the UK.

OneNewsNow sought comment from Pat Michaels, a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists who now heads the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute.

If climate change is related to severe flooding, he says, it only occurs gradually.

"It's not like, all of a sudden, there is this big thing," he observes. "And to blame something like flood in the UK on climate change, without realizing that it's an infrastructural problem, is a cop-out."

Michaels says it's well-known that the UK has trouble with its flood defenses and the December flood didn't break any rainfall records.

He predicts the country will improve its ability to deal with flood waters, much like the cities of Chicago and Paris responded to heat waves that hit them in 1998 and 2003.