text: Both the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were major climatic events, notwithstanding the attempt of a number of climate alarmists to reduce them to such insignificance that they do not even appear on the temperature history of the world over the past thousand years (see our Editorials of 15 June , 1 July , 15 July and 2 August 2000). Why do the climate alarmists do this? Because they want to promote the idea that the world is currently experiencing unprecedented warming due to increases in the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, particularly CO 2 . As the results of this study clearly show, however, whatever warming may have occurred over the past century or so may be easily nothing more than a return to more normal conditions from the global chill of the Little Ice Age.