The past three years have been a very large disturbance in the climate force. The Pacific is really the mother of these global climate systems -- and there has been a fundamental switch in the climate in the past two years.

A lot of things have changed since that task force made its recommendation. In the current climate, the applications of this technology for the Drug Enforcement Administration seem more promising than the applications for the development of a drug-free industrial hemp plant.

If we look out into our future, global warming will have a longer impact, which makes it somewhat scary.

Often a high pressure system drives the winds. The winds come off the mountain passes, the air heats up and becomes very dry and can be very strong.

The magic number is 80 degrees Fahrenheit. What we are seeing in the Atlantic right now is temperatures that are 82 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, almost two to four degrees above their normal temperatures.

Essentially what happened was that quantitatively we had our fingers on the pulse of the global oceans for the first time in history. We collected more data in the first year than they had in the previous century of data.