Zbigniew Jaworowski is past chairman of the Scientific Committee of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, past chairman of the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, and participant or chairman of 20 advisory groups of the International Atomic Energy Agency and U.N. Environmental Program. Or you can believe Al Gore’s characterization that folks like Dr. Jaworowski are flat-earthers.

Dr. Jaworowski says the U.N. doesn’t rely on real-time measurments of CO2 changes prior to 1958 to compare temperatures to the real-time measurements made since 1958. Yet they compare the two eras anyway. They use ice core samples to estimate temperatures prior to 1958 to compare to air measurements after 1958. Gee, shouldn’t be any problem there. Not much.

The problem, as Solomon points out, is that the U.N.’s IPCC assumes that ice cores are preserved intact and accurately represent the atmosphere presumably trapped in the ice long ago. But stuff escapes from the ice core, and different stuff escapes at different rates, which is pretty elementary science. Oops.

“Liquid water is common in polar snow and ice, even at temperatures as low as -72 degree C,” Dr. Jaworowski explains, “and we also know that in cold water, CO2 is 70 times more soluble than nitrogen and 30 times more soluble than oxygen, guaranteeing that the proportions of the various gases that remain in the trapped ancient air will change.”

The changes that take place, the disporportionate escaping of various gases from the ice mean that “the ice will not reveal the CO2 levels that have existed in the history of the atmosphere,” Solomon sums up. Yet global warming alarmists assume they do and compare them to contemporary air measurements. Apples to oranges.

And we’re supposed to recast modern industrial commerce based on that?

The debate/discussion was recreated today at the Freedom Communications’ Freedom School here in San Antonio. Tibor began by saying the most strategic way to vote was to vote for the Libertarian Party candidate, not with any hope of winning but as a way of helping to increase the media coverage and discussion of libertarian ideas. This is especially the least harmful choice, he argued, when the other contendors are such disreputable statists — Obama says Americans want someone to solve their problems for them, Hillary says we need a commander-in-chief of the economy(!).

Scott acknowledged there is value in the LP, but it hasn’t had a really good candidate since Ed Clark in 1980; the possibility of Bob Barr doesn’t do anything for him. (Tibor said he saw Ed Clark at an event for Vernon Smith a few weeks ago, where I was also, and Ed Clark would still be a good candidate, but it ain’t happening.) Scott continued to argue that the most effective vote would be for Obama because the key issue this year is the Iraq war and Barack, who opposed it from the beginning is the most likely candidate to wind it down. He also thought that putting an African-American in the White House would be good for the country in that it might help to begin to resolve our still unfortunately lingering race issues (Tibor agreed there might be value in that, he just wishes he had better ideas). Scott said that Obama’s biggest negative is his apparent hostility to free trade.

An interesting discussion, but nothing either good man said tempted me to want to vote for any of them.

(I cross-posted this at Horserace’08, our election blog, which you might check into from time to time.)

Here’s my favorite, which reflects the senator’s hostility to the First Amendment: “I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government.”

Read the quotations here.

I would guess that this one is not going to make it to trial — provided the feds are still willing to talk about a plea bargain.

This is good news. It shows a willingness by Interim Sheriff Jack Anderson and the DA to take on alleged corruption within the troubled department. And it reminds OC residents — who tend to treat police testimony with extreme trust — that police and deputies cannot always be trusted. Power corrupts, so it’s not surprising that those with power can be corrupted by it, or that corrupt people would be attracted by power.

Of course, bad ideas are in season for a couple of reasons. One, Congress is in session. Two, it’s an election year.

B.H. Obama and H.R. Clinton are among those calling for billions of dollars in “windfall profits” taxes. What a surprise, eh? But haven’t we been done that road before? And haven’t these characters ever read a book on economics? Or had one read to them?

In the first place, one man’s “windfall profit” is another’s “earned profit.” We suspect neither B.H. nor H.R. would be too enthusiastic if they were taxed extra on those extra personal profits they make some years compared to other years. Especially, if someone else decides how much profit constitutes a “windfall.”

But that’s just a matter of preferences. Universal preference though, considering just about everyone we know thinks he earns the money he receives above and beyond expenses.

How about economics?

ABC’s Dan Harris reported on “Good Morning America” that “. . . the economists I spoke to were unanimous on this point. Taxing big oil sounds satisfying when they’re making these record profits, but a bad idea, would probably end up raising the price of gas, because you are essentially making it less profitable to sell gas.”

Hey, how about that? A reasonable report from mainstream media. An anomaly? Even a blind chipmonk… as the saying goes.

But there’s more:

(more…)

That, Mr. Will rightly observes, ”is the left’s agenda.”

“The left,” he writes, “exists to enlarge the state’s supervision of life, narrowing individual choices in the name of collective goods. Hence the left’s hostility to markets. And to automobiles — people going wherever they want whenever they want.”

Not all political motives are leftish, of course. Thomas Sowell’s recently observed  another truism about the political inclinaton to pander.

Mr. Sowell says:

(more…)

“What about Al Gore’s dramatic graph showing CO2 and temperature moving together?”

“This famous graph doesn’t prove that CO2 has any effect on the global temperature,” Solomon recaps from a publication of Nir Shaviv.

(Shaviv is a Ph.D. and associate professor at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shaviv, incidentally, has authored or coauthored three-dozen peer-reviewed studies and presented papers at about two dozen conferences, while the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System credits his works with 613 citations. He also has received the Beatrice Tremain Award from the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. Not exactly the flat-earther Mr. Gore claims is the only type to oppose global warming alarmism.)

Shaviv’s point:

“All it (Gore’s graph) says is that there is some equilibrium between dissolved CO2 and atmospheric CO2, an equilibrium that depends on the temperature. Of course, the temperature itself can depend on a dozen different factors, including CO2, but just the CO2/temperature correlation by itself doesn’t tell you the strength of the CO2 link. It doesn’t even tell you the sign.”

“. . . The main evidence proving that CO2 does not control the climate, but at most can play a second fiddle by just amplifying the variations already present, is that of lags. In all cases where there is good enough resolution, one finds that the CO2 lags behind the temperature by typically several hundred to a thousand years.”

Then the kicker:

“Thus the basic climate driver that controls the temoperature cannot be that of CO2.”

Oops. The entire premise for Draconian control over your CO2 emissions has just been evaporated by scientific fact.

Says The Culture and Media Institute:

The liberal media aren’t reporting it, but presidential candidate Barack Obama told an Oregon audience we’re “goners” if we fail to stop global warming, and he intends to ask – or tell – Americans to stop driving SUVs, turn the thermostat down, even eat less. 

Reporters from at least 11 news media organizations were covering Obama’s campaign appearance in Roseburg, Oregon on Saturday, when the candidate said he would expect Americans to make major lifestyle sacrifices to reverse global warming. Only two, Agence France-Presse and CNN, reported Obama’s remarks.

Do you wonder why such revealing stuff wouldn’t be reported by that “unbiased,” “objective” press? Hm?