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IBD editorial tells us how the UN cooked the books on sea level changes at the globalony confab in Bali.
… We have no problem with the IPCC taking control of its meeting destinations. But we do oppose the intellectual dishonesty of seizing control of data and torturing them into the outcome IPCC scientists are looking for.
The possibility of such fraud has been raised by Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the paleogeophysics and geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. According to his June interview with the British Telegraph that was revisited on a Telegraph blog last week, the IPCC might have doctored data to show a sea- level rise from 1992 to 2002.
“Suddenly it changed,” Morner said of the IPCC’s 2003 sea-level chart, which is intended to convince the public that warming due to man’s activities is melting ice that will cause the oceans to rise to dangerous levels.
The change “showed a very strong line of uplift, 2.3 millimeters per year,” which just happens to be the same increase that was measured by one of six Hong Kong tide gauges. Morner said that particular tide gauge is “the only record which you shouldn’t use” because “every geologist knows that that is a subsiding area. It’s the compaction of sediment.”
A simple error by the IPCC? Not in Morner’s mind. “Not even ignorance could be responsible for a thing like that,” he said. “It is a falsification of the data set.”
But what about Vanuatu, that little South Pacific island that’s supposedly drowning because Americans selfishly burn too much fossil fuel to drive their SUVs and heat and cool their McMansions?
“There is absolutely no signal that the sea level” around that island is rising, Morner said. “If anything, you could say that maybe the tide is lowering a little bit, but absolutely no rising.”
Because he’s at odds with the IPCC, Morner would be about as welcome at this year’s meeting as the International Climate Science Coalition has been. That group of international scientists, skeptical of the global warming theory, was told it could not present its information at the conference. …
Power Line posts on the subject and on an Alan Dershowitz appearance at the Hudson Institute.
Charles Krauthammer thinks the Mormon flap has some Huckabee origins.
… Huckabee has exploited Romney’s Mormonism with an egregious subtlety. Huckabee is running a very effective ad in Iowa about religion. “Faith doesn’t just influence me,” he says on camera, “it really defines me.” The ad then hails him as a “Christian leader.” …
… Every mention of God in every inaugural address in American history refers to the deity in this kind of all-embracing, universal, nondenominational way. (The one exception: William Henry Harrison. He caught cold delivering that inaugural address. Thirty-one days later, he was dead. Draw your own conclusion.) I suspect that neither Jefferson’s Providence nor Washington’s Great Author nor Lincoln’s Almighty would look kindly on the exploitation of religious differences for political gain. It is un-American. It is unfortunate that Romney has had to justify himself in response.
Mark Steyn was in the OC Register. He suggests we need a free market for housing and religion.
James Taranto has opinions about the worth of the youth vote.
Sorry, but if there’s one subject about which the cynics are always right, it’s the “youth vote.” It is a myth. Young people, by and large, simply do not vote, and there is no reason to think that will ever change. Candidates pursuing the “youth vote” are like Charlie Brown kicking that football–this time, every time, they’re sure it will be different. But it always ends with a WHAM!
The myth of the youth vote is a product of baby-boom liberalism, an extension of the urban legend that the “1960s generation” were a bunch of idealistic activists who vanquished racism and war. The truth is that the civil rights movement had already won by the time the first baby boomer came of age, in 1964; and while there was something of a youth movement against the Vietnam War, it was motivated principally by selfishness–i.e., fear of the draft–not idealism.
The Economist has interesting thoughts about food prices. Their thought is that costlier food provides a chance to get rid of farm subsidies and at the same time right the balance between rural and urban.
… Over the past few years, a sense has grown that the rich are hogging the world’s wealth. In poor countries, widening income inequality takes the form of a gap between city and country: incomes have been rising faster for urban dwellers than for rural ones. If handled properly, dearer food is a once-in-a-generation chance to narrow income disparities and to wean rich farmers from subsidies and help poor ones. The ultimate reward, though, is not merely theirs: it is to make the world richer and fairer.
WSJ contributor wonders if it makes sense to give to Harvard.
Bill Gates has $56 billion to his name. What would you do if he called your home asking you for some money? You’d hang up on the prankster, of course. Now, what would you do if Harvard, with its $35 billion endowment, called begging for cash? My wife and I take out our checkbook. But maybe we should be hitting up Harvard instead. …