I’ve made several updates to my original post on the errors in NASA’s GISS database for US temperatures. After half a dozen, another major inline update seemed immoderate.

Since Steve McIntyre’s site, Climate Audit, remains down, he borrowed Anthony Watts’ blog to explain in considerable detail why the error isn’t trivial, and to forward a response to a letter by GISS warmer-in-chief James Hansen (link in PDF).

Hansen’s letter appears defensive, argumentative and not a little arrogant:

No need to read further unless you are interested in temperature changes to a tenth of a degree over the U.S. and a thousandth of a degree over the world. <…>

My apologies if the quick response that I sent to Andy Revkin and several other journalists, including the suggestion that it was a tempest inside somebody’s teapot dome, and that perhaps a light was not on upstairs, was immoderate. It was not ad hominem, though.

From McIntyre’s reply to the letter:

Hansen may have been for 1934 before he was against it. But now that he’s for 1934 once again, he can’t say that he was for it all along.

Hat tip: Kriek Jooste.

The vast leftwing conspiracy has brought down the kingmaker, the chief lizard, the plotter and puppet master. It’s true. He’s gone. News here. Commentary here and here.

Left-liberal politicians, media and chattering classes not only claim there is no progress in Afghanistan and Iraq, but need this politically. This traps them in the perverse moral bind that good news for America, Afghanistan and Iraq is bad news to them. It reduces their chances of defeating the hated George W. Bush. (Shh, don’t let on that he won’t be running in 2008.)

Here’s another brief overview report, from writer Ann Marlowe. Is Afghanistan threatening to challenge for first-world status? No. Did it ever? No. Will it soon? Not likely. But are things getting worse, as Democratic politicians claim? Writes Marlowe:

Sen. Hillary Clinton has cynically charged that we are “losing the fight to al Qaeda and bin Laden” in Afghanistan. But on my eighth trip to Afghanistan (last month) I saw that the trend lines are up, not down.

Read it and judge for yourself.

Economics, that is. And free market economics, at that.

A national test given to high school kids in the US came back with some surprising results. According to a Wall Street Journal editorial, more than half believe that poverty is best reduced by economic growth - not government intervention. Given multiple choices and a supply curve chart, a plurality also believed that setting a price floor on chocolate would cause a chocolate surplus. Would these kids reach the same, logical conclusion if the test replaced the term “chocolate” with “labour”?

While about half of the kids fail at science and history, almost 80% passed the economics section of the test. That’s a pleasant surprise, for a non-mandatory subject. Where do they get this knowledge? Surely not from the media? Could it be (gasp) common sense?

The Wall Street Journal suggests a few politicians might like to take the test themselves. I’m thinking perhaps Congressional approval ratings lower than even those of George W Bush don’t need yet another knock.