A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world’s glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC’s 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was “speculation” and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

The stunning thing about the IPCC’s assertion is not that it turns out to be pure speculation; the scary fact is that anyone believed this in the first place.  Just look at a picture: does it make sense that a degree or so of higher temperature could melt this within 30 years?

Ellen Miller, co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation, has spent years arguing for rules to force more disclosure of how lobbyists and private interests shape public policy. Until recently, she herself registered as a lobbyist, too, publicly reporting her role in the group’s advocacy of even more reporting. Not anymore.

In light of strict new regulations imposed by Congress over the last two years, Ms. Miller joined a wave of policy advocates who are choosing not to declare themselves as lobbyists.

Read the rest here; it gets better.

Should Congress regulate lobbying? In my view, no.  Beyond the enforcement issue, such regulation is not only inconsistent with free speech but counterproductive as well: it lulls voters into thinking the law has constrained special interests, when it has not.

Massachusetts is holding a special election tomorrow for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat. The candidates are Martha Coakley, a Democrat and until recently the presumptive victor; Scott Brown, the Republican and until recently a little known state senator (mine in fact); and Joseph L. Kennedy, a Libertarian and no relation to Ted.

In most Massachusetts elections, I vote for the libertarian or write in my wife (also a libertarian). The Democrats always win, so I can vote my conscience without worrying how my vote might affect the outcome.

This election, however, is different.  If the polls are to be believed, the race is close.  And, having a 41st Republican in the Senate could defeat ObamaCare, which I view as evil. So, what’s a libertarian to do?

I looked into Brown’s and Kennedy’s views on a range of issues.  Kennedy is definitely libertarian, Brown more conservative. Thus, on economics they are similar and while on social issues they differ, with Kennedy’s views closer to my own.  Brown, however, is not ultra-conservative; he is personally opposed to abortion and gay marriage, but he believes abortion should remain legal while gay marriage should be left to each state.

The other factor to consider is that one-party rule is awful; gridlock is great.

So, which way will I vote?

PS: You might think Brown has a chance because of backlash over the economy and Obama excesses.  That is part of the story, but in addition Coakly announced on a local radio show that Curt Schilling is a Yankees fan!

PPS: Brown might do better than the polls indicate because the Kennedy supporters will probably vote for Brown.

PPPS: My home phone rang about 5 times while I was writing this, all automated messages urging me to vote for Brown.

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

LYON, FRANCE — France, which regards itself as the cradle of human rights, is moving to impose legal restrictions on Muslim women who wear Afghan-style burqas or other full-face veils.

The restrictions, likely to apply to many public places, come in response to resentment in France and other European countries over the growing visibility of Muslims — immigrants or locally born — on a continent with ancient Christian roots. The tensions have long run through European societies but increasingly are coming to the surface as the number of Muslims grows and symbols of their faith, including mosques, are seen as a challenge to European traditions.

Beyond the fact that these restrictions are inconsistent with any notion of free expression, they are counterproductive: by isolating Mulsims they generate resentment, rather than encourage assimilation.

From a friend:

Let me get this straight.

The new health care plan will be written by a committee whose Chairman says he doesn’t understand it;

Passed by a Congress which hasn’t read it;

Signed by a President who smokes;

Funded by a Treasury Chief who did not pay his taxes;

Overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese;

And financed by a country that is nearly broke.

What could possibly go wrong?

The judge presiding over the first serious challenge in federal court of a state gay-marriage ban has defined his career with an unconventional approach.

Two days into the trial over the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 gay-marriage ban, Judge Vaughn Walker has upset some opponents of gay marriage by allowing gay couples to testify on the meaning of marriage.

The 65-year-old judge has tried to breach the longtime ban on TV cameras in federal court by ordering the trial to be posted on YouTube — though the Supreme Court has temporarily stayed that decision.

On Monday, the first day of the trial, he repeatedly asked the lawyers: Why don’t states “get out of the marriage business? It would solve the problem.”

OK, that’s two lines, but right on the money in any case.  Read therest; Walker is an interesting guy.  How did a libertarian get on the federal bench?

It seems that professional chefs are better than terrorists at getting things past airport security:

The Christmas Day underwear-bombing attempt won’t just slow airport-security lines. It probably will also disrupt efforts to provide U.S. carnivores with quality salami, prosciutto and headcheese.

Last week, a federal grand jury indicted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who allegedly tried to set off a bomb hidden in his underpants on a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit. The bomb didn’t explode, but it spurred demand for pat-down searches, body scans and more-meticulous baggage examinations for airline passengers headed for the U.S.

Such measures might discourage terrorists, but they are also likely to catch chefs smuggling meat from Europe. Chefs such as Rey Knight, who once flew from Italy to Miami with a pork shoulder and fennel-pollen salami vacuum-sealed and hidden inside a stainless-steel water bottle. Another time, he says, he hid a 4-pound goose-liver torchon from France inside the belly of a salmon.

Increased scrutiny of international travelers means “I’ll have to come up with more creative ways” to get charcuterie into the U.S., says Mr. Knight, whose Knight Salumi Co. sells cured meats to San Diego-area restaurants.

I do not dispute that talking or texting on a cell phone can inhibit good driving.

But laws that limit the use of cell phones while driving may still be undesirable.

First, the people who text while driving might be the same people who would otherwise be putting on makeup, fiddling with the radio, trying to eat a sandwich, or yelling at their kids.  Thus, the net amount of bad driving due to cell phones may not be large.

Second, traffic fatalities per vehicle mile have declined steadily and significantly since 1994, even while cell phones and texting have grown enormously.  This does not prove cell phones do not cause bad driving, but it makes you wonder if this effect is large.  Most studies on cell phones and traffic accidents suffer from serious statistical flaws.

Third, any accidents caused by cell phones are only one side of the equation.  Millions of people use cell phones while driving for beneficial purposes, so the net impact may well be positive.

In responding to the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day, Sen. Dianne Feinstein voiced the feelings of many when she said that to prevent such situations, “I’d rather overreact than underreact.” This appears to be the consensus view in Washington, but it is quite wrong. The purpose of terrorism is to provoke an overreaction. Its real aim is not to kill the hundreds of people directly targeted but to sow fear in the rest of the population. Terrorism is an unusual military tactic in that it depends on the response of the onlookers. If we are not terrorized, then the attack didn’t work. Alas, this one worked very well.

I could not agree more.  The rest of Zakaria’s piece is dead on as well, this paragraph in particular:

As for the calls to treat the would-be bomber as an enemy combatant, torture him and toss him into Guantanamo, God knows he deserves it. But keep in mind that the crucial intelligence we received was from the boy’s father. If that father had believed that the United States was a rogue superpower that would torture and abuse his child without any sense of decency, would he have turned him in? To keep this country safe, we need many more fathers, uncles, friends and colleagues to have enough trust in America that they, too, would turn in the terrorist next door.