The Qatari Diplomat did not cause an incident

Despite the news reports, nothing whatsoever happened on the plane that was diverted to Denver. The diplomat may have been sneaking a smoke in the lavatory, but the "incident" evidently was when asked, he said something like, "I was trying to set my shoes on fire." So all hell breaks loose.

Somebody at TSA or Homeland Security or wherever needs to look at the record of people who are in airports or on airplanes and make jokes about bombs. To date, over say the last century, there is no instance of someone making a joke who was actually serious. In the first place, it doesn't make any sense. More importantly, it never happens.

So a rational person, hearing the Qatari diplomat make a joke, would lean back and say to himself, "Well, at least I can feel confident that this guy isn't going to set off a bomb." Instead, we scramble the air force.

Lessons from Lewis Carroll

"In the midst of the word he was trying to say, in the midst of his laughter and glee,
he had softly and suddenly vanished away, for the Snark was a Boojum, you see."

A word of caution is in order. Arctic ice extent is a Boojum. Many climate skeptics are entirely thrilled at the March anomaly, and it's not irrelevant. But as Serreze is being forced to acknowledge prior anomalies, we should not forget that this is one as well. Just a few months ago, Arctic ice extent was running lower than ever for the date. Now it's the highest in years, but past experience says that there will faster melting through June, when the extent seems to be roughly the same every year, and what happens afterwards isn't much affected by what happened in March.

We're seeing an increase in Bering Sea ice. Elsewhere in the Arctic, temps are above normal but not enough to melt any of the solid cover. The Bering ice will soon melt and the other Arctic ice may be setting up for a serious decline as well. Those who trumpet the "return to normalcy" may wind up like the Baker.

Although maybe not. An odd event may represent a fundamental change in pattern, or it may just be odd. A real skeptic reserves judgment, even while perhaps hoping deeply for a colder Arctic ASAP.

The Real China

From the BBC, a Chinese activist who investigated whether shoddy construction contributed to deaths in the 2008 Sichuan quake has been sentenced to five years in jail. Another recent story told how Saudi Arabia is threatening to behead a man for make astrological predictions about them from his home in Lebanon.

People who think that buying from China is like buying from non-union plants in Arkansas only more so should think again. Or that running trade deficits with OPEC have no consequences.

There are a lot of foreign countries that I don't mind trading with. Pretty much all in Europe and North America, most of South America. Most of the Pacific Rim. But there are others that I detest and so should all freedom loving Americans. Starting with the Chinese and including pretty much all of OPEC.

We should pressure that Chinese to revalue their currency, and we should put enough tax on gasoline to cut demand to where our petroleum imports are mostly from Canada and Mexico. We are making tyrants rich and this folly will eventually come back to haunt us.

Live by the anomaly, Die by the anomaly

Those who have watched Arctic sea ice extent fluctuate with an objective eye have noticed several things. Within each year, there are times when the extent seems to be the roughly the same each year. June for one, and a couple times in November and December. This means that, as one warmist blogger just pointed out, that it doesn't seem to matter a lot what the extent is in April. It will wind up the same in June and the minimum depends on the rate of loss in the following three months.

Quite true, although based on limited data, but the same could have been said when 2009 showed a brief streak last fall that was the lower than any other for the decade. Undeterred, Jeff Masters, alarmist-in-charge at wunderground.com, blogged that it was a foretaste of more record losses. It wasn't, as ice extent returned to the normal bundle soon thereafter.

It's also easy to see that the winter maximum does not correlate at all well with the summer minimum. So when people say that 2010 was "on track" to be as bad as 2007, because the winter data looked like 2007's, they are overlooking the obvious fact that earlier years were "on track" to be worse yet, but weren't. There is no winter track.

But while the correlation between winter and summer isn't robust, it's hard to believe that having more ice on April 2 than at any time in almost a decade isn't a material fact, likely to impact September's minimum. Other factors are probably more important, such as ocean currents and wind patterns, but there's a decent chance that the current anomaly will provide enough extra ice cover to put 2010 on the high side of recent years next September.

Which may be an anomaly but will be hard to explain by the warmists who were so urgent in their warnings about the other anomalies. I'd sympathize if they had been consistent, but what goes around, comes around.

When Climate is Only 20 Years

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) publishes a graph of Arctic ice extent, updated daily. It has recently been showing a rapid rise in the extent compared with the long term average. The graph dated March 31 shows the 2010 ice extent nearly reaching the long term average.

But note what constitutes "long term" for NSIDC. 1979 through 2000. That's 22 years. The originating date is the start of satellite observations. No problem there, but the usual definition of a climate average is 30 years. NSIDC could have done that.

But they don't. If they did, they would include the years of the past decade that were below the first 20 years and that line would drop. If it were to drop, then the difference between what we now have and the average wouldn't be as scary. In fact, in 2010, it would show us to be above the 30-year average.

So why doesn't this government agency present the data in the most scientifically objective manner? If you don't know the answer, you haven't been paying attention.