How Do We Really Know if the Earth Is Getting Warmer?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Bad Science

An expert in thermodynamics says the assumption that the earth is getting warmer through the use of what is called a "global temperature" is scientifically unsound.

Professor Bjarne Andresen of the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute says it is meaningless to talk about an average global temperature. He says compiling temperatures from various places and averaging them would be like calculating the average phone number in the phone book.

And he points out there are several different methods by which scientists calculate average temperatures — and they can come up with many different answers from the same set of numbers.

Muzzled?

A NASA scientist who says the Bush administration muzzled him because he believes global warming could cause catastrophic results now acknowledges he has done more than 1,400 media interviews in recent years.

James Hansen made the accusation when his request to do a National Public Radio interview was denied. The Washington Times reports Hansen acknowledged to a congressional committee Monday that he violated NASA press policy by not notifying his supervisors when he did interviews.

And California Republican Congressman Darrell Issa pointed out that Hansen conducted 15 interviews in the month afte* accusing the White House of censoring him.

Most Liberal

Barack Obama outranks even Congressman Dennis Kucinich as the most liberal of the 2008 presidential candidates. The National Journal has analyzed voting records of Capitol Hill lawmakers and came up with scores based on issues such as federal spending, tax cuts and the Iraq war.

It found that for his two years in the Senate, Obama has a 84.3 score out of a possible 99. Kucinich stands at 79.4. Senator Chris Dodd – 79.2. Senator Hillary Clinton comes in at 78.8. And Senator Joe Biden is 76.8.

Child Martyr

And this picture of a little girl in a combat vest and al-Qassam Brigades headband has appeared on a Web site affiliated with the Palestinian group Hamas. The caption read: "Have you seen the new child martyr who will soon shake Israel to the core?"

The MEMRI Blog reports the message accompanying the photo says the little girl is, "part of the Muslim generation which will go down in history as a generation that refused to accept humiliation and defeat."

—FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.