Researchers Say Glaciers Growing Thanks To Global Warming

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Cold Mountain

Scientists say glaciers at the North Pole and in other areas are melting. However, the glaciers on California's Mount Shasta are actually getting bigger, but experts say that growth is not despite global warming but because of it.

Researchers at the University of California say that as the Pacific Ocean warms, more moisture goes into the air and then falls as snow on the mountain. That snow is enough to offset any rise in temperature. They have found that the three smallest of Shasta's glaciers are now more than twice the length they were in 1950.

Slawek Tulaczyk, a professor who studied the phenomenon, says the glaciers "seem to be benefiting from the warming ocean."

Climate Craze

And global warming, it seems, can not only make you uncomfortable, it can apparently make you crazy. The Australian Herald Sun reports that a pair of psychiatrists there have detected what they say is the first case of "climate change delusion."

Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of the Royal Children's Hospital write in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry that a 17-year-old man was referred to the hospital after suffering from depression for eight months.

They say the patient "developed the belief that, due to climate change, his own water consumption could lead within days to the deaths of millions of people through exhaustion of water supplies," and that he had what they called "visions of apocalyptic events."

Lost In Translation

Christian publishing company Zondervan is facing a $60 million lawsuit filed by a man who claims he and other homosexuals have suffered because of Zondervan's misinterpretation of the Bible. Zondervan is a subsidiary of this network's parent company Newscorp.

The lawsuit by Bradley Fowler centers on the text in first Corinthians chapter six, verse nine, which uses the word "homosexuals" among a list of those who are "wicked." While the new American standard uses the word "homosexuals," other versions do not. The regular American standard uses the phrase "abusers of themselves with men."

But a spokeswoman for Zondervan says Fowler is suing the wrong group because the publishing company is not in the business of translation.

She says the company relies on "scholarly judgment of credible translation committees."

Photo Shopped

And finally, one of the photos of yesterday's provocative missile test by the Iranian regime has created some controversy.

The New York Times Web blog The Lede reports that the image from Sepah News — the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards — has been doctored.

The image, which was published on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune as well as numerous news Web sites, shows four missiles headed skywards. But one of the missiles appears to be the sum of two others in the image.

The French Press Agency replaced its four-missile version of the photo this morning with one that shows just three missiles, saying that Iranian officials digitally retouched the photo to "cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test."

— FOX News Channel's Zachary Kenworthy contributed to this report.