An item for those who believe that climate science is “settled”. A new article in Nature reports that the post-war sea-surface temperature record is biased. See this report by the BBC. It is all to do with whether you take the temperature of water near ships’ engine inlets or from buckets. Really technical stuff like that. Apparently, because the method changed, and the change was not properly taken account of, the sea surface did not cool as abruptly in the 1940s as the figures had previously indicated, nor (it follows) warm as quickly during the rest of the century. Climate modellers are working out the implications right now. How much this amounts to–how far it influences projections of future changes in temperature–is unclear. Maybe not much, but we shall see.

Steve McIntyre, author of Climate Audit, a thorn in the side of the climate-science establishment, has been on to this anomaly for some time. (See “Nature ‘Discovers’ Another Climate Audit Finding”.) The article in Nature does not cite him. Despite the evident diligence and seriousness of his work, he is not part of the officially sanctified peer-reviewed network, and indeed appears to be shunned by it. I dare say there are lessons to be drawn here about open-mindedness, or lack of it, in official climate science, and in the claque that surrounds it.

As the climate blogger James Annan puts it: Oops. “This seems pretty embarrassing for all concerned.” But look on the bright side, he argues: “one could almost portray this as another victory for modelling over observations, since the models have always struggled to reproduce this rather surprising dip in temperatures.” Well, that would be one approach. He credits McIntyre, but cannot bring himself to utter the name: “[the issue] wasn’t overlooked by everyone [link to Climate Audit], actually. But I anticipate that plenty of people will try their best to avoid looking and linking in that particular direction.” File under, “Approved Scientific Method”.

I learned from this piece by Philip Levy in the American (via Real Clear Politics) that May 18-24 was “World Trade Week”—“in case you missed it,” he says. I had, as a matter of fact. The celebrations, let us say, never looked like getting out of hand. In an excellent short column, Levy laments the failure of politicians to talk plainly about the benefits of liberal trade and the wavering commitment of the country’s best economists to a cause they once resolutely defended. Good for him.

…the very academic stars who might help to clear up uncertainties about trade imbalances are themselves stoking the skepticism. They have found it useful to dabble in xenophobia to support a cause. Paul Krugman identified this tendency over a decade ago when he warned that it was dangerous to reach the right policy conclusion for the wrong reasons. But lately he has succumbed to it, along with economists such as Larry Summers, Alan Blinder, and even the great Paul Samuelson.

Trade is not all it is cracked up to be, they write. It can have alarming side effects. Therefore, we must…coordinate our taxes with foreign countries! Boost education spending! Pretty much do anything except embrace protectionism, which they all piously reject. However, anti-trade passions can be difficult to control, once unleashed.

Quite right (although I would not include “coordinate our taxes with foreign countries” in my list of “right policy conclusions”).

The piece mentions recent and much-cited research by University of Chicago economists Christian Broda and John Romalis, suggesting that trade has disproportionately lowered the prices of goods that are important to poor Americans. If true, that is an interesting thing to know—but I am a little uncomfortable about the eagerness with which this (not very surprising) finding has been taken up by the remaining enthusiasts for free trade. The Broda-Romalis result does not need to be true, after all, for the orthodox case for liberal trade to hold. And politically I’m not sure it’s much help either. The trade-sceptic response to it is very straightforward, the same as the response to the related, familiar and (so far as I know) uncontested fact that Wal-Mart lowers prices disproportionately for the less well-off: what is the point of saving a couple of dollars on your Chinese imports if you’ve no job?

The best way to defend liberal trade to sceptics, I think, is always to emphasise the close parallel with technological progress. That too can have some harmful side-effects on the pattern of employment and on income distribution, while raising incomes overall. Yet who thinks to oppose it? When the likes of Larry Summers, Alan Blinder and Paul Samuelson express as much anxiety about the perils of advancing technology as about the downside of trade, I will at least concede that they are being consistent. Meanwhile, the case for progressive taxation, educational reform and—above all—universal health care can and should be made on the merits.

“Recount”, the HBO movie about the Florida presidential election fiasco of 2000, was good television: well made, well cast, and well acted (with an especially vivid, albeit cruel, portrayal of Katherine Harris by Laura Dern). Highly watchable.

Much as I enjoyed it, the predictable, inevitable, anti-Republican bias did become a little wearing. The movie encouraged you to think that for the Democrats it was all a matter of “counting every vote”—and who but a villain could object to that? Also, of course, you were invited to think that so long as this had been done Gore would have won. But this is still unclear, is it not? (Don’t answer that.) The treatment of the Florida Supreme Court’s pro-Gore decisions (wise, bold, disinterested) and the subsequent pro-Bush rulings of the Supreme Court (politically motivated, indefensible) was also tendentious and misleading. Two columns by Stuart Taylor (here and here) helped me refresh my memory of that aspect of the matter.

ABC’s Jake Tapper, who was a consultant on the film, notes that its “emotional core…makes it, probably, lean a little left. Not intellectually, but emotionally.” Oh sure. Probably, just a little, but not intellectually. (The title of Tapper’s book on the episode, which the film draws on, conveys its scrupulous intellectual detachment: “Down and Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency”.)

Mainly, though, as I watched I was thinking, “only in America”. Much as I admire this country, could anywhere else take something so simple and make it so complicated and controversial? I mean, a full-scale constitutional crisis, arising out of an inability to count votes? Imagine, if you can stay awake while doing so, a movie about a close result in a British election. In my own land, a recount in a close vote means counting the ballots (crosses on slips of paper) once or twice more: it takes a few hours, and it’s over. In the meantime, there is little to see, though I’m sure many of the vote-counters have fascinating inner lives. However you look at it, thin material for lawyers or scriptwriters.

But the great thing is, the United States learns from its mistakes. Eight years on there is no chance of a candidate accusing another of suppressing votes to steal an election. Least of all in Florida.

Two weeks ago in this space I expressed the naive hope that a US presidential contest between John McCain and Barack Obama might be a cut above ordinary politics. Neither man, to put it mildly, is the conventional type. Both are men of principle, with strong convictions – but with a pragmatic streak as well, open-minded, committed to bipartisan co-operation and running against business as usual. With luck, I said, they would treat each other with respect and steer clear of ad hominem smearing. For once there might be an election about the issues.

Perhaps I misspoke. Mr Obama, increasingly certain of his nomination as the Democratic candidate despite Hillary Clinton’s refusal to yield, has begun turning his attention to Mr McCain. His principal line of attack is that the Republican nominee stands for “four more years of George Bush”. Mr McCain, meanwhile, has fastened on his rival’s avowed willingness to meet rogue leaders such as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad “without preconditions” and charged him with a taste for appeasement.

So far, then, it is politics as usual. The “four more years” line is one more vapid slogan, a tactical alternative to engaging on the issues. The appeasement line may seem to point to a crucial substantive difference, and has been greeted that way by much of the press, but in reality is just as false.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post your comments below.

In US public policy, all roads lead to healthcare. Remorseless pressure on public spending? Blame Medicare. Economic insecurity? Fear of losing health benefits is a chief cause. Stagnant wages and worsening inequality? Look to the cost of employer-provided insurance. This failing system is a national scandal not just in its own right, but because of its proliferating fiscal, economic and political implications.

For many workers without employer-provided insurance, the cost of cover is now prohibitive. The average cost for a family is $12,000 (€7,700, £6,100) a year (roughly a quarter of median household income before tax) and rising handsomely in real terms. If you have cover provided by your employer, losing your job means losing your insurance. The unluckiest – especially those with a dreaded “pre-existing condition” – may then face ruin. This vastly amplifies the anxieties colouring the election and driving the US towards an increasingly strident anti-business, anti-trade outlook.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post your comments below.

Hillary Clinton’s failure of momentum in Indiana and North Carolina last week as good as assured Barack Obama of the Democratic party’s nomination. Regardless of what happens in West Virginia tomorrow (Mrs Clinton expects an easy win), the question is no longer whether she has a chance of deflecting her rival. It is whether the manner of her exit will support or undermine him – and then what kind of contest the battle between Mr Obama and John McCain, the Republican nominee, will be.

The nomination fight has left the Democratic party divided. Mr Obama hardly swept the board in last week’s primaries: he won comfortably in a state he expected to win and held Mrs Clinton to a close result in the other. In other words, he triumphed only in denying her the big results she needed.

He made no inroads into her base of support. He merely shored up his own – among black people, the young and the urban middle class – and (against the run of recent poll results) stopped the rot elsewhere. It was enough to win and to calm the nerves of party leaders who were starting to question Mr Obama’s electability.

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post your comments below.

The hole the US Democratic party is digging for itself just keeps getting deeper. In the past few days, after the grisly reappearance of Jeremiah Wright – the former friend who came not to praise Barack Obama but to bury him – Hillary Clinton’s standing in the polls has improved again. In Tuesday’s primaries, she is hoping for a comfortable win in Indiana and a close result in North Carolina, a dramatic change from just a month ago.

Meanwhile, Mr Obama continues to attract support from the unelected “super-delegates” who will almost certainly settle this thing. To understand why this is happening – why the super-delegates are choosing Mr Obama even as the wavering rank-and-file is having doubts – one must heed their growing alarm at the emerging prospect.

Despite Mrs Clinton’s recovery, Mr Obama will almost certainly end up with a majority of elected delegates and, unless the wheels come off completely, a majority of the popular vote (on most of the ways the Democratic party has provided for arriving at that figure).

The remainder of this column can be read here. Please post your comments below.

I’m away for the next two weeks. Enjoy next Tuesday’s tie-breakers, and the tie-breaker in the following week. I’ll be back for all subsequent tie-breakers.

The New York Times reports that high gas prices are causing people to buy smaller cars.

Soaring gas prices have turned the steady migration by Americans to smaller cars into a stampede.

In what industry analysts are calling a first, about one in five vehicles sold in the United States was a compact or subcompact car during April, based on monthly sales data released Thursday. Almost a decade ago, when sport utility vehicles were at their peak of popularity, only one in every eight vehicles sold was a small car.

Colour me amazed. But it’s not too late to interrupt this alarming trend. Let’s try a gas-tax holiday. (One question about that proposal, by the way, I wish somebody would put to Hillary Clinton and John McCain: if it’s such a good idea, why do it just for the summer?)

At this, a twinge of homesickness. I never thought Boris would do it.