UH, ON SECOND THOUGHT – AT 7:48 P.M. ET:  There is some thinking going on about global warming.  That's news.  The thinking doesn't match the prevailing party line.  That's real news.  The story:

PARIS (AFP) - – Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, one of the most worrying questions in the global warming debate, should be halved, according to Dutch and US scientists.

In the last two years, several teams have estimated Greenland is shedding roughly 230 gigatonnes of ice, or 230 billion tonnes, per year and West Antarctica around 132 gigatonnes annually.

Together, that would account for more than half of the annual three-millimetre (0.2 inch) yearly rise in sea levels, a pace that compares dramatically with 1.8mm (0.07 inches) annually in the early 1960s.

But, according to the new study, published in the September issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, the ice estimates fail to correct for a phenomenon known as glacial isostatic adjustment.

This is the term for the rebounding of Earth's crust following the last Ice Age.

COMMENT:  Not to worry, environmental kamikazes.  Daddy Barack won't change his views anytime soon.  And you can still compare global-warming skeptics to flat Earthers.  The press won't mind.

But recent surveys show that the American people are turning against the global-warming "consensus," and some of the dogmatic tactics used to advance it.  We need a lot more research, a a lot more honest research.  If Obama would lead on this, rather than follow, it might counter his image as weak, indecisive, and conformist.  But then, of course, he wouldn't be our Barack.

September 7, 2010