Seeing spots

of doubt and even heresy in the ranks of the American Physical Society, which, as the link shows, once called the evidence for man-caused global warming "incontrovertible." Now society members are observing that the International Panel on Climate Change is every bit as factually fastidious as, oh, the guy who send you e-mails from Kenya saying he has $22 million and just needs to park in your bank account for a tiny while and let you keep the interest. "Numerous exaggerations and extensive errors" is the kind way that one member of the physical society described the international panel's report. It's worth noting that the panel's report was full of hedges and qualifiers and by any description far less certain than the physical society's previous, accusatory finding. The climate-change panel also was less than transparent about its methods of measuring and tracing the causes of climate change, which one member of the society described as "deliberately concealing and obscuring." Yet the physical society has at least been honest in reconsidering its previous position. Surely the climate-change panel will be every bit as accountable. Once the sun rises in the west.