Much is made, among global warming catastrophists, of data gathered from ice. Atmosphere gets trapped in Antarctic ice. Scientists collect samples, from a long ways back. Then they study the pockets of air in the frozen water.

Evidence derived this way shows that carbon dioxide — CO₂ — was once not nearly as concentrated as it is today.

But what if the ice doesn’t retain the gas well?

Zbigniew Jaworowski, a research scientist in Warsaw, says that ice does not hold CO₂ in anything like pristine fashion for centuries and millennia. Far from it. He insists that polar ice is known to be unstable, and CO₂ is known to leak out at a higher rate than oxygen and nitrogen — far higher. Jaworowski believes that we cannot rely on ice core samples for information about this gas. There are better measurements available, he says, offering more reliability about trends up and down.

Unfortunately, when Dr. Jaworoski proposed to test the reliability of measuring gases trapped in ice, the prospective research sponsors refused to fund it. Why? According to an article in Canada’s National Post, for what was called “moral reasons.” That is, the study might scientists who assert catastrophic global warming look bad.

That’s political reasoning, not moral. With something as important as the planet’s future on the line, there’s no room for lying. Or avoiding…inconvenient truths.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.