It won't help sweltering Washington, DC nor even likely boost sales of deicing salt in Argentina, but that country's national weather service yesterday reported the first major snow in Buenos Aires since June 22, 1918, according to the Manchester Guardian (credit: their photo above). What would Al Gore say?

Meanwhile, in the face of politically-correct "conventional wisdom" on "climate change," former VP Gore was challenged to a bet on the future of climate change. Reports today's Wall Street Journal:

J. Scott Armstrong, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and expert on long range forecasting, has offered to bet Al Gore $10,000 that he can do a better job of predicting the future of climate change than the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose forecasts of rising temperatures are cited in virtually every media account. Mr. Armstrong and a colleague, Kesten Green of New Zealand's Monash University, examined the IPCC's work for last month's 27th Annual International Symposium on Forecasting and found it essentially valueless according to established principles of forecasting. "Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder," concluded the two.

So what's Prof. Armstrong's own climate prediction? No change at all. "The methodology was so poor that I thought a bet based on complete ignorance of the climate could do better," says Mr. Armstrong. "We call it 'the naïve model.' Things won't change."

Professor Armstrong is the author of Long-Range Forecasting -- the most frequently cited book on forecasting methods -- and Principles of Forecasting, which was voted a "favorite book" by researchers and practitioners associated with the International Institute of Forecasters. If Mr. Gore accepts his challenge, Prof. Armstrong has proposed that each man put $10,000 into a charitable trust at a reputable brokerage house. The winner would then choose a charity to receive the total amount.

So far, no response from Mr. Gore. Perhaps he read about Buenos Aires.

So much has been written, particularly over the past week or so, about the series of 5-4 votes in the U.S. Supreme Court where President Bush's most enduring legacy is being recorded. While much has been made about the Court's ruling outlawing race-based discrimination and restoring the erosion of political free speech under the McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform," other less-discussed opinions will have far-reaching impacts on the salt industry.

Perhaps most important among them was the June 25th decision in National Ass'n of Home Builders v. Defenders of Wildlife . The Supreme Court reversed an appeals court ruling that had, in effect, established the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as a super-statute that was given priority when its dictates conflicted with other laws. This grew out of the infamous "snail darter" case thirty years ago that held the ESA "require[s federal] agencies to afford first priority to the declared national policy of saving endangered species." The NAHB ruling examined a conflict of the ESA with the Clean Water Act and the court ruled that the agencies should consult together to resolve the problem, not sacrifice pollution control rules as the preferred outcome. The ESA has been employed regarding solar salt production and this ruling is a step forward for rational (and more flexible) public policy.