I’m not sure how the [tag]White House[/tag] will manage to dismiss these results as trivial and/or inconclusive, but I’m sure they’ll think of something.
A scientific study commissioned by the Bush administration concluded yesterday that the lower atmosphere was indeed growing warmer and that there was “clear evidence of human influences on the [tag]climate[/tag] system.”
The finding eliminates a significant area of uncertainty in the debate over [tag]global warming[/tag], one that the administration has long cited as a rationale for proceeding cautiously on what it says would be costly limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases.
For years, global warming skeptics suggested there were discrepancies in the temperatures. The earth’s surface was heating up, they said, but the lower atmosphere wasn’t. This study disproves the claim — both temperatures are going up.
Just as importantly, the [tag]Bush[/tag]-appointed commission also concluded that “the observed patterns of change over the past 50 years cannot be explained by natural processes alone, nor by the effects of short-lived atmospheric constituents such as aerosols and tropospheric ozone alone.” In other words, we’re driving the temperatures up.
Rafe Pomerance, chairman of the Climate Policy Center, a group that advocates mandatory curbs on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases linked to global warming, said the new report settles the scientific debate over humans’ role.
“This puts the nail in the coffin of [the skeptics’] argument as much as anything I’ve seen,” Pomerance said. “It may not be the first time it’s been said, but it’s the clearest I’ve seen it stated coming out of a government agency. Game over.”
If only reality carried so much sway.
It’s overwhelming, right? Well, maybe, but as far as the Bush administration is concerned, yesterday’s report is just the first in a very long list of reports.
…White House officials noted that this was just the first of 21 assessments planned by the federal Climate Change Science Program, which was created by the administration in 2002 to address what it called unresolved questions. The officials said that while the new finding was important, the administration’s policy remained focused on studying the remaining questions and using voluntary means to slow the growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide.
Bush planned this well, not with regards to science or the environment, but in terms of passing the buck. Sure, this new study is conclusive and credible, but there are 20 more studies to go before the White House is prepared to do something about the problem.
By the time the Climate Change Science Program is finished publishing its reports, and proving to the president’s satisfaction that global warming is a genuine crisis, Bush will practically be on his way out of office.
Bush likes to say, “I believe the role of a President is to confront problems — not to pass them on to a future President, future Congress, or a future generation.” It’d be a better soundbite if he meant it.