Government Scientist See the World Getting Warmer

People of the world 1 - Bush administration 0

But, apparently, we are playing with ping pong rules and the game is to 21.

The first of 21 "assessments" by government scientist has found that the lower atmosphere is indeed getting warmer and there is "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system." But, for Bush, this is just one of 21 assessments.

The White House study found that "there is no longer a discrepancy in the rate of global average temperature increase for the surface compared with higher levels in the atmosphere."

If there was ever a perfect storm for Bush to step up to the plate and commit us to altering our energy consumption, it is now. But, Bush never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

You can find the complete report here.

Federal Study Finds Accord on Warming
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: May 3, 2006

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 climate system."

The finding eliminates a significant area of uncertainty in the debate over global warming, 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.

But 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.

The focus of the new federal study was conflicting records of atmospheric temperature trends.

For more than a decade, scientists using different methods had come up with differing rates of warming at Earth's surface and in the midsection of the atmosphere, called the troposphere. These disparities had been cited by a small group of scientists, and by the administration and its allies, to question a growing consensus among climatologists that warming from heat-trapping gases could dangerously heat Earth.

The new study found that "there is no longer a discrepancy in the rate of global average temperature increase for the surface compared with higher levels in the atmosphere," in the words of a news release issued by the Commerce Department and approved by the White House. The report was published yesterday online at climatescience.gov.

(Full Story)