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White House report backs climate change warnings; After a court order and four years late, Bush administration scientists issue an assessment

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 30, 2008 at 6:06 am

From the Los Angeles Times:

President Bush’s top science advisors issued a comprehensive report Thursday that for the first time endorses what most scientific experts have long asserted: that greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion “are very likely the single largest cause” of Earth’s warming. The 271-page report could undercut opposition to the more aggressive provisions of climate legislation, which is to be debated in the Senate next week.

The Bush administration had long resisted a congressional mandate, the 1990 Global Change Research Act, requiring the White House to report every four years on the science and impact of global warming and other environmental forces.

A U.S. District Court in August ordered Bush to comply with a 2004 deadline for an updated report, after the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity and other environmental groups filed suit.

Sharon Hays, deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the report did not represent a changed assessment but “a rolling up of a whole bunch of reports on the science, showing that climate change is primarily caused by human activity of the last 50 years.” The administration had earlier issued reports on the effect of climate change on transportation, agriculture and human health.

But environmentalists celebrated what they saw as a long-overdue admission from an administration that has been reluctant to join global efforts to curb greenhouse gases, such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. “This report represents a stark shift in what the administration has been saying since 2001,” said Philip Clapp, deputy managing director of the Pew Environment Group. “For the first time, it has had to admit that global warming is already having clear impacts in the United States, and the impacts are going to get worse even with the most aggressive action to cut emissions,” he said.

Read the full text of this article from the Los Angeles Times by clicking here.

May 30, 2008 · Filed Under Climate change & water supply

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