Ah, Those Little Pranksters!
Dirty tricks are simply business as usual with this Imperial White House. Spreading rumors of a white candidate having an illegitimate black baby, Swiftboating another, jamming the Democratic phone lines on election night, outing a CIA agent to get back at her husband: all are standard operating procedure by the Emperor and his minions. The Minneapolis Star Tribune points out the most recent prank by this regime:
Normally when the Bush administration makes news on global warming research, it's for trying to suppress yet another report showing the folly of its wait-and-see stance. So naturally it was a surprise when the U.S. Climate Change Science Program posted an alarming new report online.
The report, still in draft form and supposedly secret, is by a working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and its influence would be hard to overstate. The IPCC has the cooperation of virtually every climate scientist in the world, as well as experts in many other fields. Its periodic reports -- this is the fourth since 1990 -- are thoroughly critiqued by countless scientists and government policy chiefs before release, a process which assures both accuracy and moderation.
Such stature has not deterred the Bush administration from trying to dismiss or minimize past IPCC findings as just another set of debatable, unpersuasive conjectures. So why draw attention to this version's findings, which continue a trend toward the dire?
The leading explanations: The administration wanted to needle the IPCC, which asked that the draft be kept confidential until its official release next February. Or it wanted to take attention away from the report by making sure it would sound like old news when finalized nine months from now.
...Why bother? President Bush has made it consistently clear that he intends no serious action on global warming, which is reckless but at least honest. He has continued to pretend his administration will partner with the rest of the world in exploring options, which is dishonest but at least transparent. But attempting to undermine the world's most credible periodic review of climate science is only a cheap little prank, which is typical but at least can't hope to obscure a consensus this president finds inconvenient. [Emphasis added]
Petty and puerile, but, then, what would you expect from this White House?
Normally when the Bush administration makes news on global warming research, it's for trying to suppress yet another report showing the folly of its wait-and-see stance. So naturally it was a surprise when the U.S. Climate Change Science Program posted an alarming new report online.
The report, still in draft form and supposedly secret, is by a working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and its influence would be hard to overstate. The IPCC has the cooperation of virtually every climate scientist in the world, as well as experts in many other fields. Its periodic reports -- this is the fourth since 1990 -- are thoroughly critiqued by countless scientists and government policy chiefs before release, a process which assures both accuracy and moderation.
Such stature has not deterred the Bush administration from trying to dismiss or minimize past IPCC findings as just another set of debatable, unpersuasive conjectures. So why draw attention to this version's findings, which continue a trend toward the dire?
The leading explanations: The administration wanted to needle the IPCC, which asked that the draft be kept confidential until its official release next February. Or it wanted to take attention away from the report by making sure it would sound like old news when finalized nine months from now.
...Why bother? President Bush has made it consistently clear that he intends no serious action on global warming, which is reckless but at least honest. He has continued to pretend his administration will partner with the rest of the world in exploring options, which is dishonest but at least transparent. But attempting to undermine the world's most credible periodic review of climate science is only a cheap little prank, which is typical but at least can't hope to obscure a consensus this president finds inconvenient. [Emphasis added]
Petty and puerile, but, then, what would you expect from this White House?
posted by Diane at 4:01 AM
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