Science in the Modern Bush Universe

A draft report from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), has recently been leaked to the public. The report was not meant to be released for publication until next year, but apparently you can access it right now on the internet. Global Warming Fastest for 20,000 Years - and it is Mankind's Fault, from the Independent, via Common Dreams. The IPCC was established in 1988 specifically to study the problem of global warming, and this is their fourth report since their inception. According to this report:

Global warming is made worse by man-made pollution and the scale of the problem is unprecedented in at least 20,000 years, according to a draft report by the world's leading climate scientists.

The leaked assessment by the group of international experts says there is now overwhelming evidence to show that the Earth's climate is undergoing dramatic transformation because of human activity.

A draft copy of the report by a working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are at the highest for at least 650,000 years.

So, as Molly Ivins remarked in her column early in April (because spring is too beautiful to write about a depressing topic like Iraq, she decided to write on global warming), "The political fight over global warming is over, except for the Bush administration, which has some weird problem with science in general." Indeed. Now, Tankwoman wrote quite an amusing piece on getting ready for the Avian Flu pandemic, but in our NYT headlines sidebar there is a link today to a little article by Elisabeth Bumiller which is almost as amusing: Bush Urges Graduates to Use Science to Protect Human Dignity. Our Fearless Leader speaking on science in Stillwater, Oklahoma would really be funny if it were a Saturday Night Live skit, but it's real and therefore more scary than funny.

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