WH Admits Global Warming Is a Fact, and Greenhouse Gases Caused by People [View All]

[Time for change]

As a federal employee who works for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), I periodically receive notices by e-mail from that Department. Recently I received an e-mail from them entitled “HHS celebrates Earth Day”.

Here is the 7th paragraph of that HHS e-mail, in which I have bolded the surprising Bush administration admission and italicized the qualifying phrases:

The White House's Council on Environmental Quality is working on climate change policies that will help our economy grow as well as improve our environment. There is no debating the fact that the surface of the earth is warmer and that people are causing an increase in greenhouse gases. By supporting environmental technological innovation, President Bush aims to address climate change, to reduce harmful air pollution, and to improve U.S. energy security.

Previous to this, I had neither seen nor heard the Bush administration give any credence to the importance of global warming since Bush’s campaign promises of 2000.

Since then, Bush pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto Protocol as one of the first acts of his Presidency, and he has repeatedly questioned the science behind global warming. The Kyoto Protocol was signed in February 2005 by 141 nations, including every developed industrial nation in the world, with the exception of Australia and the U.S., despite the fact that the U.S. is by far the largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world.

Bush has even tried to silence Dr. James Hansen, the top climate scientist at NASA, on this issue, following Dr. Hansen’s December 2005 lecture calling for prompt reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases in order to reduce global warming. Dr. Hansen also said that the leadership and participation of the United States in the effort to reduce global warming is needed in order to prevent permanent damage to our planet:

The fresh efforts to quiet him, Dr. Hansen said, began in a series of calls after a lecture he gave on Dec. 6 at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. In the talk, he said that significant emission cuts could be achieved with existing technologies, particularly in the case of motor vehicles, and that without leadership by the United States, climate change would eventually leave the earth "a different planet."

In fact, so egregious has been the Bush administration’s refusal to budge on this issue that the “International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration” conducted hearings into it in January 2006, based on the following charges:

The Bush administration has consistently denied the scientific consensus around global warming and its causes. Administration officials have misrepresented, distorted, and suppressed scientific information on the subject, especially as it would impact public opinion.

The Bush administration has refused to take any measures to curb the emissions of greenhouse gases, guided by narrow corporate interests. It has withdrawn from any international efforts that would impose binding restrictions, however minimal. It has done this with full knowledge of the catastrophic effects of global warming and the disproportionate U.S. share of world greenhouse gas emissions, the leading cause of global warming.

So, this begs the question of why the Bush administration is now apparently admitting that global warming poses a substantial problem.

The e-mail I received that admitted the significance of global warming was addressed mainly to HHS scientists, who are notorious adherents of science. Chances are, therefore, that few if any of them would have been impressed with a statement from the White House that denied the significance of global warming. And the e-mail was sent out on Earth Day, after all! So perhaps the Bush administration simply feels that its admission won’t come to the attention of typical Bush voters, who tend to see things less like HHS scientists and more like that arch-conservative, Stephen Colbert, who said at the recent White House Correspondence dinner, in admiration of our great pResident’s disdain for books: “I’ve never been a fan of books. I don’t trust them. They're all fact, no heart. I mean, they're elitist, telling us what is or isn't true, or what did or didn't happen.”

So, is this just another instance of the Bush administration tailoring its message to its audience? Or, does it simply feel that the qualifying phrases “is working on” and “aims to address” allow enough wiggle room to avoid taking any substantive action? Or, is it feeling pressured on this subject by ex-President …. I mean, Vice President Al Gore’s recent book? Or, is it actually having a change of mind on this subject? :sarcasm: