[A man stands in front of a house. He's facing the street, garden hose in hand, watering his lawn. Smoke billows from the house behind him. A neighbor approaches.]

Neighbor: [pointing] "Sir, your house is on fire."

Man: "No it isn't."

Neighbor: "Yes it is. Just turn around and look."

Man: [still facing street] "No need to look. It wasn't on fire when I came out here."

Neighbor: [grabs him and physically turns him around] "Well it's on fire now. See the smoke coming out of the roof? Maybe you should spray it with that garden hose you have in your hand, put the fire out."

Man: "Well, maybe it is on fire and maybe not. Maybe houses just smoke sometimes. You never know. And besides, even if it is on fire I'm not gonna spray it with water. Water costs money, you know. See, I can't afford to have my water bill going up."

Neighbor: [walking away shaking head and blinking furiously] "Sure, I guess that makes sense."

Man: Damn right! I know what I'm talking about.


It looks like the Bush administration is finally getting some much needed Congressional oversight regarding it's continuous supression of the science behind global warming. They are stonewalling as much as possible, but with two years left in office, the facts are going to come out.

In the past the White House has said it has only sought to inject balance into reports on climate change.

Inject balance. That's Bush-speak for allowing a report based on years of scientific study by hundreds of scientists from around the world to be "refuted" by a couple of hand-job pseudo-scientists from one of the half-dozen or so "think tanks" funded by Exxon-Mobil. With the Dems new authority to hold hearings into any and every evil thing this administration has done, the general public is finally going to hear what science junkies like myself have known from the very beginning. The preznit and his people are evangelical when it comes to science. Any reports containing findings that conflict with their previously held beliefs or threaten corporate profits are edited or watered down or stalled or otherwise just ignored.

Bush has acknowledged concerns about global warming, but strongly opposes mandatory caps of greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that approach would be too costly.

This is classic Bush obfuscation. Give the appearance of making a concession while not actually doing so. He finally acknowledges that global warming is real, but flatly refuses to do anything about the greenhouse gases which cause it. Next he'll start talking about having more studies done to try to find ways to address the problem that won't effect our economy. I assume he'll find a fresh batch of scientists who agree with the conclusions he wants reached to conduct these studies. Kinda like he found a whole new batch of generals to run his war when the old ones didn't agree with the surge plan. In both cases it will get him through to the end of his presidency without having to actually change course in any way. All the Dems will be able to accomplish is to humiliate him by unearthing more and more of his fuck-ups until he leaves office, and I sincerely hope that's what they do. Regardless, when he finally scurries back to Crawford, we'll be 8 years behind schedule in confronting the problem of global warming. I worry what 8 years of a do-nothing, simpleton, anti-science president now might mean a few decades in the future.