Climate Change Report is a Smoking Gun, Say Dems.

...and they are right!

Bush and Cheney have resisted any and all reports they did not like, as those reports would have intefered with the huge profits for their pals in the energy industry

WASHINGTON - A strongly worded global warming report from the world's top climate scientists put pressure Friday on the Bush administration to reduce the United States' growing share of gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

Democrats newly in control of Congress and other critics of President Bush's environmental policies pounced on the long-awaited United Nations report like fresh meat.

"Although President Bush just noticed that the earth is heating up, the American public, every reputable scientist and other world leaders have long recognized that global warming is real and it's serious. The time to act is now," said Sen. John Kerry, who with GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine crafted one of a half-dozen competing bills to address global warming.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of House panels on energy and natural resources, said that "for those who are still trying to determine responsibility for global warming, this new U.N. report on climate change is a scientific smoking gun."

The White House issued a statement less than four hours after the report's release defending Bush's six-year record on global climate change, beginning with his acknowledgment in 2001 that the increase in greenhouse gases is due largely to human activity.

It said Bush and his budget proposals have devoted $29 billion to climate-related science, technology, international assistance and incentive programs — "more money than any other country."

Bush has called for slowing the growth rate of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which averages 1 percent a year, but has rejected government-ordered reductions. Last week he also called for a 20 percent reduction in U.S. gasoline consumption over the next 10 years.

Markey said it will be Congress who will have "to meet this challenge by moving aggressively to transition away from forms of energy which have the capacity to destroy the planet as we know it."

Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation, called it already "past time to act and solve global warming with the urgency and determination with which Americans have successfully confronted other threats to our security and to wildlife."

Compiled by scientists in 113 nations, the report says global warming is very likely caused by humans, meaning it is a 90 percent certainty. By the year 2100, temperatures are predicted to rise by about 3 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit and sea levels to go up 7 to 23 inches.
Yvo de Boer, the top U.N. climate official, said the findings "leave no doubt as to the dangers mankind is facing and must be acted upon without delay. Any notion that we do not know enough to move decisively against climate change has been clearly dispelled."

The last U.N. report five years ago said it was "likely," or 66 percent probable, that people had caused global warming over the last 50 years.

"This report really provides strong weight behind those saying we need much stronger action" from the United States and other nations, said Robert Watson, the World Bank's chief spokesman on global warming and former chairman of the U.N. scientific panel responsible for evaluating the threat of climate change.

"These guys are saying now very unequivocally it is very likely due to human activity," he said.

"This is a much stronger statement than we made six years ago."

Some evangelical Christians who helped Bush win re-election in 2004 demanded he provide more world leadership on the issue in light of the new U.N. report.

"I am absolutely certain that as Christians we need to act today to curb global warming pollution," said Jim Ball, national coordinator of the Evangelical Climate Initiative and president of the Evangelical Environmental Network.

"It is a moral imperative that we act to protect God's creation, including the helpless victims of what the report indicates will be the decades-long impact of global warming," he said.

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.