Bush Administration Concedes Earth is Warming and Humans are the Cause

Four years late and under court order to issue a report, the Bush administration has officially conceded what scientific studies have long maintained: The planet is warming rapidly and the burning of fossil fuels is “very likely” the cause. In a report entitled “Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Warming,” U.S. government scientists sign on to many of the conclusions reached recently by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Though mainstream in its conclusions, the report is a big step for an administration that for years denied the link between human activity and climate change. The report, which was supposed to have been issued in 2004 under the federal Global Change Research Act, says that one upshot of rising temperatures will be greater demands on the energy sector to produce more electricity to cool buildings, industries, and homes, and to pump more water to irrigate crops in a hotter — and often drier — world.