Seeking a comfortable position between environmentalists on the one hand and industry buddies on the other, President Bush let his administration release a report last week acknowledging for the first time that human-caused climate change would substantially change the U.S. environment — but then distanced himself from the report’s conclusions during a press conference yesterday. “I read the report put out by the bureaucracy,” Bush said dismissively. His spokesperson, Ari Fleischer, emphasized persisting scientific uncertainty about some aspects of global warming — long the Bush administration’s standard line — even though last week’s report was by far the most categorical assessment of climate change to come out of this administration.
