In its first move on global warming, the Bush administration has asked that the next international summit on climate change be delayed two months. When talks to hammer out the details of the Kyoto treaty collapsed last November at The Hague, Netherlands, the chair of the talks, Jan Pronk, scheduled another session for this May. But U.S. State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said this week that the Bush administration needs more time to undertake a “thorough look at the U.S. policy on climate change.” As a candidate, President Bush made clear that he didn’t support Kyoto, although he wouldn’t fully discount the possibility that global warming was occurring. Meanwhile, a study published today in the journal Science suggests that rising greenhouse gas levels might bring about more destructive weather patterns by intensifying the effects of El Nino and La Nina.
