Jim Hightower

Big news! In an apparent effort to get his job approval rating higher than 30 percent, George W has conceded that global warming does exist, and he has proposed his very own plan for coping with it.

Well... not a plan exactly. His idea is that the nations causing the most climate change (led by the U.S. and China) should meet and set goals for fixing the problem. In other words, his plan is to seek a plan. Still, in the wonderland of BushWorld, that's progress.

Yet, having taken a tentative step forward, Bush quickly took two steps backwards. Just one week after George touted his plan to make a plan, it was revealed that he is drastically cutting back on the scientific effort to collect climate data needed to devise a plan.

Starting next year, six research satellites were to be put into orbits to provide precise measurements of shrinking ice sheets, glaciers, levels of seas and lakes, surface radiation, atmospheric carbon dioxide, and other environmental changes that can only be detected by satellites. However, most of the satellite sensors needed to collect such precise data are being eliminated by the Bushites, and the launch date is being postponed to sometime between 2013 and 2026.

Why? Bush's bean counters say that the $12 billion cost of this research program is too much. Hello... they dump $12 billion into the hellhole of Iraq every two months! These are the people who airlifted $12 billion in cash to Iraq in 2003 – and it simply disappeared. But now that it's money for something that America and the world actually need, they've suddenly turned into penny-pinchers, putting the overall climate program in serious jeopardy.

Ironically, Bush's excuse for taking no action to reduce the pollution that's causing climate change has been that he's committed to researching the problem. Now we see that that's just another Bush lie.