But please, do more than wear a button today.

Do something to reduce your carbon footprint.

The Washington Times is reporting today that “President Bush is poised to change course and announce as early as this week that he wants Congress to pass a bill to combat global warming.”

This, of course, can mean only one thing: Global warming is a junk science lie.

Seriously, though, how can one man who has focused his entire presidency on protecting corporations and precariously balancing at 180° away from the American Public’s opinion and accepted science and reality suddenly decide he’s going to do something good for the world?

My partner saw 1 Sky listed on a lawn sign at a neighbor’s house today and I like what I see. Global warming/climate change/”the greenhouse effect” is not just a serious risk and challenge to us all, but also an incredible opportunity to recognize and reach out as global neighbors all under that…. 1 sky.

Check it out. Embrace the challenge.

Only deadenders can refute it.

Wish Al Gore the best tomorrow when the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded.

In a year when Bill Clinton’s Veep brought home awards at Cannes, from the Academy AND Emmy awards mostly for his work on educating America and the world about global warming, I would love the tighty righties to have reason to deal with another “Inconvenient Truth” on Friday if the man many want to run for Democratic candidacy for president in 2008 wins. Nods to the folks at DraftGore, too.

[Now if only we could get Henry Kissinger’s peace prize recalled!]

Nods, too, to Doris Lessing, who at 88 today became the oldest person (let alone woman) to win the Nobel prize in literature. Lessing’s work is considered - uh… can you say seminal when it comes to feminism? - important stuff in understanding women and women’s power.

Climate change will hurt all of us - and has. But for Darfur, it is already making a bloody nightmare that much worse.

Nevermind that pictures from NASA equipment have helped scientists document the great changes Earth undergoes and which other scientists can track as part of the climate change phenomenon. Nope; when Bush wants someone else to mock global warming, he just picks up the phone and calls a top NASA official to tell us that climate change is just a theory and how wonderful it will be when the polar icecaps melt.

In other words, the Bush Administration will do everything in its incompetent and massively corrupt power to not just wage a war on science but to nuke any scientist with decent information.

I didn’t catch his appearance with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show (Thursday p.m.) but caught much of his time on The Late Show with David Letterman.

Al could not possibly have offered a better mix of intelligent information, passion and compassion for a better America, and highly personal charm without the too-slick stuff too often seen. He moved fluidly from:

• the great dangers of global warming,
• how each American can try to do his/her part to reduce the amount of pollution/energy demand to try to slow climate change,
• the lies that took us to Iraq with no proof of the great threat they insisted Saddam played,
• his great admiration for the U.S. soldiers but that to best support the troops, we must bring them home now

At the same time, Gore was warm and personable, did not in any way beat up on Bush (who likes to toss criticism at others, but gets righteously huffy when any of it rebounds upon him).

I must confess that if this was the day of the 2008 presidential vote (and the primary before it), it would be almost impossible for me to cast anyone else but Gore as my choice. This, from a woman who has been critical of a few of Gore’s ideas and still bitter and sad that Gore DID win the White House in 2000 (though Al was a class act throughout that horrible time, stepping aside because he felt that was what he had to do) was kept from it by a coup d’etat by the Bushies and Supreme Court.

Andy Ostroy analyzes Time Magazine’s piece on Al Gore and comes to the conclusion the former Clinton Vice President in is the 2008 Democratic nominee presidential race, even if still undeclared.

Certainly, there has been talk that with the Oscar win and a good shot at the Nobel Prize combined with his effectiveness in getting Americans to pay attention to global warming along with his new book, “The Assault on Reason“, Al may never enjoy such high praise and status again.

By about 5 billion years perhaps.

Thank God, the far right fundamentalists don’t believe in science (”Why worry about climate change when “Revelations” says it all!). Of course, regardless of this, they’re doing their damnest to make sure Armageddon comes about just as soon as Rovely possible.

Eight more years of these dimwits determining U.S. policy and Earth may not be around to worry about “relocation.”

[Hint: when Bush says, as he does continually, “We work hard”, he does NOT mean hard work; he means that what little time he spends working, he does so to create as much destruction of the American ideal as humanly possible.]

Listening to the president now talking in the Rose Garden with European leaders feels a little like “alternative consciousness” because everything he says is the opposite of what he DOES. Examples:

• Resist isolationism when Bush has spearheaded this “My way or the highway” campaign
• Bush says he is of “like mind” with the Europeans on climate change, when Europe is far, far, FAR ahead of us in this area; for example, champagne producers are already looking at relocating vineyards from France because global warming is hurting their crops while Bush pays countless “experts” to insist climate change is a myth

My advice? Check out what foreign papers are saying about the Europeans’ take on Bush’s happy horseshit.

As if Karl Rove wasn’t dismissive enough of science and the reality of global warming at the White House Correspondents Dinner in his “engagement” with Sheryl Crow and Laurie “Inconvenient Truth” David, Senator and 2008 GOP Presidential hopeful John McCain wants to do one better by hiring an uber-Global-Warming denier for his team (can’t wait for the Rapture-As-A-Solution To Global Over Population mandate).

From Think Progress:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) delivered a major policy speech today focusing attention on the threat posed by global climate change. McCain said, “The world is already feeling the powerful effects of global warming, and far more dire consequences are predicted if we let the growing deluge of greenhouse gas emissions continue, and wreak havoc with Gods creation.”

Also today, McCain released a statement proudly announcing that former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger has “endorsed John McCain for President and will advise his campaign on energy and national security issues.”

The man who McCain tagged to advise him on reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a prominent global warming denier.

All too often, fat men are portrayed as thick-skinned AND jolly. Apparently neither is the case with Bush’s (none too brilliant) “brain”, Karl Rove.

Read this at Huffington Post about how songstress Sheryl Crowe and “Inconvenient Truth” producer Laurie David (wife of Seinfeld co-creator, Larry David) approached Karl Rove at the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday night only to have Rove freak because they - oh my! - touched his arm, suggested he’s supposed to work (since he’s paid from our tax dollars) for the American people, and that he needs to take a much smarter look at the issue of global warming.

Hey, maybe Global Warming will be good to Karl: let him sweat off the 100 or so extra pounds and three additional chins he currently sports.

We’re in mighty big trouble. Yes, even bigger trouble than George W. Bush as president (although his positions have only exacerbated the danger with sick initiatives like “clear skies” which just means to tell factories to “think nice thoughts” rather than manage emissions). You don’t have to be one of the scientists the Bushies tell you to ignore to realize Global Warming is reality.

Go here and find out how you can join in an action this Saturday to step up, speak out, and make a commitment to slow the damage we’re doing to our planet.

Since the good folks at Think Progress already wrote this up so well, let me point to them (also check out this piece on Gore’s testimony):

Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) has said Al Gore is “full of crap” and compared people who believe in global warming to “the Third Reich.” During today’s Senate hearing, Inhofe used a considerable amount of time to attack Gore’s use of carbon offsets and try to convince him to sign a sham “energy ethics pledge.” (Find the real facts on Gore’s energy usage HERE and HERE.)

Inhofe asked Gore for his reaction, but then quickly cut him off saying Gore had taken up too much time. When Gore tried to go on, Inhofe repeatedly interrupted, adding, “I don’t want to be rude, but from now on, I’m going to ask you to respond…in writing.” Inhofe said Gore could respond verbally only if it was a “very brief response.”

Committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) finally intervened. “Would you agree to let the Vice President answer your questions?” Inhofe said Gore could respond when he was done talking, but Boxer wouldn’t have it: “No, that isn’t the rule. You’re not making the rules. You used to when you did this. Elections have consequences. So I make the rules.” The hearing audience applauded loudly.

Last week, the National Journal reported Congressional poll results that showed only about 13% of Congressional Republicans believe that global warming is a big deal that is caused, in large part, by excesses of industrial society - right, the stuff they use in air conditioners and exhaust from vehicles is GOOD for the environment. [The other 87% apparently remain convinced that George W. Bush is the second coming of the Savior, sent back to earth by God to make it clear the money-changers now OWN the temple.]

This sad commentary came on the heels of British newspapers reporting that the Bush Administration’s “great idea” for combatting the same global warming they still intermittently insist is fictitious theory put forth by anti-God, doomsaying scientists is to pump huge amounts of dust and other garbage into space to “shield” us from the sun (uh, it would also shield us from many of better effects of sunlight as well, such as that needed to grow food somewhere other than a laboratory). Also, we’re learning that more and more “energy” corporations and even the U.S. government has gone into the business of paying financial rewards to scientists who are willing to go on record as telling us global warming is a silly notion.

And to prove how low they will go - subterranean, in fact - House of Reprehensible Dana Rohrabacher (aka Rush Limbaugh with less girth and less Oxycontin), who made headlines last week for threatening the president with “impeachment talk” for allowing a court to convict two border agents for shooting a “suspected” drug dealer in the back (who knew the judicial branch literally IS run by Bush?), now insists that global warming may really be a by-product of dinosaur flatulence. Apparently, Rohrabacher failed to read the IPCC report to Capitol Hill that global warming IS unequivocally driven by human actions.

Well, I’ll buy the latter if the dinosaurs he references include Dim Dana himself, Bush & Cheney, the far right GOP (and the extreme fundamentalists who insist global warming is no problem because the Rapture will happen first) and the CEOs of Halliburton, UniCal, Exxon-Mobil, et al. But I think Nancy Pelosi has it absolutely right when she says that the Republican majority has stifled all serious discussion of combatting global warming for far too long, that it’s time to take the subject far more seriously and STOP waging war on science.