Bush's global warming flip-flop. (Insider Report).

Radio celebrity Rush Limbaugh, longtime cheerleader for Republican presidents and the Republican Party, has, on more than one occasion, acknowledged that Clinton-Gore programs and policies are being adopted by the Bush administration. The latest example: Climate Action Report 2002, the EPA's global warming report released on June 3rd. If Rush failed to attack this toxic EPA emission, his credibility would be blown with millions of listeners; he has hounded Clinton, Gore, and the "environmental wackos" for over a decade on this issue. In his commentary on the report, Limbaugh was forced to bite the bullet. He said: "Ladies and gentlemen, on the front page of Monday's [June 3rd] New York Times there's a story that has the Bush administration essentially saying, 'Yes, the phenomenon known as global warming exists, and guess who's causing it? You! American humanity with our highly technologically advanced lifestyle--our automobiles, air conditioners and whatever else, we're the ones causing it.' The Times story b egins, 'In a stark shift for the Bush administration, the United States has sent a climate report to the United Nations detailing specific and far-reaching effects that it says global warming will inflict on the American environment, In the report, the administration for the first time mostly blames human actions for recent global warming. It says the main culprit is the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.' "Implying that Bush had transformed into Gore, Limbaugh then asked rhetorically, "George W. Algore, anyone?"

"The administration appears to have abandoned another core conservative principle," said the GOP's radio icon, "leaving us all to grapple with the question, 'Why?"'

The new Bush-Gore position on global warming is panicking many Bush supporters. Myron Ebell, a top global warming debunker at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wrote in Human Events: "Climate Action Report 2002 is a disastrous concession to global warming alarmism. All the worst parts are based on junk science concocted by the Clinton-Gore Administration and now recycled by the Bush Administration with qualifying statements added here and there. Reading it is rather like opening up a copy of the Republican Party platform to find the text of the Democratic Party platform printed inside, with a statement buried in the middle that these are not really our positions."

"The report," said Ebell, "concedes that mankind is causing global warming, that future warming will be in line with United Nations predictions, and that warming will lead to ecosystem collapse, heat waves, droughts, floods...."

On June 4th, President Bush responded to the uproar from the right by attempting to blame the report on nameless bureaucrats. "I have read the report put out by a -- put out by the bureaucracy," he said. "I do not support the Kyoto treaty." This actually compounded the problem; it told the world that the president now believes global warming to be real and dangerous, but refuses to do anything about it.

White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer added to the confusion the following day by repeatedly insisting that the Climate Action Report 2002's major findings were consistent with President Bush's speech of June 11, 2001, which acknowledged human responsibility for global warming. "This confusion gives away the whole scientific debate," lamented Ebell.