Houston to Dumb Dumb: we have a problem

Yesterday, NASA's James Hansen spoke at the National Press Club of the need to radically alter carbon emissions within ten years (giving us only a couple of years to come up with the course of action). Hansen said failure to act may put us past the tipping point and yield irreversible changes to our planet, little things like species extinction and the disappearance of polar ice/rising sea levels.

Given we've got dumb dumb in office for nearly two more years, we really can't afford to wait for the next Administration to come up with solutions. Yet, part of Bush's energy policy is exactly what we don't want:

Hansen emphasized that because of coal's high carbon content, we cannot burn more any more of it, and no additional coal burning plants should be built; he said it will become clear, unless new and affordable technology emerges, that we are only going to have to tear them down in a few years. (someone once said coal is to clean energy what a twinkie is to health food.)

Bush plans to burn more of it, which should come as no surprise given his close ties to the coal industry, and he has attempted to slash funding for cleaner coal technology. And he may not be getting as much flak from NASA; the Bush Administration cut that part of the NASA budget in mid-2006, retroactive to the beginning of the budget year, according to Hansen.

I wonder if the founding fathers pictured something like this: author Michael Crichton can give misleading climate change testimony to eager ears on the (Republican-led) Hill, but any scientifically based climate change news coming from say, the director of NASA's Goddard Space Institute, has to be vetted first by the White House.

There should be a legal price to pay for blatantly disregarding evidence and mismanaging citizens' (the US and the globe's) welfare.