Well, here’s news worth interrupting a Sunday evening for (not much to interrupt, really — I’d been watching movies and eating pretzels in my underwear). Matt Drudge is reporting that the Bushies are about to do a 180-degree flip flop on their global warming stance:

U-Turn: Bush Admin Outlines ‘Global Warming’ Effects On America; Acknowledges Damage

In a stunning U-turn 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.

More

Also for the first time — the White House places ‘most of the blame for recent global warming on human actions — mainly the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,’ the New York Times is planning to report on Monday Page Ones, according to publishing sources.

The United States will be substantially changed in the next few decades, claims the Bush report. The United States will ‘very likely’ be seeing the ‘disruption of snow-fed water supplies, more stifling heat waves and the permanent disappearance of Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal marshes.’

More

‘The new report’s predictions present a sharp contrast to the administration’s previous statements on climate change, in which President Bush always spoke in generalities and stressed the need for much more research to resolve scientific questions.’

The move puts a substantial distance between the administration and the energy industry and automakers.

Impacting Hard…

Uh, I don’t know…more brilliant rope-a-dope strategery, maybe? I mean, Christ…!

Or as Instantman puts it, “I can’t figure this administration out. It’s getting to be like Clinton without the bimboes.”

Will this re-invigorate calls for the U.S. to embrace the Kyoto Protocol? Surely. Will we ever sign the damned thing? Not a chance. Instead, this strikes me as a remarkably transparent and ill-conceived move on the part of the Bushies to siphon off some of the Dem’s green-coalition support for the 2004 election — ill-conceived because Bush could pass a law commanding that henceforth corporations produce nothing save for oxygen, lentils, rain forests, and spotted owl eggs, and the Greens would still go after him for being “mindlessly pro-industry” and for engaging in “spotted owl hegemony”; transparent because, well, Bush thinks he’ll be running against Gore again in 04′, and he thinks this is a way to cut into Gore’s voter base (such as is it is).

Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid…

[update: See Steven Den Beste’s analysis of the Kyoto crowd; and here’s Ed Driscoll, who made the same argument I did, only he made it before I did. Which is what I get for drinking bourbon and watching Lithgow and a young Cynthia Nixon in The Manhattan Project…]

[update 2: Kevin Whited comments on Den Beste’s piece].

[update 3: Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times piece:

n 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.

But while the report says the United States will be substantially changed in the next few decades — ‘very likely’ seeing the disruption of snow-fed water supplies, more stifling heat waves and the permanent disappearance of Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal marshes, for example — it does not propose any major shift in the administration’s policy on greenhouse gases.

It recommends adapting to inevitable changes. It does not recommend making rapid reductions in greenhouse gases to limit warming, the approach favored by many environmental groups and countries that have accepted the Kyoto Protocol, a climate treaty written in the Clinton administration that was rejected by Mr. Bush.

The new document, ‘U.S. Climate Action Report 2002,’ strongly concludes that no matter what is done to cut emissions in the future, nothing can be done about the environmental consequences of several decades’ worth of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases already in the atmosphere.

[…] the report has alienated environmentalists, too. Late last week, after it was posted on the Web site of the Environmental Protection Agency, private environmental groups pounced on it, saying it pointed to a jarring disconnect between the administration’s findings on the climate problem and its proposed solutions.

‘The Bush administration now admits that global warming will change America’s most unique wild places and wildlife forever,’ said Mark Van Putten, the president of the National Wildlife Federation, a private environmental group. ‘How can it acknowledge global warming is a disaster in the making and then refuse to help solve the problem, especially when solutions are so clear?’

So, other than pissing off both his backers AND environmental groups, what exactly does this report accomplish? Not much — although perhaps a few people will point to this as a sign of Bush’s “honesty” vis-a-vis environmental issues…

Not worth interrupting a nearly-nude and pretzel-filled Sunday evening, afterall. Think I’ll go watch The Vanishing…]