What the Prez Will Say about Global Warming in the SOTU Address

Last year at about this time I took a poll among interested parties–such as Roger Pielke, Jr., Environmental Economics, Kevin Drum of Political Animal–to see if the Current Occupant of the White House would mention global warming. The consensus was unanimous: he would not.

Indeed, he did not. A year later, rumors from London published in The Guardian (see below) suggested that the Prez had signed on to a greenhouse emissions cap. In response, the White House rushed out an unusually firm denial on Sunday. Today presidential spokesman Tony Snow followed up in the press briefing:

"Q:     Reports from London? Are you going to be able to be categorical about whether or not the President had been persuaded by Tony Blair to agree to greenhouse gas emission limits?

MR. SNOW: Look, we’ll have a State of the Union address in a week and we’ll lay out our policy on global warming.

Q:" So that’s not the same kind of denial that —

MR. SNOW: That’s because — you’re confronting me with another report I haven’t had time to test out.

Q That’s the one we were talking about this morning —

MR. SNOW: If you’re talking about enforceable carbon caps, in terms of industry wide and nationwide, we knocked that down. That’s not something we’re talking about."

Interesting. This suggests the White House will agree that global warming is real (which the Prez, under the influence of Michael Crichton, has questioned in the past). They might actually call for some sort of action. But what sort?

Follow-up: The Financial Times has a fascinating quote on the subject:

White House officials remain privately sceptical about a British report produced in October by Sir Nicholas Stern on the economics of climate change, suggesting it would be wrong to make big decisions based on what some officials dismiss as “popular science”.

This White House claims we should respect their opinion on a question of science? After all their efforts to eviscerate the collection and study of scientific data by Federal agencies? Holy Jesus. The arrogance of these folks knows no bounds.