THIS JUST IN -- GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL!

Sorry, I just had to put the title of this post in all caps. The reality of global warming is obvious to many of us, but its deniers occupy the highest reaches of political life and continue to block efforts to deal with it appropriately. Despite all the evidence, these deniers have long claimed that there's just too much uncertainty to reach any definitive conclusion. And so all we get is reckless stonewalling.

But now, according to The New York Times, we have this:

A scientific study commissioned by the Bush administration concluded yesterday that the lower atmosphere was indeed growing warmer and that there was "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."

The finding eliminates a significant area of uncertainty in the debate over global warming, one that the administration has long cited as a rationale for proceeding cautiously on what it says would be costly limits on emissions of heat-trapping gases...

The report's authors all agreed that their review of the data showed that the atmosphere was, in fact, warming in ways that generally meshed with computer simulations. The study said that the only factor that could explain the measured warming of Earth's average temperature over the last 50 years was the buildup heat-trapping gases, which are mainly emitted by burning coal and oil.

It should come as no surprise that the White House is resisting the findings of its own study. Its "truth" is not our truth. Its reality is fantasy. And the facts don't mean a thing.

More government-sponsored studies will be conducted, but delaying and denying will only lead us ever more swiftly to our ruin. This study tells it like it us, like we know it to be, but things won't change until the all-too-real problem of global warming is taken seriously by those who have the power to do something about it.

Until then, we will continue to be our planet's worst enemies... and hence our own.