Changing Tunes?

White House science adviser John Marburger told the BBC last week:

"I think there is widespread agreement on certain basics, and one of the most important is that we are producing far more CO2 from fossil fuels than we ought to be. And it's going to lead to trouble unless we can begin to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we are burning and using in our economies.... The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, and there's no end point, it just gets hotter and hotter, and so at some point it becomes unlivable."

That statement -- by far the strongest in support of the consensus view on warming yet issued from the Administration -- has the Christian Science Monitor asking whether Bush is finally coming around on mandatory carbon cuts, or whether he is simply running out the clock on his presidency.