Recently the White House assured us that president Bush has "consistently acknowledged climate change is occurring and humans are contributing to the problem." But perhaps it all depends on what the meaning of "contributing" is. After all, here's Dick Cheney:
I think there's an emerging consensus that we do have global warming. You can look at the data on that, and I think clearly we're in a period of warming. Where there does not appear to be a consensus, where it begins to break down, is the extent to which that's part of a normal cycle versus the extent to which it's caused by man, greenhouse gases, et cetera.
So Cheney is not in agreement with the latest IPCC report (PDF) which clearly said that humans are the chief contributor to the problem, the cause of most of the warming. If the Bush administration doesn't accept this, then it still cannot be said to be accepting of the current scientific consensus. Journalists need to re-calibrate their questions so that they can get clarification on this key point.
