24 year old Bush political appointee tells NASA to push "intelligent design by a creator" - and by the way, we're all dead

A week after the Bush administration told NASA global warming experts to stop talking about global warming, we now know have 24 year olds just out college telling senior scientists to water their lectures about Einstein. Literally. That's what the kid did. The scientists were going to be talking about Einstein and the big bang, and the Bush appointee got upset because the big bang might conflict with people's religions.

So NASA is now a church.

And we wonder why space shuttles blow up. Screw the repair job. Just slap some tape on that baby, put her on the launch pad, and let's all just pray why she takes off. After all, an intelligent designer would only blow up the shuttle as part of his plan, so who are we to say otherwise?

And as for this global warming issue. Where are the environmental groups? How hard is it to mount a campaign on global warming when the glaciers in Alaska are melting so badly they've had to move the visitors center closer to the glacier because the glacier is disappearing?

Deborah Williams, the executive director of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, used to take visitors from the Lower 48 to the famous Portage Glacier just outside Anchorage, where the $8 million Begich-Boggs visitor center opened in 1986. By 1993, the Portage glacier had receded so much that it no longer could be seen from the visitors' center.

And by the way, read that entire article, it's horrifying.

Things are getting so bad that polar bears are, for the first time, literally drowning because there's no ice for them to take a break on while swimming.

SCIENTISTS have for the first time found evidence that polar bears are drowning because climate change is melting the Arctic ice shelf.

The researchers were startled to find bears having to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food. They are being forced into the long voyages because the ice floes from which they feed are melting, becoming smaller and drifting farther apart....

Polar bears live on ice all year round and use it as a platform from which to hunt food and rear their young. They hunt near the edge, where the ice is thinnest, catching seals when they make holes in the ice to breath. They typically eat one seal every four or five days and a single bear can consume 100lb of blubber at one sitting.

And now, things have gotten so bad, that scientists are debating whether in the next few decades we're approaching a "tipping point" beyond which there will be nothing we can do to fix the problem. That's when all hell breaks loose.

Now that most scientists agree human activity is causing Earth to warm, the central debate has shifted to whether climate change is progressing so rapidly that, within decades, humans may be helpless to slow or reverse the trend....

There are three specific events that these scientists describe as especially worrisome and potentially imminent, although the time frames are a matter of dispute: widespread coral bleaching that could damage the world's fisheries within three decades; dramatic sea level rise by the end of the century that would take tens of thousands of years to reverse; and, within 200 years, a shutdown of the ocean current that moderates temperatures in northern Europe.

Kiss NY and Florida goodbye:

...one of the greatest dangers lies in the disintegration of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets, which together hold about 20 percent of the fresh water on the planet. If either of the two sheets disintegrates, sea level could rise nearly 20 feet in the course of a couple of centuries, swamping the southern third of Florida and Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village.

And remember that move, The Day After Tomorrow, where the Atlantic current collapses, simulations show there's a 50% of that happening within 200 years:

Many scientists are also worried about a possible collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, a current that brings warm surface water to northern Europe and returns cold, deep-ocean water south. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who directs Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has run multiple computer models to determine when climate change could disrupt this "conveyor belt," which, according to one study, is already slower than it was 30 years ago. According to these simulations, there is a 50 percent chance the current will collapse within 200 years.

Now back to the Bush administration trying to censor NASA scientists:

When Hansen posted data on the Internet in the fall suggesting that 2005 could be the warmest year on record, NASA officials ordered Hansen to withdraw the information because he had not had it screened by the administration in advance, according to a Goddard scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity. More recently, NASA officials tried to discourage a reporter from interviewing Hansen for this article and later insisted he could speak on the record only if an agency spokeswoman listened in on the conversation.

How's this for a factoid:

The 10 warmest years on record all have occurred since 1990, with 2005 the second hottest.

And finally, here's my favorite part of the Miami Herald story:

Now, two decades after his landmark paper, Broecker believes recent findings and more refined computer modeling have postponed The Day After Tomorrow indefinitely.

Only a major icing-over of the North Atlantic would bring about a radical cooling of the Northern Hemisphere. Ice would repel the sun's energy and create more icing. That would happen only if all the Greenland ice melted and injected enough freshwater to shut down the conveyor belt. No computer models see that happening in the foreseeable future.

Yeah, they only show it happening in 200 years, a 50% chance, in one study - so there is a study, Miami Herald. That's a 50% chance in 200 years of the move 'The Day After Tomorrow' becoming real, at least according to one study.

Now sure, the Bush administration can tell us that maybe the study is wrong. Maybe the Atlantic current won't stop, freezing most of North American and Europe dead in a new ice age.

But again, think about it. We're talking a study saying there's a 50% chance of us triggering a new ice age, and the Bush administration isn't concerned.

So I'll say it again. Where the hell are the environmental groups? Probably with all the other liberal advocacy groups. Off fund-raising.