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At least to my mind, last week was extremely significant. Last week, George W. Bush for the first time believably acknowledged that human beings are the principal cause of global warming.

Now, I know, I know: There are a few instances from the past where if you listen really, really closely, Bush sorta kinda said as much. But then he would come out and say something else different and contradictory—or Dick Cheney would.

Or Bush would get revealed to have gotten his science advice from Michael Crichton.

Anyways, something would always happen to make you slide the administration right back into the "skeptic"/denialist camp again.

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US President George W. Bush infuriated his critics by professing world leadership on climate change at his meeting of the top 16 world economies - while offering no new substantive policy and implicitly rejecting binding emissions controls.

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Poor Jack Marburger.

He’s played science adviser to an anti-science president for a long, long time. First, in 2001, Marburger was appointed very late to his post with a reduced and less than cabinet-level rank—a status considerably lower than that of his science advising predecessors from the Clinton administration. This led even Marburger’s presumptive allies in the scientific community to single him out as an ominous example of how the new administration seemed inclined to approach science. So before he even started his job Marburger was on the defensive.

That can’t have felt good.