President Bush Ordered to Release Overdue Global-Warming Plan

George W. Bush

Uh oh, it looks like the Bush administration has some 'splainin to do. The U.S. government has violated federal law by failing to produce a study on the impact on global warming, now nearly two years overdue, a federal judge ruled.

Judge Saundra B. Armstrong of Federal District Court in Oakland Calif., said the administration has "unlawfully withheld action'' required under the Global Change Research Act of 1990 to update a research plan and scientific assessment of climate change and its effects on the environment, including land, water, air, plant and animal life, and human health.

The law mandates that the research plan be revised every three years, and the assessment every four years. The last research plan was published in 2003, and the last assessment in 2000. Oops.

"As the research plan is now more than a year overdue, the court orders that a summary of the revised proposed research plan be published in the Federal Register no later than March 1,'' Armstrong said in the order on Tuesday. The scientific assessment must be produced by May 31. ::Bloomberg News and The New York Times