NASA Administrator, Michael Griffin, is backing away from comments he made last week in a National Public Radio interview. At the time Griffin stated that, " ...a trend of global warming exists, I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

Today the White House appointed Griffin is apologizing to NASA staff saying that,

All I can really do is apologize to all you guys ... I feel badly that I caused this amount of controversy over something like this."

The Bush administration is drastically scaling back efforts to measure global warming from space, just as the president tries to convince the world the U.S. is ready to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gases.

Scientists said they will face major gaps in data that can be collected only from satellites about ice caps and sheets, surface levels of seas and lakes, sizes of glaciers, surface radiation, water vapor, snow cover and atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Public opinion polls show a significant increase in the number of Americans who support strong climate action.

Deeper digging shows this support is superficial, too thin to drive the rapid sociopolitical change now required. For the first time, however, a small, but measurable number of Americans -- probably no more than 3% -- identify climate change as the greatest threat.

Global warming is accelerating three times more quickly than feared, a series of startling, authoritative studies has revealed. They have found that emissions of carbon dioxide have been rising at thrice the rate in the 1990s.

The Arctic ice cap is melting three times as fast - and the seas are rising twice as rapidly - as had been predicted. The issue will be top of the agenda of the G8 summit which opens in Germany Wednesday, placing unprecedented pressure on President George Bush finally to agree to international measures.

The Bush administration is writing a new plan to maintain governmental control in the wake of an attack or overwhelming natural disaster, moving such doomsday planning for the first time from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to officials inside the White House.

The policy makes no reference to Congressional checks and balances on the president's power to impose martial law or other extraordinary measures. Nor does it acknowledge the National Emergencies Act, a law that gives Congress the right to override the president's determination. Instead. the Bush team is pushing controversial theory that the Constitution gives the president an unwritten power to disobey laws at his own discretion.