Remember when the original cost was less than $50billion?

The Bush administration has been decidedly vague about how much a war with Iraq might cost. When pressed, officials have said less than $50 billion. Last year, White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey caused a stir when he put the price tag at between 100 and 200 billion at best.

Current request is for $245b on top of the $360b already spent.

The Bush administration will ask for another $100 billion for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior administration official said Friday.

Make sure you are keeping track.

Just in case anyone might have missed it, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just issued a report (“a comprehensive and rigorous picture of the global present state of knowledge of climate change”) on the causes and consequences of climate change.

From a New York Times article on the report:

Should greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere at even a moderate pace, average temperatures by the end of the century could match those last seen 125,000 years ago, in the previous warm spell between ice ages, the report said.

According to the report,

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in
global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global
mean sea level

Contrast that with the position of the Republican party whose out-going chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment, Jim Holfe, famously said

I have offered compelling evidence that catastrophic global warming is a hoax.

Rhapsody has a feature where it generates a playlist for you based on your listening history but they seem to have got me mixed up with that other Kevin who only ever listens to Latin jazz.
¡Ay, caramba!