“After a comprehensive review of climate change data, the nation’s preeminent scientific body found that average temperatures on Earth had risen by about 1 degree over the last century, a development that ‘is unprecedented for the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia’,” L.A. Times reporters Thomas H. Maugh II and Karen Kaplan wrote in a story out today. “The report from the National Research Council also concluded that ‘human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.’ Coupled with a report last month from the Bush administration’s Climate Change Science Program that found “clear evidence of human influences on the climate system,” the new study from the council, part of the National Academy of Sciences, signals a growing acceptance in Washington of widely held scientific views on the causes of global warming.” Whoa…whatta shocker!