After initially sounding somewhat limp with respect to President Bush's proposed "US led" global warming strategy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has since come out strong saying that it was "non-negotiable" that the United Nations should take the lead in global efforts to combat climate change and vowed to make no compromises that disregard the scientific evidence on the issue.

"I will not go for a 'lazy compromise' ... I will not get involved in diluting definite scientific findings like those of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental panel on climate change," she said.

The US proposal promises to do nothing to reduce global emissions and has been widely criticized in the international community, despite having effectively fooled the US media machine. It also opposes hard caps on emissions, a carbon trading scheme and the objective goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius - all elements endorsed by the European Union. Maybe the problem is that Bush doesn't have a clue what "2 degrees Celsius" is.

Climate change negotiations will take place at the upcoming G8 summit on June 6th - 8th.

Update 1:13pm: Merkel's comments were echoed by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who today rejected Bush's proposal and insisted that nations come to an agreement under the UN and not through US led negotiations.

Seventeen people died in a suicide car bomb in Iraq over the past day as a part of the continuing violence waged for the protection of American access to oil.

Meanwhile, 65 have died in the US as winter storms continue to grip the so called Sun Belt states. To date, the cold snap has featured snows in the Malibu resort area of California and 33 deaths in the unlikely states of Texas and Oklahoma.

In northern Europe, 10 people have died and hundreds of air flights have been cancelled due to violent storms and hurricane force winds slamming into Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and France. The storms have also forced the cancellation of hundreds of air flights, including 123 at London's Heathrow, in addition to shutting down ferries, closing schools and roads, and causing the abandonment of a container ship listing in the English Channel. Germany currently has 40,000 volunteers on standby in anticipation of damage and flood.

So where is the greatest risk? In the savage unpredictability of unstable climate? or in the irrational fear of a decimated Muslim nation whose 95th ranked GDP could scarcely buy a plane ticket across the Atlantic, let alone pose a genuine threat to the US? The Bush administration has its own answer, and they continue to spend $300 million dollars per day to ensure the growing impacts of global warming by subsidizing the United States ongoing oil addiction through their war in Iraq.

Fair comparison? You decide. But the fact remains that top analysts estimate the total cost of the war will be $1.2 to $2 trillion dollars. A fraction of that total could make the United States the global leader in solving climate change while simultaneously offering all citizens the security of our survival - as a civilization and a species.