[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                       THE SCIENCE BEHIND IMPACTS
                         OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                             AND TECHNOLOGY

                                 OF THE

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             MARCH 12, 2021

                               __________

                            Serial No. 117-3

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
 
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 


       Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov

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                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
43-632PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2021                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
       
       

              COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

             HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California              FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma, 
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon                 Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California                 MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan,             BILL POSEY, Florida
    Vice Chair                       RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York              ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
BRAD SHERMAN, California             MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
JERRY McNERNEY, California           PETE SESSIONS, Texas
PAUL TONKO, New York                 DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
BILL FOSTER, Illinois                MIKE GARCIA, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
DON BEYER, Virginia                  YOUNG KIM, California
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida               RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina         JAY OBERNOLTE, California
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin                PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DAN KILDEE, Michigan                 VACANCY
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
VACANCY
                        
                        C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                             March 12, 2021

                                                                   Page

Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                           Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Chairwoman, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives................................................     9
    Written Statement............................................    10

Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Ranking Member, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives................................................    10
    Written Statement............................................    11

                               Witnesses:

Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, Albert G. Milbank Professor of 
  Geosciences and International Affairs, Princeton University
    Oral Statement...............................................    13
    Written Statement............................................    16

Dr. Zeke Hausfather, Director of Climate and Energy, The 
  Breakthrough Institute
    Oral Statement...............................................    36
    Written Statement............................................    38

Dr. Noah S. Diffenbaugh, Kara J. Foundation Professor, Department 
  of Earth System Science, Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow, Woods 
  Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
    Oral Statement...............................................    76
    Written Statement............................................    78

Dr. Paula S. Bontempi, Dean, Graduate School of Oceanography, 
  Professor of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island
    Oral Statement...............................................    88
    Written Statement............................................    91

Discussion.......................................................   101

             Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, Albert G. Milbank Professor of 
  Geosciences and International Affairs, Princeton University....   142

Dr. Zeke Hausfather, Director of Climate and Energy, The 
  Breakthrough Institute.........................................   145

Dr. Noah S. Diffenbaugh, Kara J. Foundation Professor, Department 
  of Earth System Science, Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow, Woods 
  Institute for the Environment, Stanford University.............   153

Dr. Paula S. Bontempi, Dean, Graduate School of Oceanography, 
  Professor of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island..........   161

            Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record

Studies submitted by Dr. Noah S. Diffenbaugh, Kara J. Foundation 
  Professor, Department of Earth System Science, Kimmelman Family 
  Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford 
  University.....................................................   174

 
                       THE SCIENCE BEHIND IMPACTS
                         OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS

                              ----------                              


                         FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2021

                          House of Representatives,
               Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                   Washington, D.C.

     The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 11 o'clock a.m., 
via Webex, Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson [Chairwoman of the 
Committee] presiding.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

     Chairwoman Johnson. Good morning. The hearing will come to 
order, and, without objection, the Chair is authorized to 
declare recess at any time, pursuant to House Resolution 8. 
Today the Committee meeting is virtual. I want to announce a 
couple of reminders to the Members about the conduct of the 
remote hearing. First, a Member should keep their video feed on 
as long as they are present in the hearing, and the Members are 
responsible for their own microphones. Please also keep your 
microphones muted until you are speaking. And finally, if 
Members have documents they wish to submit to the record, 
please e-mail them to the Committee Clerk, whose e-mail address 
was circulated just prior to the meeting.
     Good morning, and welcome to the first climate change 
hearing of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee in the 
117th Congress. I want to thank our esteemed panel for joining 
us today.
     Our communities are already dealing with the very clear 
and present danger of climate change impacts. NOAA (National 
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) found that 2020 set a 
new record of 22 weather and climate disasters that each 
exceeded $1 billion in damages. The unprecedented year included 
the most active Atlantic hurricane season, multiple damaging 
severe wind events across the Midwest, and a record setting 
wildfire season in the West. In our own State of--my own State 
of Texas, we have seen the impacts of extreme weather over the 
past year.
     As this Committee discussed last Congress, many of these 
devastating impacts fall hardest on our most vulnerable 
populations. We know that in many cases, climate change is 
making these weather and climate events more intense and more 
frequent. Our ability to predict extreme events, and our 
confidence in attributing some of them to climate change, has 
improved over the time. With that in--with that knowledge, we 
need to act to both mitigate and adapt to these impacts before 
it's too late.
     Climate solutions are built on a foundation of robust, 
sustained, and long-term investment in climate science, 
observations, and modeling. In addition, we need to develop 
climate solutions that take into consideration multiple 
disciplines. Not only the physical and natural sciences, but 
the social sciences as well. Finally, we need to ensure that 
these disadvantaged communities that are hit first, worst, and 
hardest by the impact of the climate change are at the table 
when potential solutions are being developed and implemented. 
Addressing the climate crisis is a unique opportunity to help 
America back to work. Given the economic downturn our country 
has faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is vital that 
Congress prioritize Federal investments that will provide well-
paying and long-lasting jobs for Americans across the country.
     Last Congress, the Committee had very success--great 
success in moving 15 bipartisan energy innovation bills in the 
Energy Act of 2020 that were enacted into law. While this was a 
significant accomplishment, our work is not done, and I hope to 
build off this strong bipartisan work. This hearing is simply 
the first step in our Committee's efforts to address the 
climate crisis in the 117th Congress. I'm looking forward to 
working with our Subcommittee leadership, and Committee Members 
on both sides of the aisle, to develop and move strong, 
bipartisan, and impactful legislation to address the climate 
crisis and create actionable climate solutions. We have much to 
consider today, and I again want to thank our witnesses for 
participating in the hearing.
     [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]

    Good morning and welcome to the first climate change 
hearing of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee in the 
117th Congress. I want to thank our esteemed panel for joining 
us today.
    Our communities are already dealing with the very clear and 
present danger of climate change impacts. NOAA found that 2020 
set a new record of 22 weather and climate disasters that each 
exceeded $1 billion in damages. This unprecedented year 
included the most active Atlantic Hurricane Season, multiple 
damaging severe weather events across the Midwest, and a 
record-setting wildfire season in the West. And my own state of 
Texas has also seen the impacts of extreme weather over the 
past year.
    As this Committee discussed last Congress, many of these 
devastating impacts fall hardest on our most vulnerable 
populations.
    We know that in many cases, climate change is making these 
weather and climate events more intense and more frequent. Our 
ability to predict extreme events, and our confidence in 
attributing some of them to climate change, has improved over 
time. With that knowledge, we need to act to both mitigate and 
adapt to these impacts before it is too late.
    Climate solutions are built on a foundation of robust, 
sustained, and long-term investment in climate science, 
observations, and modeling. In addition, we need to develop 
climate solutions that take into consideration multiple 
disciplines-not only the physical and natural sciences, but the 
social sciences as well. Finally, we need to ensure that those 
disadvantaged communities that are hit first, worst, and 
hardest by the impacts of climate change are at the table when 
potential solutions are being developed and implemented.
    Addressing the climate crisis is a unique opportunity to 
help put America back to work. Given the economic downturn our 
country has faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is vital 
that Congress prioritize federal investments that will provide 
well-paying and long-lasting jobs for Americans across the 
country.
    Last Congress, this Committee had great success in moving 
15 bipartisan energy innovation bills in the Energy Act of 2020 
that were enacted into law. While this was a significant 
accomplishment, our work is not done, and I hope to build off 
this strong bipartisan work. This hearing is simply the first 
step in our Committee's efforts to address the climate crisis 
in the 117th Congress. I am looking forward to working with our 
subcommittee leadership, and Committee Members on both sides of 
the aisle, to develop and move strong, bipartisan, and 
impactful legislation to address the climate crisis and create 
actionable climate solutions.
    We have much to consider today, and I again want to thank 
our witnesses for participating in today's hearing.
    I now yield to Ranking Member Lucas for his opening 
statement.

     Chairwoman Johnson. And I now yield to Mr. Lucas for his 
statement.
     Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson. As we kick off 
our first climate-focused hearing this year, I'd like to 
reflect quickly on the milestone energy legislation we passed 
last year. Together we were able to pass the first update to 
Federal energy policy in over a decade in the last Congress, 
and that is in no small part due to your leadership, and 
willingness to hold good faith negotiations with this side of 
the aisle. The Energy Act of 2020 includes more than a dozen 
bills from our Committee, and focuses on competitive and 
innovative clean energy solutions driven by basic and early 
stage research. It's a prime example of the work this Committee 
is uniquely positioned to do to combat climate change and 
strengthen American energy.
     The simple truth is this, America's clean energy future is 
driven by innovation, not by mandates. It's our job to support 
that innovation and invest in the basic research that will 
provide the springboard for new clean energy technologies. One 
of our witnesses today, Dr. Zeke Hausfather, points out that 
the U.S. is in a unique position right now to accelerate 
research, development, and deployment (RD&D) of low carbon 
technologies across all sectors of the American economy. 
Through targeted investment, and demonstration of Federal 
research, we can develop direct air carbon capture, small, 
modular nuclear reactors, and other technologies that will 
completely transform our energy production to a cleaner, more 
efficient industry, unrecognizable from a century ago. And we 
can do this without raising energy prices and hurting American 
consumers.
     I worry that the cost of making immediate and drastic 
changes to our energy portfolio are being ignored by some of my 
friends. Imposing strict mandates is going to make it harder 
for our businesses to compete with China, whose greenhouse gas 
emissions continue to grow. But we have hard evidence that 
investing in innovation allows us to cut our emissions, while 
growing our economy. For instance, using discoveries at our 
National Labs to improve hydraulic fracturing technology has 
given us more access to clean natural gas. That, in turn, has 
played a large role in the 10 percent decline in U.S. 
greenhouse gas emissions between 2005 and 2018. And in that 
same period, our economy grew by 25 percent.
     Higher costs also hurt American families, and rural 
households are especially vulnerable to energy price swings. We 
have to be mindful of the many communities whose economies 
depend on our current energy infrastructure. So I want to be 
very clear, abandoning our current energy infrastructure, you 
know, has a regional impact on climate change. Just like moving 
away from rising sea levels on the coast, entire families would 
be displaced if we move too quickly to prohibit fossil fuel 
use. Fossil fuels are not the enemy. They are the most reliable 
form of energy in the U.S., and will continue to be a large 
part of our energy portfolio. Our focus shouldn't be on 
eliminating fossil fuels, but on making their production and 
use cleaner and more efficient. We're already making headway. 
According to the International Energy Agency and the 
Breakthrough Institute, it's quite possible that global 
CO2 emissions from fossil fuels peaked last year in 
2019.
     We know what we need to do from here, invest in the tools 
needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, like advanced 
nuclear, carbon capture, and greater energy storage capacity to 
make renewables more reliable. If we want to make real progress 
addressing climate change, we need to move forward with these 
bipartisan priorities. We've taken the first step with the 
Energy Act, and I look forward to working together on more 
practical clean energy solutions. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.
     [The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]

    Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson. As we kick off our first 
climate-focused hearing this year, I want to reflect quickly on 
the milestone energy legislation we passed last year. Together 
we were able to pass the first update to federal energy policy 
in over a decade last Congress, and that is in no small part 
due to your leadership and willingness to hold good faith 
negotiations with this side of the aisle.
    The Energy Act of 2020 includes more than a dozen bills 
from our Committee and focuses on competitive and innovative 
clean energy solutions driven by basic and early- stage 
research. It is a prime example of the work this Committee is 
uniquely positioned to do to combat climate change and 
strengthen American energy.
    The simple truth is this: America's clean energy future 
will be driven by innovation-not by mandates. It's our job to 
support that innovation and invest in the basic research that 
will provide the springboard for new clean energy technologies.
    One of our witnesses today, Dr. Zeke Hausfather points out 
that the U.S. is in a unique position right now to accelerate 
research, development, and deployment of low-carbon 
technologies across all sectors of the American economy.
    Through targeted investment and demonstration of federal 
research, we can develop direct air carbon capture, small 
modular nuclear reactors, and other technologies that will 
completely transform our energy production to a cleaner, more 
efficient industry, unrecognizable from a century ago. And we 
can do this without raising energy prices and hurting American 
consumers.
    I worry that the costs of making immediate and drastic 
changes to our energy portfolio are being ignored by some of my 
friends on the other side of the aisle. Imposing strict 
mandates is going to make it harder for our businesses to 
compete with China, whose greenhouse gas emissions continue to 
grow. But we have hard evidence that investing in innovation 
allows us to cut our emissions while growing our economy.
    For instance, using discoveries at our National Labs to 
improve hydraulic fracturing technology has given us more 
access to clean natural gas. That in turn has played a large 
role in the 10% decline in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 
between 2005 and 2018. In that same period, our economy grew by 
25%.
    Higher costs also hurt American families, and rural 
households are especially vulnerable to energy price swings. 
And we have to be mindful of the many communities whose 
economies depend on our current energy infrastructure.
    So I want to be very clear: abandoning our current energy 
infrastructure is a regional impact of climate change. Just 
like moving away from rising sea level on the coast, entire 
families would be displaced if we move too quickly to prohibit 
fossil fuel use.
    Fossil fuels are not the enemy. They are the most reliable 
form of energy in the U.S. and will continue to be a large part 
of our energy portfolio. Our focus shouldn't be on eliminating 
fossil fuels, but on making their production and use cleaner 
and more efficient. We're already making headway: according to 
the International Energy Agency and the Breakthrough Institute, 
it is quite possible that global CO2 emissions from 
fossil fuels peaked last year in 2019.
    We know what we need to do from here: invest in the tools 
needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, like advanced 
nuclear power, carbon capture, and greater energy storage 
capacity to make renewables more reliable. If we want to make 
real progress addressing climate change, we need to move 
forward on these bipartisan priorities.
    We've taken the first step with the Energy Act, and I look 
forward to working together on more practical clean energy 
solutions. Thank you Madam Chair and I yield back the balance 
of my time.

     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you, Mr. Lucas. Now, if there 
are Members who wish to submit additional opening statements, 
your statements will be added to the record at this point. And 
now I'd like to introduce our witnesses.
     Our first witness is Dr. Michael Oppenheimer. Dr. 
Oppenheimer is the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences 
and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he has 
served since 2002--2002. He also directs the Center for Policy 
Research on Energy and Environment at Princeton. His research 
focuses on projecting sea level rise, coastal flooding, and 
resulting risk to coastal communities, as well as adaptation 
and other responses to climate change, such as migration. He 
has been involved in the development of Intergovernmental Panel 
on Climate Change, IPCC, assessment research reports, since 
1990, the IPCC special report on oceans and cryosphere in a 
changing climate, and the upcoming Sixth Assessment Report.
     Our next witness is Dr. Zeke Hausfather. Dr. Hausfather is 
the Director of Climate and Energy at The Breakthrough 
Institute, an environmental think tank in Oakland, California. 
He is a climate scientist and energy systems analyst whose 
research currently focuses on observational temperature 
records, climate models, and mitigation technologies. He also 
serves as a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, and is a 
contributing author to the upcoming IPCC Sixth Assessment 
Report. He previously spent a decade as a data scientist in the 
clean technology sector, including co-founding the Efficiency 
2.0, an energy efficiency software company.
     Our third witness is Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh. Dr. Diffenbaugh 
is the Kara J. Foundation Professor in the School of Earth, 
Energy, and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. He 
is also the Kimmelman Family Senior Fellow at Stanford's Woods 
Institute for the Environment. He researches the climate 
system, including how regional and local conditions, such as 
extreme weather, impact people and ecosystems. He is an elected 
fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He has been a lead 
author for a number of scientific assessments, including the 
IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, and the California Climate Safe 
Infrastructure Working Group.
     Our final witness is Dr. Paula Bontempi. Dr. Bontempi is 
the Dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the 
University of Rhode Island, where she oversees academic 
research and outreach activities. Prior to this role, she was 
Acting Deputy Director of NASA's (National Aeronautics and 
Space Administration's) Earth Science Division within the 
Science Mission Directorate, where she provided leadership, 
strategic direction, and management of the agency's earth 
science portfolio. Overall she spent nearly 2 decades at NASA 
as a physical scientist and program manager in the biological 
oceanography. Her scientific interests include studying the 
Earth's systems, ocean sensors, and technology, and diversity, 
and equity initiatives in STEM (science, technology, 
engineering, and mathematics).
     And now let me just say that our witnesses need to know 
that each of them have 5 minutes for the spoken testimony, and 
the written testimony will be included in the record for the 
hearing. When all of you have completed your spoken testimony, 
we will begin questions. Each Member will have 5 minutes to 
question the panel. So now we will start with Dr. Oppenheimer.

             TESTIMONY OF DR. MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER,

           ALBERT G. MILBANK PROFESSOR OF GEOSCIENCES

        AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

     Dr. Oppenheimer. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson. I'd also 
like to thank the Members of this Committee for inviting me to 
testify at today's hearing. The views expressed in this 
testimony are, of course, my own.
     While a sharp global reduction of carbon dioxide and other 
greenhouse gases, with the aim of achieving net zero emissions 
by mid-century, is necessary, it will not be sufficient to 
protect people and places, unless accompanied by an aggressive 
program to adapt to unavoidable climate changes occurring now, 
and yet to occur in the near future. Even today the U.S. is 
falling short, particularly in protecting the most vulnerable 
segments of its population.
     I'll focus first on sea level, which is rising due to 
warming, and also accelerating due to melting and 
disintegration of the edges of the Greenland and Antarctic ice 
sheets. The largest uncertainty in projecting sea level rise is 
how fast this process will eat into the ice that's further 
inland, and how much sea level rise is inevitable by 2100, even 
if the world meets the long-term objective of the Paris 
agreement. On the other hand, we have a pretty clear picture of 
sea level rise through the year 2050, when uncertainties are 
not large, providing a sound basis for coastal planning and 
implementation of defenses.
     Sea level rise is already resulting in a radical 
shortening of the return time for what have in the past been 
rare events. Even on a pathway to a 2-degree Celsius warming 
of--global warming, that is about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, the 
Paris target, the historical once per century flood level at 
many U.S. locations is expected to recur every year, or more 
often, by 2050. The list of such locations includes Savannah, 
Jacksonville, Miami, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Honolulu, 
among others. Different areas will be affected to different 
extents. How to respond needs to be decided well before 2050, 
essentially right now, in many places, because building 
protection or implementing planned retreat to higher ground can 
take decades. Recent experience with a growing list of deadly 
climate disasters across the country, starting with Hurricane 
Katrina in 2005, and right up to the Texas cold snap of 2021, 
serves as a warning that we are not as effective at adapting at 
even today's level of risk as we should be.
     Before delving into the causes of the U.S. adaptation gap, 
let me point out some encouraging experience. In the U.S. and 
worldwide, even as property damage has increased along the 
coasts, deaths in coastal storm surge since 1900, for instance 
that accompanying hurricanes, have decreased. While the reasons 
for this trend remain unclear, improved forecasting has, in all 
likelihood, made an important contribution. Now to the bad 
news. Recent events show that we are still leaving much too 
much undone before a big event strikes. For example, in 2012, 
Hurricane Sandy struck a metropolitan area, New York, where I 
live, that seemed to have grown complacent due to the lack of 
catastrophic coastal events in the preceding decades. For 
example, the subway system, the lifeblood of the city, was 
flooded and shut down for 3 to 4 days, and parts almost ruined, 
yet nine storms in the 60 years previous to that had almost 
flooded the subway system, and little or nothing had been done 
to protect it. And that's not just a city responsibility, it's 
the State also.
     Our current ways of dealing with climate related risk 
create incentives for people in government, officials, to do 
precisely the wrong thing. A prime example is the imbalance 
between Federal funding available to assist States and local 
governments to plan and implement adaptation measures to avoid 
disaster, compared to the amount of money spent for cleanup 
after an extreme event. Even more distressing is the 
insufficient attention at all levels of government to the most 
vulnerable groups.
     Extreme heat, the leading cause of climate related death 
in the U.S., provides a vivid example. Evidence from the period 
1987 to 2005 suggests a decrease in heat related deaths for the 
overall population, but a constant death rate for people 65 
years and older. Cities deal with this risk by establishing 
cooling centers. However, one recent study of Phoenix, New 
York, and Chicago showed that the locations of these centers 
bear no systematic relationship to the vulnerable populations 
that need them most, and distances from their neighborhoods to 
the cooling centers were often such as to make the centers 
effectively inaccessible to those aged, ill, or without motor 
vehicles. The current U.S. system for dealing with climate 
adaptation is highly fragmented across many dimensions. It must 
be reformed across the board to keep us from falling far behind 
as the climate warms, especially for those who are vulnerable 
due to age, illness, persistent discrimination, or economic 
status.
     I'd like to thank the Committee once again for affording 
me this opportunity to testify.
     [The prepared statement of Dr. Oppenheimer follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
     Chairwoman Johnson. I was muted. Let me thank you very 
much, Dr. Oppenheimer, and call for Dr. Hausfather to do his 
testimony.

               TESTIMONY OF DR. ZEKE HAUSFATHER,

                DIRECTOR OF CLIMATE AND ENERGY,

                   THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE

     Dr. Hausfather. Thank you. Good morning, Chairwoman 
Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, and Members of the Committee. My 
name is Zeke Hausfather. I'm a climate scientist and Director 
of Climate and Energy at The Breakthrough Institute.
     In many ways 2020 was the year in which both climate 
change and the accelerating energy transition became impossible 
to ignore. On the climate front, we saw 2020 tie with 2016 as 
the warmest year since records began, with global temperatures 
of around 1.3 degrees Centigrade, or 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, 
above temperatures of the late 1800's. Land areas, where we all 
live, were nearly 2 degree Centigrade, or 3.6 degrees 
Fahrenheit, warmer. We saw devastating wildfires in California 
and Australia, extreme heat in Siberia, and the second lowest 
level of Arctic sea ice ever observed, among other climate 
extremes.
     At the same time, the world has made substantial progress 
in moving away from the worst-case outcomes of climate change 
over the past decade. Rather than a 21st century dominated by 
coal the energy modelers foresaw, global coal use peaked in 
2013, and is now in structural decline. We have succeeded in 
making clean energy cheap, with solar power and battery storage 
costs falling tenfold since 2009, and the world has produced 
more electricity from clean energy, solar, wind, hydro, and 
nuclear, than from coal over the past 2 years. And according to 
major oil companies, peak oil is soon upon us, not because we 
have run out of cheap oil to produce, but because demand is 
falling as consumers shift to electric vehicles (EVs).
     Current policies adopted by countries today put us on 
track for around 3 degrees Centigrade of warming by the end of 
the century, compared to the late 1800's. Including pledges and 
targets, such as those in the Paris agreement, brings us down 
to 2.5 degrees Centigrade. We have seen a proliferation of 
longer term decarbonization commitments in recent years, with 
countries representing around half of global emissions, 
including China, pledging to reach net zero by 2050 or 2060. If 
these longer-term commitments are achieved, it would bring end 
of century warming down close to the global target of 2 degrees 
Centigrade.
     Now, some caution is warranted here. Long term pledges 
should be discounted until reflected in short term policy 
commitments, and warming could well be notably higher or lower 
than these best estimates, given scientific uncertainties 
surrounding both the sensitivity of climate to our greenhouse 
gas emissions and likely changes in the ability of the land and 
oceans to absorb a portion of what we emit. CO2 
accumulates in the atmosphere over time, and until emissions 
reach net zero, the world will continue to warm. This is the 
brutal math of climate change, and it means that full 
decarbonization is not a matter of if, but when.
     Cost declines in clean energy go a long way toward making 
deep decarbonization more achievable at a lower cost than 
appeared a decade ago. Low cost renewables can provide a 
sizable share of our energy needs in modern grid integration 
models. In the near term, however, America's cheap and abundant 
supplies of natural gas will play a key role in filling in the 
gaps as we buildup more wind and solar, and keep existing clean 
energy sources, like nuclear, online.
     In the longer term, there's a growing recognition of both 
the need for complementary technologies, such as grid-scale 
storage and long distance transmission, as well as clean firm 
generation, like advanced nuclear, enhanced geothermal, and gas 
with carbon capture and storage, to ultimately wean the system 
off its dependence on natural gas. Studies have consistently 
shown that low carbon power grids with a sizable portion of 
clean, firm generation are a lower cost option than wind, 
solar, and hydro alone. CO2 removal technologies 
will also play an important role to offset the long tail of 
hard to reduce emissions from sectors like aviation. The 2020's 
is the decade to invest in maturing a range of technologies 
that improve options for the long terms.
     Debates around climate mitigation are often framed as a 
choice between the technologies we have today and future 
innovations. In reality, we need to do both, to deploy what is 
cost-effective today, and to invest in the range of solutions 
needed to tackle the hard to decarbonize parts of the economy. 
The recent omnibus bill takes an important step in this 
direction, authorizing billions of dollars for investments in 
clean energy, vital energy R&D (research and development), and 
grid modernization. It shows that there is real potential for 
bipartisan energy solutions that both reduce emissions and 
create jobs. If we want to ensure that the rest of the world 
follows the U.S. lead in reducing CO2 emissions, 
there is no better step we can take than making clean energy 
technologies cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. Making 
clean energy cheap can set the U.S. up to be a leader in 
developing and selling these technologies to the rest of the 
world, while building new industries, and creating jobs at 
home.
     Climate change impacts pose a serious threat to our way of 
life, but are unlikely to lead to human extinction. However, 
existential risks are an unnecessarily high bar to take action. 
Nearly every other challenge we have dealt with in the past, 
poverty, war, hunger, disease, did not literally threaten the 
survival of our species. The impetus to mitigate climate change 
is less about enabling humanity to survive, and more about 
enabling it to thrive, and to leave our children a natural 
world that, while far from untouched, is at least largely 
intact. Thank you.
     [The prepared statement of Dr. Hausfather follows:]
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     Chairwoman Johnson Thank you very much. We'll now hear 
from Dr. Diffenbaugh.

             TESTIMONY OF DR. NOAH S. DIFFENBAUGH,

                 KARA J. FOUNDATION PROFESSOR,

              DEPARTMENT OF EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE,

                KIMMELMAN FAMILY SENIOR FELLOW,

              WOODS INSTITUTE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT,

                      STANFORD UNIVERSITY

     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, and 
Ranking Member Lucas, for the invitation. My name is Noah 
Diffenbaugh. I'm a professor and senior fellow at Stanford 
University, but I'm appearing in my personal capacity. I'll 
focus on the topics noted in your invitation.
     A brief summary is that global warming is causing extreme 
events to increase, including unprecedented events, we are not 
adapted to these changes, meaning that global warming is 
already impacting people and ecosystems, the greater the global 
warming in the future, the more these risks will intensify, 
achieving the Paris agreement goals will reduce intensification 
of these risks, however, even if those goals are achieved, 
there will still be more climate change than has already 
occurred, meaning that adaptation will be necessary to avoid 
further impact. And, finally, research is needed to develop and 
deploy the scale of mitigation and adaptation solutions that 
are necessary to curb the intensification of these risks.
     Disasters are ultimately the function of the difference 
between the magnitude of the hazard and the level of 
preparation. The rising risk of extremes, including heat, 
rainfall, flooding, drought, wildfire conditions is causing the 
climate envelope around which so many of our systems have been 
designed, built, and operated to be exceeded with increasing 
regularity, from our disaster management systems, to our 
electrical grids, to our water and transportation 
infrastructure. This past year, while the western U.S. was in 
the midst of its most severe wildfire season in recorded 
history, the Atlantic had a record-breaking hurricane season. 
In both cases there are multiple lines of evidence linking 
historical global warming to elevated risk of extreme 
conditions, including increased probability of extreme wildfire 
weather, and of extreme precipitation and storm surge flood 
from landfalling storms. And these are just two of the most 
recent examples.
     In the absence of adaptation, we can expect more big 
disasters to happen in more places more often, with poor and 
marginalized communities experiencing the greatest 
vulnerability. And this is already costing us. My research 
group recently documented that historical changes in 
precipitation account for approximately 1/3 of the cumulative 
flood damages in the U.S. in the past 3 decades. Similar 
methods suggest that historical warming has cost the U.S. 
economy approximately $5 trillion in aggregate growth within 
the past 2 decades. These economic impacts are likely to 
accelerate at higher levels of warming, with the poorest 
counties being harmed around twice as much as the richest 
counties.
     Fortunately, there are options. Extreme climate conditions 
will intensify less at 1-1/2 or 2 degrees C than at 3 or 4 
degrees C. These lower levels of warming are also very likely 
to reduce the level of impact on the economy, on our food and 
water systems, and on human and ecosystem health. There is thus 
substantial benefit to achieving the Paris agreement goals. In 
addition, many of the mechanisms that we have for reducing 
emissions can also increase resilience to climate stresses, by 
providing critical energy resources to communities whose well-
being has been hampered by energy poverty or pollution, and by 
increasing the resilience of the energy system overall. We can 
also increase resilience by investing in marginalized 
communities, which we know are both more vulnerable and more 
exposed to climate stresses. And, carefully considering how and 
where we build, and how we preserve and manage ecosystems as we 
meet the growing need for fair and equitable housing and 
livelihood is important for managing a range of climate risks, 
including wildfires in the West, hurricanes in the Southeast, 
and floods in the Midwest.
     In your invitation letter you asked me to identify 
recommendations for additional investments in climate science. 
Given what I've described, successfully managing the risks of 
climate change will require acceleration of both mitigation and 
adaptation. We have sufficient understanding to begin that 
acceleration. And, given the scale of solutions that are 
necessary, additional research is also needed. A cohesive 
research agenda that integrates mitigation and adaptation in 
support of a climate resilient nation would include the 
following themes. Improved observational and modeling capacity 
for predicting extreme events across scale, R&D for the 
technologies and deployment necessary to transition to a 
secure, reliable, equitable, net zero emissions energy system, 
improved understanding of the climate impact of overshooting 
the Paris agreement goals, R&D for development, implementation, 
and deployment of adaptation approaches across a variety of 
geographic, climatic, and socioeconomic contexts, new 
methodologies and division support for updating our 
infrastructure and disaster risk management to accommodate the 
growing likelihood that multiple unprecedented events occur 
simultaneously, and improved understanding of how to generate 
synergies between mitigation, adaptation, and other policy 
priorities, like economic growth, job creation, environmental 
conservation, and economic, racial, and environmental justice.
     I applaud the Committee for working on these critical 
issues, and I look forward to your questions.
     [The prepared statement of Dr. Diffenbaugh follows:]
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     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. We'll now hear 
from Dr. Bontempi.

           TESTIMONY OF DR. PAULA S. BONTEMPI, DEAN,

                GRADUATE SCHOOL OF OCEANOGRAPHY,

                   PROFESSOR OF OCEANOGRAPHY,

                   UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

     Dr. Bontempi. Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, 
Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 
discuss the state of the science regarding Earth's climate 
crisis. Today I will highlight the role of the oceans in 
Earth's climate.
     I deliver this testimony from Narragansett, Rhode Island, 
the traditional land of the Narragansett tribal nation. I 
deliver this testimony to the U.S. Government, centered in 
Washington, D.C., the homeland of the Nacotchtank, or 
Anacostan, people. I honor their histories, and ancestors, and 
perseverance in our communities today, as our communities were 
built on indigenous land. We acknowledge the indigenous people, 
and honor their stewardship of the land, sea, and resources 
that they hold sacred. The Fourth National Climate Assessment, 
Volume 2, highlights the disproportionate impact of climate 
change on indigenous communities. This threat is highlighted in 
IPCC's Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere in 2019, and is 
especially relevant to our discussion today, as social and 
environmental justice must be central to our climate strategies 
and solutions.
     For the last 7 years Earth's global average temperature 
has been the warmest on record. This warming is dramatically 
changing the physical characteristics of the ocean, and 
altering its ecosystems in unprecedented ways. These impacts 
are felt today, and will continue for decades, and their 
duration will extend even longer if action is not taken to 
rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I will point out that 
a lot of the long-term trends that we see in climate would not 
be possible without Earth-observing satellites today.
     The ocean exchanges large quantities of heat, water, and 
carbon dioxide with the atmosphere, absorbing approximately 1/3 
of annual carbon dioxide emissions. The ocean also moves excess 
heat, like a conveyor belt, from the tropics to the poles. Near 
the poles, cold, salty, and dense water sinks from the surface, 
and carries carbon dioxide and heat into the interior ocean, 
where it may be stored for hundreds to thousands of years. 
Understanding ocean dynamics is therefore central to 
understanding Earth's climate crisis. The ocean conveyor belt 
is directed impacted by climate change, and if any or all of 
its major currents diminish in the future, both heat and carbon 
dioxide could accumulate in the atmosphere at an accelerated 
rate.
     The 2019 IPCC report presented the extreme damage being 
done to the world's glaciers, permafrost, and oceans by climate 
change. Dramatic changes are projected to continue under every 
emissions scenario, but outcomes under a business as usual 
approach are particularly grim. However, if global emissions 
are capped in the near term, and reduced sharply by mid-
century, and if aggressive approaches are taken to support 
resilience in marine ecosystems in coastal communities, we may 
yet avoid the worst impacts. Ocean chemistry is impacted by 
carbon dioxide uptake from the atmosphere, and since the 
beginning of the Industrial Revolution this uptake has 
increased the acidity of the surface ocean waters by 30 
percent.
     In tropical oceans, warming and acidification have 
increased coral bleaching, mortality events, and reef decline 
worldwide over the last 2 decades. A 2019 IPCC report 
identifies additional changes in ecosystem distributions and 
migration patterns. On average, marine species have moved 
poleward at rates of up to 50 kilometers per decade since the 
1950's, and sometimes more. Climate change impacts on ocean 
physical and chemical properties cause additional wide-ranging 
ecosystem responses, including frequent harmful algal blooms 
(HABs), altered ocean plant growth, reduction of fish stocks, 
many of which are either fully exploited or over-exploited 
already. The diverse climate change effects threaten 
foundations of marine food webs, pulling--putting whole 
ecosystems, and those who rely on them for food and jobs, at 
risk. Substantial and sustained reductions in global greenhouse 
gas emissions will significantly reduce projected risks and--to 
ocean ecosystems and communities that rely on them. We need 
investments in research and management.
     Here I would like to recognize and applaud Congressman 
Grijalva and Congresswoman Bonamici for their introduction 
earlier this year of the ocean-based Climate Solutions Act, 
which includes many needed steps for adapting to and mitigating 
climate change impacts. Recent Federal investments connecting 
research to management are groundbreaking, including the U.S. 
and National Science Foundation's contribution to an 
international global profiling robotic network measuring key 
ocean properties essential for understanding ocean carbon cycle 
and ecosystem health. Coupling these observations with new 
Earth-viewing satellite data, such as NASA's Plankton Aerosol 
Cloud and Ocean Ecosystem mission, and potentially 
groundbreaking technologies, like ocean-profiling LIDARs (light 
detection and rangings), will provide researchers and managers 
unprecedented local and global-scale observations of our living 
marine resources. I applaud these investments, but they're an 
appetizer. Modeling is also particularly important for climate 
change research and impact adaptation and mitigation studies.
     We must facilitate and capitalize on investments in 
science, technology, engineering, computing, architecture, and 
education. These investments are strategic, tactical, and 
sustain our blue economy, and all of my points point to one 
pivotal need. To understand climate change and its impacts on 
the Earth, we need sustained investments in global observing 
networks and high-performance computing, integrated with--
excuse me, science communication, public engagement, and 
education programs. We need a well-trained, interdisciplinary, 
climate literate workforce, including natural and social 
science, as well as policy experts, engineers, and educators.
     As we look ahead, we must allow our science questions to 
evolve as our needs change. We must begin to meaningfully 
invest in adaptive science, and support adaptive and 
sustainable management and marine resources, and we must never 
forget that climate change as a crisis is no longer a threat of 
the future, but a reality occurring already today. Thank you 
for the opportunity to discuss these topics. I look forward to 
questions.
     [The prepared statement of Dr. Bontempi follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. That completes 
our outstanding witnesses, and at this point we will begin our 
first round of questions. I will recognize myself for 5 
minutes, and then Mr. Lucas, and after that the Clerk will call 
on the persons for their questions--from the queue.
     Extreme heat is the deadliest climate related event in the 
U.S., and cities are the most vulnerable, although I must say 
that within the last month, in my hometown of Dallas, which is 
known for its heat, would argue at this point whether or not it 
is heat that brings forth most of the temperatures that are out 
of line with what we consider normal. Dr. Oppenheimer, you 
discussed in your testimony how climate change will cause more 
frequent, more intense, and longer heat waves. You also note 
how populations are more vulnerable to heat than others based 
on race, income, health status, or age. How are these 
vulnerable communities being disproportionately impacted by 
extreme heat, and what are the consequences of failing to 
design policies that recognize and address these impacts?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Thank you, Congresswoman. People, as I 
pointed out, die in higher numbers in extreme heat than any 
other climate-related event in the United States, and, you 
know, if you look at the way extreme heat is handled in much of 
the country, because it's kind of something that people think 
they're used to, there isn't really a very effective system for 
adapting to it. But what happens instead is that it goes on the 
back burner, and people are expected to have air conditioning. 
Well, a lot of people can't afford air conditioning. In central 
cities you get situations where people are too poor to have air 
conditioning, they live in apartments which are--don't have 
very good ventilation, in many cases afraid to open the windows 
for security reasons. So, again, it's the disadvantaged that 
extreme heat hits particularly hard.
     In addition, the statistics don't capture very well people 
who die due to the indirect effects of extreme heat, for 
instance, the interaction of heat with air pollution. Again, 
people who tend to live in underserved areas, central cities, 
areas where people who are poorer or suffer various forms of 
discrimination, are disproportionately represented, but that's 
a problem. It's a problem for the society as a whole, it's a 
problem for those particular populations.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Now, we consider 
a climate literate workforce, and I'd like to have some comment 
on what do we mean by that? Dr. Bontempi, in your testimony you 
describe that one critical, and often overlooked, component of 
science-based solutions is the need for a climate literate 
workforce that is trained in the natural and social sciences, 
as well as policy. The U.S. produces some of the best climate 
science in the world to inform climate adaptation and 
mitigation strategies, but we need a climate literate workforce 
to turn these goals into reality. How do we provide that right 
interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary training to build that 
workforce that is prepared to tackle these complex challenges?
     Dr. Bontempi. Thank you, Congresswoman, for the question. 
It's a good one. So what we have to do on the whole is start 
blending interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary science and 
research into our teaching curricula. We have to acknowledge 
the needs and desires of our growing workforce. We have to 
provide mentorship, and we have to provide pathways and 
investment into research that facilitates the training of 
students, and we have to start early. We have a global 
population of young people that are unbelievably connected to 
each other, to their environment, and to their role in the 
Earth system, and the climate as a whole.
     We actually also need to focus on historically 
marginalized or excluded groups, and we have to create a safe 
environment for them to join the workforce. We have to provide 
a support network, we have to provide mentorship, and it's not 
enough to just recruit people. We have to focus on retention, 
advancement, and placement, and we have to shepherd all 
students through these pieces. So people are very focused on 
this, they're very interested in this.
     When I look at the campus that I'm a dean on, the 
Narragansett Bay Campus at the University of Rhode Island, I 
have seen a real shift in working desires of the students to 
not go just the tenure track faculty positions, but into 
positions where they can actually have an immediate impact on 
the world. Blended into this is also our capability to 
science--communicate our science. Science communication, and 
inclusive science communication, cannot be an afterthought in 
the research that we pursue, or the education that we pursue. 
It has to be blended in from the start. And I think if we start 
to follow these pathways we'll have a lot more success not only 
in creating a climate literate workforce that thinks of the 
Earth system, and not just their backyard, and also have the 
reach globally.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Mr. Clerk, what 
is my time like?
     The Clerk. I believe it's expired, Ms. Johnson.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. I now recognize 
Mr. Lucas.
     Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to turn to Dr. 
Hausfather. In a recent report published by The Breakthrough 
Institute, which you co-authored, you refer to climate policy 
as quiet, if it swims with the tide of existing sociopolitical 
institutions and economic growth, if it uses technology and 
infrastructure as its main lever, and if it disrupts, rather 
than exploits, political partisanships. That's the kind of 
policy I've always aimed to achieve because it's what I refer 
to as the carrot, not the stick approach. To you, what comes to 
mind as examples both of non-quiet policy proposals and some 
examples of quiet policy proposals? Doctor?
     Dr. Hausfather. Thank you for your question, Congressman. 
So I think it's important to emphasize that what we call quiet 
climate policy is not necessarily an alternative or statement 
of opposition to setting broader goals, such as nationally 
determined contributions in the Paris agreement. Rather, it's a 
recognition that, to meet those goals, we need real bipartisan 
climate solutions. So quiet climate policy seeks to make 
substantial forward progress recognizing the realities of 
divided government. It seeks to create durable policy that will 
not change with every new administration, and I think the 
recent energy bill is a great example of quiet climate policy 
in action.
     When we think of quiet climate policy, there's really 
three pillars. First, it involves a recognition of the 
importance of government investment in research, development, 
and deployment. Most of the technologies that are reducing 
emissions today were enabled by decades of sustained RD&D 
efforts made by Federal and State governments. We need 
additional advances in both clean, firm generation in the power 
sector, and advances for hard to decarbonize parts of the 
economy like long-distance freight, aviation, industrial heat, 
and agriculture. A focus on RD&D also includes demonstration 
and early stage deployment. The Forge Program for geothermal is 
a great example here, as is the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act 
to enable the deployment of first of a kind advanced reactor 
designs.
     Second, investments in infrastructure are needed to 
support the energy transition. While we can endlessly debate 
about the right amount of renewables on the grid, what is clear 
is that, given their impressive and continuing cost declines, 
we will have more in the future than we have today. That will 
involve modernizing our electricity grid, including investing 
in high voltage, long-distance transmission and 
interconnections, as well as grid fuel storage.
     And finally, while there's a need for broader mitigation 
policies, we should try to do so in a technologically neutral 
way. While picking winners is fine for early stage 
technologies, it is more problematic for mature technologies 
whose deployment is primarily being driven by market forces. We 
should also recognize that technology enables policy. It is a 
lot easier to nudge a system further in a direction than it is 
already heading than to try to turn it around, and the advent 
of cheap energy--or cheap clean energy has dramatically reduced 
the expected costs of mitigation.
     We should be a bit humbled by the rate of change enabled 
by making clean energy cheap. We have exceeded both Waxman-
Markey goal of 17 percent reductions in emissions by 2020, even 
including COVID impacts, and the clean power plant goal of 32 
percent reduction in the power sector emissions by 2030, 
despite neither being enacted. This is not to say that there's 
not a need for policy, but rather to highlight the importance 
of both technology and policy in solving the problem.
     Mr. Lucas. You know, Doctor, it's been my experience a lot 
of times, when I was in State legislature or in Congress, 
sometimes we get in kind of an echo chamber effect, and that 
happens both at the State capitals and the U.S. Capitol. Would 
you agree that the public wants to see responsible action on 
energy--climate change?
     Dr. Hausfather. I think there is a desire for action on 
climate change, and in a way that, you know, supports the 
building of American prosperity in the long term. I think that 
we have shown in the past decade that taking strong action on 
climate change need not require large scale sacrifices by the 
American people, and that, through smart policy, we can both 
build our economy and reduce our emissions at the same time.
     Mr. Lucas. Doctor, you used shale gas unlocked by the 
fracking revolution as an example of sustained, technology 
specific research developed demonstration deployment efforts by 
the Federal Government, and it took less than a decade for 
research at DOE's (Department of Energy's) National Labs to 
lead to the U.S. becoming the world's leading natural gas 
producer. For something like advanced nuclear reactors, 
geothermal energy, direct air capture research areas, which are 
well underway at the National Labs today, should we have 
expectations similar to shale gas potential results that, for 
that matter, does the Energy Act of 2020 speed the timeline up 
significantly for these things?
     Dr. Hausfather. So we can't know what future investments 
will sort of catch lightning in a bottle in the way that 
horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing did, and we 
shouldn't put all of our hopes in any single future technology, 
be it carbon capture and storage, advanced nuclear, hydrogen, 
direct air capture, or any others. Rather, we should try to be 
pretty equimenical in our investments, and for a wide range of 
future decarbonization technologies, you know, recognizing that 
the market will ultimately drive the deployment of what proves 
to be cost-effective.
     In the case of sort of the fracking revolution, it's 
important to emphasize that it wasn't just Federal R&D. There 
were tax credits, demonstration products--projects funded by a 
FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) approved surcharge 
on--pipelines, and other measures that really drove it forward. 
Investments that led to the fracking revolution took place over 
decades at every stage of the RD&D pipeline. So I think it is a 
good example of the type of Federal investments in basic R&D 
that can have dramatic effects on the energy system, as are 
prior investments in solar photovoltaics and battery storage. 
And I think, you know, more of these are needed for the harder 
to decarbonize sectors of the economy and for sort of clean 
firm generation sources that will provide an important part of 
our future electricity mix.
     Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Doctor, and I yield back, Madam 
Chair.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Lucas. I will 
now call on the Clerk, and he will start to ask Members to use 
their 5 minutes of questioning.
     The Clerk. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ms. Bonamici is next.
     Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chairwoman 
Johnson, and Ranking Member Lucas, and really thank you to all 
of our witnesses for this productive conversation. In Northwest 
Oregon the climate crisis isn't a distant threat, it's our 
reality, and the testimony from our witnesses today demonstrate 
this, I think, in many ways. We hear obscene raging wildfires 
creating hazardous air quality, increased flooding, sea level 
rise jeopardizes our coastal communities, and ocean 
acidification. And we know that the climate crisis is a 
national emergency, and we know we need to implement bold 
policies to solve it. Last year I joined my colleagues on the 
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, and we released a 
comprehensive science-based road map to reach net zero 
emissions no later than mid-century, net negative thereafter, 
and I look forward to working with my colleagues on this 
Committee to advance the recommendations and legislation in the 
Climate Action Plan.
     We know that carbon dioxide from human-caused greenhouse 
gas emissions is causing our ocean and estuaries to become more 
acidic. Ocean acidification makes it more difficult for marine 
organisms to build their shells, but now we also know that it's 
causing some finned fish, including endangered salmon, which 
are a fundamental part of the identity and culture of our 
Northwest tribes, is causing them to lose the sense of smell 
that they need to survive and reproduce. Last week I introduced 
my bipartisan COAST Research Act, which is a comprehensive bill 
to expand scientific research and monitoring of ocean and 
coastal acidification, and help coastal communities adapt.
     So I'm going to direct my questions to Dr. Bontempi. 
First, thank you, Dr. Bontempi, for your acknowledgement of the 
Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act. I want to start by asking, 
how can we apply our current understanding of ocean 
acidification to implement even stronger adaptation and 
resilient strategies?
     Dr. Bontempi. Yes, we definitely need to apply the 
information we have to strategies for the future. And, as I 
said, I acknowledge the way you've phrased it, blending 
research and management approaches and solutions. Right now I'd 
say the hardest thing that--one of the greatest challenges for 
scientists is actually collecting enough information so they 
understand different aspects of what's happening. I'd go so far 
as to say off the Oregon coast, and even in the State of 
Oregon, you know, you--the last decade you have new seasons to 
look at, right? Hypoxia seasons, ocean acidification seasons. 
The reason that scientists are able to understand what's 
happening is because we have long-term time series. So I would 
recommend, you know, continued investment in observations of 
our ocean at the surface, down deep, on multiple scales at the 
local, regional, and global scale to understand what's 
happening in the ocean physically, chemically, biologically so 
you can understand how to manage your local marine resources.
     I think the other piece is thinking about things like the 
modeling capability. Do we have all the pieces in place to 
actually model our marine ecosystems? This is a cutting edge 
area, right? We're very good at putting things in in sort of a 
black box, but we don't know all the processes that happen in 
the ocean related to ocean acidification and the impacts on 
marine ecosystems, and you pointed----
     Ms. Bonamici. [inaudible] but I really want to get another 
question in.
     Dr. Bontempi. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
     Ms. Bonamici. I wish we had more than 5 minutes. So I was 
glad that you mentioned the high level panel for sustainable 
ocean economy in your testimony. So in 2019, in a report the 
panel found that the protection and restoration of coastal blue 
carbon ecosystems could prevent approximately one gigaton of 
carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere by 2050, so I'm 
going to soon reintroduce my Blue Carbon For Our Planet Act to 
map, protect, and restore blue carbon ecosystems. So as the 
United States--as we establish our next nationally determined 
contribution under the Paris Climate Agreement, can you please 
expand on how and why a better assessment of the sequestration 
potential of blue carbon ecosystems would be useful?
     Dr. Bontempi. Sure. Blue carbon will be an important part 
of our planning strategy for carbon, you know, cycling in the 
future. I think anything in the coastal zone where land meets 
water, wetlands, seagrasses, things like that, have the ability 
to capture carbon and actually utilize it and recycle it, and 
that will be very important. One of the things that's very 
alarming is that with all of the sea level change, sea level 
rise, coastal inundation, and things that come with it, these 
areas are being highly impacted by climate variability and 
change. And so we're going to have to also take steps to 
conserve these areas, to support them and enable marine and 
coastal resilience.
     Ms. Bonamici. Right, and that restoration work is great 
for the coastal communities as well. So I--my time is just 
about to expire. Again, thank you to all our witnesses, and I 
yield back the balance of my time.
     The Clerk. Mr. Posey is next.
     Mr. Posey. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson and Ranking 
Member Lucas, for holding this hearing. It is important to 
discuss the importance of climate change research, and the push 
toward lower carbon energy. We all support moving to lower 
carbon energy, and we've made a lot of progress already, but it 
would be wrong to ignore the impact on the people we're elected 
to serve. I'm particularly interested in hearing from the panel 
what they would say to senior citizens in Florida living on 
Social Security about doubling or tripling their electric bill 
because of the higher costs associated with lower carbon 
energy.
     The administration announced a plan to eliminate carbon 
emissions from the electric sector by 2035 by pushing wind, 
solar, nuclear, and other lower carbon energy resources. This 
previous date was 2050. Florida uses mostly natural gas for 
electric generation, and, according to the Florida Municipal 
Power Agency, the cost to convert natural gas to renewable 
energies by 2035 could increase Florida's electric bills by 200 
to 300 percent on an annual basis. The current monthly 
residential electric bill in Florida is $123. That's about 8 
percent of the average Social Security recipient's monthly 
income. By doubling or tripling their electric bill would end 
up taking 18 to 25 percent of their annual income. I'm 
concerned about moving the goalposts from 2050 to 2035. How do 
any of you think we could best explain the increase to senior 
citizens, who we all represent, when, according to the Social 
Security Administration, they earned an average of just $1,452 
per month as of December of 2019? Anyone can answer that.
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Let me take a shot at--let me answer it a 
little more generically. I think there are a lot of people who 
will gain, and some people that will lose, if we do a rapid 
energy transition. That's in the nature of change. But what 
shouldn't happen is that these groups--and that includes, for 
instance, the coal mining communities, be allowed to fall 
through the bottom of whatever safety net we have in this 
country. And so I, you know, would fully endorse an approach 
that--in fact, I'll say I doubt a solution to this problem is 
possible unless we afford the appropriate protection to people 
who might be hurt, and we've done so in the past. During the 
energy crisis of the 1970s, the U.S. provided support for 
payment of electric bills of low-income families. It's been 
done.
     Dr. Hausfather. To echo Dr. Oppenheimer, you know, I think 
that we can certainly move forward in an energy transition in a 
way that does not increase people's bills. Now, whether or not 
we get all the way down to zero in the electricity sector by 
2035, or, say, 80 to 90 percent of the way there I think is 
still a bit of an open question. Renewable energy is very cheap 
at the margins today, but once you get closer to 100 percent 
decarbonization of the system driven by renewables, you start 
getting much higher costs associated with the complementary 
technologies, like battery storage and whatnot. And so, you 
know, a world where we get 80, 85, even 90 percent of the way 
there by 2035, while still having a fair amount of natural gas 
backup to fill in the gaps between intermittent generation, is 
a much lower cost system than one where we get all the way to 
100 percent.
     Now, by 2050, the longer term decarbonization target, we 
will hopefully have more mature alternative technologies to 
fill in those gaps in a cost-effective way. And so I think we 
can definitely, you know, both decarbonize, while hopefully 
reducing, or if not reducing, at least keeping costs similar to 
they are today for most customers. And I think it's just 
important that we make sure we do that the right way. And 
there's been a number of recent U.S. decarbonization models 
that I refer to in my written testimony that are very 
instructive there, including by folks like Dr. Chris Klack and 
Dr. Jesse Jenkins, who's testifying before you guys next week.
     Mr. Posey. Now----
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Yeah, I would add----
     Mr. Posey. Just following up on that, I think Ranking 
Member Lucas makes a good point about investing in more 
technology development. Now, how can we use those new 
technologies to produce a cleaner energy economy that doesn't 
create more expenses for those that can't afford it?
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Yeah, I would add in this discussion, 
including the statement you just made, it is critical that the 
distributional impact of policies are quantified and 
considered, and that's both for policy actions that your 
Committee is considering, as well as for the impact of the 
climate changes that are happening, and that cost-benefit 
analysis is, you know, requires both sides of the equation. And 
I'll just amplify that, you know, we have clear evidence that 
global warming is already costing Americans billions of dollars 
a year. We know from the contribution to net climate and water 
disasters that that's already cumulatively billions of dollars 
a year, and then in--and impacts on economic growth, you know, 
those economic impacts are even greater. And I'll go back to 
the Chairwoman's question----
     Mr. Posey. My time has expired, and I have to yield back. 
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
     The Clerk. Ms. Sherrill is next.
     Ms. Sherrill. Thank you, and thank you to our Chair and 
Ranking Member for calling such an important discussion, and 
our panelists as well. You know, Dr. Oppenheimer, in 2012 
Hurricane Sandy ravaged New Jersey. It was the most 
devastating, costly storm in New Jersey history, and it turned 
the lives of thousands of families upside down. With a greater 
understanding of climate events our State may have been better 
prepared to handle the adverse impacts of the storm. We also 
see people in Texas making decisions about resiliency that 
would be better made with an understanding of the adverse 
impacts of climate change. So how have recent updates to 
climate science improved our understanding of the timing, 
intensity, and location of climate events?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Well, as far as location is concerned, 
one of the big challenges is always predicting something at a 
scale that's really meaningful to people in enough detail. And 
it--the big changes in the climate computer models that do the 
forecasting is the increase in resolution of those models, so 
it's become gradually more and more possible to make statements 
about climate change that are true of not just a continent, or 
a hemisphere, or even a region like the Northeast, but be 
more--but that are more specific. So the support that's gone 
into climate modeling has been absolutely crucial in helping 
communities, like the ones on the Jersey Coast that was so 
devastated, plan--look to the future, plan, and implement those 
plans for protection in the future.
     It's also true that we're never going to be perfect at 
prediction, and to some extent over the next decade or two, for 
some impacts, we're going to have to rely on generalities 
because specific predictions will remain beyond the 
capabilities of the models.
     Ms. Sherrill. Thank you. And then I--I'd love to turn to 
Dr. Diffenbaugh on--about harmful algal blooms. They now occur 
more severely, and more often, and in more bodies of water due 
to the impacts of climate change, and they're a serious 
environmental and economic threat to New Jersey, and States 
across the country. Lake Hopatcong, in my district, is the 
largest freshwater lake in New Jersey, and it was closed for 
most of the summer in 2019 due to HAB outbreaks, impacting 
residents, businesses, and the economy of Northwest Jersey. So 
what has led to the improvements in our ability to quantify 
impacts and societal risks associated with climate change, and 
how can we ensure that these efforts continue?
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Well, I--you know, the risks from climate 
change result from the intersection of the physical hazards, 
whether they're storm surge, heat, drought, et cetera, as well 
as the intersection of those physical hazards with exposure and 
vulnerability. And certainly, you know, there are a number of 
scientific studies on harmful algal blooms, for example, 
showing that intersection in the Great Lakes, for example, and 
other regions. So certainly the human dimension is critical, 
and as we heard earlier, in terms of research for understanding 
these intersections of the physical climate hazards with the 
exposure and vulnerability of people and ecosystems, we clearly 
need improved research in--at the nexus of physical sciences, 
social and behavioral sciences, in order to understand, you 
know, what the--what solutions would be necessary to prepare 
for, and, in the case of the algal blooms that you're 
mentioning, you know, reduce or prevent those events.
     Ms. Sherrill. As you can imagine, we look at huge costs 
associated with different climate events, and the impact they 
have, and the aftermath, and so as we're looking forward, as 
we're forward-looking in trying to make decisions on where 
this--where to most efficiently spend money for infrastructure 
resilience, for example, I'm wondering what more Congress can 
do to help our communities make these costly decisions, and 
make them better? For example, if it's going to be a once in a 
100-year storm, maybe make different decisions than if it's 
going to be a once every 5-year storm type situation. So I'm 
just going to open it up in my last few seconds to the panel, 
if you have any ideas on how Congress could better support 
decisionmaking like that?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Yeah----
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Well, we need----
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Go ahead, Noah. Go ahead.
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Well, I think we now have clear evidence 
that the methods that have been used historically of using the 
historical envelope of climate extremes are not applicable to 
the present climate that we're in, and so I think research into 
how to improve the combination of climate forecasts, and 
climate observations, and statistical analysis to improve those 
hazard calculations will be critical for, you know, the design 
and operation of infrastructure going forward. I----
     Ms. Sherrill. [inaudible] so much. I'm afraid my time's 
expired. Thank you so much.
     The Clerk. Mr. Weber is next. Mr. Weber, you're muted. Mr. 
Weber's having technical issues. Why don't we go to Mr. Babin 
next?
     Mr. Babin. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and 
Ranking Member Lucas. Thank you to our witnesses for being here 
today, and Houston is home to a cutting edge state-of-the-art 
technology that is revolutionizing how we produce our energy. 
I'm proud to represent Houston, and many of these companies, 
and will continue to advocate for a stronger and more secure 
energy industry here in the United States.
     When we have a debate over carbon emissions and greenhouse 
gas----
     Mr. Weber. OK, can you all hear me?
     Mr. Babin. Can you all hear me? I think I'm--am I----
     Mr. Weber. Can you hear me now?
     Mr. Babin. Madam Chair, can you hear me?
     Staff. Yes, we can hear you, Mr. Babin. Mr. Weber, we 
moved along to Mr. Babin due to your technical issues, and then 
we will circle back to you as the next Republican. Please 
continue, Mr. Babin.
     Mr. Babin. Pardon me? Pardon me?
     The Clerk. You're recognized to continue, Mr. Babin.
     Mr. Babin. OK, especially when regulations become so 
burdensome here that our companies are forced to outsource 
production to these countries with very few regulations. We 
have to remember that these are countries willing to do 
anything to get ahead of the United States.
     So, Dr. Hausfather, I'd like to ask you, China's 
commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2060 was heralded as 
a potential gamechanger, but it lacks the detail to make me 
really believe that it will happen. It doesn't show how China 
plans to decarbonize by 2060, or peak their emissions by 2030, 
which leaves many critics rightly being skeptical. 
Additionally, it also doesn't disclose a--question is how do we 
hold these other countries accountable, especially those like 
China, when they don't play by the same rules that we do? Dr. 
Hausfather?
     Dr. Hausfather. Thank you, Congressman Babin. So I think 
it is very important that we ensure that we hold countries to 
the commitments they've made, and in the case of China, you 
know, it's still early, and there are some very mixed signals 
coming out of the new 5 year plan in terms of how, you know, 
seriously they're going to reflect these long term commitments 
in short term policy. Now, I suspect China's emissions will 
probably peak sooner rather than later, but the magnitude of 
the decline that they promised is a very different story.
     And so, you know, I think there's a few things that are 
important to consider here. One is, you know, the potential to 
consider things like carbon border adjustments in a carbon 
constrained future, where we actually can punish countries, and 
products coming from countries, that are laggards in this 
space. Another area of focus should be on, you know, making it 
so we, in America, are innovating and creating cheap 
technologies that countries like China, and India, for that 
matter, can purchase themselves. Because, again, if they have 
options that are cheaper than burning coal for electricity 
generation, and do not reduce--or do not produce the, you know, 
staggering levels of pollution that are huge problems in those 
countries, they will transition to those.
     And so, as I mentioned in my testimony, I think the real 
key to getting middle income countries, like China and India, 
that will be the biggest drivers of emissions this century, to 
follow the lead of the U.S. in reducing our emissions is to 
make clean energy cheap, is to give them compelling 
alternatives to using coal, to using oil, in a way that does 
not get in the way of their economic growth. And I think that 
is an achievable----
     Mr. Babin. OK.
     Dr. Hausfather [continuing]. Goal, and it's something 
we've seen an immense amount of progress on.
     Mr. Babin. All right. Thank you very much. And expounding 
upon that same point, China's overall CO2 emissions 
in 2020 increased by .8 percent from 2019 levels, and that was 
in the middle of a pandemic. This originated in a pandemic 
which originated in China, where many other nations saw----
     Chairwoman Johnson. I think we lost him.
     The Clerk. Yes, ma'am, Mr. Babin's connection appears to 
have frozen. We're also investigating possible network issues 
on House campus.
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. I'll just add on this topic that, as Dr. 
Hausfather said, you know, the U.S. can be a source of 
innovation for enabling leapfrogging to lower carbon energy 
sources. I'll also note that global warming is proportional to 
the total cumulative emissions. The U.S. is around a quarter of 
the historical cumulative emissions, and, you know, as has been 
published in The Economist and elsewhere, you know, China, 
India, Indonesia are actually decarbonizing faster in terms of 
their per capita GDP (gross domestic product) than the U.S. and 
Western Europe have. So those countries are actually on a more 
rapid decarbonization pathway relative to their economic 
growth.
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Yeah, and I'd chip in also that the 
comment that Zeke made about border tax adjustments, while 
they're a heavy instrument, may well be the only way to see 
that any of these things are enforced on an equal playing 
field, and that countries that make commitments, and then take 
advantage of them in international trade, are prevented, 
actually, from doing so because countries have the right to 
protect themselves by taking compensatory action if they 
themselves have an honest and strong carbon reduction program.
     The Clerk. Thank you. Mr. Bowman is next.
     Mr. Bowman. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and Ranking 
Member Lucas, for this important hearing that we're having 
today.
     Dr. Bontempi, you alluded to this before, but I want to go 
back to the comments you made about education, and sort of re-
imagining and redesigning our education system to make sure our 
students are prepared, our children are prepared, for the 
climate realities that we all are dealing with. Can you speak 
to what that might look like in the K-12 school setting, or 
even focus on the K-8 school setting? What might that look like 
as we prepare our kids for this new reality?
     Dr. Bontempi. Thank you for asking about the education in 
the K-12 and K-8 systems. I will say I have never been a 
teacher in that realm, but I was a student, and one of--and I 
have fourth grader, and what I can say really speaks to him is 
experiential learning, actually bringing--using tools that will 
bring what the Earth is like to him. We have these incredible 
visualization capabilities, we have these students who are so 
conscious of the environment around them, and so when we have 
that sort of hands-on teaching, when we actually put tools--the 
same tools we use for modeling and visualization in the hands 
of second, third, and fourth graders, they really learn, and 
they really take to it. They are electronic literate, media 
literate, and we just have to make them climate literate. The 
tools are there.
     Mr. Bowman. Awesome. Thank you so much. Dr. Oppenheimer, 
can you speak to why investment in technology is not enough to 
reach our goals, and why we also need strong regulations?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Yeah, sure. And I want to say I--there--
it's not clear that there's any big disagreement between Dr. 
Hausfather and myself on this, but I do want to emphasize one 
point, which is that supporting technology alone doesn't 
necessarily get the right results. It can move you in all sorts 
of directions. To assure that the Federal support for 
technology, whether it's tax incentives or, you know, direct 
subsidies, or some other approach, are pointed in the right 
direction, the combination of regulation with such technology 
incentives are a very effective way to produce the outcome, or 
at least an outcome in the direction that you want to go.
     And I'll point to DOE's longstanding program to increase 
the energy efficiency of appliances, which goes back to the 
Energy Security Act of 1980, I believe, which combines the 
development of regulation with a program of R&D support, and 
has resulted in monumental gains on appliance efficiency, which 
has really significantly reduced the U.S. contribution to 
greenhouse gases over a very long term period.
     The Clerk. You're muted, Mr. Bowman.
     Mr. Bowman. Thank you very much. Sorry about that. Dr. 
Diffenbaugh, your research group has estimated a cost of--cost 
to the economy from global warming of $5 trillion over 2 
decades. Are you able to speak to the loss of life caused by 
these impacts historically? Are there any projections on your 
team--that your team has made about the possible loss of life 
in poor and marginalized communities as warming continues to 
rise?
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Yeah, thank you. And I should note that 
the--that estimate of the accumulated economic impact on the--
from the U.S. economy of annual--eroding of annual GDP growth 
is from my colleague Marshall Burke at Stanford. There are a 
number of pathways by which extreme events impact human health, 
mortality, as well as economic and ecosystem--the economy and 
ecosystems. Just with respect to heat, we have clear evidence 
that heat affects GDP growth, labor productivity, agricultural 
yields and insured crop losses, food security, migration, 
mental health, interpersonal and intergroup violence, cognitive 
performance, wildfire risks, air quality, and a suite of 
ecosystem impacts, including both on biodiversity and on, you 
know, biodiversity that is valued for ecotourism.
     So there are a number of pathways just by which rising 
heat exerts those impacts. We also have evidence of, you know, 
in terms of your question, on mortality, both via the direct 
impact of heat on human health and via the mental health 
impacts, and this is also research from my colleague Marshall 
Burke and his collaborators, that mental health, including 
suicide risk, is elevated by extreme heat.
     Mr. Bowman. Thank you. I yield back the balance of my 
time.
     The Clerk. We'll try Mr. Weber now.
     Mr. Weber. Can you hear me now?
     The Clerk. We can.
     Mr. Weber. Very good. Even a blind hog finds an acorn 
occasionally. Listen, it's great to be here. I will note that 
the gentlelady from New Jersey said earlier Hurricane Sandy 
hitting in 2012, that she made the comment she sees Texas, I 
think I'm quoting her, ``making decisions without understanding 
climate change.'' I would say to my friend from New Jersey that 
Texas is such a large State that we have just about every kind 
of climate there is, and I see our great Chairwoman nodding. We 
have deep freezes in North Texas, and I know that her and her 
son Kirk probably experienced that here about a month or so 
back. We have dust storms, we have floods, we have heat waves, 
we have hurricanes, like she mentioned New Jersey getting a 
random hurricane, for lack of a better term. We have ice storms 
in Texas. We've had wildfires in Texas, even earthquakes in 
Texas, and we have high winds in Texas. And, by the way, for 
the record, Texas is the No. 1 wind energy producing State in 
the country, and No. 5 in solar panels.
     So I think we've made decisions pretty well based on the 
fact that we have all kinds of weather, and have had for a long 
time, so I don't think we should discount the fact that what 
happened recently was a once in a lifetime storm--winter storm 
in Texas. I'm 67 years old, never seen anything like it. But 
anyway, I want to go to Mr. Hausfather. In his exchange with 
Congressman Lucas, one of the comments he made was while 
picking winners in early research is OK, but I think he said 
something to the effect that in latter times the market should 
drive it. Is that pretty accurate, Mr. Hausfather?
     Dr. Hausfather. It is. For mature energy technologies, it 
makes a lot more sense to use what we call technologically 
neutral means if we want to create incentives for them. Things 
like carbon prices, clean electricity standards, clean energy 
subsidies that are not tied to any particular technology, and 
so that way we can, you know, give some reward to these 
technologies for being low carbon, because that is a benefit 
that is not reflected in the market today, but at the same time 
not, you know, put our finger on the scale too much in favor of 
one technology or another.
     Mr. Weber. Right, and we would agree, you know, I think 
most of us would agree. And just a quick breakdown of the Texas 
grid, since I went there. It's 108,000 megawatts of generating 
capacity. 48 percent of it is natural gas, 13 percent coal, 
about 1/2 a percent nuclear, almost 29 percent wind, and almost 
1 percent solar. And, of course, we saw in that historic event 
that the wind generation severely hampered because the blades 
iced up. Of course, obviously, at night we don't get a lot of 
solar energy, and so nuclear would seem to be about one of the 
best possibilities for the cleanest energy. What say you, Mr. 
Hausfather?
     Dr. Hausfather. So I think nuclear is a really important 
technology. It's 20 percent of our clean generation today, it's 
our single biggest source of clean generation nationwide, and 
we should really make sure that we don't lose that, because a 
lot of our nuclear reactors today are at risk of shutting down, 
in large part because they can't compete with natural gas on 
the market. And some of that is the fact that the clean energy 
benefits of nuclear are not being reflected.
     But beyond that, you know, as I mentioned in my testimony, 
there is a real need for a solid amount of clean, firm 
generation if we want to fully decarbonize our economy, and 
nuclear is one of the key technologies to get there. Now, the 
challenge we have today is that building new current generation 
nuclear reactors has proven really expensive. They've been over 
time, over budget, and, you know, as Americans, we've just 
gotten bad at building big things, and so we need to figure out 
how to do that again, how to build these projects on time, on 
budget so we don't lose out to China, who is really doubling 
down on sort of conventional nuclear reactors. At the same 
time, you know--go ahead.
     Mr. Weber. OK. Well, thank you for that, and lest I 
sound--you know, we're good at building big fences around the 
Capitol. Did I say that out loud? But anyway, I do want to say 
that you also said--I would think--you were hearing a clarion 
call for the Federal Government to get involved in producing 
energy, it sounds like, or paying for energy, for there's a lot 
of communities who the people suffer when it's hot, they suffer 
when it's cold, but I just want to make this point. In my 
opinion, it would be more appropriate that the local 
communities--yes, Texas, believe it or not, can make decisions 
for itself that does take into account all kinds of weather 
patterns. And I would say that it's more appropriate to let 
cities and States decide what action, if any, they want to make 
in those endeavors, and for us to be involved in the research. 
And with that I will yield back Madam Chair. Thank you.
     The Clerk. Mr. McNerney is next.
     Mr. McNerney. Well, I thank the Chairwoman for this 
hearing, and I thank the witnesses. Your testimony is stark, 
it's somewhat alarming. Clearly we need to take action.
     Dr. Oppenheimer, thank you for your testimony. I thank all 
the witnesses, really. You noted that achieving the Paris 
Climate Agreement goal of limiting to 2 degrees Centigrade will 
not only require halting greenhouse gas emissions, but will 
also require removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. 
Carbon removal can take many forms, including forest and ocean-
based sequestration, better soil management, which I'm thrilled 
about in my district, direct air capture, and storage. What is 
the state of the science on carbon removal, and what will it 
take to make these technologies viable?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Well, first of all, thank you for the 
question, Congressman. I'd like to say first that it's not 
clear how much what are called negative emissions we will need, 
that is carbon removal, because we don't know really what the 
business as usual baseline emissions are going to be. But let's 
assume we're going to need some if we're to get close, or 
actually comply with the Paris well below two degrees Celsius 
target. The technology that's been talked about recently is, as 
you mentioned, direct air capture. It's one in which we kind of 
know all the pieces, but we don't have it put together yet as 
an integrated system at a price that's commercially acceptable.
     So the National Academy came out with a report I think 2 
years ago asking for a substantial Federal commitment to R&D on 
direct air capture, and I think that's a wise investment, among 
many, that should be made on ways to avoid having too much 
carbon in the atmosphere. Of course, it goes without saying 
that we ought to get our act better together on using natural 
ecosystems as carbon reservoirs, and that means, first and 
foremost, finding ways to assist the global move toward ending 
deforestation.
     Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Well, even if we eliminate carbon 
and other greenhouse gas emissions, the climate's going to 
continue to warm for years, or even decades, because of the 
greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. I worry that we're 
going to go--blow past the 2 degrees Celsius increase, given 
both the political roadblocks to measures such as a carbon fee 
here in the United States, and given the technology that we 
have available. We clearly need to develop--we clearly need to 
reduce carbon emissions and achieve zero--net zero emissions, 
we need to implement carbon removal technology as soon as 
possible, but we also need to do the science necessary to 
understand if taking direct steps to cool the atmosphere, such 
as cloud brightening, and injecting sunlight reflecting 
particles into the stratosphere, are those viable strategies? 
What's the risk? Dr. Oppenheimer, given the complexity of the 
climate system, and the risks associated with further human 
interference in it, how do you think the U.S. should approach 
the field of climate intervention?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. I personally feel that we should approach 
it with great caution, that we're not at a point where we 
understand the climate impacts at the regional and local level 
that would occur as a result of geoengineering. We know that 
such methods can be used to offset the global warming, but 
people don't live in the globe, they live in places, and how it 
will affect particular places has substantial uncertainty. But 
we ought to support research. I think it's important to do 
computer-based modeling of what a geoengineered world would 
look like. You know, I don't think we should be out there 
blasting things--into the atmosphere to see the effect now. 
It's way too premature for that.
     And I'll so say there's another component to this, which 
is how will countries react? This is something that could be 
done, in theory, by one country. Can we reach agreement on how 
that's to be done? If we become kind of familiar or friendly to 
the technology, we unleash a lot of possibilities, which could 
lead to global conflict between countries in the long term. We 
ought to be very cautious.
     Mr. McNerney. Sure. Dr. Diffenbaugh, would you like to 
answer the same question?
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Yeah. Well, I like what Professor 
Oppenheimer just said about the research on potential for 
single actor geoengineering and potential conflict. This is an 
area where, you know, there are--there is scholarly inquiry, 
and we certainly need more of that, and we need that to be 
enhanced in order to fully understand the dimensions. It's 
certainly asymmetric with the collective action problem of 
greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. You know, the 
greenhouse gas emissions affect the global climate system 
through the aggregate effects of emissions everywhere. There's 
no single actor that can singlehandedly stop global warming 
from happening. That is very asymmetric with the geoengineering 
that was described, where there is potential for single actor, 
frankly, disruption, and I mean disruption in a very technical 
sense, in terms of climate patterns regionally.
     Mr. McNerney. Thank you. I yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Sessions is next. Mr. Sessions? Mr. 
Sessions is recognized.
     Ms. Sessions. Thank you very much. I really want to 
commend Chairwoman Johnson and our Ranking Member Lucas for 
this meeting. I think that the most important thing that I have 
heard today comes from our witnesses who have talked about 
necessarily throwing out the occurrences of things that have 
happened maybe on a once in every 100 year basis, and going to 
things that are reoccurring, working together and finding 
things that, on a bipartisan way, we can agree with that then 
last through administration after administration, but that 
become meaningful, and agreements between reasonable people who 
are trying to make progress. One of these may be the tax 
credits that come from wind usage.
     There may be many other things that I think that would 
fit, but I think that the balance of this hearing should be off 
finding common ground, and I think, after listening to our 
guests this morning who gave testimony, that is the most 
important part of what I've learned, so that we don't start and 
stop, and move one direction and then back, but rather make 
meaningful money, policy, the needs of the Nation to be 
consistent, and it is what I have enjoyed hearing from this 
important viewpoint of why we have to make progress, and how 
measurable it can be if we work together in a balanced way.
     With that said, I am from Texas. I recognize we're going 
to have hearings that are going to be on Texas. What happened 
in Texas was one of those activities that perhaps Noah or Paula 
may have been in reference to that it was something that 
happened, and it might happen again, and we ought to understand 
how we ought to prepare for it, but that the system that was 
designed, is designed on a regular basis to support each other, 
and in this case Mother Nature made sure all 254 counties in 
Texas had virtually the same outcome, meaning effect, and so it 
diminished our ability to effectively help each other. And it's 
this kind of thing that we do need to study, and Michael, I 
think you addressed part of this, study of facts and data can 
draw you to a conclusion.
     Michael, when I was at the old Bell Labs in New Jersey, 
four or 500 years ago, we tried to learn about how often things 
occurred, and what that impact is, and I find your balance, and 
the balance that you bring with Noah also to this, and Paula, 
really helps us focus on making a difference in a bipartisan 
way, meaningful to where we move with each other on a 
consistent basis over years, and set a national strategy that 
is not based upon outliers, but based on regularly occurring 
things. And this is one of the things that's a takeaway for me, 
Michael, for living in New Jersey--a Texan living in New 
Jersey, but around a lot of people who tried to be artful about 
making a difference.
     I'm now down to my last 23 seconds, but the last part is 
I'd like to thank our Chairwoman, Eddie Bernice Johnson, for 
bringing together not just the discussion, but also bringing 
along Frank Lucas in a way to where we can make a difference 
together. My time is now at 1 second. I yield back my time, and 
I thank our witnesses.
     The Clerk. Mr. Tonko is recognized.
     Mr. Tonko. Thank you, and, Madam Chair, thank you for this 
hearing. By working to address the climate crisis we have the 
opportunity, I believe, to usher in a new era of economic 
growth, job creation, and prosperity for all Americans. And 
it's clear that there is a great deal of potential for the 
United States to be a leader in developing climate adaptation 
and mitigation strategies and solutions, particularly through 
innovative research and emerging technologies.
     So, Dr. Diffenbaugh, aside from the obvious economic 
benefits of being a lead developer of cutting edge technology, 
what else does the United States stand to lose if we do not 
focus on developing these technologies?
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Well, we're experiencing the impact of 
the global warming that's already happened literally day after 
day, month after month, year after year here in the United 
States. And I mentioned in my opening remarks, you know, the 
recent research from my group about flooding costs in the U.S., 
and when we look back at, you know, the--month by month what 
damages, you know, financial cost of flooding over the last 3 
decades, you know, we find that not only have the, you know, 
the most extreme precipitation events are responsible for a 
large fraction of the flooding, but that precipitation has been 
changing in many parts of the country. In particular the 
intense precipitation events have been increasing the most, and 
what that means is that around a third of the flooding costs 
from, you know, over the last 3 decades are, you know, being 
contributed by those changes in precipitation. Those changes in 
precipitation are exactly what was predicted, you know, 
literally decades ago. It is exactly what we have high 
confidence will continue to intensify.
     So as with this one example I've described in detail, and 
so many other examples of extreme events that are already 
impacting us here in the United States, and around the world, 
the more global warming we have, the greater the impact, the 
more it will cost. Achieving lower levels of global warming, 
like what's in the Paris agreement, will reduce the trajectory 
of those costs, and will still leave us with further change. 
And so, as I said in my opening remarks, we need both 
mitigation and adaptation. We have enough knowledge to get 
started on accelerating both of those, and the transition--the 
gap for both of those is large, and so we need research in how 
to achieve both of those in concert, and in concert with other 
policy priorities.
     Mr. Tonko. And I want to thank you for that. And, again, 
Dr. Diffenbaugh, what are the impacts of not developing a 
robust climate response program in the U.S. that includes 
scientific research alongside the development and deployment of 
technology?
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Well, there certainly are financial 
costs, and, you know, various estimates, including from my 
colleague Marshall Burke and I, you know, are in the trillions 
of--in terms of damages at higher levels of warming relative to 
the Paris agreement, and that's just in the U.S., so we're 
facing potentially trillions of dollars in, you know, eroded 
economic growth. And just as important, you know, we're facing 
an increasing intensification of the kinds of once in a 
lifetime events that we're experiencing more and more 
frequently. It's not just that we're now more aware of 
everything happening everywhere all the time, it's actually 
true that these unprecedented events are increasing in 
frequency.
     And I would say that the biggest transition in both our 
thinking and our research that's needed for curbing these 
events, for not being caught off guard and incurring these huge 
costs is an acknowledgement that we're now in a climate, and we 
will continue to be even in a more intense version of a climate 
where unprecedented events are happening overlapping, 
overlapping in one place one after another, and overlapping in 
different parts of the country at the same time. And so what 
used to be this never happened in my lifetime is already 
becoming frequent, and at two degrees of global warming it will 
become normal, and at four degrees of global warming it will 
become, you know, in some places, you know, every year warmer 
than the historical coldest year that we know in our lifetime.
     Mr. Tonko. OK. Well, with that I thank you, and I yield 
back, Madam Chair.
     The Clerk. Mr. Garcia is recognized.
     Mr. Garcia. Thank you. Thank you very much, and thank you 
to all the witnesses, and Madam Chair, for this very great 
hearing.
     We are in the midst of a crisis, and I applaud our 
collective use of the word crisis. I think when there's lives 
endangered, and our national security is being threatened, 
that's an appropriate word. And I think we should apply that 
same concept, and have the courage to apply that to what's 
happening at our southern border, but that's another Committee 
hearing. I think during any crisis the key is to make the right 
decisions. There's critical decisionmaking processes that we're 
going through right now. There's multiple paths to success, 
there's multiple paths to failure. Some of the failures can be 
catastrophic. Some of the successes can be more beneficial than 
others, and I think we're at that point in our Nation's history 
where the next 5 to 10 years will determine our trajectory, and 
the long term longevity of our Nation, as a result of how we 
deal with this.
     I come from California, where we have a lot of wildfires. 
I'm right in the middle of wildfire season and country, right? 
We see it all the time. One of the failures that we're 
recognizing here locally is that our local politicians, 
counties, at the State level especially, and even some of our 
Federal representatives are not recognizing the physics of the 
fire triangle, and they're instead blaming climate change for 
the fires. Therefore, they're not investing in things like 
deforestation, forest management to remove the fuels from the 
fire triangle, or to, for instance, invest in more large aerial 
tankers to actually remove the heat and BTUs from the fires 
once they start. And attributing it to climate change rather 
than addressing the physics locally has actually cost us more 
money, and more lives, and infrastructure than we probably 
should've realized. That's one example of making poor decisions 
in response to a crisis, and I think we can do better in that 
regard.
     My question, I think, is for Mr. Oppenheimer. One of the 
commitments as part of the Paris Climate Accords is a 
contribution of I believe $100 billion from I believe the 
language is from rich countries to poor countries. How are the 
other nations, call it 195, or the subset thereof that's 
responsible for this distribution of wealth program, performing 
relative to those commitments? I believe our Nation is on the 
hook for roughly $3 billion. What are the other nations doing, 
and what is the status of that $100 billion target?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. So the $100 billion target has to be 
understood. It was not supposed to come out of public funds, 
but was--public funds was supposed to leverage private 
investment in projects like developing renewable energy in 
countries that need a little assistance to get there for--or to 
stimulate adaptation in countries that have barely any 
emissions, but who are affected by the climate change that's 
brought about by the emissions of China, the U.S., Europe, 
Japan, et cetera. So it's not like it was supposed to be a 
government--a big government slug of money.
     That being said--and I--there has been one assessment, 
you'll have to allow me to get you the reference later, which 
showed that actually the governments were, after a very slow 
start, beginning to hold up their end of the commitments. I 
can't tell you how much the U.S. versus China, or India--well, 
India probably isn't a donor in this case--the European 
countries gave. I'd have to look that up. But after myself 
being very skeptical, because these are the kinds of 
commitments that are rarely actually abided by, they're 
rhetoric, the countries actually have stepped forward more than 
I would've expected, more than many expected, and it's that 
leverage on private funding that had made the program work 
better.
     Mr. Garcia. OK. So I guess if we're not really tracking, 
or necessarily thinking too much about the financial 
commitments of the accord, how are we doing from an actual 
performance relative to reductions of CO2 as an 
organization within an agreement, besides the United States?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. So the latest suggests that the 
commitments that were made, the nationally determined 
contribution at Paris, and in some cases shortly thereafter, 
are not being fully implemented. That doesn't mean that 
nothing's being done, it means that countries have, in some 
cases, put other things ahead of climate change. It's 
shortsighted, but that's happened. Or, in some cases, that the 
political consensus hasn't been as solid as it would need to 
be, like in the United States. But you can't--so you can't 
declare Paris at this point either a failure or a success.
     Mr. Garcia. Understood. Thank you, Dr. Oppenheimer. If I 
can reclaim, I think the cost estimates of us remaining in the 
Paris Climate Accords are $3 trillion to our U.S. GDP, and will 
ultimately cost us 6.5 million jobs. I think this is one of 
these decisions we do need to look more closely at. There may 
be other alternatives to get to success that are actually more 
beneficial to the climate and our economy. Thank you. I yield 
back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Beyer is next.
     Mr. Beyer. Thank you, John, very much, and Madam Chair, 
and Ranking Member Lucas, thank you very much for pulling this 
together. This is the existential crisis before us, and with 
respect to the tradeoffs, we traditionally underestimate our 
existential threats. All the psychology research shows that, 
and that's what we have done for far too long.
     Dr. Hausfather, you've mentioned how, even if we get 
emissions all the way down to net zero, global temperatures 
aren't going to fall for many centuries to come. We're going to 
actually reduce global temperatures, we need net negative 
emissions, sucking more CO2 out of the atmosphere 
than is going in. We've been looking at a number of these 
different net negative technologies, but can you talk about 
direct air capture and the scale of their deployment?
     Dr. Hausfather. Sure. So direct air capture is one of the 
most promising negative emission technologies on the table, in 
part because it has the ability to capture a large amount of 
carbon using a fairly small amount of land area. The other that 
we look at, like Dow Energy with carbon capture and storage, 
have a huge land footprint, and involve huge tradeoffs with 
land that would otherwise be used to provide agriculture, which 
can lead to additional deforestation if it pushes that into 
other areas.
     But direct air capture is essentially using chemical 
compounds to bind with carbon in air that's pumped through a 
large device, and produce a solid sort of calcium carbonate 
type output that then can be easily buried and sequestered 
underground. The challenge with direct air capture is it is 
very energy intensive. It requires a lot of energy to run these 
machines. We would need many hundreds, if not thousands of 
them, to make a big dent into global emissions. And because 
they're very high capital cost, you really want to have a high 
operating capacity factor for these devices. And so a world 
where, say, we have lots of extra solar during the day, using 
that extra solar to run direct air capture is great, but it 
doesn't make much economic sense, unless you can run these 
devices close to 24/7.
     And so there's been a lot of discussion around, you know, 
potentially tying them to new advanced nuclear reactors, or, 
you know, ensuring that the larger grid is decarbonized by the 
time we deploy these at scale. Because we don't want to be 
using energy that releases CO2 to capture CO2 
from the air, otherwise, you know, we're not really making much 
of a benefit at all.
     Mr. Beyer. OK, thank you. My hometown's Alexandria, 
Virginia, and we suffer nuisance flooding. And, of course, I'm 
in Virginia, with Norfolk and Virginia Beach, which seem to be 
underwater half the year. And the coastal resilience is such--
so incredibly important. We have the National Ocean and Coastal 
Security Improvement Act just to try to prepare this. But, Dr. 
Oppenheimer, can you touch on how we need to proactively take 
higher sea level rise into account, and why it's so much more 
important to be proactive than reactive on this?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Well, just to get to nuisance or sunny 
day flooding, that's become a real nuisance around the country. 
It was a very rare occurrence where people actually lived, 
where infrastructure existed, if you look at the data from 50, 
60 years ago. And it's gradually increased, and that's largely 
because of sea level rise. And so communities, you know, parts 
of the city I live in, New York, parts of Miami, parts of other 
places are starting to see this gradual problem go from 1 or 2 
days a year to 30, 40, or 50 days a year. And that--and you 
can't defend against that instantaneously.
     The things that need to be done are, by and large, 
decisions which are politically difficult, like deciding that 
certain areas aren't going to be inhabited anymore, and the 
governments can't afford to keep up the infrastructure in those 
places and you relocate people, or pay them to move voluntarily 
or require temporary adjustments like raising their houses. 
Alternatively, the U.S. can build large, protective 
infrastructure, the way the Dutch have done all over their 
country, or as we have done around New Orleans, which has 
reshaped that city more than once. You can't make that kind of 
decision today and complete it tomorrow. The planning takes 10, 
20, 30 years, and the thing doesn't get built until the 
planning, the political consensus, the finance of the 
construction are done. And in the case of a big project, that's 
30 years. So if we want to worry about the storms that are now 
once in a 100 years happening once a year in 2050, we'd better 
get going on it----
     Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Dr. Oppenheimer. And to my 
Republican pals on the call, and all who have, you know, the 
mandate to defend the fossil fuel jobs, we need to be thinking 
about what happens when fusion energy comes, and the 
displacement effect that's going to have on all these things. 
With that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Baird is next.
     Mr. Baird. Well thank you, and thank you, Madam Chair, and 
Ranking Member Lucas, for holding this session. I want to bring 
in the perspective of agriculture, and in that I include the 
forest industry, but I understand that we need to invest in 
clean energy, and solutions in climate change, but I think we 
ought to go beyond those that just seem overly idealistic. And 
so Ranking Member Lucas suggested that we invest in those 
science-based innovations that improve our ability to produce 
energy more efficiently. So agriculture, we have a similar 
conversation about the intersection of agriculture and climate 
change, highlighting the important contributions that farmers 
and ranchers can do to help mitigate the impacts of this 
climate change. One of the most interesting contributions that 
I found very striking was the fact that 46 percent lower carbon 
emissions if we use ethanol.
     And then I want to catch to what Mr. Garcia had to say, 
and Mr. McNerney had to say. When you look at forests, forest 
land and hardwood products, urban trees, they can collectively 
offset more than 11 percent, or about 3/4 of a gigaton, of 
CO2 per year, and that's about 14 percent of the 
CO2 emissions. So my point to you is that we have a 
lot of things taking place in agriculture, and Representative 
Garcia mentioned that we are not practicing forest management 
in a lot of our public lands out west, and that contributes to 
a lot of more BTUs when we do have a fire.
     So these are things that we can do immediately, and so I 
am just interested in the witnesses' comments about using those 
things that are in place now, and how we might invest more 
dollars in research, more dollars to incentivize farmers, and 
ranchers, and forest owners to do management practices that 
capture carbon in the soil, or capture carbon in the trees. My 
data would suggest that trees capture almost 6/10 of a metric 
ton of carbon per hectare per year. So I'll turn it over to the 
witnesses, and would appreciate your comments about how we 
might use these existing systems, natural systems, to help us 
with helping affect climate change. And I guess I might start 
with Dr. Bontempi, because you mentioned that carbon is 
captured in cold water, or ice, and sinks to the bottom of the 
ocean. So let's start there, and then, if we have time, we'll 
have other witnesses comment.
     Dr. Bontempi. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate the 
opportunity to respond to the idea of carbon capture on the 
land. You know, I think one of the things that we have to be 
conscious of in this regard is, you know, people on the land, 
farmers, agriculture, are familiar with things like droughts, 
the wildfires that were already mentioned, and a few other 
phenomena that have been occurring at the extremes, as we've 
been discussing, and these have a huge impact. And these 
climate extremes have been discussed by some of the other 
witnesses as well.
     It is true that trees, or anything that photosynthesizes, 
takes up carbon dioxide and goes through that process, and can 
release oxygen. The questions become how effective are things 
like trees at permanently storing that carbon, how long does it 
take to get back in the atmosphere. These are areas of active 
research, not only in observations but in modeling, and, of 
course, the Earth isn't infinite. How many trees do we have to 
plant to actually have an effective drawdown of the deltas that 
we need in the atmosphere to make it a long-term storage 
solution?
     So I would think at this point I would defer to some of 
the other witnesses to respond, if that's acceptable, because 
they have a bit more experience with that carbon drawdown, and 
permanent capture on land.
     Dr. Hausfather. Yeah, if I could add to that, you know, 
reforestation is one of our best, most cost-effective ways at 
sequestering carbon, and using nature instead of our energy to 
do most of the work. At the same time, even if we were to plant 
a trillion trees worldwide, it would only offset about 8 years 
of current global emissions. And so it's an important part of 
the solution, but we need to make sure that we keep it in 
context, and don't sort of treat it as a replacement for 
ultimately reducing emissions.
     Agriculture is also an area where there's huge potential 
for building up soil carbon. I can send around a paper that I 
published in 2018 that covered some of these approaches, but 
it's an area that we need--to pursue.
     Mr. Baird. I see I'm out of time, so I would be very 
interested in the other witnesses' responses, but, Madam Chair, 
I yield back.
     The Clerk. Ms. Ross is next.
     Ms. Ross. Thank you, and thank you, Madam Chair, and 
Ranking Minority Member for your--for having this hearing. It's 
so, so important, and it's particularly important for my home 
State of North Carolina because we've seen the effects of sea 
level rise on our coast. We have a highway, Highway 12, that's 
underwater frequently, and we're building bridges, and trying 
to beat that back. And then we're also No. 2 in solar in the 
country, and we're dealing with issues of how to get that 
energy resource on our grid.
     My first question is for Dr. Oppenheimer, and I want to 
build off of some of the things that Mr. Beyer was talking 
about, about how to incentive local governments to use 
research. So it's clear that we want to know what's going to 
happen with sea level rise, though my State legislature in the 
past hasn't always wanted to know. But once we have these 
tools, and we know it's hard to make those political decisions, 
and it's expensive, what could the Federal Government do to 
incentivize local governments to take the necessary action to 
protect people and to protect property?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Thank you for that question, 
Representative. There have been discussion for years of 
developing at the Federal level a climate services, sort of 
like the weather service, to, you know, turn this information 
into something that's practical, and that can get into the 
hands of the decisionmakers that need to make the decisions. 
Now, I don't know if that's the right answer, but it may be, 
but it could be done in cooperation with similar sorts of 
structures at the State and local level. The good--the 
interesting model is the agricultural extensions, which for 
over 100 years have developed local solutions for farmers 
operating in particular States, in particular areas, working 
through local universities, for instance, and in that--network 
of information which is designed not for the elite level, but 
for the people who actually use it. So this is something that 
is doable that probably isn't that expensive, and the States 
and the Federal Government together should get on it.
     Ms. Ross. Well thank you very much, and thank you for 
saying it wouldn't be that expensive. That's very attractive. I 
have a question for Dr. Hausfather about the grid. So North 
Carolina is No. 2 in solar. I've actually represented a number 
of renewable energy companies, I did that in private practice 
as an attorney, and what we're learning is, you know, now we 
have these cheaper solar resources, but the biggest issue is 
interconnection, and who is going to pay for that 
interconnection, and then who is going to pay to upgrade the 
grid. And I know that FERC has a cost-sharing model, different 
States are then left to their own devices for the model, and 
frequently it's the renewable energy company that has to pay 
for those upgrades, and those upgrades, though, end up 
redounding to the benefit of the utility when it comes to 
dealing with rates. And so I wanted to know whether you had any 
creative solutions about how we might do this not just State by 
State, but on a national scale.
     Dr. Hausfather. So I think there is a real role for direct 
Federal spending in building out a 21st century grid for the 
U.S., and we need to recognize just how important it will be to 
enable the clean energy transition at the scale and the speed 
we need. I'd like to point to a study by the National Renewable 
Energy Laboratory about--that suggested it'll cost about $80 
billion to build a 21st century super grid, it would create 
hundreds of thousands of jobs, and it would ultimately more 
than pay for itself in cost savings for people across the 
country. And, you know, in a time when there really is a need 
to put people back to work, and when the economy is suffering, 
infrastructure like long distance transmission is a really 
important way to get boots on the ground quickly.
     Ms. Ross. Well thank you very much for that. Hopefully we 
can talk about that in our Energy Subcommittee. Madam Chair, I 
yield back.
     The Clerk. Mrs. Bice is next.
     Mrs. Bice. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and Ranking Member 
Lucas, for the opportunity, and thank you for the witnesses to 
join us this afternoon. 30 years ago Sandia National Labs 
played a huge role in developing PDC bits. They were developed 
and sustained through specific technology research, and they 
had an immediate impact on the oil and gas industry. We talked 
a little bit earlier about how technology plays an important 
role in helping climate change. These are the types of 
investments that we should be making to ensure that we're 
looking toward the future and not just focusing on what's 
happening today. You know, according to the Acting 
Undersecretary for Science and Energy, Kathleen Hogan, she said 
there's an enormous amount of untapped potential for enhanced 
geothermal systems to provide clean, reliable electricity to 
power tens of thousands of homes across the country.
     I'll start with Dr. Hausfather. Is it safe to say that 
global economic development can rely on fossil fuel, at least 
in the near term, but, in your opinion, when we're looking 
toward the future, would it be better to give developing 
countries money to combat climate change, or the technological 
tools that we may be developing here in this country to reduce 
greenhouse gas emissions?
     Dr. Hausfather. So I think it is important to recognize 
that we're not going to get rid of fossil fuels anytime in the 
near future. But at the same time, there's sort of an order of 
operations for fossil fuels, right? Coal is by far the most 
carbon intensive, then comes oil, then comes natural gas. And 
so if you look at the type of models that we developed that 
look at how the globe might be carbonized, you see a transition 
away from coal first, then away from oil, and then ultimately 
away from natural gas.
     As to your second question, you know, I think geothermal's 
a really exciting area right now. You know, I think it's, in 
many ways, in a similar position to where the fracking 
revolution was 2 decades ago, and, you know, diamond drill 
bits, which you mentioned in your opening, are actually playing 
a huge role in unlocking enhanced geothermal today. And so this 
is one of the type of technologies, you know, renewables are 
obviously another, advanced nuclear is a third, where making 
them cheap enough so that they can compete with fossil fuels on 
the market is going to go a huge way to get them adopted by the 
rest of the world. You know, direct support is important in 
some occasions, particularly for adaptation health, but 
ultimately, given the scale of the energy transition needed, 
particularly in middle income countries like India and China, 
it's making clean energy cheap that is the single biggest lever 
we have to drive adoption and emission reductions by the rest 
of the world.
     Mrs. Bice. Anyone else like to comment on that?
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Yeah, I would add that--go ahead, 
Professor Oppenheimer.
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Quickly, I'd just like to add, you know, 
I actually agree with Dr. Hausfather said, with the caveat 
that--be careful with the ordering of fossil fuels. They all 
have problems, and in particular, unless the leaks of natural 
gas due to drilling, transmission, and distribution are 
eliminated, then the benefits of using natural gas for 
greenhouse gas emissions reduction are largely eroded.
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Yeah, I would add--I really appreciate, 
Congresswoman, your emphasis on looking both at the present and 
forward in the future, and when we look over the coming decade, 
the world will need to supply more energy than it's supplying 
now, and with greater access. That's true both in the U.S. and 
globally, and on the order of doubling of energy supply. To 
stabilize the climate system at any level will require reaching 
net zero emissions. That's not a political statement or a 
policy statement, it's simply the fundamental energy balance of 
the planet.
     Mrs. Bice. Which I don't disagree with your statement, but 
I think one of the challenges that we should all be thinking 
about is that the United States can become net zero, or even 
net negative, but that doesn't affect the issues that we're 
facing in China and India with them using high amounts of coal, 
as a matter of fact building coal-powered plants, and 
increasing those emissions into the environment, which is 
really causing what we're doing here to be irrelevant.
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Well, all of the emissions aggregate to 
affect the global energy balance. So the global--the 
fundamental physics of the planet are that the emissions, from 
wherever they are, the greenhouse gas emissions are mixed in 
the atmosphere, and affect the global temperature, and the 
climate around the world. So I actually am supporting your 
statement, but the reality is, regardless of the level of 
global warming, to stabilize the climate system at any level 
requires reaching net zero, and that's more global warming than 
we've already had, which means adaptation will be necessary. 
We're not adapted to the climate change that's already 
happened. Further climate change will require further 
adaptation. The U.S. can be an innovator and a leader in all 
three of those dimensions. All three of those dimensions are 
needed here in the U.S. to manage climate risk, and we can do 
exactly what you described, in terms of supporting the rest of 
the world through innovation in each of those dimensions.
     Mrs. Bice. But without a focus from India and China on 
this very issue, what we're going to be doing in this country 
won't be an impact globally. Madam Chairwoman, I appreciate the 
time, and I yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Foster is next.
     Mr. Foster. Thank you. Am I audible and visible here?
     The Clerk. Yes, sir.
     Mr. Foster. All right. Well, let's see, I'd like to start 
by asking--maybe getting reactions to what are sometimes called 
Bill Gates's five questions, and whether you think that's an 
appropriate way to look at this problem. You know, his 
questions are, you know, first off, for any proposed solution, 
how much of the 51 billion tons are we really talking about, 
that we want to make sure we do our research in the areas which 
will really take a big bite out of that, instead of sort of 
boutique solutions.
     Second question is what's your plan for cement? By cement 
he means cement steel, you know, the other boring ways that we 
make--we put a lot of carbon in the atmosphere, but are--don't 
seem to be doing as much research toward lowering the footprint 
there. How much power are we talking about, how much space do 
we need, and most fundamentally, how much is this going to 
cost? This is what Bill Gates referred to as a green premium. A 
decade ago this was the formalism of the McKinsey plot, where 
you look at the number--the cost per dollar of carbon 
mitigated, and you line up just everything you might do to 
mitigate carbon, and you start with the ones that cost the 
least, and you get them down until you've solved the problems, 
marched down the list, which I always thought was a pretty good 
way of analyzing this problem.
     So I was wondering if any of you have a reaction to that, 
if that's really the best way for Congress to think about this 
problem, or are there holes in that methodology?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Well, let me just answer that first in 
this way. I think that the idea of looking at where the big 
bang for the buck is--if that's what Mr. Gates meant--it's a 
little hard sometimes to know exactly what he means--that 
that's in general a good principle in life. So if there are big 
gains that could be made against a relatively modest sector, 
take the gains. If there are big gains that could be made 
against a big sector for, you know, a reasonable cost, take 
that. The biggest gain that's been made against the greenhouse 
effect has been actually under the Montreal Protocol, which was 
not designed to deal with climate change but originally was 
intended to protect the ozone layer. But those gases happen to 
be strong greenhouse gases, so they took off the table a lot of 
what's called climate forcing, and we'd be even in worse shape 
today than we are if that hadn't been done. So looking for 
opportunities where you can do two things at once is also a 
very smart idea.
     Where I have trouble with the Gates message is that it can 
be read as saying there are technological silver bullets, if 
we're just smart enough to find them, and that's the role of 
government, and I think that's just wrongheaded. As I mentioned 
before to Congressman Bowman, you need a combination of 
appropriate support for technologies and appropriate regulation 
to put the incentives in front of industry to head in the right 
direction.
     Mr. Foster. Um-hum.
     Dr. Hausfather. If I can add to that, I'd like to echo Dr. 
Oppenheimer. You know, I think we have a lot of the 
technologies that we need today, and we should recognize that 
we don't have all of them. There is a real need for continued 
innovation both to drive down the cost of the technologies that 
we have, and to develop the technologies for hard to 
decarbonize sectors of the economy like industrial heat, like 
steel production, glass production, cement production. You 
know, there we don't really have cost-effective ways to replace 
fossil fuels today, and so it's sort of a yes, and approach. 
And also we do need to avoid sort of silver bullet thinking 
when it comes to energy technology. There's no single 
technology, be it renewables, nuclear, whatever, that is going 
to solve this problem by itself. We really need an all of the 
above approach to clean energy, recognizing that different 
regions of the U.S. will have very different resource 
availabilities and different requirements around decarbonizing.
     Mr. Foster. I was also struck by the difference in your 
testimony in attitude toward tipping points, you know, that I 
think--I believe it was Mr. Hausfather's observation that 
really, you know, as you continue to pour more CO2 
in the atmosphere, it just sort of gradually got worse. There's 
not some magic point where positive feedbacks took over. But 
then, on the other hand, you know, there are things like the 
reversal--the stoppage of the Gulf Stream that seem like they 
are a really scary near term risk, that there's apparently 
geological evidence that, you know, in the time scale of a 
decade, the Gulf Stream has stopped and restarted, and 
indications that the slowing down may be happening now. You 
know, if that happens, we don't have 50 years to respond, and, 
you know, Scotland's going to look pretty different if that 
happens. And I was just wondering what your--is there, really, 
a scientific consensus on this issue of tipping points?
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. So there are absolutely thresholds in the 
climate system, and, you know, some of them are known knowns, 
some of them are known unknowns, and surely there are unknown 
unknowns as well. We're seeing with, you know, the large 
glaciers non-linearities emerging, you know, in real time. That 
has huge risk for sea level rise, for example. We certainly 
see, with the effects of heat, many non-linearities. We heard 
about the importance of agriculture earlier. There are very 
clear non-linearities, with very steep declines above 
temperature thresholds, and global warming is already 
increasing the frequency of occurrence with which those 
thresholds are crossed.
     And this brings me to my final point, which is it--the 
importance of adaptation, and research and adaptation. The 
adaptation gap that Professor Oppenheimer mentioned earlier is 
large. It's large at present, and it will grow as global 
warming continues. We--frankly, in order to manage the risk to 
reduced impacts, we need further research in how to design, 
develop, and deploy adaptation solutions at scale.
     Mr. Foster. Thank you. My time is up, and yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Feenstra.
     Mr. Feenstra. Thank you, Madam Chair and Ranking Member 
Lucas. Before I start, I just want to thank each of the 
witnesses for their testimony and sharing their extensive 
research and opinions with us.
     Dr. Hausfather, in my district, Summit Carbon Solutions 
and Little Sue Corn Processors are teaming up for a carbon 
dioxide capture and storage project. The partnership aims to 
capture 444,000 tons of carbon annually, which will lower the 
refinery's footprint. It will also be part of an infrastructure 
network with other vital refineries that will have the 
capability of capturing 10 million tons of carbon annually. 
Will large scale partnerships like this be crucial to achieving 
significant lower carbon emissions? And then, No. 2, they cited 
45Q tax credits as being crucial in allowing their companies to 
invest in these technologies. Could you comment on what types 
of current or new incentives would help encourage this type of 
carbon reduction and capture?
     Dr. Hausfather. Sure, I'd be happy to. So carbon dioxide 
removal is a critical technology to meet the climate goals we 
have today, both because there are some hard to decarbonize 
parts of the economy where, you know, it simply is going to be 
the most cost-effective solution to capture the carbon from 
fossil fuels, rather than replace them with something else. And 
because, as the other witnesses have discussed, you know, we 
may want to reduce our global emissions below zero in the 
future, and we need these sort of carbon capture technologies 
to be able to do that. And so I think we definitely need to be 
investing more in these than we are today.
     In terms of the types of things that can help, one big one 
is just long term certainty, and 45Q goes a long way to doing 
that, to make sure that these companies know that there will be 
a market for the carbon that they are capturing, so to speak, a 
price that's being paid to them. The second is more of an 
investment in the supporting infrastructure around carbon 
capture. You know, capturing the carbon itself is, in some 
ways, one of the easiest steps. Then you have to actually have 
pipelines associated with that, you have to have long term 
geological storage that proximate, and so making sure that we 
invest in those infrastructure as well can really enable carbon 
capture to scale.
     Now, carbon capture is not going to be the solution. You 
know, obviously a number--a lot of sectors it's going to be 
easier to replace fossil fuels with clean energy sources. But 
certainly for some sectors it will be a big part of the 
solution.
     Mr. Feenstra. OK. So let me just expand on that a little 
bit. So carbon capture, especially with biorefineries, we can 
get down to a net negative. With biofuels, this seems like the 
greenest form of energy, and yet there's this agenda of pushing 
electric vehicles, which in itself has a lot of problems with, 
you know, creating batteries, and all this other stuff. How do 
you see biofuels playing out in this greater plan of reducing 
carbon?
     Dr. Hausfather. So today the dramatic cost declines we've 
seen in batteries have really unlocked a powerful electric 
vehicle market for light vehicles, but I think there is, you 
know, an important role for biofuels, both for some light 
vehicles, and we'll see how those end up playing out in the 
market, you know, depends a lot on what happens with these 
technology costs going forward, but also for things like heavy 
duty transport over long distances, where, you know, 
limitations of batteries make that a bit more costly and more 
challenging, and especially for things like long distance 
shipping and aviation, where using electricity for those 
transportation purposes are--you know, possible, but very, very 
difficult.
     And so, you know, biofuels are an important part of the 
solution as well. You know, we do need to be cognizant of the 
impacts of growing biofuels if they're offsetting other 
activities. You know, if you're pushing, say, more 
deforestation in Brazil by reducing agriculture output in the 
U.S. by devoting a lot of land to biofuels. We're not really 
there today, but those secondary effects do need to be 
considered when looking at impacts of biofuels. But I agree 
that carbon negative biofuels through carbon capture and 
storage is a really exciting technology, and it's one that is 
used at an extremely large scale, and a lot of the energy 
system models that are used by the IPCC to model some of these 
emission pathways.
     Mr. Feenstra. Thank you, Dr. Hausfather. I look at it this 
way. I am in the Midwest, in Iowa, and we have this corn 
kernel, or we have this soybean, that holds energy, literally 
holds energy, and we squeeze it, and we get the energy out. So, 
to me, it's one of the greatest forms of energy, clean energy, 
that we can use. So with that I just want to yield back. Thank 
you.
     The Clerk. Mr. Casten is next.
     Mr. Casten. Thank you so much, and thank you to our 
witnesses, and I'm really just so pleased to be here with all 
of this climate science expertise, and geological science 
expertise, and I'm--I want to get to questions about climate 
science, but I first just--I just want to raise a concern. 
There's been a lot conversation in this hearing about economics 
and energy technology, and, as someone who's spent 16 years 
building and running clean energy companies, there have been 
some gross misrepresentations, and I just want to clarify a 
couple things.
     No. 1, clean energy is cheap energy. Anything we do to 
replace something that uses fossil fuel with something that 
uses a renewable source, with something that's more efficient, 
is a source of cheaper energy. It grows our economy. It makes 
us wealthier as a people. Any conversation we're having about 
the conversion to a clean energy economy being economically 
painful is at best economically naive, and at worst immoral. 
It's sacrificing a cleaner, cheaper future to look after the 
fossil fuel industry. The reason those projects aren't deployed 
isn't because of technology, it's because our regulatory 
structure grossly distorts economic markets and subsidizes 
incumbents, because ultimately this transition represents a 
wealth transfer from energy producers to energy consumers. 
Let's have that conversation, but let's not misrepresent this.
     Now I want to shift to climate science, and, Dr. 
Oppenheimer, I really, really appreciated your comments about 
the lag time that happens between when we emit greenhouse gases 
and when the effects take place. And what I wonder if you could 
help us out with is--I want to just paint a completely over 
optimistic view of the world. Let's say we eliminate all 
CO2 tomorrow. Explain to us, if you could, what the 
lag time is before we stop seeing--before that curve saturates. 
How much more are sea levels going to rise? How much more 
intense are the derechos in the Midwest going to get? How much 
more intense are hurricanes going to get before we saturate 
that curve? Can you speak at all to what your models tell you 
about that?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Well, if you mean if we eliminate all 
CO2 emissions, as opposed to all human-made CO2 
that's already put in--been put in the atmosphere----
     Mr. Casten. Yeah, just on a going forward basis of what we 
already have.
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Yeah. So, you know, that's been--that's 
certainly been looked at, and the--one of the lower conceivable 
emissions curves was--as a consequence of that--the sea level 
rise was examined in the report that I had a hand in on oceans 
and ice, which was mentioned by Paula earlier. And the reality 
is that the sea level rise you get over this century and beyond 
is a lot lower than if you just let emissions keep going. I 
mean, we're talking about meters difference in sea level rise, 
but, nevertheless, by the end of the century, in any 
conceivable emissions scenario, we're going to have to deal 
with a minimum of about one-third of a meter of sea level rise 
globally.
     You know, let me back--actually, what I said was not 
correct. By--over the next few hundred years we're going to 
have to deal with a half a meter to a meter. That's because of 
the very long lags in the system that you asked about. Over 
this century, we might wind up below half a meter, if we're 
lucky, and that would be, you know, not great, but it's a safer 
landing than if we're at or above a meter of sea level rise.
     Mr. Casten. I appreciate it. And, you know, the fact that 
even in a best case scenario we're looking at, you know, sea 
level rise measured in feet, I just think we need to 
internalize that when we think about what we're doing. Now 
take--and you correctly sussed out, take the--now the even more 
optimistic scenario. Let's say we actually not only got to zero 
CO2 tomorrow, but invested in all of these negative 
carbon technologies, and got back to, I don't know, something 
sustainable in the 350 parts per million zone. Are there 
hysteresis effects as we go backwards, or what's, you know, 
what's the lag time? If we get back to where that is, do we 
anticipate, you know, at some point an end to wildfires, and a 
heightening--or are some of these changes just fundamentally 
irreversible at this point?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Yeah, there are irreversibilities. For 
instance, the amount of water that we lose from the ice sheets 
into the ocean because ice melts, or forms icebergs, we're not 
going to get that back. We're not going to get it back for 
1,000-10,000 years. We may not get it back until we go into 
another ice age who knows how long in the future. So, yeah, 
there's some very serious irreversibilities. Whatever amount 
sea level rises due to loss of ice from Antarctica, Greenland, 
and mountain glaciers, we have no way to haul that back in a 
human lifetime.
     Mr. Casten. You don't--there's no time constant that we 
start to see greater snowpack and temperatures falling? Is that 
not in the planning horizons?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. You would be able to rebuild enough--you 
know, given what we know, I always want to be careful about the 
uncertainty. Given what we know, the restoration time for ice 
lost from Greenland and Antarctica is in the thousands of 
years----
     Mr. Casten. Wow.
     Dr. Oppenheimer [continuing]. So we're not going to be 
building back a lot of that ice in the--in, you know, human 
lifetimes. Let's put it that way.
     Mr. Casten. Wow. Thank you, and I yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Obernolte is next.
     Mr. Obernolte. Well, thank you, everyone, it's been a 
fascinating discussion. I'd like to further the conversation 
that we've been having about how we shield disadvantaged 
communities against the economic effects of transitioning to 
net zero carbon. And this is something that I know Congressman 
Lucas mentioned, Congressman Posey, Congresswoman Bice. And so, 
Dr. Hausfather, you said something that I thought was really 
fascinating. You said that we should be able to get to a place 
where clean energy is just as inexpensive as the energy we've 
been producing, you know, that's carbon intensive. And I'm 
wondering, you know, how we get there, because in California 
we've got a very stringent renewable energy standard that, you 
know, has caused residential electricity rates in California to 
be double that of adjacent States, and that's one of the 
reasons why California has the highest poverty rate in the 
Nation, when you factor that in, is those energy costs. What 
are we doing wrong here? How do we get to the point where these 
disadvantaged communities aren't being affected by higher 
energy prices, and where energy costs aren't driving poverty, 
as they are in California?
     Dr. Hausfather. So that's a great question. You know, 
California is a complicated system. Energy generation costs in 
California have actually been going slightly down over the last 
decade. The transmission and distribution costs have been going 
significantly up. Some of that is related to grid expansions to 
support more renewable energy on the grid, some of that is 
related to dealing with the State's wildfire crisis, and 
various grid hardening activities around that, but more 
broadly, you know, there are certainly cases where there are 
costs to an energy transition, and those costs can be 
disproportionately felt on poor people, particularly if 
electricity prices or gasoline prices are going up. You know, 
for people who have to commute to work every single day, 
multiple hours, you know, gasoline prices can be a large part 
of their disposable income. And so we should make sure that in 
any climate policies we're implementing, be it a carbon price, 
be it a subsidy for a particular type of energy, we make sure 
that we are not disadvantaging the people who are the worst hit 
by that.
     So, as an example, if we were to ever put a price on 
carbon, it would make a lot of sense to make it revenue neutral 
in a way that makes sure that the people who--for which energy 
costs are a larger portion of their income, you know, gain from 
it, they don't lose from it. Another example is, you know, 
making sure that when we are switching over from one source of 
energy to another we provide considerable assistance to those 
communities that will be most impacted, through the loss of 
jobs in that sector, or through, you know, broader disruptions 
to local tax revenue, and other factors like that, and so we 
need to start planning ahead. You know, coal country, in many 
ways, can be a cautionary tale--right, because technologies can 
disrupt our energy system very rapidly. Be it natural gas and 
wind displacing coal, electric vehicles reducing oil demands, 
reducing production in parts of the U.S. in the future, we see 
a lot of these things coming, and we need to better understand 
which communities will be worse affected, and plan ahead to 
make sure that they're not left behind.
     Mr. Obernolte. Sure. Thanks. You know, I think you raise 
an excellent point about, you know, the economics of carbon 
pricing, but I just want to raise as a cautionary tale, you 
know, the fact of political reality intrudes, and when we have 
tried in the past to try to use that pricing to reduce the 
impacts on disadvantaged communities and consumers, as we have 
in California with the cap and trade system, you know, it ends 
up being a giant government piggy bank. You know, those 
benefits actually don't make it back to the consumers if we're 
not careful.
     And then one last question for you, since I've got you, 
Dr. Hausfather, you also mentioned that you thought it was 
possible to get to a net zero energy mix, and what I'd like to 
ask about is baseload because all of the estimates that I have 
seen indicate that when you're talking about just renewables, 
storage is never going to get us to the point where we can 
provide base load without some kind of non-renewable source. 
So, you know, what kind of mix can we do that with?
     Dr. Hausfather. So that's a great question. When we look 
at storage, where storage really excels is bringing power from, 
say, the midday, when you have a lot of solar on the grid, to 
the evening, when use ramps up. The challenge you face, though, 
is around seasonal differences in generation. In California, 
for example, our solar panels produce half as much electricity 
in the winter than in the summer, whereas our demand is only 20 
percent lower in the winter than in the summer. And as we 
electrify the economy, as we start replacing natural gas 
furnaces and water heaters with heat pumps in homes, our winter 
demand is going to increase even more.
     And so there is a real need for clean firm generation on 
the grid, be that, you know, gas with carbon capture and 
storage, be that advanced nuclear, be that enhanced geothermal, 
where there's a lot of really exciting developments. But as I 
mentioned in my written testimony, if energy system models 
include a chunk of clean firm generation, tend to be lower cost 
overall than ones that rely just on variable renewables and 
storage.
     Mr. Obernolte. Sure. Yeah, I completely agree, and 
especially clean nuclear I think is something we can't ignore. 
All right. I realize my time is up. Thanks very much everyone, 
it's been a fascinating discussion. I yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Kildee is next.
     Mr. Kildee. Thank you so much, and for the witnesses, 
thank you for a really interesting conversation thus far. I'm 
sure many of know--at least the Committee Members know I come 
from Michigan, a State with a really proud heritage of making 
automobiles, putting the world on wheels, and even we, in this 
area, in this sector of the economy, recognize that this 
climate crisis is real, and we have to address emissions. It's 
a huge polluter. The transportation sector in particular is the 
largest contributor to climate change, and so American auto 
companies have been working to transition from internal 
combustion engines to electric vehicles. For example, General 
Motors, which, by the way, was founded right here in my 
hometown of Flint, Michigan in 1908, GM has invested heavily in 
electric vehicles, and has committed to stop selling internal 
combustion vehicles by 2035. And I have been working to expand 
the 30D tax credit that would provide consumer incentives to 
purchase electric vehicles, and, just to be clear, to expand it 
in a way that makes more affordable vehicles available to more 
people across the economic spectrum, especially folks who are 
middle income earners.
     Some opponents to electric vehicles, however, say that 
much of the electricity used to power electric vehicles--made 
from fossil fuels that generate the electricity, fuels such as 
coal and gas. So starting perhaps with Mr. Hausfather, can you 
talk a bit, No. 1, about how electric vehicles can help 
decarbonize the transportation sector, even when electricity, 
at least for now, is primarily generated using fossil fuels, 
and just talk about the efficacy of continuing to invest in 
EVs?
     Dr. Hausfather. Sure. So even today, if you get 100 
percent of your electricity from coal, which nowhere in the 
U.S. does right now, an electric vehicle would still be 
slightly lower carbon than the average conventional vehicle on 
the road today. So that's the starting point. Now, the U.S. 
grid is much cleaner than that today, and so you can expect at 
least 50 percent reductions in life cycle emissions for 
electric vehicles today in most parts of the country. That 
includes, you know, taking into account the emissions 
associated with producing the battery, which is non-trivial.
     That said, the real benefit of electric vehicles as a tool 
of decarbonization is they get better the further along we get 
in other sectors of the economy. So as we decarbonize the grid, 
the use emissions from those electric vehicles goes pretty 
close to zero, and the manufacturing emissions also decreases 
pretty dramatically. About half of the emissions required to 
produce the batteries for electric vehicles is in the form of 
electricity used for the assembly of the battery pack. The 
other half is for mining and transport of the materials, et 
cetera. And so, as we reduce the, you know, cleanup the grid, 
we are also going to decarbonize the manufacturing process for 
electric vehicles.
     Mr. Kildee. You know, you said something just in the last 
question that I just wanted to follow up on, because it's been 
an area of real interest for me, and it has to do with the use 
of geothermal. Can you talk about how geothermal might be 
used--because I know this issue of surge, and the imbalance 
in--particularly in consumer demand for energy is one of the 
real challenges when it comes to energy storage, but it seems 
to me, and I've thought about this in the context particularly 
of urban redevelopment in low income communities, that the use 
of geothermal not only can reduce consumption, but actually 
reduces the--some of the inequity, or the problems that we have 
in terms of imbalance in utilization. Can you discuss whether 
or not you think there's reason to invest in research around 
how geothermal might be used to promote affordability of 
energy?
     Dr. Hausfather. I think there is. You know, when we talk 
about geothermal, we should really differentiate between sort 
of ground source heat pumps, which is sort of small scale 
geothermal for homes, and sort of enhanced----
     Mr. Kildee. Yeah, that's really the focus that I'm trying 
to zero in on, yeah.
     Dr. Hausfather. Yeah. So those technologies are still 
fairly expensive today in most places, but costs have come down 
a lot. You know, it certainly is a very promising area to 
continue, you know, research and development and deployment in. 
I'm less familiar with it than on the power generation side, to 
be honest.
     Mr. Kildee. Well, I appreciate all of your testimony, and 
I appreciate the Chairwoman holding this really important 
hearing. Thank you for that, and I yield back.
     The Clerk. Mrs. Kim is next.
     Mrs. Kim. Unmute.
     The Clerk. We can hear you.
     Mrs. Kim. OK. Thank you so much. I want to thank our 
Ranking Member Lucas and Chairwoman Johnson for this very 
informative hearing today. You know, the communities that I 
represent in California's 39th District are keenly aware of the 
climate change impact. Every year our region is devastated by 
record setting wildfires caused by increasing temperatures, 
costing our taxpayers billions of dollars. But rather than 
looking for a centralized government response to climate 
change, like Green New Deal, our country should look to unleash 
market-based solutions. If our country does not take the 
initiative to implement innovation and new technologies to 
combat climate change, other countries, like China, will take 
that initiative away from us.
     You know, Mr. Hausfather, in an L.A. Times article you 
noted that fires are not unusual in California, that they're a 
part of the State's history and landscape, but bad forest 
management combined with human behavior have contributed to the 
problem. And as my colleague from California, Mr. Garcia, also 
mentioned, wildfires are a problem in California. So let me 
pose this question to all our witnesses. Can you talk to us 
about the role that forest management and land use play in 
climate change and emission reduction, and do you think that 
the monitoring of wildfires by using satellites, and the 
National Weather Service, along with forest management, would 
help in preventing some of the tragic effects we've seen from 
these large fires?
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Yeah, I can start. Wildfires result from 
a confluence of conditions, as you've described. There's 
certainly never been a wildfire without ignition. There's never 
been a wildfire without fuel. You know, there's never been a 
structure threatened or destroyed without habitation. So these 
all contribute to wildfire risk. And we know that--
opportunities to manage those risks in each of those 
dimensions, so absolutely how we manage fuel is critical. The 
resources that we have for fire prevention and response are 
critical, as we've seen, tragically, in recent years, including 
this past year. The state of the electrical grid, which has 
been a source of ignitions in California in recent years, is 
critical for reducing emissions.
     And the reality is is that the condition of the fuels is 
being affected by global warming, and the associated climate 
change. The area burned in the western U.S. has increased 
around tenfold in the last 4 decades. About half of the--area 
burned is attributable to long-term warming and the effect on 
fuel aridity. My research group had a--published a study this 
summer documenting that the frequency of extreme wildfire 
weather in California during the critical autumn seasons is--
has more than doubled in the last four decades, so we're in a 
climate now where high risk is more common, it's more frequent. 
That will continue to accelerate. We've seen, tragically, year 
after year the effects of this elevated risk that has stretched 
our response systems past the ability to prevent those fire, to 
contain those fires, and to prevent the loss of structures, 
and, tragically, the loss of life.
     Mrs. Kim. Thank you. I would like to reclaim my time so I 
can put in another important question in there. You know, the 
United States has the most dynamic private sector in the world, 
with entrepreneurs, investors, big companies, and capital 
markets all eager to license technologies and launch startups, 
but many of these ventures are built on technologies that come 
from basic research funded by the Federal Government. So can 
you talk about some of the examples of sustained technology 
driven research and development the government has started and 
the private sector has commercialized successfully?
     Dr. Hausfather. I'd be happy to take that really quick. 
So, you know, pretty much every technology that we're using to 
decarbonize our economy today has its roots in Federal and 
State R&D, be the--RD&D efforts, be that solar photovoltaics--
wind, cheap natural gas, which is one of the biggest factors 
displacing coal in the U.S. today. Geothermal is really being 
powered today by diamond drill bits, and horizontal drilling, 
and hydraulic fracturing technologies that came out of Federal 
investments. The Federal Government has invested significantly 
in battery storage technologies in the past, and RD&D there, 
and our National Labs have played a key role. And so I think 
that, you know, we really need to recognize the power of 
technology to help us tackle climate change, and, at the same 
time, the critical role of the Federal Government in driving 
that forward.
     Mrs. Kim. I think my time is up. I yield back. Thank you.
     The Clerk. Ms. Moore is next.
     Ms. Moore. Well, thank you so much, Madam Chairwoman, and 
Mr. Ranking Member. Of course, this is just like being in 
school. I've learned so very, very much today.
     I am not that efficient with managing my time, so I'm 
going to get right into it, and maybe I'll start with just 
mentioning something. I realize I'm not from Flint, Michigan, 
but I am from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It's one of the Great 
Lakes, and I just want to mention that if the Great Lakes were 
a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. 
You know, it'd bring $6 trillion a year to our economy, and, of 
course, Wisconsin, we are the biggest trading partner with 
Canada, and three million of that trade passes through 
Wisconsin. I say that to say--because we've spent an awful lot 
of time talking about disasters on our coasts, and, you know, 
New Jersey, and New York, and the State of Washington, and 
California, and I just want to remind people that, you know, 
we're the fresh coast, and we have a huge economy to protect, 
and I'm wondering, maybe from Dr. Oppenheimer--you do a lot of 
stuff with attribution. Do you see--is there any different sort 
of climate research that needs to be done to maintain and 
sustain the Great Lakes? I know that the Army Corps of 
Engineers right now is engaged in a climate resilience project, 
but they also just get involved with hazard mitigation when, 
you know, utility lines are knocked down, or something happens. 
Is there--are the Great Lakes being neglected in the whole 
scheme of things?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Well, I wouldn't say they're being 
neglected. The hottest temperature ever recorded in the United 
States, taking together heat and humidity, it's called the wet 
bulb--was recorded in Appleton, Wisconsin. And so----
     Ms. Moore. That's right.
     Dr. Oppenheimer [continuing]. You know, extreme heat 
affects the whole Midwest, you know, right up to the 
Mississippi Valley, and spreads out. And we know that, and 
there's been no less focus on that, and I--and it's a real 
concern, even in the most northerly regions of the low 48 
States. The agricultural economy, which is so important in 
States around the Great Lakes, is a focus of a lot of study. In 
fact, a study from my research group examined how many people 
move in and out of those counties if it gets too hot, and the 
corn doesn't tassel, and people start moving elsewhere. And 
there have been----
     Ms. Moore. I would love that study. I've got a couple more 
questions, but I would love to see that.
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Sure.
     Ms. Moore. I just want to ask a question--maybe Ms.--I 
just want to appreciate our witness who has served on the 
Native American--with the Native American lands. I want to ask 
her if she has seen that climate satellites are useful in 
monitoring climate, and what does she think that that might do 
in creating, I think, raison d'etre for investing in vulnerable 
communities, and low-income communities, to demonstrate, maybe 
by attribution, the benefits of reinvesting in those 
communities without gentrification to ward off the greatest 
climate damage?
     Dr. Bontempi. Yes, ma'am, thank you so much for that 
question, Congressman Moore--Congresswoman Moore, forgive me. I 
would say satellites have been absolutely instrumental in 
enabling us to identify long term trends in climate variability 
and change on a global scale. What they also allow us to do is 
reach down to the regional and local levels and actually look 
at direct impacts of climate variability and change on 
different populations, particularly along the coast.
     You mentioned the Great Lakes. We study, you know, harmful 
algal blooms in the Great Lakes, water quality in the Great 
Lakes. This is really important. And I also know, and the IPCC 
points out, that these communities are disproportionately 
impacted by climate variability and change. There are agencies 
that study this. NASA has an applied sciences component with 
their science division, our colleagues in NOAA, others with 
real management responsibility take a very hard look at 
utilizing all pieces of information and blending that into 
transitioning research into management strategies that can 
support these communities. The system isn't perfect, and 
there's a lot of research to do, which is why I stress the hand 
in hand of research and management.
     Ms. Moore. Well, thank you so much. I have, you know, 5 or 
6 seconds left. I just want to, you know, support the comments 
of Mr. Casten and say that we ought to not pit money and the 
lack thereof, you know, against our efforts to mitigate climate 
impacts in vulnerable communities, and I yield back.
     The Clerk. Ms. Stevens is recognized.
     Ms. Stevens. Great, thank you so much. I want to just say, 
I'm from another Great Lakes State, Michigan, and I love what 
Congresswoman Moore just laid out. I also just absolutely loved 
these testimonies, and I want to thank you all for bringing 
your expertise to our Committee, and breadth of knowledge, and 
fact, and figure, and designation for us today.
     In particular, Mr.--or Dr. Hausfather, from The 
Breakthrough Institute, you provided just a very thorough 
writeup of--which I soaked with your materials, and want to--I 
want to recognize--and I know Mr. Casten and Dr. Foster 
appreciate, and certainly our, you know, Chairwoman, who saw 
this through to the finish line, which was that you--on Page 31 
of your testimony you mentioned the sweeping bipartisan package 
that we got done that authorized billions of dollars for 
investment in clean energy, vital energy, R&D, grid 
modernization, and on, and I loved how you put in quotes that, 
you know, it's the potential for quiet climate policy. But a 
big thing on this Committee is how we work together, and 
produce, and I've spent some time with Sean Casten on this, 
Congressman Sean Casten, and--how this was really just a 
sweeping effort, and just part of what we're trying to do, but 
I appreciated that you included that in your testimony, sir.
     And you also mentioned a couple other things. One, I know 
that Congressman Kildee has talked to you about the electric 
vehicles here in Michigan. You know, I'm in the heart of 
automotive land here. We're already seeing industry prepare and 
get ready for, you know, the arrival of electric, certainly the 
global demand. We've got a lot to do on the infrastructure 
side. But you, sir, mentioned peak oil in your--several times 
in your written documentation. I was just wondering if you 
could give me your definition of peak oil, and what you mean by 
that, and also what that means for those of us who are in this 
manufacturing space, plight toward sustainability, and where--
what we should expect in terms of when we're hitting peak oil.
     Dr. Hausfather. Thank you, that's a great question. So 
when I refer to peak oil, I'm not really talking about the peak 
oil concerns of the 1990's, which was all about running out of 
cheap oil. You know, clearly that was very wrong. The world has 
plenty of cheap oil. But rather I'm talking about peak oil 
demand, the point at which global oil use stops increasing, and 
starts decreasing, which, you know, is something that seemed 
out of reach, you know, a decade ago, but now seems pretty 
close to happening. British Petroleum has already predicted 
that 2019 was the year of peak oil, and that we'll never 
recover to that level, even in a current policy world, without, 
you know, rapid additional climate policies. Other groups 
suggest that it'll more plateau around current levels, or 
slightly increase into the future, so there's by no means, you 
know, universal agreement on this.
     But certainly if you look at government targets, it would 
apply that we're going to either reach peak oil last year, or 
in the mid-2020's at the latest. And if you look at 
manufacturer targets, so what companies have pledged to do in 
terms of their EV sales globally, you know, we'd reach peak oil 
even sooner, and see larger declines. And so, you know, I think 
we need to start preparing for a world in which the rapid 
falling price of electric vehicles is driving down global oil 
demand. It's not going to--all of it anytime soon, but 
certainly we're not going to be seeing a world of rapidly 
expanding oil use that's characterized the last few decades, 
and that has important implications.
     One of these is that in a demand constrained future, it's 
really going to benefit the cheaper producers, places like the 
Middle East, which have very low marginal production costs of 
oil, will be able to capture more of the market when the market 
size overall is shrinking. And that means we need to be 
prepared. You know, obviously we can't predict the future 
perfectly, things might change. Global demand might increase 
driven by much more rapid economic growth than we all forecast. 
You know, we simply don't know, but we should prepare for a 
world in which relatively expensive locations of U.S. oil 
production become less economical, and prepare for the types of 
disruptions that might happen there.
     Ms. Stevens. Well, and you've got--we've got to ask 
ourselves too, you know, in terms of some of these 
transformations, as we look at peak oil, and to the plastics 
industry, certainly, or even--and we talk a lot about electric 
vehicles, but I haven't yet heard about the electric plane, har 
har. You know--right, and we could look at, you know, what's 
relying on the, you know, the fuel, and the, you know, the 
plight, and you very nicely articulated, you know--and all of 
you, by the way. I mean, these testimonies are just--I mean, I 
could spend 10 to 15 minutes with each of you, and I'm going to 
do some follow up questions, because I'm on time--I've hit my 
time, and I--you know, Zeke, I wanted to get to this 
agriculture point that you brought up. You know, we've got--
obviously talking about the carbon use on agriculture, as well 
as, you know, these notions of a world without ice. So, if 
that's OK, I'll just do those for the record, and I'm going to 
yield back to, you know, the next person in line, but this has 
just been a remarkable hearing, so thank you all.
     The Clerk. Mr. Lamb is next.
     Mr. Lamb. Thank you to the witnesses for sticking around 
this long. I wanted to start with Dr. Hausfather as well. I 
know that you had done a little bit of work in the past on the 
transition from coal to natural gas, and the, I guess, 
percentage of methane leakage that you need to make that 
advantageous for climate change purposes. Could you say a 
little bit about that research, and where the industry is now--
and this is, like, the most compound question ever, sorry, 
but--and also reinstating the methane rules that were in place 
before the Trump Administration repealed them, what that would 
contribute to this issue of ensuring the climate benefits of 
the transition from coal to gas?
     Dr. Hausfather. So that's a great question. The--comparing 
methane emissions from natural gas to CO2 emissions, 
or coal, or corn natural gas, is really complicated, because 
methane and CO2 are very different greenhouse gases. 
They have very different lifetimes, they behave differently, 
and a lot of it comes down to how much you value sort of short 
form effects on the climate versus long term effects on the 
climate.
     That said, in almost all scenarios natural gas is not 
worse than coal under the types of leakage rates we have today. 
And if you look at the long term, you'd have to have much 
higher leakage rates than anything anyone is suggesting we have 
today to make it worse than coal. But worse than coal is a 
really low bar, right? You know, we need to make our energy 
system considerably better than coal, and there there's huge 
potential in tackling leakage from the oil and gas sector. 
There's no reason why companies should be losing 2 percent of 
what they produce to the atmosphere. It means they're losing 
money, it means it's, you know, harming our climate, it has 
significant local air pollution impacts. And so better 
understanding where these leaks are coming from, which involves 
satellite monitoring, which involves a lot of newer 
technologies like infrared cameras on drones, for example, 
which can do a good job of detecting methane leaks. Like, 
there's a huge amount of technology that can be thrown at this 
problem effectively.
     What we've also found in the work by Adam Brant--Dr. Adam 
Brant at Stanford is merely instrumental here, is that the 
leakage in the system is dominated by a long tail of what we 
call super emitters, a small number of sites that are 
responsible for a large portion of our overall leakage. And so 
remote sensing can provide an important detection mechanism 
there to let us narrow down on those sites. And those super 
emitting sites are usually places where the operator of the 
site does not know that a leak's occurring, and could really 
save money remediating it. And the real cost there isn't so 
much fixing the leak, it's detecting the leak, and our effort 
should really focus there.
     Mr. Lamb. Now--it sounds like, though, your--that 
prescription has a lot to do with technology, and deployment of 
technology, which is good, but are you familiar with what the 
methane standard was before the Trump Administration sought its 
repeal? It had to do a lot with the frequency required of 
inspections, but--I guess what I'm trying to get at is would a 
replacement of the status quo ante help put us back on the road 
to something like less than 1 percent emissions, or does it 
have to be a more technical and rigorous standard----
     Dr. Hausfather. I mean, I think inspections are a critical 
part of getting to the bottom of the problem. At the same time, 
we want to try to minimize the cost of these inspections as 
much as possible, and I think that's where technology plays a 
role. So I think it's a combination of both, and also creating 
systems. And I think Colorado has really led the way here in 
some ways of, you know, creating smart inspection regimes 
where, if there is a problem, you give another inspection 
relatively soon after that, maybe next year. If there's not a 
problem, it might be 2 years or 3 years until you get your next 
inspection, and you have to pay the costs associated with that. 
So, you know, rewarding companies that do a good job, 
penalizing those that don't, and, you know, ensuring that we 
can get to the bottom of where these leaks are occurring on the 
production side.
     Now, there's other challenges around distribution, 
particularly last mile of distribution, where it's much harder 
to mitigate leaks, and there, you know, we're ultimately going 
to solve that moving away from natural gas toward things like 
heat pumps for space heating and water heating.
     Mr. Lamb. Great. I have a minute left. Any other witness 
want to be heard on those couple questions?
     Dr. Oppenheimer. Yeah. Let me just add that there's been a 
tremendous amount of research done in the last 10 years in 
identifying the sources of the leaks, and it--particularly in 
the few years since the Trump Administration started taking 
apart the regulations. We know a lot more now, and so it--I 
think it's going to have to be looked at again carefully, 
because, in answer to your question of exactly whether the past 
regulations were what we needed, and were they strong enough, I 
don't think we'll know that until there's a thorough review. So 
just reinstating those regulations might not be good enough at 
this point.
     Mr. Lamb. Well, thank you for that, and thank you all for 
sticking with us this long time, and for your insights, and 
I'm--Chairwoman, I yield back.
     The Clerk. Ms. Wild is next.
     Ms. Wild. Thank you so much. This has been a really 
interesting hearing, and I appreciate it. I wanted to ask a 
question--I'm going to start off with Dr. Diffenbaugh. I share 
with my colleagues, you know, we've all shared stories of our 
own districts, and how climate change has affected them, and my 
district is Pennsylvania 7, the Lehigh Valley, and based on a 
2018 analysis, NOAA data shows that it is the fastest warming 
area of our State, and our community sits on the edge of 
floodplains. We--I've seen firsthand recurring flooding. We are 
being hit constantly by stronger storms and heavier 
precipitation which, of course, stresses our local 
infrastructure, and damages people's homes, and devastates 
crops. So I think that we really must figure out how we address 
the climate crisis and invest in community resilience to its 
impact.
     And, Dr. Diffenbaugh, I have a two part question. I'll ask 
the whole thing. Based on your research, how have advancements 
in attribution science informed our understanding of climate 
change's role in extreme storms and precipitation, and the 
second part is, based on that understanding, how would limiting 
the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, rather than 
2 degrees, limit flooding and extreme storm events for 
communities on floodplains like mine?
     Dr. Diffenbaugh. Thank you for that question. Yeah, so I 
started my Ph.D. in September of 2000, in the Y2K era, and at 
that point, you know, the overwhelming response of the 
scientific community to questions about attribution of 
individual events to global warming was that, you know, the--
that we can't attribute any individual event, you know, that 
that's not something that we're able to do scientifically. That 
was back 20 years ago. There has been a huge acceleration in 
our scientific--the ability to answer that question 
scientifically, and it's, you know, it's thanks in large part 
to investments in research by the Federal Government, in--at 
National Labs, and at universities, and outside of those 
institutions. And what we've learned is that, in fact, the 
global warming that's already happened is increasing the risk 
of individual events in many locations, and for many different 
kinds of events.
     And here in the U.S., extreme heat, extreme precipitation, 
extreme wildfire, weather conditions, extreme storm surge, 
flooding during landfalling storms, the severity of droughts 
when low precipitation coincides with high temperature, which 
is much more likely now as a result of warming, these are some 
of the many areas where we have now clear confidence that the 
risks are already elevated, in particular for unprecedented 
events. And this is really important, right? We're--we now have 
clear understanding that we're already in a climate where we 
have substantially elevated probabilities of events that are 
more severe than any we've experienced, or any that we've 
observed historically are now more likely.
     And so, for the kinds of impacts on communities that you 
were describing, the lower the level of warming globally, you 
know, the less intensification of these conditions will occur. 
And I want to note again that the impacts are non-linear, 
right? We're--in so many of these examples that you provided, 
for instance, in agriculture, in flooding losses, we see 
historically that the impacts are non-linear with--in some 
cases exponential impacts at higher levels of warming. So 
there's absolutely benefit to curbing the level of warming, 
and, in addition, that adaptation gap, again, that--is so 
critical, and in particular for infrastructure, right? 
Infrastructure is really where we see that--the nexus of 
mitigation and adaptation, where we see the nexus of investment 
and community, you know, benefits to communities, and so 
updating our design, our operations of--our management of 
infrastructure has great opportunities for both mitigation and 
adaptation in communities and for individual localities.
     Ms. Wild. Well, thank you. I don't think I have enough 
time left to ask my next question. Madam Chair, I yield back. 
But thank you very much, Mr. Diffenbaugh.
     The Clerk. Madam Chair, I believe every Member present has 
asked questions.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much, and thanks for 
all the participation. Before we bring this meeting to a close, 
I just need to ask if there's anyone with a hot question that 
they'd like to ask at this time?
     Hearing none, I'd like to thank our outstanding witnesses 
for participating today, and testifying, and to notify you that 
the record will remain open for 2 weeks for additional 
statements from the Members, and for any additional questions 
the Committee may ask of the witnesses. Our witnesses now are 
excused, and our hearing is adjourned.
     [Whereupon, at 2 o'clock p.m., the Committee was 
adjourned.]

                               Appendix I

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                   Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

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                              Appendix II

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                   Additional Material for the Record
                   
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