[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 107 (Friday, July 27, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H4772-H4777]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PRESIDENT BUSH STANDS BY HIS CONVICTIONS ON MATTERS OF DEFENSE AND THE
ENVIRONMENT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is
recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I draw Members' attention to President
Bush and the great job that he has been doing withstanding public
pressure to go in the opposite direction of which he believes to be
true.
{time} 1545
We have a sense about what George W. is about; and I believe that
George W. is proving himself to be a great president and that, as time
goes on, we will find that this gentleman, who has been castigated by
his opponents in some very vile characterizations, is actually a very
thoughtful person, and a person of high character, and a person of
strength.
President George W. Bush has been willing to say things straight, in
a straightforward manner that has enraged his political opposition, but
yet by standing strong and tall, like President Reagan before him, who
was also attacked in very personal and vile terms, our new president is
finding that if he stands strong, that people will go in his direction.
Because the things that he believes in, many of the things that he
believes in, are clearly true but not in line with the liberal ideology
that has dominated the American government and dominated the news media
and communications in this country and in Western Europe.
Our new president, for example, has stood firm on the idea and the
concept of missile defense. Prior to going to Europe recently, the
President was under severe attack by the leading Democrat in the
Senate, Tom Daschle, and he was being told that by insisting that the
United States move forward on missile defense that it would in some way
bring about a renewal of the arms race. How many of us heard that?
Now, I believe the Democrats certainly have a right to attack a
Republican president or vice versa. That is what democracy is all
about. We all have the right to criticize. But let us point out that
while some people seem to be upset that the President was being
criticized overseas, I am just upset with the fact that the Democrats
were so adamant in their opposition to missile defense and that, now
what, they were wrong, not that they were criticizing the President.
Missile defense is something that now seems to be becoming more
acceptable to our European allies. And in fact, instead of being this
roadblock to any type of good relationship with the government in
Russia, now we see President Putin in Russia edging towards President
George W. Bush's position.
Let us note that President Ronald Reagan first stepped forward with
the idea that if we are going to be spending billions of dollars in
order to protect the people of the United States it is better for us to
build a system that indeed protects our people rather than a system
that is based on annihilating millions of other people living in less
free societies when they become engaged in a conflict with the United
States.
During the Cold War, it made every sense to have a situation where
the Russians knew that if they attacked the United States with their
missile force that hundreds of millions of Russians would lose their
lives, like hundreds of millions of our citizens, and that was a
deterrent. But during the post-Cold War world, such a deterrent makes
no sense at all.
Right now, for example, if there is an adversary, if there are people
who in some way might be willing to take the risk of attacking the
United States, they are not people who care about losing the lives of
their own citizens. If the Communist Chinese were to launch one of
their missiles at the United States, they could care less if there
would be retaliation. The regime in Communist China murders their own
people, so why would they care if we killed 1 million, 10 million or
even 50 million of their people in retaliation for a missile attack
that killed a million Americans?
George W. Bush's position, as well as Ronald Reagan's position, makes
all the sense in the world. Let us not put ourselves in a position of
having to murder millions of people in another country because their
dictators, their bosses, the gangsters that control their country have
attacked the United States of America. Let us, instead, protect
ourselves and use our technological genius to build a system that will
protect us against some attack with one or two missiles from a rogue
country, from North Korea or from China or Iran or Libya.
Now, the Democrats have done everything they can to prevent this type
of technology from being developed. During the 8 years Bill Clinton was
President of the United States, he spent those 8 years spending the
money on missile defense and channeling it in a direction so that that
technology would not succeed. He kept us engaged in a treaty with the
former Soviet Union, even though the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.
He kept us in compliance with this treaty that we signed with old
Communist dictators, even though communism and the Soviet Union no
longer existed in Russia. We could have gotten out of that treaty.
And this is one thing George W. Bush is pushing for, out of the
treaty that prevents us from thoroughly developing our anti-missile
system. We could have gotten out of that, and by now have developed a
system so that if China would launch a missile towards the United
States that we could knock it down and protect Los Angeles or southern
California or northern California, or even parts of the United States
as far as Chicago. We would be able to protect the United States from a
missile attack. But Bill Clinton decided, as President of the United
States, that he did not support missile defense. So the money that we
spent on missile defense was frittered away, frittered away and wasted.
Now we are vulnerable and we have George W. Bush standing firm against
all those who try to pressure him and say back down.
Well, I think it was one of Ronald Reagan's great moments, when he
went to meet with Gorbachev and Gorbachev told him he had to agree not
to develop a weapon system that could protect rather than kill people,
and if he did that, if he stopped or gave up this idea of missile
defense, he could sign a big treaty and be the biggest hero in the
world, that Ronald Reagan walked away from it. George W. Bush is
proving himself to be that same type of strong leader who will bring
about a more peaceful world.
Ronald Reagan had no idea when he turned that down that the people of
the world would see him as a strong and a tough leader who they could
trust to make a decision and that that in and of itself would have a
dramatic impact for the promotion of freedom and peace on the planet.
By the time Ronald Reagan was done being president, even though he
had been nitpicked to death by people on the other side of the aisle,
the Cold War was over, the Berlin Wall was on its way down, and
democracy and peace were given a better chance than ever in my lifetime
and in the whole 20th Century, all because Ronald Reagan stood tough.
George W. Bush is making those same tough stands against the same
type of nitpicking that went on during the Reagan administration. Every
time we took a stand against communism, there were those on the other
side of the aisle trying to find a mistake that we made in order to
thwart our efforts, whether it was in Latin America or whether it was
with the Mujahedin against the Russian expansion in Afghanistan or
elsewhere, or in the development of missile defense.
Our President today, George W. Bush, has that same strength of
character. And if he maintains his courage, as he has been doing and as
we have seen, and for the first time the world is starting to lean in
his direction already in terms of the things he has said on missile
defense, George W. Bush, like Ronald Reagan before him, will be able to
make an incredible contribution to the contribution of freedom and
peace on this planet.
Now, one of the other areas that George W. has been standing firm on
is his refusal to submit the American people to the dictates of a Kyoto
global warming treaty. For this tough stand that he has taken, George
W. has been under vicious attack. But those of us in the United States
who are proud that our country has a high standard of living and that
in our country ordinary
[[Page H4773]]
people can live decent lives, we applaud George W. Bush and his wisdom
and his courage when it comes to the Kyoto Treaty.
Many people have heard congressman after congressman come to the
floor of this body attacking George W. for not being part of the team
when it comes to global warming and supporting the Kyoto Treaty. Time
and time again we hear, ``America is doing nothing on this global
warming.'' Well, maybe the American people should understand when these
Members of Congress get up and start talking that way and condemning
George W. Bush for doing nothing what it is they want him to do. What
is it that the Kyoto Treaty is demanding of the American people that
George W. Bush is saying, no, I do not think that we are going to do
that? What we are talking about are severe restrictions on our standard
of living.
They claim the United States should be ashamed that we put more
CO2 into the air than any other country. That is the way
they judge it. The United States puts more CO2 into the air.
Well, what does that mean? Well, that may mean that we have the highest
standard of living of any other country of the world. And, yes, there
is some CO2 we put into the air. But in terms of the
standard of living, if we put per $1,000 of GNP, we actually put less
CO2 in the air than anybody else.
So if we just judge it by how much we are putting in, of course that
is a mandate for what? For lowering the GNP, for lowering the standard
of living of regular people. That is what they are trying to force
George W. to agree to, lowering the standard of living of ordinary
Americans. Is that what we want?
By the way, these same fanatics who are trying to convince us about
this ``global warming problem,'' do not take into consideration that
America, through its agriculture, has had a vast tree planting over the
last 100 years. And by the way, we have many more trees in America
today than we had 100 years ago. Because at the turn of the century
there was a replanting of trees across America. Up in the Northeast, up
in Maine, and up in New Hampshire and Vermont and those areas that were
treeless by the turn of the century, or the 1800s, those were
replanted. Go up there today and there are vast forests there. Those
trees take the CO2 out of the air. We actually take more
CO2 out of the air than any other country in the world.
The fanatics that want us to get involved in the Kyoto Treaty do not
take that into consideration. Instead, they would have us, for example,
pay $5 a gallon for every gallon of gas that we buy. Now, what is that
going to do for the price of goods that are sent by truck? What will
that do for the standard of living of average Americans, that $5 a
gallon for gasoline? It will dramatically reduce the well-being of our
people.
When we see people up here attacking George W. Bush on the Kyoto
Treaty, that we are doing nothing, they will say what they want us to
do is be engaged in a treaty that will lower the standard of living of
ordinary people in this country, that will suck money right out of our
pockets that could go to better food, better health care, better
education. Instead, they are going to put it into higher prices for
gasoline and other types of fuel.
It is vital that the public know what is going on in this attack
against George Bush. Global warming, first and foremost, is not a
scientific imperative. Let us talk about global warming for a minute.
It is a politically driven theory. The people who are pushing global
warming are not, by and large, being pushed by some scientific
motivation but instead have a political agenda. Those people who are in
the scientific community that have signed on have done so realizing
that they are kowtowing to political powers and not to scientific
knowledge.
{time} 1600
Those exposing global warming, those scientists who are brave enough
to step forward, do so knowing that they might be retaliated against.
Our young people, for example, are being lied to about the environment
in general, and they are being lied to especially about global warming.
I see this every time a group of young people from my congressional
district comes to Washington, D.C.
As a member of Congress, I represent Huntington Beach, California,
Southern California, I went to high school in Southern California and
now that I am a Member of Congress, every student group that comes from
my congressional district here to Washington, D.C., I take the time and
effort to talk to them and to get to know what they are thinking and
try to find out as much about them as they are finding out about me and
about government.
I ask them the same question, every single time, every group. How
many of them believe, these are students from Southern California,
believe that the air quality today in Southern California is cleaner or
is worse than it was when I went to high school 35 years ago in
Southern California? Ninety-five percent always say the same thing,
almost every group says the same thing. They believe, 95 percent of
them believe that the air quality in Southern California today is so
much worse than when I went to high school 35 years ago. I was so
lucky, they say, to have lived in a time and went to school in a time
when the air was so clean. Of course, they are surprised when I tell
them that they are absolutely wrong, that the real answer is 180
degrees in the other direction.
In fact, the air in Southern California has never been cleaner in my
lifetime and they enjoy some of the best clean air ever in Southern
California. These young people have been systematically lied to and
been told that the environment is killing them. They are being told
that the water is so much worse than it ever was.
The fact is that water quality in the United States has been vastly
improved in these last 4 decades. Forty years ago if you tried to put
your finger in the Potomac River they would come out and say, What the
heck are you doing put your finger in the Potomac for? Do you want to
get the acid burn on your finger?
Today you go out and people are swimming in the Potomac. People are
fishing in the Potomac. What happened? I will have to admit that many
regulations, many are regulations that the Democratic party pushed. Let
me make no beans about it, the Democrats were in the front of the
reform effort. That over the years tough measures were put in and there
has been an enormous amount of environmental clean up that has taken
place.
Unfortunately, the information about that cleanup has not made it to
the American people and especially to our young people. They are being
told the water is getting a lot worse. They are being told that the
land is much more foul. Over the years of our country's history there
were toxic waste dumps all over the place. There was no hope of
cleaning them up. The land was spoiled. This was a horrible situation.
Guess what? With the technology we have developed today, we can clean
up those sites. In fact, in my own district I worked with a company
called Simple Green Company that has developed a way that in 60 to 90
days can take a contaminated soil and turn it into clean soil so it can
be used for homes or schools or whatever.
We tried a demonstration project in my district. We took 10 acres of
soil that used to be an old oil sludge dump, and sure enough, in about
90 days Simple Green, this company in my district, was able to turn
that into a usable piece of property again. Mark my words, when people
find out about this process, we will have toxic waste sites being
cleaned up all over the country because it will be profitable to do so
and we have the technology to do so.
But our young people are not being told that. Our young people are
being told it is technology, the machines and the industrialization
that has caused the problems. The fact is people are living longer
today than they ever have. Although, yes, there are the diseases we
face, other generations faced many of these same diseases long before
there was this industrialization. Not to say that there is not some
collateral impact, and we should be aware of that and study that.
This President has not only full funded but doubled the budget of the
National Institute of Health so that we can scientifically look at the
health patterns to see if we can help to cure some of those problems.
But in terms of the overall environment, it is so much better. For
example, in 1966 a Mustang that my father
[[Page H4774]]
owned, if you take the pollution coming out of that tail pipe and you
examine the new Mustangs today and examine how much pollution is coming
out of that tail pipe, 96 percent of the air pollution has been
captured. The engines are that much more effective. They have cured 96
percent of that problem.
In Southern California, what that has meant is we have doubled or
maybe even tripled our population. Yet the air quality is much much
better.
Now, some people say, so what if they are lying to these kids? So
what if the public is not getting the story. I can tell you so what.
What is happening then is there are a group of people using these lies
and the fear that our young people live in and that our other people
live in to try to push their own political agenda which is a
centralizing of power in Washington, D.C., and that is frightening
enough, but their agenda as well is to empower global government
through the United Nations and other institutions, to have the power to
control our lives, our economic lives, in the name of stopping this
horrible pollution.
This threat of global warming that is supposedly going to destroy
people's lives and the whole planet, I am sorry but I am not about to
give up my freedom to a bunch of unelected officials from other
countries. By the way, the people that would be running these
international bodies that will oversee the environment and, thus,
oversee our economic lives and, thus, oversee every decision which we
make as people, these bodies will not be manned and not be controlled
by individuals who are elected. No.
They will be controlled by people who are not elected even in their
home countries, much less by the people of the United States. Those
people who run roughshod over their own countries in the Third World
will end up with seats on the United Nations or on these global
commissions or authority boards. They will be the ones making the
decisions that we must run our lives by. I am afraid not. If that is
what you are going to do to clean up the environment, count me out.
Because within 10 years all of these bodies will be run by corrupt
Third World people who are probably going to be bribed by Communist
China, et cetera.
By the way, let us note that in the Kyoto Treaty which the President
has been, and we can be grateful for this, has been standing
steadfastly against, the Kyoto Treaty that these Democrats are trying
to push on us and force down our throats, exempts from its regulations
and its Draconian controls, exempts Communist China. Surprise,
surprise, surprise.
What do you think that is going to do if we have all kinds of
controls on America and in the United States? To open up a factory in
the United States, it is going to cost so much more and that if you are
going to create any jobs in the United States there is going to be all
sorts of hoops people have to jump through and it will cost more money
and more controls. But none of those controls and none of those extra
costs exist in China. Where do you think people are going to set up
their factories? They are going to set their factories up in China.
Let me note, we have some controls in the United States,
environmental controls that are exemplary compared to China, compared
to these Third World countries that are all exempt. So we have our
businesses going to these places to set up factories where they can
pollute even more. So the irony of it is the global warming treaty will
create more pollution, not less, because it exempts the countries that
permit the dirtiest of industrialization. No. You can count me out on
that one.
Let us talk a little bit about global warming. What is it? People
should understand what is being talked about. Global warming,
supposedly, is carbon fuel, coal, oil and gas, et cetera, that is being
put into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, that is
CO2, and supposedly CO2 will raise the
temperature of the planet and that will cause drastic changes in our
weather. The ice flows. Supposedly the ice caps are already melting,
and animal and plant life are being really threatened by global
warming. Every time there is a hot day you can hear some global warming
guy get up and say, oh, well, this is all caused by global warming.
Well, that is just so much global bologna. First and foremost, all of
the recent scientific reports agree that there may or may not have been
a minor change in this planet's temperature, its average temperature
over the last 100 years. That there is, get this, no conclusive
evidence that man has caused it. Now, that is what the facts are.
But if you listen to Dan Rather or you listen to our friends trying
to push their political agenda here in the House, or if you pay
attention to the news media besides Dan Rather and the rest of them,
you are being told that you have all of these reports and the reports
are confirming that the world is getting hotter and man is the cause.
In fact, it was not too long ago I saw a report on TV about one of
these commissions and their study and it said the study has found out
that it is getting warmer. This is Dan Rather in the beginning. That
the Earth is getting warmer and man is at fault. By the end of that
report where his own reporter in Washington said, of course, they have
not indicated and they cannot prove whether or not man has had anything
to do with this. A direct contradiction to this headline that Dan
Rather lead into his own report. That is not something that is an odd
situation.
If you take a look at all of the media reports on global warming, you
will find when you look into the details, by the time you get to the
end of the story you will find quotes from the report that they are
supposedly pushing or talking about, and there are weasel words
throughout the whole report because the scientists that are conducting
these studies are not sure and, thus, they want to put into the report
words that they can point to and say, well, we did not really say this.
We said maybe. We said could lead to the conclusion that or possibly.
Look at these reports. Do not believe when you read something in the
newspaper or hear it on television that some scientific body has
conclusively decided this, do not believe it because it is not true.
Not only is that not true, it is about as true as the fact that those
poor kids in my district are being told that air pollution in Southern
California is worse than it has ever been and they are scared to death
that it is hurting their life.
Climate science, by the way, had become really a new entry into this
whole idea of scientific study. Prior to 1980, there were only a
handful of climatologists. Now they are everywhere. Why is that? How
come there are so many climatologists all of the sudden?
The fact is that it is easy now to get a government grant if you are
going to prove that global warming exists and it is very difficult to
get a grant if you are trying to have a scientific study that will or
will not prove that global warming exists.
Eight years ago when President Clinton took over the Executive
Branch, he saw to it that there would be no scientific research grants
going from the government to scientists who did not support the idea
that we were under attack from some global warming trends. Unless they
furthered the global warming theory, they were not going to get a
government grant.
We were tipped off to this when the lead scientist, the Director of
Energy and Research for the Department of Energy, a guy named Dr. Will
Happer, immediately when Clinton was elected and took office, they
could not move fast enough to fire this guy from his position because
he did not agree with the global warming theory.
Dr. Happer, by the way, now is a professor of physics at Princeton
University. But his removal back in Clinton's first few weeks in office
sent a message to the scientific community.
{time} 1615
There does not appear to have been much information about global
warming prior to the mid 1980s. But what we have been able to find out
is that that information that was available before the 1980s indicated
that there was going to be a new ice age. Back in the 1980s, some of
the same scientists who are now warning us against global warming were
warning us that there was going to be a new ice age and that global
cooling was really the problem. This Member of Congress sat through
hearings in which the advocates of global warming would appear and
after a few questions they would admit, well, it could be global
cooling, yes, it could be global cooling.
[[Page H4775]]
What is that all about? Why are we spending billions of dollars? Why
are we giving up our freedom? Why are we permitting the standard of
living of our people to go down based on that type of scientific logic?
I think not. The fact is that in a span of 20 years, climate models
have gone from predicting that we would all freeze to death in the new
ice age to now we are all going to have to worry about being baked to
death in a global furnace.
Some of the leading proponents, as I say, of global warming went from
freezing to burning to death. Historically speaking, we know, by the
way, let us just take a look at it, everybody should understand it a
little bit, that the global climate changes. Global climate changes.
There have been ice ages in the earth's past and there have been
tropical ages. Both of those came about off and on throughout the
hundreds of millions of years of the earth's life without any
interference of man.
Now, the global warming theory, by the way, is that it is getting
hotter because mankind is putting CO2 into the air. Mankind
is putting CO2 into the air. Well, what about all those
climate changes before humankind, before there were any railroads or
industry or cars? Why did that happen? There is no real explanation for
that. Well, there is an explanation. What the proponents of global
warming will not tell you is that all of this CO2 that they
claim is causing global warming, all of that CO2 that
mankind puts into the atmosphere is only 5 percent of the
CO2 that goes into the atmosphere every year from all
sources. Mother nature is putting 19 times more CO2 into the
air than human beings. But human beings are being blamed totally
because we want to have a little higher standard of living.
By the way, when there is a volcano that erupts violently, all of a
sudden there is dramatically more CO2 in the atmosphere. One
volcano like Krakatau or something can put as much CO2 into
the air as all of our industrialization. So it makes sense for us not
to have good jobs? It makes sense for us not to have cars? Give me a
break. The fact is that of all the reforms that global warming people
want us to go through and restrictions and the Kyoto treaty, it would
knock a little CO2 out of the air but that is just mankind's
contribution to that CO2. If there is a volcano that erupts,
that is taken care of right away and that does not even count anymore.
I had a Member of this Congress grab me by the arm the last time I
spoke about this and said, ``You know, Dana, you're wrong. The
volcanoes do not put CO2 into the air.'' And he cited all of
these scientists.
I went back to my office, I got on my Internet, looked up the
scientific basis and by the time I had to come down to the floor to
vote the next time, I had the report right in front of me and, sure
enough, volcanoes do put CO2 into the air. Three percent
every year of all CO2 going into the air comes from
volcanoes. Only 5 percent is coming from human activity. So if we have
a large number of volcanoes or one big eruption, that means they just
totally cancel out anything that we would do as humankind.
By the way, one other factor is, all of these people are talking
about, ``Oh, this horrible global warming, you can see its impact
starting now.'' What is the global warming? What are these people
telling us about our weather? Our weather supposedly is 1 degree warmer
than it was 100 years ago. Let us look at this. One degree over 100
years and they are saying that that is a trend that is really
frightening. These people cannot tell us what the weather is going to
be like next week but they are afraid because they think that the
weather is 1 degree warmer now than it was 100 years ago.
I heard about this meeting President Clinton had of climatologists
and weather reporters from around the United States into the Oval
Office, into the White House, about 5 or 6 years ago. He was going to
have all these weathermen there, they were going to talk about global
warming and this 100 years and the trend that is set up and, oh, my
gosh, 100 years from now how bad it is going to be, when they all got
to the White House and they had their meeting and during that meeting
at the White House, a storm came across Washington, D.C. and there was
a deluge of rain, it was raining horribly, but of those hundreds of
weathermen and climatologists who knew all about weather so much, they
could predict weather for 100 years, only three of them had brought
their umbrellas to that meeting. What does that tell you? You cannot
predict what the weather is going to be like 2 weeks from now. And if
it is just 1 degree over 100 years, they are telling us that we are
going to be so frightened out of our wits by that that we are going to
submit to a global treaty that would give powers over our economy and
bring down our standard of living, exempt Communist China and let them
get all the development? No way. One degree over 100 years is this
thing that they are fearful about. And at the same time, let us go back
to that basic fact that we were just discussing. There have been
changes in the earth's temperature many, many times. Even if that 1
degree over 100 years was right and, by the way, we do not know how
they took the temperatures 100 years ago. We do not know who was taking
the temperature down in some Pacific Ocean place. Was it a sailor who
was reading the thermometer right or what about the guys out west or
out in the jungles or something? Who was taking these temperatures 100
years ago? How do we know that it was 1 degree cooler 100 years ago? I
would doubt that it is 1 degree warmer, it might be, but if it was and
even if we were in a period of our earth's history where there was a
slight bit of warming, that is the way it is sometimes. That is no
excuse to change the standard of living of the American people.
Earlier in this millennium, we know, for example, or in the last
millennium, I should say, Leif Ericson established a colony in
Greenland. Greenland at that time was free from snow about half the
year. Half the year it did not have any snow in Greenland. Yet less
than 100 years after that, the colony had to be abandoned because the
climate was growing colder. They had a mini ice age. Certainly we know
that throughout our history, we have seen situations where the glaciers
came down and then the glaciers receded. Is it possible now that maybe
we are in a period where the glaciers are receding a little bit and
then they will come down a couple of hundred years from now or a
thousand years or a hundred thousand years from now? That is possible.
Maybe we are in a period of the earth's history in which, as I say,
those glaciers that came down and dug out the Great Lakes and now they
have receded, maybe they still are receding. I know one thing, there
was a report from the Canadian government that debunked the idea that
the ice cap is melting. How many people have heard that? Again, it is
like the kids being told in my area that the air pollution is so bad,
now they are being told, the ice caps are melting, catastrophe is about
ready to happen. The Canadian government just put out a report about 3
months ago, I happened to see it, no, the ice caps are not melting. The
ice caps are not melting. They are not receding. There is just as much
ice cap as there ever was. This is all baloney. It is called global
baloney. Give up your freedom because we are going to try to scare you.
I do not think so. I do not think the American people will buy that.
I think that George W. Bush deserves a medal for standing strong
against these fearmongers who are trying to scare us into again
centralizing power in Washington, D.C. and trying to scare us into
centralizing power globally.
Let me just say a few things about George W. Bush overseas, the Kyoto
Protocol and the media that has been really down on him. Ronald Reagan
went through the same thing. I saw this personally. I worked in the
White House with Ronald Reagan. He went through the same personal
attacks. You had scientists, you had these liberal science groups that
would get up and make the same claims about Ronald Reagan's theories,
especially about his defense theories, and they all were proven wrong
by the end of his administration. But let me just say, when you hear
these reports by the scientific community, especially, for example,
there was a report by the National Academy of Sciences, this is the one
that Dan Rather was reporting on that I mentioned, and that National
Academy of Sciences report which we were told proved conclusively that
global warming was happening and that mankind was at fault, when you
look at
[[Page H4776]]
that, when you look at that report, it is so filled with caveats and
weasel words that the scientific community was not putting itself on
the line to support global warming, it was just drawing attention to
the debate about the issue.
I have some documents that I will make part of the record considering
this. Again, we have to take a look at what is being said and why it is
being said and look very closely at this issue when people are talking
about it. I am not suggesting that we should take anyone's word, either
people who are anti-global warming or pro-global warming and take them
just on face value. We need to make sure that we are very skeptical
when people are trying to tell us that something dramatic is happening,
whether it is to our weather or to anything else and be very careful
before we make such awesome decisions that would change the standard of
living and bring down the standard of living of our people.
One thing that people might want to note is that some people are
telling us that the global warming phenomenon if there is a 1-degree
increase in the earth's temperature, that there could be other
explanations for it other than that mankind is using cars to get around
in or that CO2 is being put into the air by machines. For
example, the earth's orbit around the sun is elliptical. What does that
mean? That means at some time, the earth is closer to the sun and
sometimes it is further away from the sun. That happens in 100-year
cycles. We are finding now that maybe we might be a little bit closer
in that curve and maybe that would account for the fact that things
were 1 degree warmer over 100 years. Ancient Mayans and Aztecs observed
that cycle, that solar cycle of 208 years. They have suggested that
there is a 104-year decline in temperatures and a 104-year increase in
temperatures just by the fact of how far you are from the sun.
By the way, also something that we might explain this is the fact
that there are sun spots and there are solar storms. The sun itself may
be the cause of global warming which of course has nothing to do with
industrialization or automobiles or us putting CO2 in the
air. We also have to remember that water, water comprises so much of
the volume of this planet. I think it is three-quarters of the planet
is water. Yet there are no adequate global ocean temperature readings.
All the readings have been done on land, have not been done of the
water or of the air. So we have not tested the water temperature nor
have we tested the atmospheric temperature. In fact, a renowned
scientist just prior to me coming up here was with me coming here and
said, there is absolutely no evidence that there has been any
temperature change, not even that 1 degree over 100 years, no
temperature change above the atmosphere.
If there has been no change there and no change in the water, how are
these people able to come forward and be so fanatical about what they
are trying to railroad us into?
{time} 1640
So, none of the readings include any deep water, and if there is any
water temperatures, it is only very shallow water readings. So we have
zero understanding of the deep waters that cover this planet, and no
change, we see no change in the upper atmosphere. So how can we then
try to think that with that type of data, not knowing how the other
data has been collected, how can we possibly make decisions like the
ones for the Kyoto Treaty that will so dramatically affect the standing
of living of our people?
Let me go on to say one other thing about global warming. About 7 or
8 years ago, during the height of the Clinton Administration, this
Member of Congress was visited by a high ranking scientist in the U.S.
Government, and he made me swear never to tell who he was, but he said,
Dana, these readings that they are using to back up their theory that
we are going through global warming, they do not take into
consideration cloud cover.
Get that. Not only do they not take water temperature or the sun or
any of these other things, but cloud cover. They have not taken into
consideration even if the clouds were covering that day, much less do
they take into consideration that at one time, maybe 100 years ago,
there was a lot of open space where they were taking the readings, and
now that space is covered with concrete because it might be a city.
Now, what does that have to do with that one degree of increase in
temperature there has been? These things make a lot of difference, and
yet those people who are trying to tell us that global warming is a
problem have not taken any of these things into account.
So, anyway, what can we determine by all of this? That global
temperature records are flawed. We know they did not take into account
what was going on with the sun, whether or not the areas that were
being recorded were urban or rural over these last 100 years. They have
not even taken into consideration the humidity factor in terms of the
Earth's temperature.
Finally, let us look at the Earth's orbit itself. They do not take
into account the Earth's orbit. They do not take into account the sun's
situation. They do not take into account the clouds. They do not take
into account their own long-term readings. They do not take into
account the humidity. What they do take into account is a theoretical
calculation that man-made CO2s have something to do with
global warming, and they have lots of hypothetical data about how human
beings are polluting the world.
Okay, human beings are polluting the world, and that is certainly a
fact, and we have to work to make sure that we correct pollution by
better technology all the time. It does not mean that we have a global
warming problem. It does not mean that we have to make drastic changes
in our life or increase taxes or centralize power.
Most of the sources of CO2, and that is the pollutant they
are looking at, these greenhouse gasses, methane and CO2,
most of them are coming into the atmosphere naturally and are not man-
made. Now, certainly we contribute a little bit. As I mentioned
earlier, you have volcanic activity that creates CO2. Three
percent of all of the CO2 in the world every year comes from
volcanic activity. If a huge volcano goes off, it goes much more.
But how about these other sources? That is about the same level as
mankind. The volcanoes put out about the same thing mankind puts out
every year, unless there is a big volcano that goes off.
What about some of the other sources? The other sources of methane
and CO2 are what? How about insects and termites, and how
about rotting wood? Do you know that insects and termites and rotting
wood contribute much more to the CO2 and methane that goes
into the environment than human beings? All of our industrialization
does not put into the environment as much CO2 and methane
that termites and insects and rotting wood do.
So if our main concern about pollutants is to bring those
CO2 levels of methane down, because we are so afraid of
global warming, what would we do? What would be consistent with that?
Well, they say you want to limit human beings' right to have their own
automobiles, make it so expensive people cannot own a car, $5, $6 a
gallon gasoline. We want to make sure there are controls on all the
factories so we do not have good jobs, ordinary people lose their jobs.
That is what they say. That would only get to maybe 1 or 2 percent of
the CO2 that is being put into the atmosphere.
If you are really consistent with what these fanatics, the global
warming fanatics, would have you do, what we would do is bulldoze, are
you listening to this, bulldoze all of the rain forests and all of the
old growth trees, because, according to the global warming theory, the
CO2 and the methane that comes in, that is what is causing
global warming, and rotting wood in rain forests and the insects eating
that rotting wood and the old growth trees we have here in the United
States and elsewhere are the major source of that pollutant. So what we
need to do is bulldoze all those rain forests.
Now, do you think you are ever going to hear some global warming
fanatic come down here and admit that? No way. But if you ask them, you
keep pointing questions, they always try to dodge this question. In a
hearing you keep on them, and you will get them to admit that yes, this
is a much greater source for global warming gasses, you know, they call
them greenhouse gasses, than industrialization.
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Now. Well, I do not happen to think we should, and, by the way, I am
not advocating that we bulldoze all the forests and all of the rain
forests. By the way, what you would do then is plant young trees. It is
young trees and plants that are young that soak in the carbon dioxide
and give out oxygen. That is what you want for a better balance of
CO2 and oxygen in the planet. But I would not advocate that.
But I do not believe in the global warming theory.
Interestingly enough, many global warming people also oppose nuclear
power. Making sure we put the power of the atom to work in producing
electricity would have a tremendous impact in lowering CO2.
Are you going to find them out here advocating that? No way. Instead,
what they are advocating are stricter controls on the amount of money
that is invested in businesses in this country, the amount of money
that is invested in manufacturing facilities, and restricting the kind
of activity that we can do industrially in this country. And who does
that hurt? It hurts ordinary working people who want to have working
class jobs. That is who it hurts. They are willing to do that. Their
own theory would suggest they said bulldoze down all of the forests and
all of the swamps and rain forests we have.
Do not hold your breath looking for those people to be consistent.
Instead, what you can do is watch them come to the well day after day
condemning George W. Bush for not going along with the global warming
treaty, and being very nebulous about exactly what that means. He
supposedly is doing nothing.
George Bush was 100 percent right in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and
demanding further scientific research before any drastic government
policies are put into place. The most frightening element of the global
warming debate is that intelligent people backed up by so-called
experts are willing to give up the American way of life, and, yes, put
into place regulations and taxes that would lower our standing of
living.
Global warming advocates would have us give authority to unelected
international officials. And all of this to me, I do not care if they
call them international environmental bureaucrats or just international
officials, if they have not been elected, I do not want them making
decisions over my life. If these global warming fanatics have their
way, Americans are going to be targeted as the bad guys.
If you ever listen to these arguments, whether it is Daschle or other
global warming advocates, it is always the American people that put
more pollutants into the air. No, that argument does not hold. In fact,
what every person in the world puts into the air is only a minor, a
minor, contribution to what global warming is all about. But, yet, the
American people are trying to be stampeded by this campaign.
Now, I have seen campaigns like this before. I have seen people
trying to scare people on various issues since I was a little kid. How
many people remember when cranberries were supposedly going to cause
cancer, and then all of a sudden the cranberry business for 2 years
went to hell. People went bankrupt because our people were frightened
into believing cranberries caused cancer. That is when I was a little
kid.
Guess what? People are drinking cranberry juice. There are so many
cranberries being consumed in our county, I cannot believe it.
Then there were cyclamates in soda. That was going to cause cancer.
It cost our soda pop industry billions of dollars that evaporated. They
put the cyclamates in, it was something to keep people from gaining
weight.
Canada never took the cyclamates out. Then 10 years ago, after
billions of dollars of cost they mandated in our business, that means
there are fewer people employed, that comes right out of the general
welfare of our people, that we do not have that wealth to make our
lives better, guess what? The FDA said, guess what? We are sorry, the
cyclamates do not cause cancer after all.
We also remember a very well-known movie star that convinced us only
a few years ago that alar in apples caused cancer. Well, I am sorry,
after about a year that actress was found to be wrong. But what
happened in that year? Apple farmers suffered tremendous losses. Many
families lost their whole life savings. They went out of business.
When we buy on total theories that are haywire and unscientific
theories, there is an effect to this. There is a cause and effect. We
buy on to things that are not scientifically proven, they are trying to
scare us. Just like they are trying to scare the kids in my
Congressional District about dirty air. That is the cleanest air we
have had in decades, but if we buy on to those theories and get
frightened, it will impact in a negative way.
Now, with the cranberries and the cyclamates and the alar, it just
hurt various farmers. But if we buy on to the global warming theory, it
is going to hurt all of us. It is going to bring down our standard of
living.
Thank God we have a President of the United States that is willing to
say this does not hold water; we need a lot more scientific research
before we make such decisions; I am not going to go along with this
global warming Kyoto Protocol. I commend him for that, and I would hope
that the American people understand his wisdom and his courage and that
he is standing there to protect us and to protect our standard of
living.
With that, I would ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing that
George W. Bush is doing this kind of job and that he is a good man, and
wish him well.
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