[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 21 (Wednesday, February 25, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H603-H604]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Speaker, in recent years there has been a 
significant conflict in our discussion and certainly differences of 
opinions from reliable sources about whether or not human activity is 
affecting the climate. So what I would like to do this evening in just 
the short time that I have is not to say that the Earth is warming, not 
to say that the Earth is cooling, not engage in the dispute as to 
whether human activity is causing the climate to change or the climate 
to warm. But what I would like to do is to present some observations 
from various independent scientists including the National Academy of 
Sciences that did a study to evaluate the International Panel on 
Climate Change, a study that was conducted by about a thousand 
scientists from around the world, to draw from the President's own 
scientists to make a determination as to what really are or what can be 
seen as observations of the indicators of whether we are engaged in a 
climate change.
  If we observe the world the way it is now and the way it was 100 
years ago and through an analysis the way it was 400,000 years ago, can 
we make some determination about the type of climate we have today, 
what we had 100 years ago, what we had 10,000 years

[[Page H604]]

ago, and what might happen in the future? To do this, there are certain 
understandings in the scientific community that the ocean, the land, 
and the atmosphere working together provide us with a type of balance 
in the heat distribution on the planet. No one would dispute that the 
Earth, the ocean, and the atmosphere work together through various 
means to make the type of climate that the planet has right now. The 
atmosphere and the elements that make up the atmosphere and all the 
different kinds of gasses are in a constant cycle with the Earth and 
the oceans. So that is not in dispute.
  If we observe the planet today and 150 years ago, we will see that 
there is a warming trend both on the surface of the land, the surface 
and subsurface of the oceans. There is a significant retreat of 
glaciers around the planet, and the Arctic Sea ice is getting smaller 
and actually thinning. So if we look at these observations, someone 
could say that there is a natural cycle over the last 150 years and we 
happen to be in a warming trend. If we take the climate over the long 
range and we go back 10,000 years ago through an analysis of ice cores, 
certain seabeds, coral, crustaceans, et cetera, if we go back 10,000 
years, we will see a natural range of fluctuation on the climate of the 
planet, a natural range of fluctuation due to a number of variables 
including the atmosphere, land, and ocean, the wobble of the Earth, the 
closeness we are to the sun, et cetera. There is a predictable change 
in the climate based on the last 10,000 years. In fact, we could go 
back 400,000 years and base that prediction.
  What we are now seeing, though, in the last few decades of the 20th 
century and the first decade of the 21st century, are environmental 
variables that have not been seen for 400,000 years. If we look at what 
is making up our atmosphere and the kind of greenhouse gasses that we 
need in order for a distribution of the heat balance, we will see an 
increase in these greenhouse gasses, most notably carbon dioxide or 
CO2, a more significant increase now than we have seen in 
the last 400,000 years. The amount of carbon dioxide that has been in 
the atmosphere over the last 400,000 years has been a predictable 
amount based on the historical records which we find in ice cores and 
so on; but that natural range of fluctuation, the amount of 
CO2, the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, was 
seen to have a pattern, a trend. But the increase in CO2, 
carbon dioxide, that we have seen now in the last 50 years is larger, 
stronger than has ever been seen before.
  So is it a natural bump up in CO2? When we calculate the 
natural sources of CO2 on the planet, and there are many, we 
will have a certain amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. What is 
the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere? When we take in all 
of the natural variables, we still have more than we have ever had 
before.
  When we take in another variable, which is interesting, human 
activity, this answers the question that human activity is increasing 
CO2 in the atmosphere, changing the climate in ways that may 
not be predictable. Just a few facts to lay upon the table.

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