[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 79 (Wednesday, May 14, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H3876-H3882]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Space). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from California (Mr.
Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I preface my remarks with a personal
statement that, while I am opposed to the advocates of man-made global
warming theories, I am committed to a clean and healthy environment, to
purifying our air, our water, and our soil; all of this for the sake of
the people of this planet, including my three children, Anika, Tristan
and Christian. I do this not because of some paranoid theory that
humans are changing the climate of the world, but instead, I am very
concerned about the health of the people of the world and, thus,
committed to clean air, clean soil, and clean water.
Thus, we have, today, to take a look at the issues of global warming
and pollution that confront our society because there are enormous
implications to this whole discussion of what has been called ``man-
made global warming.''
Only 18 months ago the refrain ``Case closed: Global warming is
real,'' was repeated as if the mantra from some religious zealots. It
was pounded into the public consciousness over the airwaves, in print,
and even at congressional hearings, ``Case closed.'' Well, this was
obviously a brazen attempt to end open discussion and to silence
differing views by dismissing the need for seriously contrary arguments
and seriously listening to both sides of an argument. And rather than
hearing both sides of the argument, this was an attempt to dismiss
arguments even though the person making the arguments might have a very
impressive credential or might be a very educated scientist or someone
else who should be listened to.
And yes, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of prominent scientists
and meteorologists, the heads of science departments at major
universities, and others, who are highly critical of the man-made
global warming theory. There is Dr. Richard Lindzen of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been adamant in his
opposition, as has a Bjarne Andresen of the University of Copenhagen,
Adreas Prokoph, a professor of earth sciences at the University of
Ottawa, Dr. William Gray, a famous hurricane expert and former
President of the American Meteorological Association, and Dr. Kevin
Trenberth, the head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National
Center of Atmospheric Research. All of these are respected scholars,
all skeptical of the unwarranted alarmism that we are being pressured
to accept.
But their views and those of so many more prominent scholars and
scientists don't matter. The debate is over. Al Gore has his Nobel
Prize, and the film, ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' its Academy Award. So
shut up and get your mind in lockstep with the politically correct
prevailing wisdom, or at least what the media tells us is the
prevailing wisdom. And no questions, please, the case is closed. We
heard that dozens and dozens of times.
So what is this theory that now is so accepted that no more debate is
needed or even tolerated? The man-made global warming theory may be
presented as scientific truism, but it is not. It is a disturbing
theory that the Earth began a warming cycle 150 years ago that differed
greatly from all the other warming and cooling cycles in the Earth's
past. This warming cycle of 150 years ago, we keep being told, is tied
directly to mankind's use of fossil fuels, basically oil and coal,
which, of course, oil and coal and these fuels, these so-called fossil
fuels, have powered our industries and made modern civilization
possible.
Fossil fuels, we are told, puts an ever-increasing so-called level of
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and
[[Page H3877]]
the most prevalent of these gases, of course, being carbon dioxide,
CO2. This increase in CO2 causes the warming that
we are supposedly experiencing today. This man-made warming cycle,
according to the theory, is rapidly approaching a tipping point when
the world's temperatures will abruptly jump and accelerate with dire
and perhaps apocalyptic consequences for the entire planet.
For skeptics of this hypothesis, the consequence of accepting this
theory, the consequences are far more dire than any of the consequences
we're supposed to be suffering out of a predicted rise in temperature.
And by the way, that rise in temperature, of course, isn't really
happening, which we will discuss a little bit later.
If one accepts this as fact rather than theory, this idea that man-
made global warming is overwhelming our planet, then one would be
expected to also accept controls, regulations, taxation, international
planning and enforcement, mandated lifestyle changes, lowering
expectations, limiting consumer choice, as well as personal and family
sacrifices that are all going to be necessary for us to save the planet
from--well, from us.
It really takes a lot to frighten people into accepting such
personally restrictive mandates that would result from implementing a
global warming-based agenda. People's lives will change if we decide to
implement a global warming-based agenda. Yes, people's lives will
change, but not for the better if we have to end, for example, discount
airline tickets and cheap travel.
Most people who listen to the global warming advocates don't
understand that the global warming advocates believe that jet planes
are some of the worst CO2 polluters, and thus they have to
be restricted, according to the theory. So how many people really do
want to end the cheap airline tickets that can be had over the
Internet?
Obviously one of the goals will be to severely restrict the use of
private automobiles. Sure. Now, we know that. The fact that the
automobile has been targeted for the last 20 years certainly suggests
that automobiles are on the hit list. But don't worry, we may have to
give up our automobiles, but the rich and the government officials will
still have their private jets, their Suburbans, and even their
limousines. But the rest of us, of course, will be relegated to public
transportation. And we will have very limited travel rights unless we
can, of course, afford the higher and higher prices.
Global warming predictions appear designed to strike fear into the
heart of those malcontents who just won't willingly accept the mandates
in their lifestyle changes that are needed in order to save the planet.
These people, of course, won't accept things like higher food prices,
which will come with an implementation of global warming mandates. And
of course they certainly won't accept less meat in their diet. That's
right, part of the manmade global warming theory and how we're going to
solve this is to wean mankind away from meat.
A 2006 report entitled ``Livestock's Long Shadow'' to the United
Nations mentions livestock emissions and grazing, and it places the
blame for global warming squarely on the hind parts of cows. Livestock,
the report claims, accounts for 18 percent of the gases that supposedly
cause the global warming of our climate. Cows are greenhouse-emitting
machines. Fuel for fertilizer and meat production and transportation,
as well as clearing the fields for grazing, produce 9 percent of the
global CO2 emissions, according to the report. And also,
cows produce ammonia, causing acid rain, of course.
Now, if that's not bad enough, all of these numbers are projected in
this report to double by the year 2050. Well, not only are we then
going to have to cut personal transportation, which will keep us at
home, but when we stay at home, we can't even have a bbq. And heck,
they won't even let us have a hamburger.
I would like to point out that before the introduction of cattle,
millions upon millions of buffalo dominated the Great Plains of
America. They were so thick you could not see where the herd started
and where it ended. I can only assume that the anti-meat, manmade
global warming crowd must believe that buffalo farts have more socially
redeeming value than the same flatulence emitted by cattle. Yes, this
is absurd, but the deeper one looks into this global warming
juggernaut, the weirder this movement becomes and the more denial is
evident.
Ten years ago, for example, the alarmists predicted that by now we
would be clearly plagued by surging temperatures. In testimony before
Congress 20 years ago, now, says James Hansen, a man who has repeatedly
challenged people who simply want to make sure that his views are
balanced off at NASA, but NASA's James Hansen 20 years ago predicted
CO2 would shoot up and global temperatures would shoot up by
more than one-third of a degree Celsius during the 1990s.
So a rise in temperature was predicted, and it would lead to what?
Rising sea levels. In the end, we'll have rising sea levels, perhaps
even cities under water, droughts and famines, and of course an
increase in tropical diseases. Yes, tropical diseases. Sometimes it's
difficult for me to hear it when certain environmentalists use that as
an example, considering the fact that tropical diseases, namely
malaria, has killed millions of children in the Third World because the
environmentalists have been successful in banning DDT. But that's
another issue.
{time} 2230
But the point is there are serious consequences, perhaps unintended
consequences to following nonsensical extremism in the arena of the
environment.
So were the predictions of global heating correct? Forget ``case
closed.'' The question needs to be answered. Were all of these
predictions correct? Mr. Hansen said it would rise by a third of a
degree just a little over a decade ago. And the answer is that the
predictions of a decade ago have turned out to be dramatically wrong.
Temperatures during that decade rose only one-third of the jump
predicted by Hansen, a modest 0.11, one-third of what he had predicted.
Furthermore, numerous and powerful hurricanes that were forecast by
the National Hurricane Center, for example, at NOAA and others, well,
by now we haven't seen such a trend, and by now we were led to believe
there would be a drought and a melting of the ice caps would be clearly
upon us. My beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains in California were due to
heat up, dry up, brown up, and burn, burn, burn. Yep, during the entire
Clinton administration, we heard these predictions over and over again.
During the Clinton administration, we saw scientists produce study
after study predicting the horrific impact of the unstoppable onslaught
of man-made global warming, which we were led to believe would be
overwhelming us right now. Right now. Of course, if there was even a
hint that the conclusion of their research wouldn't back up the theory
of man-made global warming, these scientists wouldn't have seen one red
cent from the Federal research pool during the Clinton administration.
In a September, 2005, article from Discovery Magazine, Dr. William
Gray, now an emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado
State University and a former president of the American Meteorological
Association, was asked if funding problems that he was experiencing and
has been experiencing could be traced to his skepticism of man-made
global warming. His response: ``I had NOAA money for 30 years, and then
when the Clinton administration came in and Gore started directing some
of the environmental stuff, I was cut off. I couldn't get any money
from NOAA. They turned down 13 straight proposals from me.'' This man
is one of the most prominent hurricane experts in the world, cut off
during the Clinton-Gore administration because he had been skeptical of
global warming.
In fact, Al Gore's first act as Vice President was to insist that
William Harper be fired as the Chief Scientist at the Department of
Energy. Now, why was that? Well, that's because William Harper had
uttered words indicating that he was open minded to the issue of global
warming. So off with his head. They didn't want someone who was open
minded. They wanted someone who was going to provide grants based on
people who would verify this man-made global warming theory. Now, that
was 1993 when Mr. Harper
[[Page H3878]]
was relieved, the first year of the Clinton-Gore administration. So for
over a decade, all we got was a drumbeat of one-sided research, setting
the stage for the false claim that there is a scientific consensus
about whether or not man-made global warming is real.
Unfortunately, for all those scientists who went along with the
scheme, now, over a decade later, there is a big problem. Contrary to
what all those scientists living on their Federal research grants
predicted, the world hasn't been getting warmer. In fact, for the last
7 years, there has been no warming at all, which has been verified even
by, for example, Michel Jarraud of the World Meteorological
Organization. He's their Secretary General. He reluctantly admitted
that global temperatures have not risen since 1998, according to a BBC
article. Global snowfall is at record levels and there are fewer, not
more, hurricanes.
Furthermore, there is some melting in the Arctic. We all know that
there is some melting in the Arctic because we hear about it over and
over again. In fact, NBC did some special on the melting of the Arctic
and how bad it is and showed the pictures of penguins sitting on a
diminishing piece of ice in the Arctic. Except there was a problem with
that story. You see, penguins don't live in the Arctic; they live in
the Antarctic. There are no penguins in the Arctic. So NBC had it
wrong. Somebody must have told them that the penguins from the Arctic
were being victimized by global warming. In fact, in the Antarctic,
where the penguins are, there is a buildup of ice. It is getting
cooler. And in the Arctic, of course, we do recognize there has been a
warming in the Arctic, likely due to ocean currents that have changed
in the last few years and not due to CO2 that comes from
somebody's SUV.
After hearing about the extinction of the polar bear, which has been
drummed into our heads, we now hear that--and by the way, just today
the polar bear was put on an endangered species list. But are the polar
bears really disappearing? We now hear from Dr. Mitchell Taylor from
the Department of the Environment under the Canadian territory of
Nunavut and other experts, I might add, who suggest, yes, all but one
or two species of the polar bears are flourishing. Yes, of the twenty-
odd species, there are perhaps one or two that are suffering and not
doing well, but all the rest of the species of polar bear are
expanding. In fact, we don't have a situation with fewer polar bears;
we've got more polar bears. Yet our government is putting the polar
bear on an endangered species list, saying that if the ice cap melts,
the polar bears will all be going away because their habitat has been
destroyed.
Unfortunately, the debate on this case is not closed. So explaining
emerging obvious differences between the reality and the theory needs
to be addressed by the people who have been advocating global warming.
The case is not closed. The gnomes of climate theory now have to come
up with explanations for us of why it was predicted that the weather
would be this way at this time and it is not. Why is it that basically
we've had stable weather, if not a little cooler weather, for the last
8 years?
The first attempt to basically cover their tracks about this
noticeable dichotomy in what they predicted and what was happening
happened a few years ago, and it went very slowly but very cleverly.
The words ``climate change'' have now replaced the words ``global
warming.'' Get that? Every time you hear it now, half the time they are
going to be using the words ``climate change'' where those very same
people were so adamant about ``global warming'' only 4 or 5 years ago.
So no matter what happens now, now that they've changed it to ``climate
change'' rather than global warming, whatever happens to the weather
pattern, whether it's hotter or cooler, it can be presented as further
verification of human-caused change. If you just had ``human-caused
warming,'' it would have to be at least warming for them to actually
have any verification of what they were trying to say. But right now by
using ``climate change,'' they can bolster their right to be taken
seriously upon recommending policies, even though no matter what
direction the climate goes, it is justified by how they are labeling
themselves.
I'm sorry, fellows. Do you really think the world is filled with
morons? When it comes to bait and switch, used car salesmen are
paragons of virtue compared to this global warming crowd. Excuse me.
It's not the ``global warming'' crowd now; it's the ``climate change''
crowd. Of course, they don't want any of us to own automobiles; so what
the heck. They can act like used car salesmen because there will be
more jobs for them as being advocates in the climate change arena.
We just need to ask ourselves, if a salesman gives a strong pitch and
claims something that is later found to be wrong, totally wrong, when
does one stop trusting that salesman? Then if he starts playing word
games, changing the actual words that he's using about the same product
rather than just admitting an error, isn't it reasonable to stop
trusting him?
Yes, Al Gore and company, we have noticed that you are now saying
``climate change'' rather than ``global warming.'' I know that people
tried to slip it in, but we have noticed, and there is something behind
this that the American people should take note of. Why has that
changed? Well, that's because the world has not been getting warmer in
these last 7 years, as they predicted it would be.
So instead of word games, what these advocates need to explain is
what is happening in the real world today and why it doesn't match what
they said was going to happen based on their ``case closed, man-made
global warming is real.'' They must realize that someone is bound to
notice that last winter was unusually cold and that chilly weather
seems to be the trend. It actually snowed in Denver just less than a
month ago, and people have commented on the chilliness of the weather
this year.
So now we see a beehive of activity going on. Those federally funded
scientists are trying to save some modicum of credibility by adjusting
their computers and coming up with some explanations that keep man-made
global warming as a theory but explains away the current dichotomy
between what they said would happen and what is actually happening. Of
course, computer models were used to justify their hysteria and their
hysteric warming predictions to begin with. So now the computer's
information input is readjusted and we can see all these things coming
out of it.
Well, there's a lot of questions that need to be answered and a lot
of things that were told to us that obviously are not true and are not
consistent with what's been going on and what we see happening around
us today.
And why is this of such concern to us? Why are we concerned that
global warming as a theory has been presented and that it's false, and
why should we be so concerned that it's being accepted? What could be
the negative results of just accepting it from some people who might be
very sincere, very sincere and concerned about the planet?
Well, what happens in such cases as this is that we have situations
that occur and people then actually come to the point where they are
focused on aspects of what's going on in the world that will not make
it better but instead have terrible consequences in and of themselves.
For example, a deadly cyclone just brought death and destruction to
Burma, and it was a horrible thing. Burma is a country that is run by a
vicious dictatorship, and after the cyclone went through Burma, the
dictatorship wouldn't even permit our supplies to be given to those
people of Burma. Well, Al Gore is so committed to this idea of global
warming, which, of course, most people call ``climate change,'' that
when commenting on Burma, instead of talking about the monstrous nature
of the Burmese regime, instead he had to say, ``The trend toward more
category five storms--the larger ones and the trend toward stronger and
more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and
specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean
temperatures in the top couple of hundred feet of the ocean, which
drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them
more powerful.''
What should Al Gore's reaction have been? Well, what it should have
been was ``The Burmese regime is despicable. The Burmese people are
suffering. They are dying by the hundreds
[[Page H3879]]
of thousands. It is despicable for this dictatorship not to permit our
aid in.'' But instead that was ignored, and what Al Gore did focus on
``This is a chance for me to explain global warming,'' as the quote I
just gave suggested.
{time} 2245
Well, the Burmese cyclone hit Burma. If you take a look at what Al
Gore's words were, he is trying to say that it is because of the
warming of the water. I have in front of me, which I will submit as
part of the Record, a satellite image of ocean temperatures taken by
NOAA on May 5 which suggests the ocean in the area of the Burmese
cyclone is one of the coldest water areas on Earth.
So what the heck is Mr. Gore talking about? What is all this mumbo
jumbo? Again, he is warning about global warming because he is grasping
at an attempt to try to verify in some way his predictions that have
been all wrong for the last 5 years.
Dr. William Gray, for example, as I mentioned, the former chairman of
the American Meteorological Association, a pre-eminent hurricane
expert, has noted ``there is no reliable data available to indicate
increased hurricane frequency or intensity in any of the globe's seven
tropical cyclone basins.'' So hurricanes and cyclones are not a product
of global warming. Dr. Gray, I think, has more credentials than Mr.
Gore. But most convincingly, the most convincing part of this is that
no matter what Al Gore says about the warming of this water, that is
not what we are hearing from other sources.
I will now submit for the Record indications that actually the water
temperature is not warming and is expected to cool, especially in the
northern areas of the world.
So what is really important here is that we take a look and we see
that the world is not warming and that those people who have been
advocating this are grasping to try to find a way out of the fact that
they are telling us that we need to adopt the policies that they want
for our country, yet their predictions on the weather were wrong.
What is happening is, and the articles that I will submit for the
Record show, is that some of the organizations that were predicting
that we would be in global warming now are telling us that, yes, there
will be global warming. We are not giving it up. But it is going to be
10 to 15 years from now and not in the last 10 years, as was predicted.
In fact, as I said, we actually have this article that suggests that
the sea around Europe and North America will cool slightly during the
next decade, and the Pacific will be about the same. And the article
suggests that it will be a ``10-year time-out for global warming.''
This is based on studies that were conducted by organizations that only
a few years ago were predicting that global warming would be so evident
to us today. Well, they have to say something I guess.
To understand all of this nonsense, you have to go back and look at
the basic assumptions that are being used by global warming alarmists.
They believe that excessive amounts of manmade CO2 are being
deposited into the air which causes a greenhouse effect that warms the
atmosphere. They call this the ``carbon footprint.'' That is what we
are led to look for. We don't want to look in Burma for this vicious
dictatorship causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people
because of the repression. They won't even let our supplies in. We have
to blame it on global warming causing a cyclone which hit Burma. No. I
don't think so. But carbon footprinting is now what we should look at.
The global warming analysts want us to judge everything by its carbon
footprint. What that means is how much CO2 is being released
because of that activity, because they believe it is CO2
that causes the planet to warm.
This concept, just like these other extrapolations that we get from
computers, is wrong. It is dead wrong. A rise in CO2 comes
after global temperature increases, not before. This has been observed
in ice cores by prominent scientists, yet ignored by those screaming
their warnings at us. That's right. Ice cores indicate that there have
been periods, many periods, of warming and cooling in the history of
the world. But the warming that has happened preceded the increase in
the level of CO2 in the world. That is why we have warming.
That is why we can't say that if we control CO2 that it is
going to prevent the climate from warming.
Obviously, if the CO2 increase comes as a result of the
warming, by changing that, the warming is still going to be with us.
Well, that is getting things to the core. And I don't mean a pun by
that in terms of the ice core, but the fact is that this evidence is
confirmed by ice cores.
So take note that the very argument upon which global warming is
built has been proven to be false and that manmade global warming
advocates will not address that issue. I have been in hearing after
hearing. I have been involved with debates on this thing. When you tell
them ``no,'' and you name several scientists, and I will be happy to do
that for the Record, who are indicating that the CO2
increases come after the warming of the planet, well, that issue just
isn't addressed.
After all, the case is closed. We don't need to discuss any of those
type of details. To cite one example of experts' findings on this, by
the way, is Tom Scheffelin of the California Air Resources Board who
stated on November 5, 2007, that ``CO2 levels track
temperature changes between 300 to 1,000 years after the temperature
has changed. CO2 has no direct role in global warming;
rather, it responds to biological activity, which responds to climate
changes.''
The fact is that the global warming community is jumping through
hoops and bending over backwards struggling to find one little glint of
new information to cover their arrogant attempt to stampede humankind
into draconian policies and to cut off the debate and dismiss the
debate without addressing the issues. The government-financed
propaganda campaign to convince us that manmade global warming has been
and continues to be a major threat, this propaganda is a cacophony of
gibberish presented as a scientific explanation.
Go back and look at what Mr. Gore's words were about that cyclone.
That same sort of putting together of pseudoscience wording in order to
impress people is seen time and again. There are facts now evident, of
course, that this can't be ignored. And Mr. Gore's mumbo jumbo
notwithstanding, the predictions have been wrong. And the
CO2 premise is wrong. The methodology that has been used has
been wrong. The observations have been wrong. And the attempt to shut
up those people who disagree has been wrong.
I remember Al Gore labeling me a Stalinist because when I chaired the
subcommittee on Research and Science Education, I insisted that both
sides be presented. There was a study on research and the environment,
a subcommittee of the Science Committee. And I insisted when I was
chairman of the committee that expert witnesses on both sides be
present at hearings and that they address each other's contentions.
Well, to him, that is Stalinism. Well, I would suggest that the
propaganda campaign of the manmade global warming alarmists has far
more in common with Stalinism than does insisting that both sides of an
argument be heard.
One has to really believe that he or she has a corner on the truth to
make such a complaint as the one that he was making against me. He must
feel really safe in saying that he knows the truth and that is in order
to justify not having both sides of an argument presented at a hearing.
Of course, Mr. Gore's documentary, ``An Inconvenient Truth'' by its own
title suggests that it should be taken as the truth. And I won't go
into the numerous debatable points and outright errors that are
presented in the film. Something far worse has recently emerged
concerning the fundamental veracity and truthfulness of Vice President
Gore's film.
In the film, there are numerous film segments of climate and
environmental incidents to add credibility to the alleged scientific
points that were being documented in the film. However, what we see is
not necessarily what we are getting. The audience is being given
questionable information and questionable views because what they are
seeing is not necessarily a documentary view but, instead it is a
special effects creation in an attempt to convince the viewers that
they are watching an actual occurrence of something.
Specifically, let me note that the film portrays a huge cracking and
[[Page H3880]]
breaking away of a large portion of the polar ice cap. I have not seen
the film, but I am told the scene is awesome and somewhat overwhelming,
leaving the audience feeling that they are witnessing a massive
occurrence, and this massive occurrence, of course, Mr. Gore
conveniently ties to human activity, the human activity he wants to
regulate and of course the human activity that he will profit from if
we have this carbon credit scheme instituted by the various governments
of the world.
Unfortunately, that view of the breakaway of the ice there in the
Arctic is a total fake. It is not National Geographic footage of a huge
breaking away of a portion of the ice cap. It is not firsthand, grand
photographic evidence of the ice breaking. Instead, what the audience
is looking at is an example of special effects. It was not the ice cap
that was being looked at. It was Styrofoam. That's right. Styrofoam.
And the real sin of all of this was not only the sin of presenting
Styrofoam and trying to trick people into thinking they are watching
something real, the ice breaking away, but that we haven't heard about
it. I have only seen this in one or two publications. We haven't heard
about it.
If such a trick and attempt to deceive was done by a conservative, I
could tell you that that conservative would be tarred and feathered in
the media. In fact, if there is anything wrong, I am sure that one or
two points that I have in this speech are debatable, and I am sure that
those will be looked at with a microscope. And if I am wrong, even a
little bit, they will try to use that to just say ``don't listen to
anything he says.'' But Mr. Gore can present the breaking away of
Styrofoam and present it to us as if it is really happening. And he
doesn't even apologize or comment on it when it is found out. Al Gore
has no comment on this deception.
Maybe it is inconvenient for him to comment because, yes, it might
hurt his credibility. And after all, the world is getting warmer in
these last 7 years, which is just the opposite of what he predicted.
And of course, maybe his predictions were based on a Styrofoam computer
model. But we will go into that later.
Well, the first time I met President Gore was during my first term in
Congress back in 1989 and 1990. Al Gore then was a United States
Senator. And he marched into the Science Committee room followed by a
platoon of cameras and reporters. He sat in front of the Science
Committee, and he demanded that President Bush, that is George W.'s
father, declare an ozone emergency. And he waved in his hand a report
of evidence that an ozone hole was opening up over the Northeast United
States.
A few days later, the report touted by the Senator was found to have
been based on faulty data, data collected by one so-called researcher
flying a single-engine Piper Cub with limited technology and not much
expertise. Senator Gore was demanding emergency shutdowns of factories
and manufacturing plants in the Northeast. It would have had dire
consequences for the American economy and for those people who worked
in those plants. But they be damned, because we are out to save the
planet.
Now does anyone here see any type of a pattern here, the ozone hole
that wasn't there and then we are going to have this drastic action in
order to save the planet? The scare tactics, the Chicken Little-ism and
all the rest of these types of things that are trying to create
hysteria, this isn't a new tactic.
Let's look at some of the past examples of the nonsense being
portrayed as science.
{time} 2300
Cranberries, yes, cranberries, shield your children from Ocean Spray.
That's right, the cranberry industry suffered a loss of nearly $20
million back in 1957 when it was determined that perhaps cranberries,
there was something wrong with the cranberries. In fact, later on it
was admitted to be just a mistake.
But the cranberry industry went to hell for 2 or 3 years. But if you
are not growing cranberries, what do you care about cranberry farmers?
No, you care about people. Many peoples' lives were destroyed because
over a 2- or 3-year period, cranberries were basically labeled as
something that they should not have been labeled, and it was a
catastrophe for them, just like perhaps those people that worked in
factories that would have been closed up had we taken that ozone scare
seriously.
Then there was the scare over cyclamate. Cyclamate was used in
everyday items like soda, jams, ice cream. It was a sweetening element,
it's very low in calories, that industry, it was a very fine product
and generated an enormous profit. In the early 1970s, the FDA banned
cyclamates. I remember very well.
People spent billions of dollars building this industry. It was a
great industry, but it was labeled as a cancer hazard after someone,
some kind of a researcher, force-fed rats the equivalent of 350 cans of
soda a day. By giving these rats the equivalent of 350 soda cans a day,
8 out of 240 got sick.
Well, even that was a faulty test, and eventually the truth prevailed
and cyclamates were labeled okay, they were given an okay. That was
after about 10 years. Canada, by the way, never banned cyclamates, but
in order to protect us and save us, and it was a terrible situation,
yes, the cyclamate industry never recovered.
The damage, however, was done. This episode has had serious
consequences, because when the cyclamates were banned, that led to the
introduction of what, high fructose corn syrup, so, yes, and with all
of the obesity and problems that come with high fructose corn syrup.
That first got its hold in the food business at a time when cyclamates
were thought to be the answer, but they were banned.
So we have had examples of this over and over again, another American
industry that was decimated by a rotten theory that had hazardous
consequences for implementing.
The next example of fear mongering, of pseudoscience, happened in
1989. February 26, 1989, that evening thousands of Americans tuned into
``60 Minutes'' and heard Ed Bradley say the most potent cancer-causing
agent in our food supply is a substance sprayed on apples to keep them
on the trees longer and make them look better. That's the conclusion of
a number of scientific experts. And who is at risk? Children who may
someday develop cancer.
That one story, by the way, snowballed into a media blitz, a feeding
frenzy, Meryl Streep testified before Congress, spouting off, again,
pseudoscientific nonsense. Parents tossed apples out the window,
schools removed applesauce from the cafeteria and, of course, replaced
that with much safer nutritious substances like ice cream and pudding.
Of course, there was only one problem, the Alar didn't cause cancer,
the apples definitely didn't and even the Alar didn't. The study was
based on bad science, and 20,000 apple growers in the United States
suffered major financial harm.
Okay, so by now such alarmism has become a political tool that scares
people to try to get them to do things. That's what we are facing with
global warming, excuse me, climate change.
The Three Mile Island incident is another example of this. You
remember Three Mile Island, a near disaster in Pennsylvania which,
basically, coupled with the movie ``The China Syndrome'' led to a total
halt in the development of nuclear energy as a means for producing
energy in the United States.
The Jane Fonda movie, ``The China Syndrome,'' coupled with a mishap
at a nuclear power plant, that was, I might add, a mishap that no one
suffered any health consequences, no one died, no one was hurt. Yet it
was presented to the public as this catastrophe, and that led to a
shutdown of the efforts of building any new nuclear power plants.
Ironically, of course, nuclear power is the most effective means of
producing power with no carbon footprint. Again, it was a total con job
on the nuclear energy industry.
What about the ozone hole over the Antarctic? We are told that it
would grow and grow for decades, and it was totally out of control.
Well, Boyce Rensberger, Director of the Knight Fellowship of
Massachusetts Institute of Technology says that ozone depletion is a
cyclical event, expanding and contracting throughout the eons of
history. Here is a scientist from MIT telling us that the current
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ozone depression has been simply part of a reoccurring cycle, not as a
result of the use of chlorofluorocarbons, meaning your aerosol cans.
So, what we have got is a situation where at a gigantic shift of
expense, of shifting away from aerosol, we have basically accomplished
nothing because the ozone hole opens and closes on its own. I might
add, we know now, of course, there have been many cycles of warming and
cooling, and is this a natural thing? Well, if you consider the sun
being natural, yes.
Instead of saying that CO2 that's coming out of the use of
fossil fuels is causing our climate to change now, as compared to all
the other times it changed in the past, maybe these people should look
at the sun, and maybe there are natural cycles where you have sunspots
and it causes warming and cooling on the Earth.
Could that be an explanation? Well, let's think about it. Otherwise,
how do we explain the fact that on Jupiter and Mars we have cooling and
warming cycles that seem to be matching some of the cycles here on
Earth. Well, maybe there are some SUVs up there on Mars.
Well, the last example, one of the last examples, of course, that I
have in my memory of people trying to be frightened into supporting
policy with this kind of alarmism has been acid rain. The acid rain was
supposed to decimate our forests, destroy our fresh water bodies and
roads, our buildings and sidewalks, and, what happened? That was just
an onslaught that was going on, I worked for Ronald Reagan at the time,
he was just beaten without mercy for his unwillingness to take costly
action aimed at thwarting acid rain. He insisted on waiting for an in-
depth study to be completed.
While he waited, of course, he was vilified as if he doesn't care
about the environment, he doesn't really care about whether or not our
environment is being destroyed by acid rain which is being caused by
us. Well, a 10-year study was going on, Reagan knew about it. He
waited, as he well should have, and there was a study by the Nation
Acid Precipitation Assessment Project and was submitted to Congress in
the 1990s. It minimized the human impact on the acidity on the water
and especially the rain in America's northeast. The issue died quickly
after that report, and it just went away.
After all of the intense attacks on Ronald Reagan, once that report
was in, it just sort of went away. Well, one reason it went away, maybe
there was another alarmist scheme to go to.
Yes, there was, one was emerging about this time, and it was on the
cover of Time Magazine 30 years ago. This was probably the most pitiful
of all of these alarmist attempts. It was, three decades ago, the
scientists were warning us about global cooling. We were told early
that we were on the edge of another ice age.
Well, unfortunately, that one went away very quickly because the
temperatures immediately didn't do what they said it was going to do,
and the temperatures actually did not go down dramatically or freeze.
It did get a little bit warmer during those days. It was one of those
warming cycles, it went up for a few years and it went down.
It was getting warmer, so even as those predictions of frozen gloom
and doom, they just changed the words, those same people were making
the predictions of frozen gloom and doom now were sort of talking about
global warming gloom and doom. You guessed it, so global cooling became
global warming almost overnight. Now, after global warming, climate
change comes almost overnight.
So the scare tactics are nothing new. It is tied to a tried-and-true
method of how to try to manipulate people to accept things they
wouldn't otherwise accept. Unfortunately, there are long-term negative
consequences that will be very clear to our future generations. Of
course, they are being lied to all the time.
I often asked students from my district, who are here visiting in
Washington, whether they believe the air in southern California is
better now or worse now than when I went to high school in southern
California 40 years ago. A huge percentage, maybe 80 percent of these
students, believe that the air quality of 40 years ago was dramatically
better than today. Of course, that's not just a lie, that's a big lie.
This generation has every reason to be optimistic about the future,
and they are being lied to, being told that they are poisoned, and
things are getting worse and worse. In fact, man-made global warming is
going to devastate the whole planet any way. No, these kids now, when I
tell them that, no, when I went to high school, the air pollution in
southern California was much worse than it is today, they are
incredulous.
What is all this lying about? Why are all these children being lied
to? Why are we all being lied to?
I remember as a college student, the first Earth Day--I am quoting
someone here--``I remember as a college student at the first Earth Day
being told that it was a certainty that by the year 2000, the world
would be starving and out of energy,'' writes Dr. John Christy, a
professor of atmospheric science at University of Alabama.
Dr. Christy goes on to say ``Similar pronouncements today about
catastrophes due to human-induced climate change sound all too familiar
and all too exaggerated to me as someone who actually produces and
analyzes climate information.''
So, we are told that polar bears are dying, but they aren't. As we
have known that we have all of these other predictions, we are told
that the polar ice caps are melting, but now we know that the polar ice
caps are melting yes, only in the Arctic, but in the Antarctic, ice is
actually growing.
Hurricane Katrina, we were told would only be the first of many
horrendous hurricanes to hit the United States in the next few years
but, of course, no hurricane equal or close to has been on the horizon.
In fact, a hurricane that was just as strong as Katrina hit the United
States 100 years earlier, long before this effective ``global
warming.'' So when you look at facts like this, an honest debate is
long overdue but yet we see an attempt to shut down an honest debate.
I will submit an advertisement, the Hill newspaper from the
Environmental Defense Action Fund, and it says ``What's next? The Bond-
Voinovich Cigarettes Aren't Addictive Act?'' What they are saying, it's
a cute way of saying, anybody who questions global warning, it is the
equivalent of saying that cigarettes aren't addictive. Well, that's a
great way to dismiss someone's arguments without addressing them. It
says here, ``Some senators,'' this is in the add, ``are asking you to
ignore . . . an international scientific consensus.''
Well, let's put it this way, we hear that, there is a consensus over
and over again. There is no consensus. The world is not getting warmer,
and I would submit a list of 400 members of the scientific community
who do not agree with a man-made global warming theory and, I might
add, I quoted numerous very prestigious members of the scientific
community already in this speech. So what we have is alarmism at its
worst, and the consequences will be very, very severe if we let these
people get away with this.
Now, what we have done is we have, again, permitted people to make
their case without having to defend their case. This is never more
evident than in the dealings with the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change, which is the United Nations panel.
I will submit several statements that indicate that the IPCC was
wrong in its approach, in its entire methodology in trying to determine
whether or not global warming, whether there is global warming and
whether or not it is caused by man-made activity.
So with this said, we need to look and say, What is the negative
impact of all of this lack of truthful information? What could possibly
happen? If someone says well, aren't we all against pollution? So what
if someone is making a claim that global warming exists and it is
caused by humankind and in reality it is just the pollution that we are
both trying to get it at. Well, that just doesn't work.
The fact is if we accept this theory of man-made global warming, we
will be focusing our activities on trying to eliminate CO2
rather than eliminate toxic substances from our air. If I am concerned
about my children, my three triplets, Christian, Anika and Tristan, I
am concerned about their health, that is something that I think I share
with every parent. Their health is not in any way threatened by
CO2. CO2 is
[[Page H3882]]
nontoxic. It is threatened by NOX and other toxin materials
that come out of engines in cars and other sources. So if we only focus
on CO2, we will end up focusing on the wrong target.
What we need to do is make sure that we develop clean energy sources,
not because of global warming but because of the health of our
children. And also, we need to be independent of foreign sources. The
fact is that foreign sources of oil, because we are not developing our
own oil resources as a result of the dynamics created by the global
warming juggernaut that we have been experiencing, the fact is that we
have not drilled for our own oil. We have not focused on real
alternatives to energy like nuclear energy. The fact is that we need to
make sure right now that we do our very best not to be captured by
this, what I consider to be one of the greatest hoaxes that I have seen
in my lifetime, but instead focus our efforts on accomplishing
something that is real and positive for the people of the world and the
people of the United States of America. We should be drilling for oil
so that the terrorists overseas are denied the revenue when we are
forced to buy oil from countries that are allied with these terrorists.
We need to make sure that we develop better engines, and make sure
that those engines are not putting pollutants into the air and forget
about the CO2, go to the pollutants.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you and I will submit these articles for the
Record.
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