[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 190 (Tuesday, December 15, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H14948-H14949]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE COOLING WORLD
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. POE of Texas. Madam Speaker, we debate throughout the world the
concept of global warming, but we don't call it that any more; we call
it climate change. All the big leaders of the world are in Denmark
talking about how they can figure out a way to control man, to make
sure that man, the evildoer, the polluter of the world, does not
continue to pollute our wonderful climate.
The consensus has been for some time that global warming, climate
change, continues because man is the perpetrator. Now we are beginning
to learn that may not be true, that there is not a consensus that there
is global warming or climate change. We now have heard about
Climategate, where the expert scientists hid emails in England that
disagreed with the so-called consensus that there is global warming and
global climate change. We have heard now new evidence that even NASA is
involved in not revealing evidence that contradicts climate change.
I think a history lesson is in order, Madam Speaker, and I would like
to read from a couple of well thought of, in the science community, a
couple of magazine articles. One of them is under the Science section
of Time magazine. It's dated June 24, but the year is 1974. The article
begins with this comment, ``Another Ice Age?'' So much for global
warming.
As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather patterns of the
past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to
suspect that many seemingly contradictory events are occurring in
global climate upheaval. The weather widely varies from place to place
and time to time.
When meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe,
they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler the
last three decades and the trend shows no indication of reversing. Let
me repeat that. According to scientists in 1974, the trend shows no
indication of reversing the cooling trend.
Scientists are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather
aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another Ice Age.
If we were to live in 1974, and, you know, I actually lived in 1974,
I read this article then, I believed it. I believe we were all going to
freeze in the dark. It goes on to say that a part of the problem is man
polluting the atmosphere with farming. Because man farms and the dust
gets up into the air, that blocks the sun rays from coming to Earth,
and that actually cools the Earth. Maybe that's another new idea of
carbon emission cooling that was in 1974.
The following year that notable news magazine, Newsweek, April 28,
1975, under its Science section in the back, talks about the cooling
world. There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have
begun to change dramatically and that these changes may be bringing a
drastic decline in food production throughout the world.
To scientists these dramatic incidents represent the advanced signs
of a fundamental change in the world's whether. The central fact, you
got that word, fact, is that after three-quarters of a century of
extraordinarily mild conditions, the Earth's climate seems to be
cooling down. And that's from Newsweek.
Here is a chart they put in their expert scientific article, and it's
entitled--I think it's nice they put it in the ice-blue color--
Newsweek, ``The Cooling World,'' and it shows that average temperatures
are getting colder. Of course, it goes off the chart, colder and
colder, April 28, 1978.
Like I said, Madam Speaker, I believed we were all going to freeze in
the dark. The scientists told us that we were going to freeze in the
dark because of the weather patterns. Climates do change, Madam
Speaker. In the 1970s it was getting cooler. Now they say it's getting
warmer. Now they just say it's climate change.
Climates do change. That's what seasons are. Most of the world up
here in the north has seasons. Now, we don't have seasons in Houston.
We have two seasons--we have summer, and we have August. Other than
that, the seasons change. In most parts of the world they get warm,
they get cold.
We are going to try to trust the world's climate predictions to a
group of people from the 1970s and now, 2000, to a group of people who
can't even predict correctly tomorrow's weather. You know, people in
the weather industry are the only people I know who consistently can be
wrong and keep their jobs. But yet, these same people who can't predict
tomorrow's weather are trying to predict the weather from now on, that
climate change is occurring because man is the culprit.
And that's just the way it is.
[From Newsweek, Apr. 28, 1975]
(By Peter Gwynne)
The Cooling World
There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns
have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may
have
[[Page H14949]]
drastic decline in food production--with serious political
implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop
in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only ten years
from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the
great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the
north, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient
tropical areas--parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Indochina and Indonesia--where the growing season is
dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun
to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-
pressed to keep up with it.
In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline
by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant over-all loss
in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually.
During the same time, the average temperature around the
equator has risen by a fraction of a degree--a fraction that
in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in
the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148
twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a
billion dollars' worth of damage in thirteen U.S. states.
Trend: To scientists, these incidents represent the advance
signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. The
central fact is that after three quarters of a century of
extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to
be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and
extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific
impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost
unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural
productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic
change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the
resulting famines could be catastrophic. ``A major
climatic change would force economic and social
adjustments on a worldwide scale,'' warns a recent report
by the National Academy of Sciences, ``because the global
patterns of food production and population that have
evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the
present century.''
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a
drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the
Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to
George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos
indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere
snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released
last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of
sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S.
diminished by 1.3 percent between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature
and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the
University of Wisconsin points out that the earth's average
temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about 7
degrees lower than during its warmest eras--and that the
present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way
toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a
reversion to the ``little ice age'' conditions that brought
bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between
1600 and 1900--years when the Thames used to freeze so
solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when
iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New
York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages
remains a mystery. ``Our knowledge of the mechanisms of
climat- ic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,''
concedes the National Academy of Sciences report ``Not
only are the basic scientific questions largely
unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to
pose the key questions.''
Extremes: Meteorologists think that they can forecast the
short-term results of the return to the norm of the last
century. They begin by noting the slight drop in over-all
temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers
in the atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of
westerly, winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air
produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local
weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long
freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature
increases--all of which have a direct impact on food
supplies.
``The world's food-producing system,'' warns Dr. James D.
McQuigg of NOAA's Center for Climatic and Environmental
Assessment, ``is much more sensitive to the weather variable
than it was even five years ago.'' Furthermore, the growth of
world population and creation of new national boundaries make
it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their
devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will
take any positive action to compensate for the climatic
change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some
of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting
the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or
diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater
than those they solve. But the scientist see few signs that
government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the
simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the
variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections
of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the
more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change
once the results become grim reality.
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