[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 129 (Thursday, September 23, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7409-S7410]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             GLOBAL WARMING

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come because we are coming to the 
end of our workweek. Many of our colleagues are gone already, and 
others are preparing to go. Another week has gone by in which the 
Senate has taken no action whatsoever with respect to the continuing 
pollution of our atmosphere by carbon, which we subsidize by allowing 
our biggest polluters to do it without cost or consequence. The effects 
of that on our world continue to manifest themselves. This is one of 
those issues where we can come to an impasse in the Senate and the foes 
of doing anything about moving to clean energy jobs and requiring 
carbon polluters to actually pay a price for their pollution can stop 
all that. It may seem like a victory, but the problem is there is a 
real cost to continuing to pollute our atmosphere with carbon. It does 
trap heat. It does warm the planet.
  Those are scientific verities that are unavoidable and the 
consequences continue to cascade through our world, through the 
environmental systems of which it is made up. The evidence of that 
continues to emerge.
  Frankly, Mother Nature does not care about what happens in the 
Senate. She is not subject to our law. She is not subject to our 
opinion. She will continue to do her thing. It is up to us to be 
prudent and thoughtful caretakers of our planet and sensible men and 
women and take the appropriate steps so we can head off the disasters 
she is loudly signaling are coming our way.
  I thought I would share just some of the continuing cascade of 
evidence and news that is coming out on this subject.
  The first thing I will mention is a report from Science Daily that 
came out about a week ago. According to NOAA, the National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Government agency's recent state 
of the climate report, the lower 48 States, as a whole, experienced the 
fourth warmest summer on record, with average August temperatures 2.2 
degrees above the last century average.
  The American Southwest experienced its warmest summer ever. The 
Midwest experienced its third warmest summer. The Northeast, where I 
come from, where my home State of Rhode Island is, experienced its 
fourth warmest summer ever recorded. Indeed, Rhode Island experienced 
its hottest ever July on record.
  The increase of temperature in our weather systems has the effect of 
adding energy into those weather systems which suggests that storms are 
made more frequent and more powerful. Sure enough, the facts confirm 
that as well.
  In 2007, Environment America analyzed rainfall data and determined in 
a report that came out more recently that extreme precipitation events 
had increased across the United States by 24 percent between 1948 and 
2006. The region in which the extreme precipitation events--these major 
storms with extreme levels of rain or snow--faced the greatest increase 
was in New England, with a 61-percent increase from 1948 to 2006. 
Within New England, the State that faced the greatest increase was my 
home State of Rhode Island, with an 88-percent increase in extreme 
precipitation events.
  One of those extreme precipitation events was the March flooding in 
my home State, in which our rivers--the Pawtuxet, Blackstone, and 
Pawcatuck--some of them went above 100-year floodplain levels. Some of 
them reached areas beyond 500-year flood levels.
  Clearly, something is changing. Actually, there were two floods that 
happened back to back, just weeks apart. I visited homes in West 
Warwick, where the mud and the flooding had brought into people's homes 
and basements thick muck they had to dig out and clean up. As soon as 
they had dug it out and cleaned it up, boom, it happened again. It was 
absolutely heartbreaking for them. One can imagine how frustrating it 
is to go into your home, your basement, to see what used to be a nice 
area, what used to be clean, what used to be dry, where your children 
kept their photo albums, you might have kept old papers, things that 
were important to you, televisions, sofas, and now just a sea of filthy 
mud that you are going to have to figure out how to clear out and clean 
up, cutting out all the wallboard, cutting out everything that is wet, 
having to rebuild. The frustration of having to do that--people lead 
busy lives, they do not need that--and then, boom, to have it happen a 
second time as soon as it was done is unbelievably frustrating and 
disheartening.
  Those are the kinds of extreme and unpredicted weather events that 
are associated with a warming planet and the heating of the atmosphere.
  It also changes the way different animals can live and migrate. One 
of them is the bark beetle. Earlier this month, the U.S. Forest Service 
predicted that outbreaks of spruce and mountain beetles in Western 
States will increase in the coming decades because of climate change. 
These beetles historically had their range kept in check by cold 
winters, which basically kill off the larvae, and that limits the 
reproduction of the beetles and it limits their geographic range. As 
the winters become warmer, then the beetles have survived--because the 
winters aren't as cold--so they continue to go out and do their thing. 
Their thing to do is to kill pine trees. The beetles have already 
affected more than 17.5, I believe, million acres of Western forests.

  I have traveled out West. I was in Idaho a few summers ago, and you 
could fly over the mountains of Idaho and see entire forested 
mountains, as far as the eye could see from the plane, and it was dead 
and brown and it was because the beetle had gone in there and killed 
them.
  These changes are going to continue. I can't estimate what cost it 
was to the industry or to Idaho's economy to have that massive die-off 
of pine trees, but, clearly, it is no good thing.
  The ocean continues to send us warnings as well. According to the 
University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center--this again 
earlier this month--for only the third time in satellite history, ice 
has covered less than 5 million square kilometers of the Arctic Ocean. 
As a result of the trend that these researchers see, they warn that 
global warming could leave the Arctic sea ice free by 2030--20 years 
from now. Many of us will be around then to see that.
  An ice-free Arctic Ocean has very significant repercussions for our 
world because it is the ice that reflects a great deal of the heat back 
out of the atmosphere in what is called the albedo effect--the 
reflection of it. If that is not there, instead there is a dark ocean 
absorbing the heat. It accelerates the warming and begins the feedback 
loop that makes the problem worse.

[[Page S7410]]

  So it is significant that the Arctic sea ice is continuing to shrink 
and for only the third time in satellite history now has covered less 
than 5 million square kilometers.
  If you go from the far north to the tropic seas, there are signs of 
distress there as well. On September 20, the New York Times reported 
that in 1998, 16 percent of the world's shallow water reefs died as a 
result of record warm temperatures. It is estimated that the die-off 
could be even worse this year. In May, more than 60 percent of corals 
off the coast of Indonesia's Aceh Province bleached and died after 
Andaman Sea temperatures reached 93 degrees Fahrenheit.
  It may not seem significant that corals are dying. It may seem indeed 
insignificant to many of my colleagues. But these coral areas are the 
nurseries for tropical seas. Many species depend on them to basically 
grow and feed in their early stages, and if they die, it creates a 
cascading effect through the food chain that has potentially 
significant effects for our kinds of species--set aside the local 
economy wanting to be able to support snorkelers and people such as 
that who go to see these rare and special beauties.
  Finally, the Scientific American reported earlier this summer that 
the average phytoplankton population in our oceans has dropped about 1 
percent a year between 1889 and 2008, resulting in a 40-percent drop 
overall in phytoplankton.
  What is a phytoplankton? It is one of the tiny plant--almost 
microscopic--species that grows in the ocean and floats free in the 
ocean. Is that important? It is important because zooplankton and 
phytoplankton--animal and vegetable plankton--represent the base of the 
oceanic food chain. They are what the little fish feed on, and the 
little fish are what the big fish feed on, and up you go.
  We have never had a situation in which the bottom of the food chain 
began to collapse. But we have been seeing it over the past century, 
and we anticipate seeing a lot more because the carbon our polluters 
release into the atmosphere with impunity--subsidized by all the rest 
of us--ends up being absorbed by the ocean--80 percent gets absorbed, 
if I am not mistaken--and that changes the pH level of the ocean, how 
acidic it is.
  The ocean, right now, is more acidic than it has been in 8,000 
centuries, and 8,000 centuries is a long time. We are engaged in a 
chemical experiment with our oceans that has potentially vast 
consequences for them by just injecting all this carbon and waiting to 
see what happens. Now we are out, far enough outside the range of 
where, in human experience, there has been a pH that we are 8,000 
centuries away from it being at this level. All that--the acidification 
of the ocean--makes it more difficult for these plankton to survive. So 
the crash we are seeing is consistent with the damage that carbon 
pollution does to our oceans.
  I say this because I know we are not going to get anywhere with 
energy before the election. Maybe nobody cares. But again, we can be as 
ignorant as we please. We can be as pleased with ourselves that we have 
delivered for interest groups and special interests as we please. We 
can suggest to Americans that climate change isn't real or isn't 
happening. We can participate in the propaganda battle the big 
polluters are sponsoring to try to raise doubt about the established 
science. We can do all those things and we can claim victory and block 
legislation and we can serve our special interest supporters. We can do 
all those things to prevent any serious legislation from coming through 
this body for years and years and years and, you know what, the Earth 
will not care.
  You cannot legislate our environment. King Canute could stand in the 
oceans and order that the tide not come in, and he could have all his 
courtiers and all his supporters around him. He could have all the 
people who keep him in office and provide campaign contributions and it 
wouldn't make a darned bit of difference. The tide comes roaring in.
  Our job in this body is not just to represent special interests, not 
just to achieve temporary political victories, not just to block 
progress of bills that interests that support us disagree with. We have 
another job as well; that is, to look out for the welfare of our 
country and of the American people and to prepare when the Earth 
plainly warns us of coming dangers. It is in the service of that job 
that I intend to continue coming to the floor to remind my colleagues 
that no matter what their opinions are, no matter what their politics 
are, no matter what the interest groups that support them are, the 
facts continue to announce themselves, and the announcement they are 
making to us is a warning. If we are not smart enough--with our God-
given intelligence and foresight--to read the warnings nature is giving 
us and respond appropriately before it is too late, then it will be on 
us that we failed to do so.
  People will look back from 20 years hence, from 30 years hence, from 
40 years hence--the young pages who are here in the well, when they are 
my age, will look back at this generation that sat in this Senate, in 
this year, on this occasion, at this time--and they will say: How could 
you have been so negligent? How could you have allowed the politics of 
the moment to put you on this march of folly that failed to protect us 
when you knew--when you knew?
  So I intend to continue because this is an issue that will not go 
away. Nature's warnings to us are persistent, and I intend to be 
persistent as well.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant editor of the Daily Digest proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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