[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 66 (Thursday, May 10, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3073-S3075]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CARBON POLLUTION
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I want to speak about the ongoing and
deliberately overlooked problem of carbon pollution and what it is
doing to our planet.
In the context of these remarks, I ask unanimous consent to have
printed in the Record an article entitled ``Game Over for the
Climate,'' written by Jim Hansen and published in yesterday's New York
Times.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From The New York Times, May 9, 2012]
Game Over for the Climate
(By James Hansen)
GLOBAL warming isn't a prediction. It is happening. That is
why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with
President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada
would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves
``regardless of what we do.''
If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over
for the climate.
Canada's tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with
bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted
by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully
exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our
conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach
levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million
years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it
is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that
the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of
control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities.
Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50
percent of the planet's species would be driven to
extinction. Civilization would be at risk.
That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will
be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western
United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to
Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it
does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding.
Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the
Midwest would be a dust bowl. California's Central Valley
could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to
unprecedented levels.
If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to
reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power
not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf
Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export
markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave
tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.
The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of
random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the
journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased
noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent
heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in
2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural
events--they were caused by human-induced climate change.
We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps
heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate
conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing
now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is
not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The
earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle
where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are
rising--and it's because we are forcing them higher with
fossil fuel emissions.
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has
risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last
150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon--240
gigatons--to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar
sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an
additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these
dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our
addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon
concentrations below 500 p.p.m.--a level that would, as
earth's history shows, leave our children a climate system
that is out of their control.
We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not
create new ways to increase them. We should impose a
gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel
companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to
all Americans on a per-capita
[[Page S3074]]
basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This
market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and
economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick
winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy
users, would get more back than they paid in increased
prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting
from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as
the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada,
rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic
models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.
But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to
make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy
playing field, the world's governments are forcing the public
to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of
dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to
extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal,
longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar
shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.
President Obama speaks of a ``planet in peril,'' but he
does not provide the leadership needed to change the world's
course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public--which
yearns for open, honest discussion--explaining that our
continued technological leadership and economic well-being
demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has
shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but
leadership is essential.
The science of the situation is clear--it's time for the
politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify
conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business.
Every major national science academy in the world has
reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by
humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes
far higher the longer we wait--we can't wait any longer to
avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The article begins with two simple sentences:
``Global warming isn't a prediction. It is happening.''
He talks about the dangers of the Canada tar sands and what that
means for us if we go ahead with that project. His conclusion is this:
If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over
for the climate.
Canada's tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with
bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted
by global oil use in our entire history.
He looks at the recent extreme weather that people--not only across
the country but across the world--have been noticing. He concludes:
We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves
in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which
killed tens of thousands, were not natural events--they were
caused by human-induced climate change.
So the risk we face is a real one, and we are actually seeing it
begin to happen in present time. He says:
The tar sands contain enough carbon--240 gigatons--to add 120 parts
per million to our atmosphere. As I have said before on the Senate
floor, we have lived for 8,000 centuries within a range between 170 and
300 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere. That is the
bandwidth within which the human species has lived on this planet, and
we have gone rocketing out of that bandwidth in recent years. We are
now at 390 parts per million out of a bandwidth, for 800,000 years,
between 170 and 300 parts per million. The tar sands would add 120
parts per million to that. That would take us to 510, if my math is
right.
Tar shale--a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United
States--contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon.
This shows the folly of what Dr. Hansen describes:
. . . as a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel
through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic
fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep
ocean and Arctic drilling.
Jim Hansen is somebody who is worth listening to. He has been writing
about this now for more than 30 years,
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a posting by
Neil Wagner entitled ``Hansen Had It Right in 1981 Climate Report.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Hansen Had It Right in 1981 Climate Report
(By Neil Wagner)
A recently rediscovered 1981 paper, written by NASA
atmospheric physicist James Hansen and others, has been
analyzed and found to be impressively accurate about the
course of climate change since its publication.
The 10-page paper (available at this link), which was
published in the journal Science, had been overlooked for
decades when researchers Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Rein
Haarsma from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
uncovered it and began scouring its contents.
The paper's impressive prognostication is the best kind of
vindication for Hansen, who has suffered more than his share
of the slings and arrows from climate deniers in the media,
such as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Andrew Breitbart. He's
also taken hits from ``climate confusionist'' Physicist
Freeman Dyson, and has charged that the Bush administration
tried to silence his warnings about global warming's urgency.
Deniers of climate change often look for boogeymen in their
attempts to disprove the phenomenon's existence. As a means
of putting a face on the ``global warming hoax,'' an
individual is often singled out for attack. In his new book,
The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, scientist Michael E.
Mann calls this technique the Serengeti Strategy, since the
technique is akin to lions singling out vulnerable prey from
a herd.
The links below provide current information about some of
the paper's projections: Atmospheric carbon increase,
Formation of drought prone regions, Sea level rise, Antarctic
ice erosion, Opening of the Northwest Passage.
The complex world of climate science rarely enjoys such
clear and simple validation. When such an opportunity
presents itself, we owe it to ourselves to make some noise
about it. Haarsma and van Oldenborgh's findings should be
shouted from the rooftops.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. He says:
A recently rediscovered 1981 paper, written by NASA
atmospheric physicist Jim Hansen and others, has been
analyzed and found to be impressively accurate about the
course of climate change since its publication.
The 10-page paper . . . which was published in the journal
Science, had been overlooked for decades when researchers
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Rein Haarsma from the Royal
Netherlands Meteorological Institute, uncovered it and began
scouring its contents.
The paper's impressive prognostication is the best kind of
vindication for Hansen, who has suffered more than his share
of the slings and arrows from climate deniers in the media .
. .
He concludes:
The complex world of climate science rarely enjoys such
clear and simple validation. When such opportunity presents
itself, we owe it to ourselves to make some noise about it.
With appreciation to Jim Hansen, how the actual science has borne him
out over the past 30 years, and with respect for the predictions he
makes, we should as soon as we can begin to address ourselves to this
problem.
Jim is not alone. An array of scientific organizations wrote us all a
letter back in October of 2009 whose conclusion is pretty clear and
stark in scientific language:
Observations throughout the world make it clear that
climate change is occurring and rigorous scientific research
demonstrates that the greenhouse gasses emitted by human
activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are
based on multiple independent lines of evidence and contrary
assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of
the vast body of peer reviewed science.
We act as if it is something new, but, in fact, it is not. The
determination that carbon dioxide would warm the planet as it increased
its concentration in the atmosphere was figured out around the time of
the American Civil War by an Irish scientist who worked in England
named John Tyndall. What Tyndall discovered we have proven to be true,
as since then we have dumped gigaton after gigaton of carbon into our
atmosphere, loading it up to the point now, as I said before, that we
are well outside the bounds that have protected our species for 800,000
years on this planet.
The scale of what 8,000 centuries means is perhaps best measured
against the time that scientists now believe man first began to engage
in agriculture, first started scratching the earth and putting seeds
into the ground. Before then, we were primarily hunter-gatherers,
leading a very primitive life. So we have gone from beginning to
scratch the earth and plant things to be, 10,000 years later, the
species we are. We lived within this bandwidth of 170 to 300 parts per
million for 8,000 centuries. To veer outside of it is significant and
hazardous.
I am delighted that Mr. Hansen, despite all the abuse that has been
heaped on him, continues his work. I hope the time comes when we start
to listen to the voice of what our planet is telling us, the voice of
what our scientists are telling us, the voice of what our children are
telling us, and not just the voice of what the lobbyists for the
polluting industries--particularly the oil and gas industries--are
telling us.
Frankly, the lobbyists for the polluting oil and gas industries are
not
[[Page S3075]]
telling us the truth. They are not telling us the truth. The truth is
becoming increasingly apparent, and the problem is that as time goes by
you can reach tipping points that are irrecoverable. It would be really
tragic for us to look back and think, if we had been able to act on
time, if we had listened on time to the signals of our Earth, our
planet, the signals that are plainly in our face, we could have made a
world that was better and safer for our children. But, instead, in our
folly, in our greed, in our willingness to listen to the falsehoods of
these polluters, we shot past that point, and there is no way to
recover it now.
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