[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 114 (Monday, July 30, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5631-S5642]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CYBERSECURITY ACT OF 2012--MOTION TO PROCEED
Recognition of the Majority Leader
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.
Schedule
Mr. REID. Mr. President, we are on the motion to proceed to S. 3414,
which is the cybersecurity bill. This is postcloture. At 4:30 p.m., the
Senate will proceed to executive session to vote on the nomination of
Robert Bacharach, of Oklahoma, to be a U.S. circuit judge for the Tenth
Circuit. This likely will be our last vote on a circuit judge for this
Congress. I hope we can be successful. This is a person whom I will
talk about a little bit, and he is certainly well qualified. He came
out of committee unanimously.
At 5:30 p.m., today, there will be a cloture vote on the Bacharach
nomination. If cloture is not invoked on the Bacharach nomination, the
Senate will resume legislative session and begin consideration of the
cybersecurity bill following the vote.
Measure Placed on the Calendar--H.R. 6082
I am told H.R. 6082 is at the desk and due for a second reading.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the bill by
title.
The assistant bill clerk read as follows:
A bill (H.R. 6082) to officially replace, within the 60-day
Congressional review period under the Outer Continental Shelf
Lands Act, President Obama's Proposed Final Outer Continental
Shelf Oil & Gas Leasing Program (2012-2017) with a
congressional plan that will conduct additional oil and
natural gas lease sales to promote offshore energy
development, job creation, and increased domestic energy
production to ensure a more secure energy future in the
United States, and for other purposes.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I object to any further proceedings with
regard to this bill.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Objection is heard. The bill will
be placed on the calendar.
Middle-Class Tax Cut
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I was glad to hear Speaker Boehner say last
week he will bring the Senate-passed middle-class tax cut to the House
floor for a vote. I heard again today he is going to hold to what he
said. I think that is very good.
Our struggling Nation is one vote away from avoiding the fiscal cliff
for middle-class families. Every Member of the House of Representatives
should have an opportunity to show where they stand: with millionaires
or the middle class. Members can support the Democrats' plan to cut
taxes for 98 percent of Americans while reducing the deficit by almost
$1 trillion or they can support the Republican plan to hand out more
tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, increasing taxes for 25
million American families struggling to put kids through college or
even food on the table.
The two approaches demonstrate a glaring difference in priorities.
There is another difference between the two plans. The Democrats'
proposal is the only one with a chance of becoming law. President Obama
said he would sign it tomorrow. What he will not do is sign into law
any more wasteful giveaways to the wealthiest 2 percent.
The Senate has defeated the Republican proposal in a bipartisan vote,
so it is simply a waste of time for House Republicans to continue to
pursue their middle-class tax hike. House Republicans should stop
holding the middle class hostage to extract more tax cuts for the
richest of the rich. They
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should pass our middle-class tax cut now. American families cannot
afford to wait until the last moment to find out how their bottom line
will look come January 1. People are sitting around their kitchen
tables now trying to figure out whether they can afford to buy a home
or rent a home, should they send their kids to college or trade school
or should they or can they retire? Republicans shouldn't force 114
million families to guess whether they will have $1,600 less to spend
or save next year. They certainly need to do something and do it now,
and one simple vote can give them that certainty.
Mr. President, cybersecurity is basically a new word. Today, the
Senate also continues to work to address this problem. This is a
problem that national security experts call the most urgent threat to
our country; that is, weakness in our defense against cybersecurity.
Cyber terrorism could cripple the computer networks that control our
electrical grid, water supplies, sewers, nuclear plants, energy
pipelines, transportation networks, communications equipment, and
financial systems, to name a few. GEN Martin Dempsey, chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: ``A cyber attack could stop this society
in its tracks.'' Cyber espionage does not just threaten our national
security, it threatens our economic security as well. Hackers have
already attacked one of the most important businesses we have in
America today, the Nasdaq stock exchange. Major corporations are under
attack every day, spending millions and millions of dollars to protect
against cyber attacks. These attacks cost our economy billions of
dollars a year and thousands of jobs.
GEN James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, said Chinese
cyber theft of American intellectual property is ``the greatest
pillaging of wealth in history.''
``That's our future disappearing in front of us,'' added GEN Keith
Alexander, Director of the National Security Administration.
In a report released last year, the American Chamber of Commerce said
the government and private sector should work together to develop
incentives for businesses to voluntarily act to protect our Nation's
critical infrastructure. The legislation before this body today does
exactly that. It establishes a public-private partnership to make our
Nation safer and protect American jobs. I hope the Chamber will join in
our efforts to pass this important legislation.
I personally believe this bill could go further to address the
critical infrastructure, such as the networks operating our electrical
grid, our water supply, and other life-sustaining systems. It is a
tremendously important first step.
I applaud Senators Lieberman, Collins, Feinstein, and Rockefeller for
their work on this legislation. The bill managers are compiling a list
of relevant amendments for consideration. I hope we can cooperate to
work through the list and pass this legislation this week. We can't
afford to fail to address what experts have called the greatest
security challenge since the dawn of the nuclear age.
Bacharach Nomination
I said I would talk a little bit about Judge Bacharach, and I intend
to do that now.
Today, the Senate will vote on whether to end a filibuster of Judge
Robert Bacharach, a nominee from Oklahoma to the Tenth Circuit Court of
Appeals. By any measure, this man is the type of noncontroversial
nominee the Senate would routinely confirm with broad bipartisan
support. He was reported out of the Judiciary Committee by voice vote.
Everybody said he is a good guy. He has the support of two Republican
Senators from his State of Oklahoma. Senator Coburn, the junior Senator
from Oklahoma, said Friday that Judge Bacharach is a stellar candidate
and ought to get through.
Yet Republicans have signaled they are going to block his nomination.
If they hold up this consensus candidate, it will be the first time an
appeals court nominee with this bipartisan support has ever been
filibustered on the floor.
Why should we ever be surprised? We have already had 85 filibusters,
so we can add another one to it. I hope they don't filibuster this good
man. I have already said this would be our last circuit court judge. It
is too bad that is the case.
If Senator Coburn and Senator Inhofe broadly support this qualified
nomination, blatant partisanship will be to blame. Senator Coburn said
Judge Bacharach is ``an awfully good candidate caught in election-year
politics.''
Will the Chair announce the business of the day.
Reservation of Leader Time
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the
leadership time is reserved.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Higher Education
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, 2 years ago, not long after I became
chairman of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Committee, I made the decision to undertake an investigation of the
for-profit sector of higher education.
My reason for doing so was compelling: Congress had just finished
making huge new investments in the Pell grant program; meanwhile,
enrollment in for-profit colleges had increased 225 percent over the
previous 10 years compared to 31 percent for the rest of higher
education.
So this is what we were looking at, as shown on this chart. The
enrollment in the for-profit sector kept going up, and finally, in
2006, it took a huge increase--up from 765,000 in 2001 to 2.5 million,
almost, in 2010. So while students at for-profit colleges made up
between 10 and 13 percent of all the students, for-profit colleges now
were receiving almost 25 percent of all student loans and Pell grants.
Meanwhile, troubling reports began to surface: prospective students
being lied to by aggressive recruiters; other recruiters showing up at
wounded warrior facilities and homeless shelters; students saddled with
a mountain of debt, unable to find jobs.
Two years later, our investigation is complete. The committee has
held 6 hearings, issued 30 document requests, compiled data from
multiple agencies, interviewed many former students and employees, and
compiled a fact-based authoritative public record.
Earlier today, we announced the release of our final report called
``For-Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal
Investment and Ensure Student Success.''
This report provides a detailed explanation of how Congress has
failed to properly monitor student outcomes in this sector of higher
education or to safeguard the enormous investment taxpayers are making.
As this next chart shows, Pell grants going to the for-profit sector
have grown from $2.5 billion to $8.8 billion, in just 5 years. Again,
this is what we are looking at. Just think, that we had to do
something; and look at this: $2.5 billion, up to $8.8 billion, in 5
years. These are Pell grants. As I said, about 10 percent of the
students, 25 percent of all the Pell grants. This was twice as fast as
anything else in higher education.
As the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds Pell
grants, we work very hard to make sure Pell grants keep up, that we
increase them. So it was distressing and outrageous to learn that a
disproportionate share of this Federal investment is going to schools
that are raking in big profits but failing to educate our students.
I will now put up another chart.
You have to ask the question: Has the American taxpayer gotten an
acceptable return on this huge investment in students attending school
in the for-profit sector? The answer is a resounding no.
More than half of the students who enrolled in 2008 and 2009 had
withdrawn by 2010. At many of them, as the chart shows, the withdrawal
rate was 67 percent, as shown here for Ashford University.
What this means is, for students who signed up at one of these
schools and
[[Page S5633]]
got a loan, got a Pell grant, 1 year later 50 percent of them were not
there. It was as high as 67 percent of students at Bridgepoint, Ashford
University, who were not there.
So you say: Well, what happened to the money? Guess what. Bridgepoint
got the Pell grant. Bridgepoint got the Stafford loan. The student
dropped out, and the student has the debt.
The student has the debt, and the student has nothing to show for it:
no appreciable skill, no diploma, nothing. In fact, they are worse off
than when they started because now they have a huge debt hanging around
their neck. I just want to say that in this report, what we will find
is overwhelming documentation of exorbitant tuition, unsavory
recruiting practices, abysmal student outcomes, taxpayer dollars spent
excessively on marketing and pocketed as profits, and regulatory
evasion--regulatory evasion and manipulation.
I will have more to say about that later. Again, these practices are
not the exception, they are the norm. They are systemic throughout the
industry. There are, of course, individual exceptions. Again, there are
real differences among the various for-profit colleges. That is why we
took profiles of 30 different companies. We took 15 that were publicly
owned, investor owned, and we took 15 that are more private. We took
some from the biggest to the smallest so we would have a broad picture
of what was happening in this industry.
Now, again, compared to the industry overall, some for-profit
colleges are doing a better job for their students. I would mention
Strayer, Walden, National American University, and American Public
University--all private, for-profit schools doing a much better job for
their students.
There are also for-profit colleges that have had serious
shortcomings. But they are beginning to make some changes. They are now
open to new thinking about how to improve student outcomes. I would
include in this list Kaplan, DeVry, and Apollo, which is basically the
University of Phoenix. The bottom line is that a large share of the $32
billion that taxpayers invested in these schools in 2010 was wasted. We
cannot allow this to continue.
Why? Because 73 percent of undergraduate students in this country are
nontraditional students. For example, they are holding down jobs, they
are older, perhaps they have family responsibilities, come from maybe
low-income communities, and they may be the first in their family to
attend college. Our Nation's existing network of public and not-for-
profit colleges and community colleges cannot meet the demand for
higher education or meet President Obama's goal of producing more
college graduates without increasing the number of Americans who spend
at least some time in higher education. We need for-profit schools to
offer these students more than a path to enrollment. We need them to
offer students a path to success and graduation.
We uncovered two overall problems with the status quo in for-profit
higher education. One, billions of taxpayer dollars are being diverted
from the educational activities they were intended to finance; and,
two, taxpayer dollars are being used to do real lasting harm to the
students these colleges enroll.
Again, think about it. In just the 1 year we examined, more than half
a million students enrolled in for-profit colleges and then quit.
Almost every one of those dropouts left school worse off than when they
began, with no tangible economic benefit, but saddled with debt that
cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, far less able now to continue their
higher education in the future because they will have defaulted on
those loans. They will not be able to get Federal loans, and they will
not get any more Pell grants.
So we have to ask why is this happening? One of the reasons is that
the tuition at for-profit colleges is grossly out of line with the cost
of comparable programs at public and nonprofit institutions and fail to
reflect the often dubious value of a degree from a for-profit. As this
chart shows, this is average, from a public college in yellow, and the
purple is for-profit colleges.
For an average certificate program, public schools, $4,249--this is
tuition. At a for-profit, $19,806; for an average associate degree, 2
years, $8,000 in public schools; that would be our community colleges
and others, $34,988--almost $35,000 at a for-profit school. For a
bachelor's degree, $52,000 in public schools; $62,000 in the for-profit
schools. It costs 20 percent more for an online degree from Ashford
University than a degree from the University of Michigan.
Now, since these schools do not have bricks and mortar, they do not
have to pay heating bills and cooling bills and upkeep of dorms and all
of that kind of stuff, one would think they could offer these courses
much cheaper than what they are doing. That is not the case. They are
much more expensive.
So why doesn't this lower overhead translate into lower tuition? We
will put up the next chart. The answer is the efficiencies of online
education are not passed on to students. Instead, those lower costs of
delivery go straight to profits, marketing, and executive salaries.
Tuition is set primarily based on maximizing revenue from Federal
taxpayer dollars and on what executives think the market will bear.
That is sort of what this chart shows. This red line is the average
available Federal aid to a student. This would be Stafford loans and
Pell grants. This is average, $13,205. When we examined all of the
private schools--this is just a representative sample--they are all
just above that line. In fact, we have internal documents from many of
these schools, from their executives, saying they are going to set
their tuition in order to make sure they can maximize access to those
Federal dollars.
Now, there are exceptions. I wanted to put one in there. American
Public Institute, as I said earlier, they are way down here. They made
a profit, they are profitable, and they provide a good service. They
are not pegging their tuition costs at just what they can maximize. So
there are examples out there, but the vast majority set it just at what
the market will bear and how they can maximize their Federal dollars.
How much are these Federal dollars? About 83 percent. So I think
another feature of the for-profit schools is their almost total
reliance on taxpayer money. They say they are for-profit, but it is not
like a for-profit for a private business that is competing in selling
cars or washing machines or refrigerators or maybe some other kind of a
service where one can pick and choose. About 83 percent--this is
military, 3.8 percent, and 79.3 percent is Federal student aid dollars;
83 percent comes directly from the taxpayers of this country.
So if for-profit colleges charge exorbitant tuition and often provide
an inferior education while experiencing sky-high dropout rates, how
are they able to recruit a steady stream of new students? The answer is
that for-profit colleges are what I would call a marketing machine.
They spend 42.1 percent of their revenues on marketing, recruiting, and
profit. Yet they only spend 17 percent of revenues on actual
instruction.
By comparison, the University of North Carolina System spends less
than 2 percent of its budget on marketing--2 percent. What we see is 42
percent--42 percent on marketing and profits; 17 percent on student
instruction. This is interesting: 40.7 percent all other spending. I
would point out herein are executive salaries, executive compensation,
bonuses paid to recruiters, and on and on and on. Only 17 percent for
instruction.
Most colleges, when they talk about marketing, it is down around 2 or
3 percent. I will bet the University of Virginia is probably down
there. I do not know. We may have that documentation. I know the
University of Iowa System is down around that 2- to 3-percent total for
marketing. You have seen their ads, different things for public
universities, nonprofit universities, but nothing close to 42 percent.
This is what leads to what we call the ``churn.'' Students come in,
they get recruited, they get their Pell grants, they get their loans,
the school gets the money, a year later the student drops out, and so
the marketers go out and bring in more students. So we get this
tremendous churn in the student body at these for-profit schools.
Perhaps most critical, these institutions fail to provide adequate
student support services, as I said. This is a critical finding of our
report.
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Despite knowingly enrolling some of the most at-risk students in our
country, many of these schools do not provide these students with the
services common sense tells us they need to succeed. How many times
have we heard from the for-profit industry: Yes, we are different
because we are enrolling students who do not go to our normal colleges,
do not go to the University of Iowa, to the University of Virginia.
These are nontraditional students. Many of them are poor. That is true,
but that is who they are recruiting.
Why are they recruiting them? To get the most Pell grants and the
most Stafford student loans. That is what the college gets.
Now, if they are doing that, then they need to provide mentoring,
tutoring, some kind of alumni network, job partnerships, and genuine
career counseling. Two of the largest for-profit companies provide no
career counseling or placement to students whatsoever. Yet these are
the very students who need the most help when they go to college.
Students from upper income families who go to good schools, they do not
need that. English language learners, Latinos, African-American
students, those we intuitively know need more education. Maybe they
have lost a job and now they realize: I have to do something. I have to
get a better education. These marketers go after them. This is what our
report found.
If you look at the enrollment in these schools, as I said, it has
gone up. The enrollment has gone up. Look at the recruiters. From 2007
to 2010, we went from a little over 20,000 to 35,202 recruiters at 24
of these companies.
Down here, the red line, these are the career services. These are the
people who counsel and mentor and tutor and help with career guidance.
It has not gone up a bit. Huge increase in students, big increase in
recruiters, and almost no increase at all in career counselors. This is
a failure, an abject failure.
This report is the first comprehensive fact-based analysis of this
industry. Earlier today I saw that the association for for-profit
institutions called this a flawed process. As near as I can understand
their critique, the process was flawed because it was about them, but
that is what congressional oversight is about.
This was not an overnight thing. This is what we produced: four huge
volumes, data-driven documentation, documentation on what is happening
in this industry. This is the summary. This holds most of what we
found. These three will have all of the backup documentation that is
needed to support the findings we have.
We have before us a factual record that we have never had before. The
Department of Education did not have it. No one has had it before. This
can guide us as we move toward reauthorization of the Higher Education
Act next year. Again, during the reauthorization we will also be
looking at traditional higher education.
We have already held two hearings on college affordability. There is
no question that we need to find a way to improve outcomes not just at
for-profit colleges but also at low-cost community colleges. That said,
the fact is there are problems that are unique--unique to the for-
profit sector that will require some unique solutions.
We have seen some progress on this front, as I said. I have met with
some of them. They have expressed a determination to reform and to do
right by their students. In addition, the Department of Education took
steps that are beginning to have real impacts.
In April, President Obama issued an Executive order that will help to
ensure our veterans are not the subject of deceptive and misleading
recruiting, and that will help solders and veterans to make better
decisions about where to use their GI bill dollars.
Last month, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway led a 20-State
attorney general settlement with QuinStreet, one of the companies
engaged in some of the most egregiously misleading recruiting efforts
targeted at veterans. But these are not enough. As I said, there is an
important role for for-profit colleges in our increasingly knowledge-
based economy.
A solid record of student success is in the national interest. The
challenge is to require the companies to be as focused on student
success as they are on financial success.
Now, there are four things we need to do.
First, we need to know how every student enrolled in college is
doing, not just first-time, full-time students. This is a flaw in our
system. The Department of Education only tracks first-time, full-time
students. Most of the students who go to our for-profit schools are not
first-time, full-time students, they are part-time students. So what we
need to do is that for any student who gets a Pell grant and/or
Stafford loan, we need to know how that student is doing and how they
do later on.
Second, we need to be very clear that the Federal education money has
to be spent on education, not advertising, recruiting, or lobbying.
That is just common sense. I challenge anyone to stand up here and say:
No, they should use taxpayer dollars to lobby, to advertise, or to pay
a recruiter. No. We have to be very clear--they can spend it on
education but not on advertising, recruiting or lobbying.
Third, we need to make sure these schools are providing at least a
basic level of student services that would give the at-risk students
they enroll a fair shot at completing. If there is one thing that
distinguishes good for-profit schools from the bad ones, this is it: a
genuine commitment to providing a network of student support--
mentoring, tutoring, employer partnerships, genuine career counseling--
not just in the beginning but all the way through the program. The good
schools that are doing that are turning out quality products.
Fourth, we have to think seriously about outcome-based thresholds,
particularly for colleges that get a very high proportion of their
revenue from taxpayers. And we need to build on the gainful employment
rule to ensure that students are not being loaded up with debt they
cannot repay.
I am confident the record we are laying out today will make some of
these reforms inevitable as we move forward. I wish to also thank some
of my colleagues and to note that work has already begun on
legislation.
Senator Hagan is sponsoring a bill to ban the use of Federal
financial aid dollars for marketing.
Senators Murray and Webb are sponsoring comprehensive legislation to
better protect servicemembers and veterans using the post-9/11 GI bill.
Senator Lautenberg is sponsoring a bill to provide every veteran who
receives education aid from the Department of Veterans Affairs with
counseling to help make the right choices and to create a system to
track veterans' complaints of waste, fraud, and abuse by these for-
profit schools.
Senators Carper and Durbin are sponsoring bills to address the
absurdity of not counting all Federal money in the restriction on how
much money these schools can receive.
One of the things we picked up on as we started this investigation
was the tremendous focus these for-profits were now making on veterans,
especially Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, and Active-Duty personnel.
The reason for that is because we have a 90-10 rule that says for-
profit schools can only get 90 percent of their money from the Federal
Government. The other 10 percent has to come from someplace else--
private sources. But that doesn't count military. If a for-profit
school bumps up on the 90-10 level, it cannot go out and recruit any
more people, but if it recruits one military person, it can get nine
more nonmilitary. So that pays for them to go after the military. Well,
Senators Carper and Durbin have a bill in to stop that.
Senator Durbin is also a leader on the issue of private student loans
and bankruptcy, as well as a great partner in helping to draw attention
to the experiences of students who have attended these schools.
I also thank other members of the HELP Committee who have been active
participants at hearings, including Senators Franken, Merkley, and
Blumenthal.
I have also received a great deal of support and encouragement along
the way from organizations dedicated to ensuring that students have a
genuine path to success in higher education. In particular, I thank the
Council for Opportunity in Education, the Education Trust, the
Leadership Council on Civil Rights, the Institute for College Access
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and Success, Campus Progress, and the National Association for College
Admissions Counseling. All of them have been involved in helping us
over the last couple of years to get the data we needed.
On behalf of servicemembers and veterans, we have had tremendous
assistance from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Association, the
Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Military Officers Association of America,
Blue Star Families, the Vietnam Veterans Association, Student Veterans
of America, the American Legion, VetJobs, VetsFirst, Paralyzed Veterans
of America, the National Association for Black Veterans, the National
Guard Association, the Air Force Sergeants Association, the Association
of the United States Navy, Wounded Warriors, and Veterans for Common
Sense. All of them have been involved. We have gone to them, and they
have been so forthcoming and helpful, helping our staff and me to
understand what is happening.
I also thank the witnesses at our hearings, several of whom have been
subjected to unwarranted and undeserved criticism. In particular, I
thank Steve Eisman, who provided the committee with unique expertise
and insights about the industry in a way that helped policymakers
understand that these companies were much more than just colleges. As
everyone in this body knows, people with a financial stake in an
industry testify before Congress every day and, like Mr. Eisman,
provide some of the most insightful and accurate information we
receive.
I also thank former Westwood employee Joshua Pruyn, who provided a
real-world view of working as a for-profit recruiter. He was willing to
come forward for the sole purpose of shedding light on this industry,
and the criticism he has sustained speaks poorly of those who claim to
believe in the valuable role whistleblowers play.
I thank my staff, who have pursued this investigation tirelessly and
tenaciously.
I thank my oversight team and my HELP Committee, who spearheaded the
investigation, analyzed the numbers, calculated all of the outcomes,
interviewed students and employees, reviewed thousands of pages of
documents, and prepared this final report. That oversight team was led
by Beth Stein. She was assisted throughout six hearings, three previous
reports, many spreadsheets, charts, and megabytes of documents by
Elizabeth Baylor and Ryan McCord. More recently, they were joined by
Kia Hamadanchy and Bryan Boroughs, who have dedicated many long hours
to the research, writing, and publication of this report.
I also owe a tremendous thanks to several staffers who are no longer
with the committee but played a critical role in this investigation:
Beth Little, Luke Swarthout, and Robin Juliano.
I also thank my former and current HELP Committee staff directors,
Dan Smith and Pam Smith, who have ably guided this sometimes
challenging effort.
Our communications staffers have patiently explained the 90-10 rule,
the cohort default rate, and the fact that we don't actually know how
veterans attending for-profit schools are doing to hundreds of
reporters throughout the country. I thank Justine Sessions, Kate
Frischmann, and Liz Donovan.
I also thank my education policy staffers who joined this effort more
recently but who will be carrying us forward in our legislative reform
efforts: Mildred Otero, Spiros Protopsaltis, and Libby Masiuk, as well
as Carrie Wofford, who has played a tremendous role in outreach to
groups across the country and has been a particular advocate on behalf
of veterans impacted by the practices of the for-profit colleges.
I also thank our tremendous group of law clerks, who dedicated many
hours to the less glamorous tasks of getting this put together: Abre
Connor, Joel Murray, Lauren Scott, David Krem, Ashley Waddell, Lindsey
Daughtry, Zach Mason, Sophie Kasimow, and Brittany Clement.
A special thank-you goes to the law clerks who helped write and
prepare the report: Lucy Stein, Nicholas Wunder, Shauna Agean, Keagan
Buchanan, and Douglas Dorando, and also Andrea Jarcho, who has juggled
multiple roles and worn multiple hats.
For their assistance along the way, I also thank Paul Edenfield,
Madeline Daniels, Alyssa Davis, and also Dan Goldberg for his always-
sound analysis and advice.
Finally, I thank Denise Lowrey and Carolyn Bolden, on the committee
staff, who spent many hours making the report as error-free as humanly
possible.
Today we bring the HELP Committee investigation of for-profit
colleges to a close, but the record we have laid out leaves much to be
done, and I look forward to continuing to work with my Senate
colleagues to help for-profit colleges realize their potential as a
genuinely transformative force in higher education.
With that, I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Vermont.
Global Warming
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, the Senator from Oklahoma, Jim Inhofe, is
a friend of mine. While we have strong philosophical and political
differences, we have had a very positive personal relationship since I
entered the Senate 5\1/2\ years ago. I like Senator Inhofe, and on
occasion, despite our political differences, we have been able to work
together as members of the Environment and Public Works Committee, on
which we both sit. I especially applaud the Senator for his strong
efforts on the recently passed Transportation bill in which he led the
effort in getting his fellow Republicans to move forward on the vitally
important issue of rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure--in this
case, roads and bridges.
Unfortunately, Senator Inhofe has some very radical views regarding
global warming. I believe he is dead wrong and dangerously wrong on
this issue. Not only is he wrong, but because he is the leading
Republican on the Environment Committee, his views hold great influence
over other Republicans in the Senate, in the House, and across the
country. Because many Republicans follow Senator Inhofe's lead, it
means we are making very little progress in Congress in combating what
most of the scientific community sees is a global environmental crisis.
I am on the floor today to ask Senator Inhofe to rethink his views on
this enormously important issue and to ask my Republican colleagues to
do the same. I am asking them to join the overwhelming majority of
scientists who have studied and written about this issue in
understanding that, one, global warming is real; two, global warming is
significantly caused by human activity; three, global warming is
already causing massive and costly destruction to the United States and
around the world, and it will only get worse in years to come.
I am also asking Senator Inhofe and my Republican colleagues to
understand that the United States, with all of our knowledge, all of
our expertise, and all of our technology, can and must lead the rest of
the world, which must follow our effort in cutting back on carbon
emissions and reverse global warming, and to understand that when we do
this--when we transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and
enter into energy efficiency and sustainable energy--when we do that
over a period of years, we can create millions of good-paying jobs.
What I want to do this afternoon is nothing more than to simply quote
some of the statements and assertions Senator Inhofe has made and to
express to you why he is dead wrong and dangerously wrong on this
vitally important issue.
Mr. President, on July 11--just 2\1/2\ weeks ago--Senator Inhofe
spoke on this floor reiterating his longstanding views on global
warming. What he said during that speech is pretty much what he has
been saying for years. I read that speech, and I want to use this
opportunity to comment on it. Specifically, I want to discuss a number
of observations in which Senator Inhofe is completely wrong.
First and foremost, Senator Inhofe tells us in his speech that global
warming science is wrong. First and foremost, Senator Inhofe tells us
in his speech that global warming science is wrong. Mr. Inhofe states,
on page S4860 of the Congressional Record from July 11--and I will do
my best to quote him as accurately as I possibly can--the following
about global warming:
In 2003 . . . I started hearing from a lot of the real
scientists that it was a hoax.
And Senator Inhofe continued, again from July 11, 2012:
It is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American
people.
[[Page S5636]]
Let me repeat again what Senator Inhofe said just a few weeks ago on
the floor of the U.S. Senate.
[Global warming] . . . is the greatest hoax ever
perpetrated on the American people.
In fact, the title of Senator Inhofe's new book--which he was kind
enough to give me a copy of--is ``The Greatest Hoax.'' That is the
title of his book.
Well, let's examine that assertion on the part of Senator Inhofe. The
United States Global Change Research Program, which was supported and
expanded by President George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, and
which includes scientists at NASA, EPA, the Department of Defense, the
Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the State
Department, the Department of Health, the Departments of
Transportation, Commerce, and Interior, have said:
Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.
Senator Inhofe has said global warming is a hoax, but the Global
Change Research Program, which brings together many departments of the
U.S. Government, says:
Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.
Our National Academy of Sciences joined with academies in Brazil,
Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia,
South Africa, and the United Kingdom. They all came together and said:
The need for urgent action to address climate change is now
indisputable.
It is now indisputable. Senator Inhofe says global warming is a hoax;
academies of science all over the world state the need for urgent
action to address climate change is now indisputable.
Eighteen scientific professional societies, including the American
Geophysical Union, the American Chemical Society, and others say:
Climate change is occurring and rigorous scientific
research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by
human activities are the primary driver.
That is a quote from 18 scientific professional societies. Senator
Inhofe says global warming is a hoax, but 18 scientific professional
societies say climate change is occurring and rigorous scientific
research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human
activities are the primary driver.
Even noted climate skeptic Richard Muller, who, interestingly enough,
Senator Inhofe has cited in his own speeches over the years, wrote in
the Wall Street Journal last year that his latest research proved
``global warming is real.'' More to the point, in an op-ed published 2
days ago, Richard Muller, who in the past was cited by Senator Inhofe
as a global warming skeptic, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times
entitled ``The Conversion of a Climate Change Skeptic.''
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
the op-ed I have just referred to.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so
ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, this is how Richard A. Muller--again, the
scientist who was often quoted by Senator Inhofe--began his op-ed 2
days ago in the New York Times. This is the quote from Richard A.
Muller.
Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago, I identified
problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw
doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year,
following an intensive research effort involving a dozen
scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that
the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm
now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the
cause.
And Dr. Muller continues:
My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of
careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface
Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter
Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of
the earth's land has risen by 2\1/2\ degrees Fahrenheit over
the past 250 years, including an increase of 1\1/2\ degrees
over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely
that essentially all of this increase results from the human
emission of greenhouse gases.
That was Dr. Richard Muller from an op-ed in the New York Times on
July 28, 2012.
I am not going to tell you that every single serious scientist in the
world agrees with Dr. Muller or agrees with me or agrees with the vast
majority of scientists that global warming is real and primarily caused
by human activity. But I will say that, according to the National
Academy of Sciences, approximately 98 percent of active climate
scientists who published peer-reviewed papers agree with the assertion
that global warming is occurring and human activity is a significant
driver of it--not 100 percent but 98 percent.
When we talk about scientists publishing with peer review, what we
are saying is their papers and research were reviewed and examined by
other expert scientists in their field. That is the great thing about
science and peer review. The process invites criticism and invites
other scientists to prove your idea is wrong. When we say 98 percent of
active climate scientists agree about global warming, we are talking
about scientists whose work has been examined critically and found to
be well-documented and correct by their peers in the field.
This is an important point to be made. There may well be scientists
out there who may have different views. But by and large they have not
written peer-reviewed literature which has been examined by other
experts in that field. So the bottom line here--and the important
bottom line--is when Senator Jim Inhofe says global warming is a hoax,
he is dead wrong according to the overwhelming majority of scientists
who have studied this issue.
I hope very much--and I mean this sincerely, because this is an
enormously important issue--that Senator Inhofe will rethink his
position, and those Republicans who have followed Senator Inhofe's lead
will also rethink their position.
In July of 2010, in an interview with ABC News, Senator Inhofe said:
We're in a cycle now that all the scientists agree is going
into a cooling period.
Let me repeat that, because I don't want anyone to think I made a
mistake about what I said. July 2010, ABC News, quoting Senator Inhofe.
We're in a cycle now that all the scientists agree is going
into a cooling period.
On July 11, on the floor of the Senate, Senator Inhofe stated in his
remarks--and this is found on page S4860 of the Congressional Record. I
want everyone to make sure I am not misquoting Senator Inhofe. I would
not do that. From page S4860 of July 11, the Congressional Record:
. . . we went into a warming period that went up to the
turn of the century. Now it is actually going down into a
cooling period again . . .
That was Senator Inhofe, July 11, 2012. In other words, as I
understand it, Senator Inhofe is saying that since the year 2001 we are
in a cooling period. Unfortunately, Senator Inhofe's assertion that we
have entered a cooling period could not be more incorrect.
Let's look at what the scientific data shows us. The last decade was
not one where our temperature got cooler. It was, in fact, the very
opposite. According to NASA, the last decade was in fact the warmest on
record, using temperature records that date to the late 1800s. NASA's
data shows that 9 of the 10 warmest years on record occurred since
2000, when Senator Inhofe says we went into a ``cooling period.'' So
NASA says the last decade was the warmest on record, but Senator Inhofe
says we have gone into a cooling period.
But it is not just NASA making this finding. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration--NOAA--issued a report from 300 scientists
in 48 countries that confirms the last decade was the warmest on
record--the warmest on record at a time when Senator Inhofe tells us we
are going into a cooling period.
The World Meteorological Organization also confirms that the last
decade was the warmest on record, and they found the 13 warmest years
on record have all occurred since 1997.
So the American people and my Republican friends are going to have to
make a decision: Is Jim Inhofe right that we are entering into a
cooling period or is NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration correct in saying that the last decade was, in fact, the
warmest on record?
As my fellow Vermonter, Bill McKibben, recently pointed out, globally
we have seen 327 consecutive months where the temperature exceeded the
global average for the 20th century. Senator Inhofe tells us the world
is getting cooler, but science shows us we have just experienced the
warmest
[[Page S5637]]
decade on record. Somebody is right and somebody is wrong, and I do not
believe Senator Inhofe is right.
Senator Inhofe stated on July 11, 2012, page S. 4862 of the
Congressional Record:
One thing we did find out when we got a report from several
universities, including MIT, was that the cost of this, if we
were to pass any of the bills, would have been between $300
billion and $400 billion a year.
This is not the first time Senator Inhofe has asserted that the cost
of cutting greenhouse gas emissions is $300 billion to $400 billion a
year. In an interview with Fox News on February 11, 2000, Senator
Inhofe was asked by the Fox anchor about the cost of global warming
legislation, and he responded:
It would cost between $300 billion and $400 billion a year.
Senator Inhofe gets his estimates by looking at worst-case scenarios
from an out-of-date report that looked at legislation from 2007. The
truth is, however, more recent research proves we can take strong
action to cut emissions while at the same time growing our economy and
saving Americans substantial sums of money on their energy bills.
For example, a 2009 study from McKinsey consulting firm found that
the United States can meet our 2020 targets for greenhouse gas emission
reductions just through cost-effective energy efficiency efforts, with
a net savings for American consumers of $700 billion. A 2010 report
from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy found that by
doing things nationally, many States--including the State of Vermont,
my own State--are doing on energy efficiency already, we could achieve
substantial benefits. The study found by investing aggressively in
energy efficiency in our buildings, in our schools, in our factories,
and in our transportation systems we would create over 370,000 net new
jobs by 2020, boost our rate of economic growth and GDP, and save
households significant sums of money on their energy bills--all while
vastly exceeding our 2020 target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions 17
percent from 2005 levels.
In this scenario, we could cut emissions over 30 percent by 2020 as
we create jobs and as millions of people save money on their energy
bills. To my mind, creating jobs, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and
saving money on people's fuel bills is a win-win-win situation.
In addition to the clear benefits from taking action, I want to point
out to Senator Inhofe the costs and risks if we do not take action, if
we do nothing. The alternative is we step back, we don't do anything,
and what happens?
Already, the extreme weather we have seen is impacting our Nation's
infrastructure. An interesting article appeared just a few days ago,
July 25, 2012, in the New York Times. It said the Nation's
infrastructure is being taxed to worrisome degrees by heat, drought,
and vicious storms. The article noted that on a single day in July, an
airplane got stuck in asphalt that softened due to 100-degree
temperatures, and a subway train derailed after heat caused a track to
bend. It also cited highways that are heating up and expanding beyond
their design limits, causing cracks and jarring bumps in the road. The
article mentioned how powerplants are having difficulty using their
regular cooling sources during operation because the water is now
excessively warm.
A power company executive with 38 years of experience was quoted as
saying:
We've got the storm of the century every year now, after
power was knocked out for 4.3 million people in 10 States
after the June derecho storm that raced from the Midwest to
the East Coast at near hurricane-force winds.
Interestingly, not generally noted as being terribly progressive, the
insurance industry has noted their costs for property damage from
increasingly extreme weather have already increased in the United
States from $3 billion a year in the 1980s to $20 billion a year today.
According to Mark Way, an official with Swiss Re, a large reinsurance
company:
A warming climate will only add to this trend of increasing
losses, which is why action is needed now.
A landmark study prepared for the British Government by Nicholas
Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, found that doing
nothing to reverse global warming could eventually shrink the global
economy by 20 percent. The Chairman of the National Intelligence
Council under President George W. Bush testified to Congress that
intelligence assessments indicated that global warming could worsen
existing problems, such as poverty, social tensions, environmental
degradation, ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions.
Climate change could threaten domestic stability in some States,
potentially contributing to conflict, particularly over access to
increasingly scarce water resources.
Unlike Senator Inhofe, most Americans are seeing the evidence of
global warming with their own eyes. I want to take some time to talk
about what we are seeing.
The Associated Press reported on July 3, 2012:
But since at least 1988, climate scientists have warned
that climate change would bring, in general, increased heat
waves, more droughts, more sudden downpours, more widespread
wildfires and worsening storms. In the United States, those
extremes are happening here and now.
So far this year, more than 2.1 million acres have burned
in wildfires, more than 113 million people in the U.S. were
in areas under extreme heat advisories last Friday, two-
thirds of the country is experiencing drought, and earlier in
June, deluges flooded Minnesota and Florida.
We saw extreme weather last year as well. In 2011, we had a record-
breaking 14 weather disasters in the United States that each caused
over $1 billion in damage. One of those was Hurricane Irene, which
caused devastating flooding and loss of life in the State of Vermont
and other States in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. According to FEMA:
Considered together, the federally declared disasters of
2011 presented crises all but unprecedented in their
frequency and scope. The 99 major disasters, 29 declared
emergencies, and 114 requests for fire management assistance
touched 48 out of 50 states.
In other words, 48 States had a federally declared disaster last
year.
Global average surface temperature has already increased 1.3 degrees
Fahrenheit since 1900, according to NOAA. The last 12 months is the
warmest 12-month period on record in the United States. Since January
1, 2012, cities and regions in the United States have set 40,000
records for warm temperatures, compared to just 6,000 for cold
temperatures, according to NOAA. In the 20th century we set warm and
cold temperature records at roughly a 1-to-1 ratio. In the 21st
century, that has changed 2 to 1 in favor of heat records, and this
year it has jumped to 7 to 1.
As the planet warms, we are seeing more extreme heat wave events.
Heat waves killed tens of thousands in Europe in 2003 and Russia in
2010, and a heat wave in Texas and Oklahoma caused severe drought and
wildfires in 2011. Global warming made these heat waves significantly
more likely, according to the latest science.
Leading climatologist James Hansen and several of his colleagues
published a report that said:
Extreme heat waves such as that in Texas and Oklahoma in
2011, and Moscow in 2010, were caused by global warming,
because their likelihood was negligible prior to the recent
rapid global warming.
Another study from German researchers published in the U.S. National
Academy of Sciences found an 80-percent likelihood that the Russian
heat wave in 2010 was attributable to global warming. And a study from
NOAA found the heat wave and drought in Texas in 2011 was 20 times more
likely to occur today than 50 years ago due to the warming of the
planet.
As I mentioned, this country is currently experiencing a devastating
drought. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated disaster
areas due to drought in 1,369 counties in 31 States this year. The
price of corn has increased 50 percent in the last 3 months, and
soybean prices are up 25 percent since June. This is because 78 percent
of the corn crop and 77 percent of soybean production is in drought-
affected areas.
This is not the first time we have seen devastating droughts spike
food prices in recent years. Severe drought in Russia in 2010 led that
country to ban exports of grain, which contributed to a near doubling
in wheat prices over a 2-month period in that year. The worst drought
in China in 60 years occurred last year in 2011, affecting 12 million
acres of wheat and contributing--along with floods in Australia
[[Page S5638]]
and the drought in Russia--to record food prices.
Some commentators cited the record food prices caused by these
extreme weather events as contributing to unrest. When food prices go
up, there is often instability in countries around the world--including
the Middle East and Africa.
Sea levels have already risen 7 inches globally, according to EPA. We
have seen during the last three summers record low levels of Arctic Sea
ice, and we know from NASA satellites that Antarctica is losing 24
cubic miles of ice every year. In Glacier National Park in this country
we had 150 glaciers when it was formed in 1910, but today only 25
remain. Some studies predict a sea level rise of 5 feet or more by the
end of this century. But even if sea levels rose 3 feet, cities such as
Miami, New Orleans, Charleston, SC, Oakland, CA, and others could find
themselves partially underwater.
The average annual acreage consumed by wildfires in the United States
more than doubled during the last decade compared with the previous
four decades. Last year in Texas wildfires destroyed 2,700 homes. This
year in Colorado--the most destructive wildfire in that State's
history--destroyed 350 homes. Wildfires in Colorado this year caused
tens of thousands to evacuate their homes. In New Mexico, we saw the
largest wildfire in that State's history this year burn more than
170,000 acres that broke the previous record which was set just last
year when a fire burned more than 150,000 acres.
Mr. President, last year floods along the Mississippi River caused $2
billion worth of damage. Floods in North Dakota displaced 11,000 people
from their homes. Record floods in Australia in 2011 caused its State
of Queensland to conduct the largest evacuation in its history. Floods
in Pakistan in 2010 killed 2,000 people and left one-fifth of that
nuclear-armed nation under water for weeks. That is the kind of
potentially destabilizing extreme weather events the folks at the
Department of Defense and the CIA worry about. Unfortunately, I could
go on and on. The bad news is if we do nothing, the science is clear
that temperatures will continue to increase, sea levels will continue
to rise, and extreme weather will become more frequent and more
devastating. The good news is--and it is very good news--that we now
have the technology, the knowledge, and the know-how to cut emissions
today through energy efficiency and through moving toward such
sustainable and renewable technologies as solar, wind, geothermal, and
biomass.
It is time for Congress to get serious about global warming and to
work to transform our energy system to sustainable energy, and that
starts by beginning to understand that global warming is real and that
if we do not address it now, it will only get worse and bring more
danger to this country and to our planet.
Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?
Mr. SANDERS. Yes.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the
conclusion of the remarks of my friend from Vermont, I be recognized as
in morning business for such time as I will consume.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I am glad to see my friend from Oklahoma
here on the floor. I want to conclude by reading a review of Senator
Inhofe's book, which is called ``The Greatest Hoax,'' by a gentleman
named J.C. Moore. This review by J.C. Moore was published in the Tulsa
World which is, I suspect, the largest newspaper in the State of
Oklahoma. J.C. Moore is a native Oklahoman--the same State Senator
Inhofe represents--and a Ph.D. who taught chemistry and physics and is
a member of the American Geophysical Union.
This is what Mr. Moore wrote: ``Inhofe claims he is winning in his
fight to debunk global warming.'' After discussing the scientific
consensus among climate scientists and major scientific institutions
all over the world, Moore writes:
Inhofe's greatest adversary is nature itself, as research
shows the climate is changing in response to human
activities. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is
increasing, the temperature of the Earth is rising, the
oceans are becoming more acidic, glaciers and polar ice caps
are melting, sea levels are rising, the probability of severe
weather events is increasing, and weather-related natural
disasters are becoming more frequent and more costly. It is
time we examine more closely who is actually winning by
ignoring science.
As I understand it, that is from a review of Senator Inhofe's book,
``The Greatest Hoax,'' by a gentleman named J.C. Moore in the Tulsa
World.
There is much more to be said on this issue because here on the floor
of the Senate we are saying virtually nothing. I might say that we look
pretty dumb to the rest of the world by ignoring what many scientists
believe is the major environmental crisis of our time which, if we
don't get a handle on, will have profound impacts on the well-being of
this country and countries throughout this world.
So I say to my friend Senator Inhofe--and he is my friend--I hope
very much the Senator will rethink his position. I hope those
Republicans who are following the Senator's lead will rethink their
position because nothing less than the future of our planet is at
stake.
Exhibit 1
[From the New York Times, July 28, 2012]
The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic
(By Richard A. Muller)
Call me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified
problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw
doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year,
following an intensive research effort involving a dozen
scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that
the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm
now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the
cause.
My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of
careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface
Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter
Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of
the earth's land has risen by two and a half degrees
Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of
one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years.
Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this
increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations
group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on
global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded
only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be
attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the
I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956
could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even
a substantial part of the more recent warming could be
natural.
Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical
methods developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert
Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature
much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised
by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our
results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior
groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available
temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from
poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations
and poor ones) and from human intervention and data
adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off).
In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially
troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions.
The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt
dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic
eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect
sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth's
surface for a few years. There are small, rapid variations
attributable to El Nino and other ocean currents such as the
Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the ``flattening''
of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not,
in our view, statistically significant. What has caused the
gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We
tried fitting the shape to simple math functions
(exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to
rising functions like world population. By far the best match
was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured
from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice.
Just as important, our record is long enough that we could
search for the fingerprint of solar variability, based on the
historical record of sunspots. That fingerprint is absent.
Although the I.P.C.C. allowed for the possibility that
variations in sunlight could have ended the ``Little Ice
Age,'' a period of cooling from the 14th century to about
1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of
the past 250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes.
This conclusion is, in retrospect, not too surprising; we've
learned from satellite measurements that solar activity
changes the brightness of the sun very little.
How definite is the attribution to humans? The carbon
dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we've
tried. Its
[[Page S5639]]
magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse
effect--fextra warming from trapped heat radiation. These
facts don't prove causality and they shouldn't end
skepticism, but they raise the bar: to be considered
seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at
least as well as carbon dioxide does. Adding methane, a
second greenhouse gas, to our analysis doesn't change the
results. Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large,
complex global climate models, the huge computer programs
that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and
adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the
close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature
rise and the known greenhouse gas increase.
It's a scientist's duty to be properly skeptical. I still
find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate
change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I've
analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism
about them hasn't changed.
Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming.
The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been
going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar
bears aren't dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan
glaciers aren't going to melt by 2035. And it's possible that
we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago,
during the ``Medieval Warm Period'' or ``Medieval Optimum,''
an interval of warm conditions known from historical records
and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm
spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by
cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to ``global''
warming is weaker than tenuous.
The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five
scientific papers now online at BerkeleyEarth.org. That site
also shows our chart of temperature from 1753 to the present,
with its clear fingerprint of volcanoes and carbon dioxide,
but containing no component that matches solar activity. Four
of our papers have undergone extensive scrutiny by the
scientific community, and the newest, a paper with the
analysis of the human component, is now posted, along with
the data and computer programs used. Such transparency is the
heart of the scientific method; if you find our conclusions
implausible, tell us of any errors of data or analysis.
What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions
increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect
the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one
and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if
the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid
economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the
last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds
one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could
take place in less than 20 years.
Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in
principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this
analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been
answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help
settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its
human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across
the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and
should be done.
With that, I am happy to yield the floor for my friend, Senator
Inhofe of Oklahoma.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, something my friend from
Vermont said a minute ago would surprise a lot of people, and that is
we are friends. It is kind of strange. People don't understand being
violently opposed to each other in this body and yet also being very
close friends. My friend from Vermont has a different philosophy than I
do. That is the nice thing about both the House and the Senate. We have
people with different philosophies who believe in different things.
Somewhere in the midst of this, the truth ultimately does come out most
of the time. I think we would probably agree with that.
One thing I like about my friend from Vermont is he really believes
and is willing to stand up and fight for something he believes. I am
not going to suggest there are hypocrites in this body. I wouldn't say
that at all. When we look around the political scene, we see people who
somehow might ingratiate a block of people who are wanting support.
Maybe it is for the next election, maybe it is for a cause. That is not
the case with my friend from Vermont. He believes in his heart
everything he says.
Sometimes I talk to young people who come in as interns. I tell them
there are varied philosophies in the Senate and in the House. We have
extreme liberals who believe our country should have a greater
involvement in the decisions we make. We have conservatives, like I am,
who believe we have too much government in our lives as it is. It is a
basic difference. But I say to them, even though I am on the
conservative side, I would rather someone be a far outspoken liberal
extremist than be in the mushy middle and not stand for anything. My
friend from Vermont is not in the mushy middle. He stands for
something.
It was not too long ago that another friend in his office, his press
secretary--we are very close friends--said something, and I don't want
to misquote him. He said, My boss would like to have a copy of your
book. I said, Not only will I give him a copy, but I will autograph it
for him, but with one commitment, and that is he has to read it. He
kept that commitment; I can tell by the things he said.
Let me go over a few things that were said, and I think it is
interesting. This Dr. Richard Muller--I can't recall too much about
him, but I do know he was listed among scientists who were skeptics.
For the benefit of people who may not know the terminology, I refer to
an alarmist as someone who thinks there is great alarm because
something is happening and the end of the world is coming because of
global warming. Skeptics are those like myself who don't believe that.
He apparently has changed from being a skeptic to an alarmist. I would
only say this, and that is my Web site, epw.senate.gov, shows from
probably over 12 years ago a list of scientists who are calling me,
making statements, and saying that the IPCC--that is the United
Nations, and that is what we are talking about. The United Nations came
out with a preconceived notion that they wanted to believe a
preconceived conclusion. When they did this, the scientists who were
included in the process were scientists who agreed with them.
So when I questioned it by standing on the floor--I don't remember
the date of this. My friend from Vermont may remember that. I made
statements about two or three scientists who had called me. After that,
the phone was ringing off the hook. Keep in mind there are a lot of
scientists out there. We listed on the Web site up to over 1,000
scientists who declared they were skeptics about this whole thing. So I
can take some gratitude about the fact that the only scientist who was
on the skeptic list who has changed to an alarmist is 1 out of 1,000.
My friend was talking about the National Academy of Sciences. I think
it is kind of interesting because let's remember it was the National
Academy of Sciences that came out with a report in 1975 warning of a
coming ice age. Keep in mind we are all going to die whether it is
global warming or another ice age. That is the National Academy of
Sciences, the same group. According to a lot of people, they have
turned themselves into an advocacy group.
I will quote MIT's Dr. Richard Lindzen, who was a former U.N. IPCC
reviewer. He was talking about Ralph Cicerone, who is the president of
the NAS. He said:
Cicerone of NAS is saying that regardless of evidence the
answer is predetermined, if gov't wants carbon control, that
is the answer--
That is what the NAS will provide. If you control carbon, you control
life.
So we have had a lot of differing and varying interpretations of
availing science over the years. I can recall one of my first
introductions to this. Of course, this came way back during the Kyoto
Convention. Some people have forgotten that Kyoto was a convention that
was going to get everyone to get together under the leadership of the
United Nations and we were all going to reduce our carbon, and so they
had this big meeting down there. I will always remember it. This is the
famous Al Gore meeting that was called the Earth Summit of 1992. So
they came out with this and said this is going to happen. The United
Nations said it is, and so they thought everything was fine. Everyone
believed it.
It was shortly after that I remember hearing someone talk about it.
We can go back and look at this. This is not something I am just
saying. There were statements that were made in the 30-year period--
let's take the 30-year period from 1895 to 1925. That is 30 years.
During that time everyone feared that another ice age was coming. They
talked about another ice age, and that the world was coming to an end.
They provided all of this documentation during that 30-year period that
that is what was happening.
Well, from 1925 to 1945, that 20-year period was a global warming. In
fact,
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the first time we heard of global warming was in that 20-year period
from 1925 to 1945. So the world was going to come to an end again, and
it was going to be during that period of time due to global warming.
Then came the 30-year period from 1945 to 1975. During that time they
said it is a cold spell, and that is when all of these companies came
in--the Senator from Vermont is right. I have given probably 30 talks
well in excess of an hour each talking about these things. During that
time, I remember holding up the cover of Time magazine where they
talked about how another ice age was coming. Then I held up a cover of
the Time magazine 20 years later, and they said, no, it is global
warming. They had the last polar bear stepping on the last cube of ice,
and saying we are going to die.
We went through a period of 1945 to 1975 where they declared it a
period of another ice age. Then 1975 to the turn of the century--so
that was another 30-year period of time--when it was global warming. So
we have gone back and forth.
Here is the interesting thing about that. The assertion is always
made that we are having catastrophic global warming because of manmade
gases, CO2, anthropogenic gases, and methane. Yet the
greatest surge of CO2 came right after World War II starting
in 1945, and that precipitated not a warming period but a cooling
period. So when you look at these things, sometimes--by the way, the
only disagreement I would have with my friend from Vermont is that he
has quoted me as saying some things.
Actually, unlike Al Gore and some of these other people, I recognize
I am not an expert. I am not a scientist, but I read what the
scientists say. I get my phone calls, I look at it, and I try to apply
logic to it and come to my conclusions. So that is what has been
happening over the last--oh, it has been now 12 years, I guess, since
all this started.
I wish to mention a couple of other things that were said. For
example, on the idea of the science--here it is, right here. As far as
scientists are concerned, I can remember quoting from the Harvard-
Smithsonian study. The study examined results of more than 240 peer-
reviewed--``peer-reviewed'' is the term used by my friend from
Vermont--the Harvard-Smithsonian study examined the results of more
than 240 peer-reviewed papers published by thousands of researchers
over the past four decades. The study covers a multitude of geophysical
and biological climate indicators. They came to the conclusion that
``climate change is not real. The science is not accurate.''
Then we have another quote from a former President of the National
Academy of Sciences. He is Dr. Fred Seitz. He said:
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human
release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases
is causing or will in the foreseeable future cause
catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption
of the Earth's climate.
Again, he is a former President of the National Academy of Sciences.
Then we had a study from not long ago done by George Mason
University. This is one my friend from Vermont may not have seen. It
was called to my attention, and I missed it somehow in the media. It
was a survey of 430 weather forecasters by the university, and it found
that only 19 percent of the weather forecasters believed that the
climate is changing and if so, that it is due to manmade gases--only 19
percent. That means 81 percent of them think it is not.
Dr. Robert Laughlin is a Nobel Prize winner and a Stanford University
physicist. He said--this is kind of good. I enjoyed this one. He said:
Please remain calm: The earth will heal itself. Climate is
beyond our power to control. The earth doesn't care about
governments or their legislation. Climate change is a matter
of geologic time, something that the earth routinely does on
its own without asking anyone's permission or explaining
itself.
It is happening. I think it is kind of arrogant for people to think
we can change this. I am recalling one of the statements made by my
good friend that we have all of these--we must provide the leadership.
We have watched these great big annual parties the United Nations has
in these exotic places around the world. I can remember going to a few
of them. I remember one of them in Milan, Italy. It would have been
2003. I went there. They had ``wanted'' posters on all the telephone
polls with my picture and quoted me when I first came out with the hoax
statement. These big parties are kind of interesting. I have only gone
to three of them, but they have people invited from all over the world.
The only price to pay to come to this is to believe that catastrophic
warming is taking place and that it is the fault of bad old man and
anthropogenic gases.
Anyway, the last one was an interesting one--not the last one, the
most enjoyable one in Copenhagen. At that time--I am going from memory,
but I believe President Obama had been there, Secretary Clinton had
been there, Nancy Pelosi had been there, and several others. There were
five different people--I can't remember the other two--and they were
there to assure the other countries--keep in mind, 192 countries--they
assured them that we were going to pass some type of cap-and-trade
legislation. So I went. Right before I went over, I announced myself as
a self-described--I don't mean it in an arrogant way--as a self-
proclaimed, one-man truth squad. I went over to tell them the truth,
that it wasn't going to happen.
But right before it happened--talk about poetic justice, I say to my
friend from Vermont--right before that happened was a hearing we had
with the director of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, whom I love dearly. She is
one of my three favorite liberals whom I often talk about, and she came
out and said--I looked at her and I said: I am going to Copenhagen
tomorrow. I have a feeling that when I leave to go to Copenhagen, you
are going to have a declaration that will declare that it is a hazard
and all this and give the bureaucracy justification to do through
regulation what they could not do and have not been successful in doing
through legislation.
I saw a smile on her face.
I said: In the event you make that finding, it has to be based on
science. What science do you think it will be based on?
She said: Well, primarily the IPCC--the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.
It is a branch of the United Nations. It was all started by the
United Nations.
By the way, I would not mention my book; however, I checked before I
came down, and if somebody else mentions my book, which is ``The
Greatest Hoax,'' then it is all right for me to mention it. I see my
friend from Vermont nodding in agreement. So I want people to read the
longest chapter, which is the chapter on the United Nations. It goes
back and tells what the motives were for this. It goes back to 1972. We
were in the midst of an ice age at that time, if my colleague
remembers. It talks about the meeting that was going to be held at the
Earth Summit in 1992, what the motivation was, and then it goes forward
from there.
Here is what is interesting. I was going to mention this in a hearing
we will both be attending tomorrow. They had the Earth Summit Plus 20
just a month ago in Rio de Janeiro, the same place it was held 20 years
before that when George Bush was President of the United States. He
went down there even though he didn't really agree with the stuff that
was going on. In this case, President Obama didn't even go down. In
fact, it has been conspicuous.
I was glad to see my friend from Vermont coming to the floor and
talking about an issue that hasn't been talked about now for years. I
am glad it is coming up again. I am glad people realize the cost it is
going to be to the American people. By the way, the $300 billion to
$400 billion originated from a study that was done by scientists--I am
sorry--by economists from the Wharton School, and they came up with
that figure. Later on, MIT and several universities said: Well, that is
the $300 billion to $400 billion, what it will cost. So that has been
pretty much agreed to. Yet I am sure there is a dissenting view. But
this is the first time I have heard on the floor of this Senate a
denial of that assertion that was made. Everyone knows what it will
cost.
I remember the McCain-Lieberman bill when Senator Lieberman said:
Yes, it will cost billions of dollars. There is
[[Page S5641]]
no question about it. Cap and trade will cost billions of dollars. The
question is, What do we gain from it?
Well, that is a pretty good question.
Getting back to Lisa Jackson, I asked the question--this was in a
live hearing. I think the Senator from Vermont may have been there; I
don't know for sure. It was live on TV.
I said: The assertion has been made that global warming is--that if
we pass something, we are going to be able to stop this horrible thing
that is going on right now. Let me ask you for the record, live on TV,
in a committee hearing, if we were to pass the cap-and-trade bill--I
think it was the Markey bill at that time; I am not sure. Cap and trade
is cap and trade--pretty much the same. If we were to pass that, would
that lower worldwide emissions of CO2?
She said: No, it wouldn't.
Wait a minute. This is the Obama-appointed director of the
Environmental Protection Agency who said: No, it wouldn't, because the
problem isn't here. The problem is in other countries.
I don't remember what countries she named--probably China, India,
Mexico. It could be other countries; I am not sure. But nonetheless,
she said: No, it really wouldn't do that.
So what we are talking about is this tax on the American people of
$300 billion to $400 billion. I remember--and I think the Senator from
Vermont remembers this also--way back in 1993, during the first of the
Clinton-Gore administration, they had the Clinton-Gore tax increase of
1993. That was an increase of marginal rates, the death tax, capital
gains, and I believe it was the largest tax increase in three decades
at that time. That was a $32 billion tax increase. This would be a tax
increase ten times that rate.
I know there are people--their heads swim when they hear these
numbers. It doesn't mean anything to them. I will tell my colleagues
what I do. In Oklahoma, I get the number of families who file a tax
return, and then I do the math every time somebody comes up. In the
case of that increase, of the $300 billion to $400 billion, we are
talking about a $3,000 tax increase for each family in my State of
Oklahoma that files a tax return. So, fine, if they want to do that,
they can try to do it, but let's not say something good will come from
it when the director of the EPA herself said no, it is not going to
reduce emissions.
The other thing too that my friend from Vermont mentioned was the
heat. Yes, it is hot. In fact, it was kind of funny--during the remarks
of my friend from Vermont, my wife called me from Oklahoma and said: Do
you think I should call in and say today it is 109 degrees?
I said: No, it wouldn't be a good idea. Let me say it.
So it is true. Now and then we have some very hot summers, and in the
case of my State of Oklahoma, it is hot almost every summer. We have
had a lot of heat. However, the people who try to say there is proof
that global warming is taking place are the same ones who--back when we
had the most severe winter 2 years ago, when my kids built the famous
igloo, that was one of the most severe winters. In fact, all the
airports were closed at that time. It was kind of funny. I have 20 kids
and grandkids. One family is headed up by Jimmy and Molly Rapert. She
is a professor at the University of Arkansas. She has a little girl we
helped find in Ethiopia many years ago. Zagita Marie was just a few
days old when we found her and not in very good shape. We nursed her
back to health. Molly and her husband, who have three boys, decided
they wanted a girl, and they adopted her. She is now 12 years old. She
reads at college level. Every year I have the Africa dinner in
February, and she has been the keynote speaker at that.
Anyway, 2 years ago in February, she had given her keynote speech and
they were getting ready to leave and go back home, but they couldn't
get out because all the airports were closed. What do you do with a
family of six? You go out and build an igloo. This wasn't just an igloo
the kids built; it slept four people, right next to the Library of
Congress, and on top of it they had a little sign saying ``Al Gore's
New Home.''
Anyway, they were talking about that single weather event at that
time--or some were; not me; I know better than to do that--saying
global warming can't take place because we have had the most severe
winters. Anyway, a lot of people have tried to use--and I don't blame
them for doing it--the idea that, oh, it is really hot out there;
therefore, this must be global warming.
I would suggest that--oh, yeah, the one weather event. Roger Pielke,
Jr., professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado,
said:
Over the long run, there is no evidence that disasters are
getting worse because of climate change.
Judith Curry, chair of the Georgia Institute of Technology School of
Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, said:
I have been completely unconvinced by any of the arguments
that attribute a single extreme weather event or a cluster of
extreme weather events or statistics of extreme weather
events to an anthropogenic forcing.
Myles Allen, the head of the Climate Dynamics Group at the University
of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department,
said:
When Al Gore said that scientists now have clear proof that
climate change is directly responsible for the extreme and
devastating floods, storms and droughts, my heart sank.
The other day, I was on the ``Rachel Maddow Show.'' I watch Rachel
Maddow. She is one of my three favorite--let me just declare today that
I have four favorite liberals, and the Senator from Vermont is one of
them. He just graduated to that today, I say to my friend from Vermont.
Anyway, I have been on her show before--and I always like doing it
because they are on the other side of these issues--but her own guy,
called Bill Nye the Science Guy, agrees, one, it is wrong to try to
attribute climate to a weather event. There is a big difference between
weather and climate. So we have an awful lot of people who are talking
about that.
My good friend from Vermont talked about the global cooling
predictions. Let me correct him in saying that I did not say that. I
said that quoting scientists. I try to do that because I do not want
anyone to think I know that much about science because I do not.
A prominent Russian scientist, Dr. Abdussamatov, said:
We should fear a deep temperature drop--not catastrophic
global warming. . . .
It follows that [global] warming had a natural origin, the
contribution of CO2 to it was insignificant. . . .
This second thing: ``UN Fears (More) Global Cooling Commeth!'' This
is the IPCC. This is the United Nations, the same people who, in my
opinion--I do say this--are trying to profit from this issue. When I
say that, let me clarify that because when the United Nations comes up
with something that is not in the best interests of this country--I
have often said we ought to correct this. I have written letters,
signed by Members of this Senate, and before that by Members of the
House when I was in the House, saying: You guys are going to have to
come to the meeting and talk about this because it is going to be a
serious problem.
When you talk about all these things that are going on, it is
something that is not actually taking place.
So they said--and I am quoting now. This would be palaeoclimate
scientist Dr. Bob Carter from James Cook University in Australia, who
has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on EPW. I was there at
that testimony. He noted on June 18, 2007: The accepted global average
temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.
Oddly, this is 8-year long temperature stability that occurred, despite
an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million of atmospheric
CO2.
So, again, these are scientists. I know there are scientists with
varying views, but there sure are a lot of them here.
Just months before the Copenhagen matter took place--by the way, I
kind of enjoyed that trip to Copenhagen because when I got over there--
this, again, was the meeting where they invite all the people who
believe in global warming and make all these countries--192 countries--
believe if they will go along with this, they will get great rewards
for doing something about global warming. So, anyway, I enjoyed that
very much because I was
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able to go over and show the people what the truth was in this country.
But Andrew Revkin, just before Copenhagen, on September 23, 2009, in
the New York Times, acknowledged:
The world leaders who met at the United Nations to discuss
climate change . . . are faced with an intricate challenge:
building momentum for an international climate treaty at a
time when global temperatures have been relatively stable for
a decade and may even drop for the next few years.
I look at some of the things--incidentally, I kind of wish I had
known my good friend from Vermont was going to be talking about this
because I would have been delighted to join in and get a little bit
better prepared. But I would say this as to the cost: When you talk
about where this cost comes from, the $300 to $400 billion, the Kyoto
Protocol and cap-and-trade cost--this is from the Wharton Econometrics
Forecasting Associates I mentioned just a minute ago--Kyoto would cost
2.4 million U.S. jobs and reduce GDP by 3.2 percent or about $300
billion annually, an amount greater than the total expenditure on
primary and secondary education.
Oh, yes, let's talk about polar bears. I am not sure my friend
mentioned the polar bears, so I will skip that part. Anyway, let me
just say this: It has become something that has been somewhat of a
religion to talk about what is happening and the world is coming to an
end. I would just suggest they are not winning that battle.
In March 2010, in a Gallup poll, Americans ranked global warming dead
last--8 out of 8--on environmental issues. That was not true 10 years
ago. Ten years ago, it was No. 1, and everyone thought that. The more
people sit back and look at it and study it, they decide: Well, maybe
it is not true after all.
In March 2010, a Rasmussen poll: 72 percent of American voters do not
believe global warming is a very serious problem. In a Rasmussen poll
at the same time as to the Democrat base: Only 35 percent now think
climate change is manmade.
The global warmist Robert Socolow laments:
We are losing the argument with the general public, big
time . . . I think the climate change activists, myself
included, have lost the American middle.
In a way, I am kind of pleased it is coming back up and surfacing
now. I thank my good friend, and he is my good friend. People do not
understand--they really do not understand--what the Senate is all
about. The House was not that way when I was in the House. But in the
Senate, you can love someone and disagree with them philosophically and
come out and talk about it.
I have no doubt in my mind that my friend from Vermont is sincere in
what he believes. I believe he would say he knows I am sincere with
what I believe. That is what makes this a great body.
But I will just say this: It is popular to say the world is coming to
an end. When we look historically, I could go back and talk about what
has happened over the years--over the centuries really--and going
through these periods of time, and it is always that the world is
coming to an end.
Well, I am here to announce--and I feel very good being able to do it
with 20 kids and grandkids; I am happy to tell them all right now--the
world is not coming to an end, and global warming--we are going through
a cycle. We have gone through these cycles before, and every time we go
through--in part of my book I talk about the hysterical things people
are saying.
Back during that period of time, I mentioned between 1895 and 1930
about how the world was coming to an end, and the same thing from 1930
to the end of the war. Then, of course, getting into the little ice
age, all these things that were taking place, the little ice age from
1945--not the ice age but this cooling period--the cooling period that
started in 1945 and lasted for 30 years was the time in our history
where we had the greatest increase in carbon in the air, the greatest
use of that. So it is inconsistent with what reality was.
So I would say to my good friend, I have no doubt in my mind that the
Senator from Vermont is sincere in what he says. While he and I are
ranked at the extreme sides of the philosophical pendulum, I would say
I know he is sincere. But I will also say this is a tough world we are
in right now. When we look at the problems we have in this country and
the problems we are having in the world and the cost that it has, I am
very thankful those who are trying to pass the cap and trade, all the
way from the Kyoto Treaty--which was never brought to the Senate, never
brought because they knew they were not going to be able to pass it--up
until the time when that ended in about 2009, I would say a lot of
activists were out there, but I think people have now realized: Just
look at the patterns. It gets colder, it gets warmer, it gets colder,
it gets warmer. God is still up there. And I think that will continue
in the future.
I thank the Chair and yield the remainder of my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Franken). The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I have talked for a long time on this
issue, so I do not want to make a great speech and continue speaking at
great length. I do want to say a few things.
First of all, I want to thank Senator Inhofe for his kind words. Let
me respond in the same way. He and I philosophically and politically
come from very different places. I have never doubted for one moment
the honesty or the sincerity of the Senator from Oklahoma. He is saying
what he believes. He has the courage to get up here and say it, and I
appreciate that. So we are good friends, and I hope we will continue to
be good friends.
I think, frankly, it does this Senate, and it does this country, good
when people hear varied differences of opinion on an issue that I
consider to be of enormous consequence. So what I would say to my
friend is, I hope, in fact, this is the beginning of a resurgence of
discussion about this issue, and I look forward to engaging in the
discussion with my friend from Oklahoma.
With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Webb). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
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