[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 73 (Wednesday, May 22, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H2846]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, last month, two scientists from Oregon 
State University, Shawn Marcott and Alan Mix, published a peer-reviewed 
study in collaboration with scientists at Harvard reviewing 11,300 
years of global temperatures. They found that the range of temperature 
change in the last 100 years is equivalent to the temperature change 
over the previous 100 centuries.
  Climate change is real, it is devastating, and it is accelerating. 
Most focus is on the terrestrial effects. Other research points to 
rapid and devastating changes in our oceans--again, a study done by 
Oregon State University.
  Burke Hales, an OSU chemical oceanographer, coauthor with Alan 
Barton, who works at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery, looked into 
the fact that oysters were failing at an incredible rate to spawn and 
reproduce. Their study linked the production failures to the 
CO2 levels in the water. That has incredible implications 
for the future of not only the shellfish industry, an important 
industry in the Northwest and other parts of the country, but also for 
the whole ocean food chain.
  The ocean chemistry is also threatening something called pteropods, 
who are tiny sea snails, and they're very much at risk. They happen to 
be a food source for zooplankton, whales, and of course our salmon, who 
already have a host of problems in terms of their future.
  Then from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, the Arctic 
seas are becoming rapidly more acidified. It turns out that cold water 
is especially susceptible, and as the sea ice in the summer recedes, 
more and more of the Arctic Ocean is exposed to the increased levels of 
carbon dioxide, and it is rapidly acidifying, in addition to which the 
melting of the ice in Greenland and elsewhere is adding fresh water, 
which further degrades the capabilities of the oceans to deal with the 
carbon dioxide.
  Finally, research in the Northeast shows that the surface 
temperatures in the northeast Continental Shelf in 2012 were the 
highest recorded in 150 years of record-keeping. They found that over 
the last four decades many species of fish stocks have been moving 
north to escape the warming waters, but there are many species that 
cannot move or evolve that rapidly, which portends for more disasters.

                              {time}  1040

  Back in 1973, there was a science fiction movie called ``Soylent 
Green,'' sort of a mystery movie, but it was about an overpopulated and 
polluted world, and the final devastating blow was that the oceans were 
dying. Now we have evidence that our oceans are very, very much at risk 
from CO2 and climate change.
  The House Republicans are using their leadership here to stymie 
efforts to even research and document climate change, let alone just 
totally denying that it's a problem. Time and time again, they voted to 
know nothing and do nothing about climate change. They voted to block 
action on climate change no fewer than 50 times in the last Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, it's time to listen to the scientists and get serious 
about climate change. The evidence is in. The only question now is 
whether Congress will listen and act.

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