[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 141 (Tuesday, September 29, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7008-S7009]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise today for my 113th ``Time to
Wake Up'' speech on climate change. They say 13 is unlucky. I don't
know what 113 is, but I do know what climate change is. It is very
real. We shouldn't kid ourselves. And it is an urgent challenge for our
country and our world. Our leading scientific organizations say so. Our
national security leaders say so. All of our National Laboratories say
so. Major American businesses say so. Religious leaders of all faiths
say so. Pope Francis certainly said so last week. But the Senate is
jammed by persistent, meretricious climate denial. The denial comes in
many guises, but, like a compass, all the denial points in the same
direction: whatever helps the fossil fuel industry keep polluting. That
is the true north of climate denial--whatever helps the fossil fuel
industry. Look at the fossil fuel money pouring into the Republican
Party and tell me this is a coincidence.
We have Senators who deny that anything is happening, who say it is a
hoax. We have Senators who deny that we can solve this. We have
Senators who deny their faith in the American economy to win if we
innovate. We have Senators who simply shrug and say: I am not a
scientist. A bunch of Senators say: Don't even worry about it; climate
change has stopped. The junior Senator from Florida tells us, ``Despite
17 years of dramatic increases in carbon production by humans, surface
temperatures [on] the earth have stabilized.'' The junior Senator from
Texas proclaims that ``satellite data demonstrate for the last
seventeen years, there's been zero warming. None whatsoever.''
Let's leave aside for a moment the cherry-picked data this conclusion
is based on, which leaves out the oceans, which cover a mere 70 percent
of the Earth's surface. I will get back to oceans in a minute. But even
this cherry-picked data needs a trick to deny the long-term trend.
Using their trick, you could convince yourself climate change has
stopped six times in the history of this increase from 1970. It is easy
to do. You pick a spot here and you pick a spot there, and in the
variability you make it a flat line and you say: There, you see a
pause. The problem is that these manufactured pauses keep climbing.
When this bogus climate pause idea was trotted out in an op-ed in the
Providence Journal, my home State paper, PolitiFact quickly determined
that it uses ``cherry-picked numbers and leaves out important details
that would give a very different impression.''
When we look at the linear trend for this whole data set, from 1970
to 2013, no one can deny that the Earth is warming. Research shows that
climate change is marching on. The past decade was warmer than the one
before that, which was warmer than the one before that. Seventeen of
the 18 hottest years in the historical record have occurred in the last
18 years. NOAA and NASA count 2014 as the hottest year on record, and
so far 2015 is on track to be even hotter than 2014. Fluctuations do
not statistically alter the trend.
It is a disservice to the truth and to this Senate to suggest that
this heralds the end of climate change. As noted UC Berkeley physics
professor Richard Muller put it, ``When walking up stairs in a tall
building, it is a mistake to interpret a landing as the end of the
climb.''
Plus, for what reason would it have stopped? There is no basis for
the pause. We know why it is happening. Global warming is caused by
carbon pollution. We have known that science since Abraham Lincoln wore
a top hat around this town. That is not news. And our carbon pollution
sure hasn't stopped. We just broke 400 parts per million of carbon in
the atmosphere for the first time in the history of the human species.
There is no intellectual basis behind the pause theory. These claims
of a climate change pause have been debunked. Just a couple of weeks
ago, researchers from Stanford University published a study: ``There is
no hiatus in the increase in the global mean temperature, no
statistically significant difference in trends, no stalling of the
global mean temperature, and no change in year-to-year temperature
increases.'' In other words, there is no pause.
A different study prepared for the U.S. Climate Variability and
Predictability Program reviewed this so-called pause data and said
this: It ``not only failed to establish a trend change with statistical
significance, it failed by a wide margin. [A]ny argument that global
warming stopped 18 or 20 years ago is just hogwash,'' said one of that
report's authors--just hogwash. When legitimate scientists and
statisticians examine the data for global mean temperature, they don't
find any so-called pause.
This chart I have in the Chamber shows global average temperatures
since the late 1800s, which is about the time we began burning fossil
fuels in the Industrial Revolution. In yet another study out this
month, researchers did a little test. They showed this chart to 25
economists, but instead of temperature they told the economists that
the chart showed world agricultural output. That stripped the data of
any political baggage of climate change. It made this a simple
statistical question: Does this chart show that the measured
phenomenon--climate change, temperature, world agricultural output--
does this chart show whatever the measured phenomenon is stopped in
1998? The economists looked, and they flatout rejected that conclusion.
What they agreed was that claiming the phenomenon had stopped would be
misleading and ill-informed.
So why did this pause theory appear that is a mistake, that is
hogwash, that is based on cherry-picked numbers all toward a conclusion
that is misleading and ill-informed? Why? Because the big carbon
polluters and their allies in Congress don't want us to act. So we keep
getting this mischief fed to us.
The enterprise that performs that evil task of feeding mischief into
this debate is perhaps the biggest and the most complex racket in
American history. It is phony. They cherry-pick a handful of
statistically insignificant data points and tell us the whole problem
went away on its own. Then the real scientists take a look at it and
say that is bunk. But in the meantime, the polluter enterprise notched
a public relations victory. It bought some time to keep polluting for
free, and sadly it got some of our colleagues to be party to it.
Telling the American people there is a pause in global warming may
lull the gullible to sleep, but it is phony, it is inaccurate, and it
is wrong. It ignores the truth. It ignores the science. Basically what
it is, is cheesy fossil fuel PR dressed up in a lab coat to look like
science, just enough to fool people that little bit.
Now let's turn back to the oceans--that 70 percent of the Earth's
surface the other data left out. These data show the decades-long
warming of the surface oceans--1960 to 2010. No pause. Remember, the
deniers conveniently left all this data out when they cherry-picked
their pause data--70 percent of the Earth's surface left out.
The first law of thermodynamics, conservation of energy, decrees that
all of that heat in the ocean had to come from somewhere. Research
shows that greenhouse gases trap excess heat in the atmosphere and that
over 90 percent of that excess heat went into the oceans, was absorbed
by our oceans. People who insist that the climate has not warmed in
recent decades ignore this one little thing--the oceans, which cover 70
percent of the surface of the Earth. The oceans don't lie. This warming
is changing the oceans and our fisheries. Water expands when it warms.
That is the law of thermal expansion--unless somebody wants to come and
deny that. The seas are rising across the globe. In Rhode Island, we
measure it at the Newport Naval Station tide gauge. Basically it is a
glorified yardstick. It is not complicated. There is no theory
involved. It is a measurement. It says we are up nearly 10 inches since
the 1930s. That may be funny to landlocked States, but when there are
10 more inches of sea to be thrown against your shores by a big ocean
storm, coastal States take that stuff very seriously. NASA measures it
around the world with satellites; it is not just the coastal stations
that take
[[Page S7009]]
these measures. NASA measures from satellites. We measure the exploding
acidity of the seas. The exploding acidities of the sea are directly
related to CO2 absorption--unless people want to deny
chemistry. You can put CO2 seawater in a high school lab and
you can make the pH change. That is what we are doing on a global
scale, and we don't get to repeal laws of chemistry around here, no
matter how powerful the special interests.
Last week, His Holiness Pope Francis called on us to work together to
protect our common home. He warned us in his recent encyclical: ``Those
who will have to suffer the consequences of what we are trying to hide
will not forget this failure of conscience and responsibility.'' But
first we have to want to protect our common home. If what we want to
protect is the fossil fuel industry, at all costs, at any cost, we need
a priority adjustment.
In our rotten, post-Citizens United, billionaire special interests
politics, perhaps the Pope would have had more effect if he had a super
Pac, but it shouldn't take a super Pac for us to heed the Pope's
warning or to heed the science or to heed our national security leaders
or to heed everyone else who has lined up to try to wake us up.
Pope Francis also said ``to avert the most serious effects of the
environmental deterioration caused by human activity,'' now is the time
for courageous actions and strategies.
Today's New York Times has this headline: ``Many Conservative
Republicans Believe Climate Change Is a Real Threat.'' Once you get
away from this building and the pernicious influence of the fossil-fuel
industry and its relentless money and threats, it is not a question of
ideology, it is a question of special interest influence, and
conservative Republicans increasingly understand that this is real.
Eleven of them just broke rank in the House.
It is time to come together in good faith to tackle this real and
persistent threat--the threat of climate change.
It is time for us to wake up.
I yield the floor.
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