[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 102 (Thursday, June 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3543-S3544]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                   Climate Change and Paris Agreement

  Mr. President, I noticed in the news this morning one more of these 
incidents happened where they had groups of people going to either the 
Antarctic or the Arctic to try to reaffirm their positions that somehow 
the world is coming to an end because of global warming and global 
warming is because of manmade gases, which, of course, we know is not 
the case. The interesting thing about yesterday was that a group of 
some scientists, some individuals, and some environmental extremist 
activists was going to the Arctic to show that things were melting, and 
they got stuck in the ice. This is the fourth time this has happened in 
the last 4 years because they didn't anticipate the fact that we have 
actually some areas where it is increasing.
  I thought, well, it is time to make one last compliment to the 
President when he had the courage to pull out of the Paris climate 
agreement.
  A lot of people don't know what these climate agreements are. This 
was the 21st year we had a climate agreement. It was all started by the 
United Nations some 21 years ago. The idea was to go to exotic places 
around the world and invite all 192 countries to come in to convince 
them that they need to reduce their own greenhouse gases, their 
CO2 emissions.
  Toward the end of the Obama administration, after eight such meetings 
they decided this wasn't going to work. They finally decided they would 
go ahead and try to make one look like an agreement, and, hence, there 
was the Paris Agreement--not a treaty but an agreement, not anything 
that would come through ratification, obviously.
  I have been over there for some of these meetings. What is 
interesting about this is that most of the 192 countries involved in 
these meetings think that if the President says something, it is going 
to happen. They forget about the fact that we have another branch of 
government called Congress, and we have to ratify some of these 
decisions.
  So I do want to make a couple of comments about what the President 
has accomplished by getting out of this agreement.
  First, since there is a deliberate effort to make people who are 
reluctant to believe one narrow view, in terms that the world is coming 
to an end is a reality, they try to make it change into the argument 
that as to climate change, anyone who is against the idea that we are 
having these problems out there is opposed to the idea of climate 
change.
  Look, we have said so many times on the floor that the climate has 
always changed. All the evidence--historic evidence, scriptural 
evidence, archeological evidence--shows very clearly that climate is 
always changing. The arrogance is that somehow climate change can be 
managed by man. Did man ever cause the ice age or any of the other 
extreme weather patterns the Earth has seen just over the last few 
thousand years? The answer is no.
  But earlier this year, a climate change study was released which 
found that little agreement is found with climate modeling simulations 
and consistently overstate recent summer warming and underestimate 
preindustrial temperature changes. That was the study. It is no 
surprise they found forecasts to be inaccurate. According to the 
environmental extremists, every summer is going to be the hottest. I 
have yet to see a summer that wasn't going to be the hottest. Every 
year they say that is going to take place.
  In one of the charts from the study I have here, all you have to do 
is go back and look historically at what has happened in this country. 
We go through warming periods. We go through ice ages. I will tell you 
what is interesting about this chart. The largest increase we had in 
global warming happened right after World War II, in 1945. That was the 
year we had the largest number of CO2 emissions that took 
place. Historically, no one disagrees. That precipitated not a warming 
period but a 20-year cooling period. So we have been going through this 
for a very long period of time now.
  Essentially, the findings of the study show that the climate patterns 
we see now are not significant in the grand scheme of things, as we can 
see by this chart. People like to vilify those of us who talk about 
this subject and openly question the inaccurate statements and so-
called findings of fearmongering scientists who tell everyone the world 
is ending because of manmade gases. They think that just because many 
of us recognize that science is not settled and we question exactly how 
much man affects climate change, corruption must be involved, and so 
forth.
  But we look at the real science. I have not yet met him personally, 
but I know about a guy named Dr. Richard Lindzen. Dr. Richard Lindzen 
is an MIT professor. He arguably could be considered the most 
knowledgeable person in this field. He made this statement: Regulating 
CO2 is a bureaucrats dream. If you regulate CO, you regulate 
life. So that is what is behind this, and we have watched this play out 
now for about 20 years. To question the idea that man is single-
handedly responsible for the changes in climate and doomsday is near 
due to the fact that we burn fossil fuels is entirely inappropriate 
and, frankly, unnecessary.
  I remember very well a climate fanatic named Michael Mann. I 
mentioned that Paris was the 21st meeting the United Nations has had. 
In 2009, that meeting was held in Copenhagen. At that time, I chaired 
the Environment and Public Works Committee. The first year of the Obama 
administration, I remember getting ready to go to Copenhagen to explain 
to people they had been lied to. At that time, Obama was going over, 
Hillary Clinton was going over, John Kerry was going over, and all the 
rest, saying we in the United States were going to pass cap and trade. 
I wanted to make sure they knew we were not going to be passing cap and 
trade.
  I was getting ready to go over. Lisa Jackson was the first Obama 
designee to be the Director of the EPA. I looked at her, and I said: I 
have a feeling that as soon as I leave town, you are going to have an 
endangerment finding so you can start regulating this stuff. She kind 
of smiled. I said: When that happens, it has to be based on science. So 
tell me, what science will you base this on? She said: Well, it is 
going to be based on the IPCC.

  IPCC stands for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That 
is the United Nations.
  As luck would have it, right after that, a matter of days after that 
statement was made by her, we had climategate. Do you remember 
climategate? Not many people remember it because the media didn't play 
it up here like they did in Europe and around the world. Climategate 
was where they caught two scientists--one was Michael Mann and one was 
Phil Jones--who had rigged--there was evidence of this through 
communications that were disclosed--they were actually rigging the 
science. They didn't pay much attention to it here in the United 
States, but I remember at the time that Christopher Booker of the UK 
Telegraph--that is one of the biggest communication operations in the 
UK--they called this the worst scientific scandal of our generation. 
That is climategate. That is cooking the books on science to make 
people believe things that weren't true.
  Clive Cook of the Financial Times said:

       The close-mindedness of these supposed men of science, 
     their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a 
     preconceived message, is surprising, even to me. The stink of 
     intellectual corruption is overpowering.

  That is the science on which they have relied for a long period of 
time. In fact, to give you an example of the hockey stick--that was 
what Michael Mann came up with in trying to show, instead of what we 
are showing on this chart here, that somehow this all happened in a 
recent period of time. It is another research exploration that was 
wrong.
  I started off talking about what happened on the climate change 
research exploration that just took place in the last few days. Many of 
these were postponed in the Arctic because of the unusual amount of ice 
that has taken place. Before a research team could embark on their 
exploration to study climate change--keep in mind, this group went 
there to try to show what things are happening, that ice is melting all 
over the world. Their ship, the Canadian research icebreaker Amundsen, 
had to be borrowed by the Canadian Coast Guard for search and rescue

[[Page S3544]]

efforts to help fishing boats and supply ships that were trapped in the 
unexpected, large amount of ice.
  This is at least the fourth time this has happened in recent years to 
research ships around the world. There was a situation a few years ago 
where a Russian ship carrying climate scientists and journalists and 
activists and tourists and an entire crew became trapped in ice that 
was at least 10 feet thick. An Australian icebreaker arrived 6 days 
later to rescue them, but it was unable to do so because of the ice. A 
few days after that, a Chinese icebreaker sent out a helicopter that 
was able to airlift 52 of the passengers from the Russian ship to 
safety on the Australian icebreaker. Unfortunately, during the rescue 
effort, the Chinese icebreaker became trapped as well.
  I tell you these stories because all of these expeditions that were 
going to the various posts were doing so to try to prove that ice was 
not accumulating, and they got stuck in the ice.
  Most of the predictions that have been published over the last few 
decades have been widely inaccurate, but most have been accepted by the 
environmental groups and some of the extremists because they are 
maintaining their war on fossil fuels, although Trump has ended that.
  I have to say that one of the reasons I go back to my State of 
Oklahoma every weekend is to talk to real people. They will ask a 
question. I remember that during the Obama administration, he had a war 
on fossil fuels--fossil fuels are coal, oil, and gas--but he also 
didn't like nuclear. You don't get these questions asked in Washington. 
They asked me: Inhofe, explain this to me. We have a President who is 
trying to do away with fossil fuels--coal, oil, and gas--and nuclear, 
and we are currently dependent upon coal, oil, gas, and nuclear for 89 
percent of the power it takes to run this machine called America. What 
is going to happen if we are not able to do it?
  Of course, as I said, you don't hear those questions around 
Washington.
  Anyway, by fearmongering techniques, environmental extremists and the 
Al Gore fan club can easily convince a large number of people that 
regulatory burdens like the EPA's Clean Power Plan, the Quad Oa, the 
venting and flaring rules, and the waters of the United States rule are 
a good thing and that we can save the Earth without any consideration 
of the effect these rules have on energy.
  By the way, for any conservatives who are out there, I would like to 
remind them that even though it didn't get much play in the media, this 
President in the first 100 days in office has been able to do away with 
some 47 of the regulations. The two ways of doing away with a 
regulation--one is through Executive order, and the other is the CRA, 
the Congressional Review Act. In fact, I was proud that the first 
signing ceremony our new President had was signing a bill that I had 
passed. It is one that has really made an effort to try to save enough 
of the oil and gas industry to run this machine, as I mentioned, called 
America.
  Now we are actively working to face the problems inherited from the 
previous administration. For the past 8 years under the Obama 
administration, the American economy suffered under the effects of his 
climate agenda. That era is over. President Trump has delivered on his 
campaign promises since he was sworn in. The strongest signal of this 
was President Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord.
  It was just a few weeks ago that I was on the Senate floor urging 
President Trump to pull out of this Paris Agreement. That same day, 21 
of my Senate colleagues and I sent a letter to the White House with 
that same request. Our message resonated with the President, and it was 
clear that our voices were heard because it was exactly 1 week later 
that the President announced to the world he was getting out of a bad 
deal.
  Let me mention one thing about this Paris Agreement. The Paris 
Agreement supposedly is something that 192 countries--each said what it 
was going to do to reduce greenhouse gases, their CO2 
emissions. For example, the agreement President Obama said at that 
time--he said: We commit that we will reduce our CO2 
emissions by between 26 and 28 percent by 2096.
  The interesting thing about that is that it can't be done. In fact, 
immediately after he made that statement, we had a televised public 
hearing of the EPA to ask them how in the world we could reduce by some 
27 percent greenhouse gases in the United States of America. They said 
it is impossible and we couldn't do it. So what the President was doing 
then was telling people that we in the United States were able to do 
something--were going to do something that was very meaningful by our 
reduction, even though he knew at the time it could not be done.
  Then we have the other countries--China, for example. China is the 
second largest emitter of CO2. Currently, as we speak right 
now, they are cranking out one coal-fired powerplant every 10 days. 
What did they agree to in this Paris accord? They said: Well, we will 
continue to increase our output in China. We will continue to have a 
new powerplant every 10 days or so until 2025. At that time, we will 
consider reducing it.
  Then along comes India, the third largest emitter of CO2. 
India said: Yes, as long as we get $2.5 trillion, we are willing to do 
it. Well, where would that $2.5 trillion come from? The good old United 
States. The big green fund.
  That is how ridiculous that whole thing was. It was the right 
decision for him to make this a reality.
  Many believe that if we lose our ability to negotiate with other 
nations--this is the only legitimate complaint I have gotten that I 
really heard during the time. They said: Well, if we don't have a place 
at the table, then we are not going to be able to be in on any future 
discussions.
  That was wrong, and those who are using that argument were wrong 
because the agreement that gave us a seat at the table has already been 
ratified by the United States, meaning the Senate gave its advice and 
consent. It is known as the United Nations Framework Convention on 
Climate Change. This was in the 1992 treaty that supports all of the 
big parties that are held every December. We are still at that table. 
That decision was made a long period of time ago. We will be at any 
future activities that take place.
  I will wrap up by saying that this was the right thing to do. Stop 
and think about it. The previous speaker on the floor, the junior 
Senator from Georgia, was talking about the dilemma we have in this 
country, the spending dilemma, and how we are going to have to do 
something about it. We are going to eventually have to get to some of 
the entitlements, the big spending items.
  If we had stayed with the program that the President had outlined and 
had committed to the other 192 countries, that would have constituted 
arguably the largest single tax increase in the history of America, and 
there would have been nothing that would have been accomplished by it.
  My final thought. I would like to thank President Trump for pulling 
out of the Paris Agreement. It is the right decision, and it will 
without question help the United States in the long run.
  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. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to 
address the Senate as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.