[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 144 (Thursday, September 7, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5079-S5083]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here to deliver my ``Time to Wake
Up'' speech, which I do every week that the Senate is in session. We
have been out of session for a few weeks, so there is a fair amount to
talk about that happened while we were gone.
One of the first things was a new study in my home State of Rhode
Island. Rhode Island is a coastal State. We have considerable worries
about sea level rise, and we have a State Coastal Resources Management
Council that has done what is probably the best modeling anywhere in
the country of
[[Page S5080]]
the effects of sea level rise and the risk of ocean storms on our
shores. In conjunction with them, there has been a report from the
Rhode Island Division of Planning--this is the State government--which
has identified roads and bridges that are most likely to be underwater
as the tides climb higher and as waves push farther inland.
The State's 10 roads most vulnerable to sea level rise are Hope
Street in Bristol, which everybody knows--a beautiful, historical
street; Memorial Boulevard in Newport; Wampanoag Trail in Barrington;
Conanicus Avenue in Jamestown; North Road in Jamestown; County Road in
Barrington; Beach Street in Narragansett, Main Street in Warren; and
State Highway 24 South in Tiverton.
Throw in storm surge on top of sea level rise, and the 10 most
vulnerable roads are County Road North in Barrington; Phillips Street
in North Kingstown; America's Cup Avenue in Newport; Route 138 West
onramp in Newport; Hope Street in Bristol; Highway 24 North in
Portsmouth; Centerville Road in Warwick; Narragansett Avenue in
Narragansett; Main Street in Warren; and Route 38 West in Jamestown.
The report goes on to identify the 10 bridges most vulnerable to sea
level rise and the 10 bridges most vulnerable to a combination of sea
level rise and storm surge.
Overall, Warwick, Narragansett, Newport, Barrington, and Providence
are our top five municipalities most vulnerable to climate change-
related road damage. So when I come to the floor to talk about this,
this is not some hypothetical, liberal concern.
The Coastal Resources Management Council in my home State is
predicting 9 vertical feet of sea level rise by the end of this
century. As the Presiding Officer knows, Rhode Island is not a huge
State. We don't have a lot to give back to the ocean. Nine feet of sea
level rise is potentially catastrophic. And when my State Division of
Planning is highlighting the roads and bridges that we are going to
lose to sea level rise and to storm surge, don't expect me to sit idly
by.
There is a larger context, of course, for all of this. I am pretty
Rhode Island-centric, but, boy, are we seeing a lot going on.
Let's start off with what is going on out West. We have an
extraordinary wildfire situation happening in the American West. I am
reading a news story here:
Wildfires burned across hundreds of thousands of acres in
the American and Canadian West this week, fueled by scorching
temperatures that are breaking heat and fire records across
the region.
In California, at least 15 cities have seen record-breaking
heat. The State has experienced its hottest summer on record.
San Francisco hit 106 degrees over the weekend, breaking its
previous high ever by 3 full degrees.
By the end of the day Tuesday, there were at least 81 large
fires blazing across 1.5 million acres of the U.S. West, from
Colorado, to California, and north to Washington.
``These unprecedented extreme events are exactly the types of events
that are more likely due to the global warming that has already
occurred,'' say the scientists.
Studies find that a warmed global atmosphere with
increasingly clear human fingerprints will continue driving a
potent mix of heat and dryness that is projected to escalate
in the West.
The climate scientist at UCLA says: ``That's not a future projection,
but an observational reality, and that is something that we expect to
increase in the future. When we get these extremes, there is a human
fingerprint.''
``The increased occurrence of severe heat and the role of global
warming on the occurrence of severe heat, that is already happening,''
said a Stanford scientific researcher.
This is not a fluke.
Nine of the 10 worst fire seasons in the past 50 years have
all happened since 2000. And 2015 was the worst fire s in
U.S. history, surpassing 10 million acres burned for the
first time ever recorded. So far this year, wildfires in the
U.S. are at 7.8 million acres, but the fire season is far
from over.
Researchers have shown that human-induced climate change accounted
for about half the observed increase in fuel aridity, or forest
dryness, that has been setting off these fires in the Western United
States since 1979 and that this had nearly doubled the area of the U.S.
West affected by forest fires since 1984.
The conclusion:
We know that global warming has already increased the
probability of unprecedented high temperatures in the western
U.S., including in California. And we know--
``We know,'' the scientists say--
with high confidence that continued global warming will
continue to intensify those increases.
Last week in Montana, a 20-square-mile blaze burned the
historic Sperry Chalet, a hotel and dining room built in 1914
only reachable by trail.
It had been there for more than 100 years, but this is the fire that
burned it down. This means a lot out at Glacier National Park.
``It's hard to think about the magnitude of what's
happened,'' the National Park Conservancy Executive Director
Doug Mitchell said.
One of the western fires even jumped the Columbia River to burn
across into Washington--the Eagle Creek fire.
As the news said, in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge, a blaze known as
the Eagle Creek Fire has jumped the Columbia River and is inching into
the State of Washington, creating dramatic and dangerous scenes.
Another news report called this a devastating summer in which an area
larger than a certain State has burned.
I would hate to have Rhode Island be used as the unit of measure, but
that is what they said: An area larger than Rhode Island has burned
this summer. And they are looking not just at the loss of the Sperry
Chalet but potentially losing Lake McDonald Lodge--``a loss that
would,'' says a historian who has worked at the lodge for years, ``be
unimaginably devastating.''
``These are some of the most remarkable buildings anywhere in the
United States and they are an integral part of the Glacier experience
and the Glacier tradition.''
They are either burned or at risk of burning.
If you are in those Western States, it is not just in the high, dry
forests; if you go down to the oceans, climate change is whacking away
at them too.
The Oregon and Washington razor clam fisheries are currently closed
due to high levels of domoic acid. Domoic acid is a toxin that is
produced by algae--the algae Pseudo-nitzchia--and algae are associated
with climate change. For instance, a record-breaking red tide in 2015
was likely linked to climate change, and we are going to see a lot more
of that in the future.
Now, of course, the dry part of what is happening in our climate has
really been drowned out by what we are seeing on the wet part.
The New York Times recently ran an article saying:
Climate change doesn't cause extreme events, it amplifies
them. On the climate side of risk, we have unambiguous
evidence that the hazards are changing. Our emissions of
heat-trapping gases have already increased the likelihood and
severity of heat waves, extreme rainfalls, and storm surges.
Scientists can now even evaluate how much climate change has
increased the odds of individual extreme events, including
rainfall and flooding. We certainly understand the
mechanisms. Put simply, a warmer atmosphere can hold more
water, increasing the potential for heavy downpours.
Storm surge now occurs on top of sea level rise, increasing
flooding risks.
We know by the law of thermal expansion why the seas rise when they
warm, and we have measured that they are warming with a very
complicated device called the thermometer.
Warmer oceans in turn produce more intense hurricanes.
We know that as well, as has occurred in the North Atlantic and the
gulf.
The article continues that ``unprecedented is increasingly the
norm,'' and it notes that ``up to 8 feet of sea level rise is possible
in this century.''
Rhode Island is in a unique place, so we are riding higher than
average, and we are looking at potentially 9 feet of sea level rise.
Harvey has been an astonishing monster of a storm. It was described
in one article as 9 trillion gallons of water, a hydraulic cube over
downtown Houston 4 miles square and 2 miles high. And then the author
said: ``The cube doubled to become the most extreme rain event in
American history.''
Harvey, by the way, is the third 500-year flood in the Houston area
in the past 3 years. It dumped enough water in southeastern Texas to
equal almost 20 times the daily discharge of the Mississippi River.
So while the wildfires are burning out West, this astonishing set of
deluges is happening elsewhere.
[[Page S5081]]
Land temperatures, according to NOAA, were the hottest they have ever
been in 1,651 months of recordkeeping. July also marked 384 months
since the last colder-than-average month in NASA's database. So 384
months since we had a month that was colder than average, with July
well warmer than average. The last 3 consecutive years--2014, 2015, and
2016--each set a new global record for warmth, according to NOAA.
Politico writes: ``2016 confirmed as planet's hottest year,'' with
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration documenting record-
breaking global warming trends of 2016. The observed outcomes of
swiftly rising temperatures include the highest sea levels ever
recorded, extremes in rain cycles, and declines in global ice and snow
cover, with last year the third in a row breaking global temperature
records. ``Several markers such as land and ocean temperatures, sea
level and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere broke records
set just one year prior,'' the NOAA report said. ``The long-term
climate change is like riding up an escalator over time, and things
like El Nino and La Nina are like jumping up and down on that
escalator,'' one of the NOAA scientists said.
So that is what we are seeing--the underlying trend of climate change
raising temperatures, with El Nino and La Nina creating a variation
like jumping up and down on that escalator.
Greenhouse gas concentrations are now higher than ever
recorded.
Global surface temperatures are the highest on record.
Sea levels are the highest they've ever been since record
keeping began.
Precipitation cycles are becoming more extreme.
Antarctic sea ice levels are lower than ever recorded.
Alpine glaciers have declined for 37 consecutive years.
There were more tropical cyclones. . . .
Something is going on, and that well-known far-left liberal outlet,
USA Today, had its editorial board say the following:
Could proof grow any more powerful that humanity is
responsible for a dangerously warming planet?
It referenced the quadrennial National Climate Assessment:
Scientists from 13 federal agencies found that a rapid rise
in temperature since the 1980s in the United States
represents the warmest period in 1,500 years.
It quotes the report:
Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities,
especially emission of greenhouse gases, are primarily
responsible.
There are no alternative explanations.
Do you hear that? ``There are no alternative explanations,'' and it
keeps coming down.
There was an article that came out while we were away on the great
flood of 2016 in Louisiana: ``The worst rainstorm in a rainy state's
history,'' the article called it.
In some places, more than 2 feet of rain fell over three
days. . . . Research has shown it was . . . clearly linked to
climate change.
There were two separate teams of scientists that linked Louisiana's
great flood with climate change, and the State's own meteorologist, a
gentleman named Barry Keim, a professor at Louisiana State University,
said that aspects of the August storm were consistent with climate
change, and that both of the climate studies so far have shown it
likely that climate change likely had its fingerprints on that
Louisiana disaster.
Indeed, in Louisiana, the State is mounting a massive battle against
rising seas as well as floods. Along the coast, ``rising waters and
escalating flood insurance rates,'' the article says, ``will drive
thousands of families further inland, the state predicts, leaving
behind homes''--these families are leaving behind homes--``they have
known for generations,'' leaving behind ``places that have
fundamentally shaped their identities.''
One of the Louisianans living in the area in question said: ``This is
the first time that I can remember that a group came in and said it's
not going to be all right.''
But over the next two generations [flooding in Louisiana
along the marshes and coastal] will happen at an alarming
scale, as the twin challenges of sinking land and rising seas
overtake ancestral homes at breakneck speed. In 50 years, the
state estimates Terrebonne parish, whose name means ``good
earth'' in the French that some of its residents still speak,
will lose 41 percent of its land mass.
Areas are obviously going to lose their tax bases, the report says,
``as rising waters and increasing flood insurance rates drive most
locals out.''
The Louisiana planners had a leg up, since the
environmental changes here have been so swift that many
residents have seen land lost in their own lifetimes.
When you are seeing it happen before your eyes, it is not so easy to
deny it. Indeed, it is affecting local markets, and ``new-gated
communities advertise `higher elevations' on bright [advertising]
banners facing the highway.''
In Louisiana:
What had been the worst-case scenario for land loss when
the legislature passed its 2012 version of the master plan
became the best-case scenario in the latest version, approved
by the legislature in June, thanks to updated sea-level rise
estimates.
So we are in Louisiana. We are in a Republican-controlled
legislature, and they pass a master plan to address flooding in 2012.
That master plan is based on a worst-case scenario. Just in the 5 years
since then that worst-case scenario, the legislature has now updated
that to become a best-case scenario, with the worst-case scenario far,
far exceeding what they anticipated just as recently as 2012.
``Climate change and water management practices could significantly
alter the magnitude and variability of extreme flooding events, causing
flooding to become nonstationary,'' said the article, ``Deciphering
Deluges.''
We have to come up with new ways on how to cope with sea level rise,
offshore storms, major tropical storms, downpours, and riverine
flooding.
Right now, our colleague Bill Nelson has left us this afternoon after
the vote to go back down to Florida because Hurricane Irma is steaming
toward his State. Hurricane Irma is the most powerful storm ever
recorded in the Atlantic Ocean. Experts say Irma's strength is the
result of unusually warm water for that part of the Atlantic.
Guess what global warming does. It raises ocean temperatures. Do you
know how much of the excess heat created has gone into the oceans?
About 93 percent--virtually all of it. Thank goodness for the oceans.
Without them, we would already be baking in climate change. So 93
percent went into the oceans, but, of course, that raises ocean
temperatures, and on go the storms.
If Irma stays on the forecast track and reaches the Florida Straits,
the water there is warm enough that the already intense storm could
become much worse, with wind speeds potentially reaching 225 mph,
warned Kerry Emanuel, an MIT meteorology professor.
``For the Florida Keys, if you were to create the worst case
scenario, that is what we are looking at,'' Monroe County Emergency
Operations Center Director Martin Senterfitt told CBS Miami.
Even Tropical Storm Emily some time ago dumped enough rain on Miami
Beach--7 inches of rainfall over several hours--that the pumps meant to
drain the area went offline for nearly an hour because the power was
interrupted. The mayor, Tomas Regalado, used the flooding to make a
case for a proposed $400 million bond initiative to help pump the water
out. We have infrastructure demands that come from this disaster as
well.
A pretty good summary came, again, from an article in the New York
Times, an editorial piece.
What is going on?
First, hurricanes arise from warm waters, and the Gulf of
Mexico has warmed by two to four degrees Fahrenheit over the
long-term average. The result is more intense storms.
``There is a general consensus that the frequency of high-
category (3, 4, and 5) hurricanes should increase as the
climate warms,'' Kerry Emmanuel, a hurricane expert at
M.I.T., tells me.
Second, as the air warms, it holds more water vapor, so the
storms dump more rain. That's why there's been a big increase
in heavy downpours. Nine of the top 10 years for heavy
downpours in the U.S. have occurred since 1990.
``Climate change played a role in intensifying the winds and rainfall
associated with Hurricane Harvey,'' says Charles Greene, a climate
scientist at Cornell.
Last year was the third in a row to set a record for
highest global average surface temperature, according to
NASA. The 10 years of greatest loss of sea ice are all in the
last decade. Houston has suffered three ``500-year floods''
in the last 3 years.
So the author asks the question: Why can't we all respect scientists'
predictions about our cooking of our only
[[Page S5082]]
planet? How is it that we don't listen to the scientists on this,
particularly right here in this room, in this Chamber?
There are two very interesting articles that came out while we were
away that addressed this. One is about a phony group called the Cooler
Heads Coalition, whose job is to call climate science a hoax and
denounce environmentalists as global warming alarmists. They write
letters, blast out emails, pressure lawmakers, sponsor seminars, appear
on television. They even made a documentary movie.
This article in the Washington Post told the story behind this
coalition. Obviously, the coalition, this Cooler Heads crowd, is paid
for. ``The Cooler Heads have received more than $11 million in
donations over the years from coal and oil companies.'' Who knew?
``They've taken in tens of millions from nonprofit foundations, such as
those controlled by the wealthy Koch brothers. . . .'' Guess what.
There is more fossil fuel money. The Koch brothers run a fossil fuel
empire.
The Cooler Heads Coalition . . . are allied with industry
trade groups, public relations companies and lobbyists, all
of whom are working to influence public debate about global
warming.
Climate scientists said there is no doubt about the reality
of climate change and its consequences, including melting
polar ice caps, rising sea levels, and the intensification of
storms.
Benjamin Santer is a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory. We are pretty proud of our National Laboratories, and we
usually don't think people who are there are idiots or are fooling us
or are part of a hoax. Dr. Santer, by the way, also received a
MacArthur Foundation Genius award. He told the Washington Post that
this Cooler Heads outfit is ``attempting to turn back the clock on
knowledge and science.''
The history of this is rooted in a complex influence campaign that
began in support of tobacco. The tobacco plan foreshadowed the tactics
that Cooler Heads members would soon employ on climate change.
First, there were millions in contributions from affected industries,
often laundered through front groups and through foundations. ``The
same array of donors,'' the Washington Post reports, ``would help
finance charities behind'' the fight against climate science.
They took the skills they learned, denying the health harms of
tobacco, and moved that same technology of propaganda, influence, and
politicking into climate change. The Competitive Enterprise Institute
became the lead group in this Cooler Heads Coalition, taking over
management of the coalition, joined by groups such as the Heartland
Institute. The Heartland Institute is really a classy group. They are
the ones that put up billboards comparing climate scientists to the
Unabomber. That is the quality of debate we get out of the Heartland
Institute.
Americans for Prosperity is another influential nonprofit
organization, which is a front for--guess whom--the Koch brothers and
Koch Industries; i.e., the fossil fuel industry. They got particularly
cranked up by the Kyoto Protocol, and the story continues:
The energy industry went on a spending spree to thwart
Kyoto, devoting at least $13 million to public relations and
information campaigns in 1997. . . . The Cooler Heads
Coalition was in effect a loose confederation of groups with
the declared mission of countering ``the myths of global
warming.''
In early 1998, this Cooler Heads group met with energy industry
executives and lobbyists in closed-door meetings at the American
Petroleum Institute and began to soak up more money, and here is what
the plan was. I am quoting from the story in the Post.
One former Cooler Heads member, who spoke on the condition
of anonymity because of fear of a punitive backlash, said the
coalition's mission . . . was to . . . simulate a ``cacophony
of voices'' against climate-change science.
``There's a whole web,'' the former member said [out to do
this].
The ExxonMobil Foundation, of course, had given millions to Cooler
Heads members.
A 2009 IRS filing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute--the group
that took over the coalition and managed it--inadvertently made public
a filing that disclosed their funding from two coal mining companies,
Ohio-based Murray Energy and Richmond-based Massey Energy.
``Contributions to CEI during the Obama administration rose to $7.6
million in 2014.'' As the article continues, ``CEI and the Cooler Heads
were just the tip of the spear. . . . [B]etween 2003 and 2010, energy
companies, corporations and conservative foundations contributed
hundreds of millions to 91 nonprofit `think tanks,' educational groups
and associations involved in the fight against global-warming
regulations.''
To put it mildly, as the expert who chronicled this concluded, ``This
is a large-scale political effort.''
We have one last report from inside that large-scale political
effort. This is the firsthand voice of the individual. His name is
Jerry Taylor. Here is what he says:
I used to be the number two person at the Cato Institute.
The Cato Institute is one of this constellation of rightwing groups
that foment and support climate denial and receives money from fossil
fuel interests.
He continues:
I was responsible for building our resistance to climate
action. . . . I discovered that a lot of the scientific
narratives I was offering were really dodgy. . . . [O]ne of
the people that I trusted the most was in the business of
consciously misrepresenting the debate. This really rattled
me.
He goes on.
[O]nce I started looking closely at a lot of the
convenient, plausible talking points I was offering they
began to fall apart. [I then turned to look at] economic
arguments.
He says:
This is pretty hard. It's a very difficult thing . . . to
find that you cannot trust any of the scientists that are
being offered to resist climate action.
This is the guy who used to lead the anti-climate action effort of
the Cato Institute, saying it is a very difficult thing to find that
you cannot trust any of the scientists who are being offered to resist
climate action, and then the economists whom you have been relying on
to put cautious remarks about cost-benefit are now all walking away
from the game.
He goes on to say:
We got to the point . . . where you could not find an
academic economist who studies climate change who argued
against climate action--not one single one.
Here is his conclusion:
Believe it or not, libertarians and conservatives and
Republicans were put on this earth with the perfect answer to
climate change--harnessing markets and price signals via a
carbon tax or a carbon tax-like mechanism to reduce
greenhouse gas emission. We're perfectly placed to do that.
[What is it that] keeps Republicans from coming to the
conclusion that climate change doesn't just threaten polar
bears in the Arctic, it threatens the global economy, it
threatens capital flows, it threatens capitalism. . . . It's
not the Republican base, let me tell you.
There is poll after poll, survey after survey showing that most
Republicans believe in doing something about climate.
He continues:
What prevents Republican politicians from acting is that
there are significant members in the Republican Party
Coalition who are denialist demanders.
They are not just climate deniers themselves, they are denialist
demanders.
They have outsized influence in the party.
He says:
[T]he Koch-controlled Tea Party movement [has] held the GOP
by the throat.
By the way, if you were somebody who was trying to find some comfort
in the widely reported phenomenon that 97 percent of climate scientists
conclude the global warming is real and problematic for the planet and
has been exacerbated by human activity, if you are comforting yourself
that maybe the 3 percent were right, that the really smart place to
place your bet for the future of the planet and our economy and our
standing in the world is on those 3 percent--not take the 97 percent
bet; no, take the 3-percent bet--if that is the way you are thinking,
you got bad news.
Researchers tried to replicate the results of those 3 percent of
papers. Guess what. They found biased, faulty results.
Katharine Hayhoe is an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech
University. She said this:
Every single one of those analyses had an error--in their
assumptions, methodology, or analysis--that, when corrected,
brought their results into line with the scientific
consensus.
[[Page S5083]]
If you are hoping that 3 percent was somehow going to bail you out
from having to face this crisis, that just blew up. There is no 3
percent.
Broadly, there were three main errors in the papers denying
climate change. Many had cherry-picked the results . . . some
that applied inappropriate ``curve-fitting'' [to try to step]
away from data until the points matched the curve of their
choosing.
This is my favorite.
Sometimes the papers just ignored physics altogether.
It has been quite a month with the West ablaze, Houston underwater,
the most powerful storm ever measured in the Atlantic is headed our
way, heat and rain and other measures breaking records year after year,
multiple departments of governments aligning to warn us, and how does
the Trump Administration respond?
The Energy department asked scientists to remove the word ``climate
change'' from a grant proposal.
I have been asked to contact you to update the wording in
your proposal abstract to remove words such as ``global
warming'' or ``climate change.''
Not just one fluke. In March, POLITICO reported as follows:
[T]hat staff at the Department of Energy . . . were told
not to use the terms ``climate change,'' ``emissions
reduction'' or ``Paris Agreement.''
The Department put out a power grid study that has been long delayed,
and in the power grid study, the words ``climate change'' never
appeared. Wherever they were in earlier drafts, they got scrubbed. The
only reference to climate is a reference to ``rescinding energy and
climate-related policies.''
The EPA has been scrubbing the word ``climate change'' from its
website. It removed its climate change page and then got hammered with
a series of Freedom of Information Act requests as to what is going on
with that so they quickly scrambled and published an archived version
but buried it back in the website.
The Department of Interior has also removed discussions of the
effects of global warming from several of its pages. The Department of
Agriculture has emails showing how staff in their Natural Resources
Conservation Service was coached by managers to avoid the term
``climate change'' and instead use other language.
That is where we are--all of those facts, the motive behind it, the
fingerprints of the fossil fuel industry, the confessions by
participants in those schemes. Where are we? In this room, silence.
Nobody will talk about it because the power of the fossil fuel industry
is so strong, the threats are so bloodcurdling that nobody dares. We
cannot have a grownup, factual discussion about climate change in this
building either. Of course, over in the Trump administration, they have
completely thrown in the towel to the fossil fuel industry, and now we
are hoping to dodge the problem by forbidding people from using the
words ``climate change.'' It is pathetic.
I yield the floor.
____________________