[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 156 (Thursday, September 10, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5541-S5542]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the world today is in the clutches of 
a pandemic disease that touches directly or indirectly pretty much 
every human being on the face of the planet. It is costing us in lives, 
in money, and in immeasurable human pain.
  It didn't have to be this way. We could have been better prepared. 
President Trump was left a detailed playbook from his predecessor, but 
he ignored it. Trump did away with key safety systems like the National 
Security Council's pandemic response unit. Once the pandemic struck, 
Trump and his team assured us it would all go away in time--no urgency.
  It is a cautionary tale, it is a lesson, and it brings me today for 
the 270th time to call this Chamber to action on the issue of climate 
change. We cannot wait flat-footed for the next foreseeable crisis to 
engulf us. Climate change is a foreseeable crisis. It was indeed a 
foreseen crisis--indeed, even foreseen by Big Oil--and it is an actual 
crisis right now. It is a crisis we maybe can manage if we act swiftly 
and decisively, but if we fail to heed the warnings our natural world 
is screaming at us, we will be lost.
  The fossil fuel industry runs a massive dark-money influence campaign 
to foment fake uncertainty about climate change, but the evidence--the 
evidence--is overwhelming. We see climate effects in harsher wildfires, 
more frequent and intense storms, and more extreme heat waves. Mother 
Nature's warnings grow clearer and louder every day. It is the ocean--
the ocean--that signals some of the strongest warnings.
  The changes in our marine world are clear. Oceans are acidifying, 
oceans are warming, and oceans are rising against our shores. These 
changes are measured; they are not hypotheticals. They are measured 
with thermometers, with tide gauges, with simple pH tests.
  The tide gauges in Rhode Island don't lie about sea level rise. Sea 
levels are up nearly a foot over the last century. In other areas of 
the globe, sea levels have risen even higher, and the rate of sea level 
rise is accelerating.
  We just learned more about Greenland, whose melting ice sheet is an 
enormous contributor to global sea level rise. Over a fifth of global 
sea level rise since 2005 is Greenland ice melt. Last month, Greenland 
broke its previous record for ice loss. Again, the pace of the melting 
is accelerating.
  A team at Ohio State University just released a new study of the 
Greenland ice sheet based on 4 years of satellite data. The data showed 
that Greenland poured an average of 300 billion tons of melted glacier 
into our oceans every year across that period. But over the last two 
decades, that rate of melting--that glacial collapse, as the scientists 
put it--is up sevenfold from the earliest years they studied. The rate 
is accelerating. That means that Greenland's ice is now melting so 
quickly that winter snows that typically replenish these glaciers won't 
keep up. We are now on course for the entire Greenland ice sheet to 
disappear.

  ``Glacial retreat has knocked the dynamics of the whole ice sheet 
into a constant state of loss,'' said Ohio State's Ian Howat.
  Greenland's glacial collapse portends dramatic and destructive sea 
level rise. Scientists reckon Greenland holds enough water to raise sea 
levels by about 20 feet. That puts my capital city of Providence and 
Florida's major cities underwater. Antarctica holds enough ice to melt 
and raise sea water levels 60 feet. So it is not hard to see the 
problem--total coastal inundation.
  But well before total coastal inundation, coastal property values 
would plummet. Financial experts have been following the sea level 
economic threat for years because a coastal property values crash would 
radiate quickly through the rest of the economy. That crash creates 
what financial experts call systemic risk--a threat to the entire 
economic system. In 2016, the top economists for mortgage giant Freddie 
Mac--which is no liberal environmental group--warned that climate-
driven flooding along U.S. coasts will lead to economic losses 
``greater . . . than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great 
Recession.''
  It is not just Rhode Island. Pulitzer Prize-winning outdoors reporter 
Bob Marshall has warned of losing essentially all of Louisiana south of 
I-10. He said: ``Voting for congressmen who oppose emissions 
regulations is a vote to drown this coast.''
  It is not even just coasts. A new study out of the University of 
Arkansas shows sea level rise could push inland water tables higher, 
flooding communities many miles from the sea. We already see this 
phenomenon in inland Florida.
  Last, there is really no dispute about the data. A tide gauge is a 
simple and ancient measure. But we see this and do nothing.
  Another alarm bell is ringing in the ocean, and that is temperature. 
Oceans are warming, and the warming is accelerating. The rate of ocean 
warming has already doubled, and the ocean is projected to absorb up to 
five to seven times more heat by 2100. Why? Because the oceans regulate 
our planet's temperature by absorbing atmospheric heat. The oceans 
indeed have absorbed over 90 percent of the excess atmospheric heat 
fossil fuels have caused. If you think things are bad right now, we are 
actually only experiencing 10 percent of the global warming we have 
caused. The other 90 percent has been absorbed by the ocean. It is a 
lot of heat. By one example, our oceans are

[[Page S5542]]

warming at the rate of multiple Hiroshima explosions worth of heat per 
second--per second. There is not a lot of dispute here either, unless 
you want to argue with a thermometer.
  Ocean warming displaces fisheries, disrupts ocean currents, destroys 
coral reefs, and depletes the oxygen levels and carrying capacity of 
the sea. These are the kinds of changes that usually transpire across 
geologic time. They are happening now.
  Ocean warming sends its dangers ashore because that ocean heat energy 
powers up storm systems. They power up into stronger storms, and they 
power up faster. We just watched Tropical Storm Laura spin up into 
category 4 Hurricane Laura in less than 24 hours. As Bob Marshall, the 
Pulitzer Prize-winning Louisiana writer put it: ``High water 
temperature [is] the crystal-meth of hurricane intensity.''
  Warmer seas power up stronger storms, and they power up more storms. 
The Atlantic has already generated a typical full year's worth of 
storms, pumping out about 55 percent more energy than usual into 
tropical storms and hurricanes. This year delivered the earliest ever 
C-, E-, F-, G-, H-, I-, J-, K-, L-, and M-named storms--every single 
one, the earliest of its name.
  In 2019, 14 separate billion-dollar disasters struck the United 
States, and the majority of them were hurricanes. In 2018 and 2019, 
Dorian, Florence, and Michael slammed into our coasts. Year 2017 
brought Harvey, the most significant tropical cyclone rainfall event 
ever recorded; and Irma, the strongest storm ever recorded outside of 
the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean, with sustained winds reaching 185 
miles per hour; and Hurricane Maria, killing nearly 3,000 Americans in 
Puerto Rico and laying waste to the island.
  Ocean warming is altering basic operating systems of our planet. 
Physical systems are altered; biological systems are altered; basic 
features of the ocean are altered; and the change has just begun. Many 
of these changes are oceanic, but some come ashore. We need to buckle 
up.
  The third ocean alarm bell is acidification. Oceans absorb not just 
90 percent of the excess heat; they absorb about 30 percent of the 
carbon pollution--the excess carbon dioxide from fossil fuel emissions, 
and they have sucked up a lot of excess carbon. Since the Industrial 
Revolution, oceans have absorbed about 525 billion tons of 
CO2--22 million tons per day. That added carbon dioxide 
chemically changes the ocean's pH, making oceans more acidic. It looks 
like the oceans are acidifying at their fastest rate in at least 50 
million years. As with warming and sea level rise, the rate of 
acidification is accelerating. Again, there is no real dispute; pH 
testing is pretty reliable stuff.
  A new Texas A&M study shows carbon dioxide levels rising at alarming 
rates in the Gulf of Mexico--bad news for shrimp, coral, and other 
marine life that are highly sensitive to acidity. Texas A&M warns of 
the acidification threat to the gulf's commercial fisheries, worth 
roughly $1 billion per year.
  The Woods Hole Institute made startling findings about acidification 
of coral reefs triggering a kind of osteoporosis for coral, hampering 
the organism's ability to grow skeletons. Reefs, of course, are the 
nurseries of the sea. Without coral reefs, marine biodiversity plummets 
and our oceans become unrecognizable.
  The University of Alaska has an entire ocean acidification research 
center because of the dangers to Alaskan fisheries. The lowly pteropod 
is a base species along the northern Pacific coast. It is damaged in 
acidified seas, and no one quite knows what becomes of that ocean food 
chain when a foundation species like the pteropod collapses. We know it 
is not good.
  All of these warnings are stark. Our oceans are in crisis. Our 
natural world hurdles toward a point of no return. Meanwhile, the 
fossil fuel industry keeps deploying lies and political influence in a 
carefully orchestrated covert operation run against our own government.
  The fossil fuel industry's menacing climate denial apparatus has 
captured one of America's major political parties. In the wake of 
Citizens United, fossil fuel dark money has so thoroughly corrupted 
American politics that Congress has lost an entire decade--the lost 
decade--to industry mischief. Even today, we still fritter and dawdle.
  Eventually, we will see the full contours of the covert operation the 
fossil fuel industry has run against us as if we were an enemy nation. 
One day will come a full accounting of this industry's wanton deception 
of the American people. One day we will see just how much money this 
industry paid for its malign influence and who accepted that money and 
denied the science and ignored the problem. History will judge those 
involved harshly, and deservedly so. It is a crime in progress against 
our own children and the world they will inhabit.
  After the lost decade of Citizens United, time is short to heed the 
warnings of our oceans and end the fossil fuel pollution that threatens 
them. It is truly getting to be now or never.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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