[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14825-14831]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



PRESIDENT BUSH STANDS BY HIS CONVICTIONS ON MATTERS OF DEFENSE AND THE 
                              ENVIRONMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I draw Members' attention to President 
Bush and the great job that he has been doing withstanding public 
pressure to go in the opposite direction of which he believes to be 
true.

                              {time}  1545

  We have a sense about what George W. is about; and I believe that 
George W. is proving himself to be a great president and that, as time 
goes on, we will find that this gentleman, who has been castigated by 
his opponents in some very vile characterizations, is actually a very 
thoughtful person, and a person of high character, and a person of 
strength.
  President George W. Bush has been willing to say things straight, in 
a straightforward manner that has enraged his political opposition, but 
yet by standing strong and tall, like President Reagan before him, who 
was also attacked in very personal and vile terms, our new president is 
finding that if he stands strong, that people will go in his direction. 
Because the things that he believes in, many of the things that he 
believes in, are clearly true but not in line with the liberal ideology 
that has dominated the American government and dominated the news media 
and communications in this country and in Western Europe.
  Our new president, for example, has stood firm on the idea and the 
concept of missile defense. Prior to going to Europe recently, the 
President was under severe attack by the leading Democrat in the 
Senate, Tom Daschle, and he was being told that by insisting that the 
United States move forward on missile defense that it would in some way 
bring about a renewal of the arms race. How many of us heard that?
  Now, I believe the Democrats certainly have a right to attack a 
Republican president or vice versa. That is what democracy is all 
about. We all have the right to criticize. But let us point out that 
while some people seem to be upset that the President was being 
criticized overseas, I am just upset with the fact that the Democrats 
were so adamant in their opposition to missile defense and that, now 
what, they were wrong, not that they were criticizing the President.
  Missile defense is something that now seems to be becoming more 
acceptable to our European allies. And in fact, instead of being this 
roadblock to any type of good relationship with the government in 
Russia, now we see President Putin in Russia edging towards President 
George W. Bush's position.
  Let us note that President Ronald Reagan first stepped forward with 
the idea that if we are going to be spending billions of dollars in 
order to protect the people of the United States it is better for us to 
build a system that indeed protects our people rather than a system 
that is based on annihilating millions of other people living in less 
free societies when they become engaged in a conflict with the United 
States.
  During the Cold War, it made every sense to have a situation where 
the Russians knew that if they attacked the United States with their 
missile force that hundreds of millions of Russians would lose their 
lives, like hundreds of millions of our citizens, and that was a 
deterrent. But during the post-Cold War world, such a deterrent makes 
no sense at all.
  Right now, for example, if there is an adversary, if there are people 
who in some way might be willing to take the risk of attacking the 
United States, they are not people who care about losing the lives of 
their own citizens. If the Communist Chinese were to launch one of 
their missiles at the United States, they could care less if there 
would be retaliation. The regime in Communist China murders their own 
people, so why would they care if we killed 1 million, 10 million or 
even 50 million of their people in retaliation for a missile attack 
that killed a million Americans?
  George W. Bush's position, as well as Ronald Reagan's position, makes 
all the sense in the world. Let us not put ourselves in a position of 
having to murder millions of people in another country because their 
dictators, their bosses, the gangsters that control their country have 
attacked the United States of America. Let us, instead, protect 
ourselves and use our technological genius to build a system that will 
protect us against some attack with one or two missiles from a rogue 
country, from North Korea or from China or Iran or Libya.
  Now, the Democrats have done everything they can to prevent this type 
of technology from being developed. During the 8 years Bill Clinton was 
President of the United States, he spent those 8 years spending the 
money on missile defense and channeling it in a direction so that that 
technology would not succeed. He kept us engaged in a treaty with the 
former Soviet Union, even though the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. 
He kept us in compliance with this treaty that we signed with old 
Communist dictators, even though communism and the Soviet Union no 
longer existed in Russia. We could have gotten out of that treaty.
  And this is one thing George W. Bush is pushing for, out of the 
treaty that prevents us from thoroughly developing our anti-missile 
system. We could have gotten out of that, and by now have developed a 
system so that if China would launch a missile towards the United 
States that we could knock it down and protect Los Angeles or southern 
California or northern California, or even parts of the United States 
as far as Chicago. We would be able to protect the United States from a 
missile attack. But Bill Clinton decided, as President of the United 
States, that he did not support missile defense. So the money that we 
spent on missile defense was frittered away, frittered away and wasted. 
Now we are vulnerable and we have George W. Bush standing firm against 
all those who try to pressure him and say back down.
  Well, I think it was one of Ronald Reagan's great moments, when he 
went to meet with Gorbachev and Gorbachev told him he had to agree not 
to develop a weapon system that could protect rather than kill people, 
and if he did that, if he stopped or gave up this idea of missile 
defense, he could sign a big treaty and be the biggest hero in the 
world, that Ronald Reagan walked away from it. George W. Bush is 
proving himself to be that same type of

[[Page 14826]]

strong leader who will bring about a more peaceful world.
  Ronald Reagan had no idea when he turned that down that the people of 
the world would see him as a strong and a tough leader who they could 
trust to make a decision and that that in and of itself would have a 
dramatic impact for the promotion of freedom and peace on the planet.
  By the time Ronald Reagan was done being president, even though he 
had been nitpicked to death by people on the other side of the aisle, 
the Cold War was over, the Berlin Wall was on its way down, and 
democracy and peace were given a better chance than ever in my lifetime 
and in the whole 20th Century, all because Ronald Reagan stood tough.
  George W. Bush is making those same tough stands against the same 
type of nitpicking that went on during the Reagan administration. Every 
time we took a stand against communism, there were those on the other 
side of the aisle trying to find a mistake that we made in order to 
thwart our efforts, whether it was in Latin America or whether it was 
with the Mujahedin against the Russian expansion in Afghanistan or 
elsewhere, or in the development of missile defense.
  Our President today, George W. Bush, has that same strength of 
character. And if he maintains his courage, as he has been doing and as 
we have seen, and for the first time the world is starting to lean in 
his direction already in terms of the things he has said on missile 
defense, George W. Bush, like Ronald Reagan before him, will be able to 
make an incredible contribution to the contribution of freedom and 
peace on this planet.
  Now, one of the other areas that George W. has been standing firm on 
is his refusal to submit the American people to the dictates of a Kyoto 
global warming treaty. For this tough stand that he has taken, George 
W. has been under vicious attack. But those of us in the United States 
who are proud that our country has a high standard of living and that 
in our country ordinary people can live decent lives, we applaud George 
W. Bush and his wisdom and his courage when it comes to the Kyoto 
Treaty.
  Many people have heard congressman after congressman come to the 
floor of this body attacking George W. for not being part of the team 
when it comes to global warming and supporting the Kyoto Treaty. Time 
and time again we hear, ``America is doing nothing on this global 
warming.'' Well, maybe the American people should understand when these 
Members of Congress get up and start talking that way and condemning 
George W. Bush for doing nothing what it is they want him to do. What 
is it that the Kyoto Treaty is demanding of the American people that 
George W. Bush is saying, no, I do not think that we are going to do 
that? What we are talking about are severe restrictions on our standard 
of living.
  They claim the United States should be ashamed that we put more 
CO2 into the air than any other country. That is the way 
they judge it. The United States puts more CO2 into the air. 
Well, what does that mean? Well, that may mean that we have the highest 
standard of living of any other country of the world. And, yes, there 
is some CO2 we put into the air. But in terms of the 
standard of living, if we put per $1,000 of GNP, we actually put less 
CO2 in the air than anybody else.
  So if we just judge it by how much we are putting in, of course that 
is a mandate for what? For lowering the GNP, for lowering the standard 
of living of regular people. That is what they are trying to force 
George W. to agree to, lowering the standard of living of ordinary 
Americans. Is that what we want?
  By the way, these same fanatics who are trying to convince us about 
this ``global warming problem,'' do not take into consideration that 
America, through its agriculture, has had a vast tree planting over the 
last 100 years. And by the way, we have many more trees in America 
today than we had 100 years ago. Because at the turn of the century 
there was a replanting of trees across America. Up in the Northeast, up 
in Maine, and up in New Hampshire and Vermont and those areas that were 
treeless by the turn of the century, or the 1800s, those were 
replanted. Go up there today and there are vast forests there. Those 
trees take the CO2 out of the air. We actually take more 
CO2 out of the air than any other country in the world.
  The fanatics that want us to get involved in the Kyoto Treaty do not 
take that into consideration. Instead, they would have us, for example, 
pay $5 a gallon for every gallon of gas that we buy. Now, what is that 
going to do for the price of goods that are sent by truck? What will 
that do for the standard of living of average Americans, that $5 a 
gallon for gasoline? It will dramatically reduce the well-being of our 
people.
  When we see people up here attacking George W. Bush on the Kyoto 
Treaty, that we are doing nothing, they will say what they want us to 
do is be engaged in a treaty that will lower the standard of living of 
ordinary people in this country, that will suck money right out of our 
pockets that could go to better food, better health care, better 
education. Instead, they are going to put it into higher prices for 
gasoline and other types of fuel.
  It is vital that the public know what is going on in this attack 
against George Bush. Global warming, first and foremost, is not a 
scientific imperative. Let us talk about global warming for a minute. 
It is a politically driven theory. The people who are pushing global 
warming are not, by and large, being pushed by some scientific 
motivation but instead have a political agenda. Those people who are in 
the scientific community that have signed on have done so realizing 
that they are kowtowing to political powers and not to scientific 
knowledge.

                              {time}  1600

  Those exposing global warming, those scientists who are brave enough 
to step forward, do so knowing that they might be retaliated against. 
Our young people, for example, are being lied to about the environment 
in general, and they are being lied to especially about global warming. 
I see this every time a group of young people from my congressional 
district comes to Washington, D.C.
  As a member of Congress, I represent Huntington Beach, California, 
Southern California, I went to high school in Southern California and 
now that I am a Member of Congress, every student group that comes from 
my congressional district here to Washington, D.C., I take the time and 
effort to talk to them and to get to know what they are thinking and 
try to find out as much about them as they are finding out about me and 
about government.
  I ask them the same question, every single time, every group. How 
many of them believe, these are students from Southern California, 
believe that the air quality today in Southern California is cleaner or 
is worse than it was when I went to high school 35 years ago in 
Southern California? Ninety-five percent always say the same thing, 
almost every group says the same thing. They believe, 95 percent of 
them believe that the air quality in Southern California today is so 
much worse than when I went to high school 35 years ago. I was so 
lucky, they say, to have lived in a time and went to school in a time 
when the air was so clean. Of course, they are surprised when I tell 
them that they are absolutely wrong, that the real answer is 180 
degrees in the other direction.
  In fact, the air in Southern California has never been cleaner in my 
lifetime and they enjoy some of the best clean air ever in Southern 
California. These young people have been systematically lied to and 
been told that the environment is killing them. They are being told 
that the water is so much worse than it ever was.
  The fact is that water quality in the United States has been vastly 
improved in these last 4 decades. Forty years ago if you tried to put 
your finger in the Potomac River they would come out and say, What the 
heck are you doing put your finger in the Potomac for? Do you want to 
get the acid burn on your finger?
  Today you go out and people are swimming in the Potomac. People are

[[Page 14827]]

fishing in the Potomac. What happened? I will have to admit that many 
regulations, many are regulations that the Democratic party pushed. Let 
me make no beans about it, the Democrats were in the front of the 
reform effort. That over the years tough measures were put in and there 
has been an enormous amount of environmental clean up that has taken 
place.
  Unfortunately, the information about that cleanup has not made it to 
the American people and especially to our young people. They are being 
told the water is getting a lot worse. They are being told that the 
land is much more foul. Over the years of our country's history there 
were toxic waste dumps all over the place. There was no hope of 
cleaning them up. The land was spoiled. This was a horrible situation.
  Guess what? With the technology we have developed today, we can clean 
up those sites. In fact, in my own district I worked with a company 
called Simple Green Company that has developed a way that in 60 to 90 
days can take a contaminated soil and turn it into clean soil so it can 
be used for homes or schools or whatever.
  We tried a demonstration project in my district. We took 10 acres of 
soil that used to be an old oil sludge dump, and sure enough, in about 
90 days Simple Green, this company in my district, was able to turn 
that into a usable piece of property again. Mark my words, when people 
find out about this process, we will have toxic waste sites being 
cleaned up all over the country because it will be profitable to do so 
and we have the technology to do so.
  But our young people are not being told that. Our young people are 
being told it is technology, the machines and the industrialization 
that has caused the problems. The fact is people are living longer 
today than they ever have. Although, yes, there are the diseases we 
face, other generations faced many of these same diseases long before 
there was this industrialization. Not to say that there is not some 
collateral impact, and we should be aware of that and study that.
  This President has not only full funded but doubled the budget of the 
National Institute of Health so that we can scientifically look at the 
health patterns to see if we can help to cure some of those problems.
  But in terms of the overall environment, it is so much better. For 
example, in 1966 a Mustang that my father owned, if you take the 
pollution coming out of that tail pipe and you examine the new Mustangs 
today and examine how much pollution is coming out of that tail pipe, 
96 percent of the air pollution has been captured. The engines are that 
much more effective. They have cured 96 percent of that problem.
  In Southern California, what that has meant is we have doubled or 
maybe even tripled our population. Yet the air quality is much much 
better.
  Now, some people say, so what if they are lying to these kids? So 
what if the public is not getting the story. I can tell you so what. 
What is happening then is there are a group of people using these lies 
and the fear that our young people live in and that our other people 
live in to try to push their own political agenda which is a 
centralizing of power in Washington, D.C., and that is frightening 
enough, but their agenda as well is to empower global government 
through the United Nations and other institutions, to have the power to 
control our lives, our economic lives, in the name of stopping this 
horrible pollution.
  This threat of global warming that is supposedly going to destroy 
people's lives and the whole planet, I am sorry but I am not about to 
give up my freedom to a bunch of unelected officials from other 
countries. By the way, the people that would be running these 
international bodies that will oversee the environment and, thus, 
oversee our economic lives and, thus, oversee every decision which we 
make as people, these bodies will not be manned and not be controlled 
by individuals who are elected. No.
  They will be controlled by people who are not elected even in their 
home countries, much less by the people of the United States. Those 
people who run roughshod over their own countries in the Third World 
will end up with seats on the United Nations or on these global 
commissions or authority boards. They will be the ones making the 
decisions that we must run our lives by. I am afraid not. If that is 
what you are going to do to clean up the environment, count me out. 
Because within 10 years all of these bodies will be run by corrupt 
Third World people who are probably going to be bribed by Communist 
China, et cetera.
  By the way, let us note that in the Kyoto Treaty which the President 
has been, and we can be grateful for this, has been standing 
steadfastly against, the Kyoto Treaty that these Democrats are trying 
to push on us and force down our throats, exempts from its regulations 
and its Draconian controls, exempts Communist China. Surprise, 
surprise, surprise.
  What do you think that is going to do if we have all kinds of 
controls on America and in the United States? To open up a factory in 
the United States, it is going to cost so much more and that if you are 
going to create any jobs in the United States there is going to be all 
sorts of hoops people have to jump through and it will cost more money 
and more controls. But none of those controls and none of those extra 
costs exist in China. Where do you think people are going to set up 
their factories? They are going to set their factories up in China.
  Let me note, we have some controls in the United States, 
environmental controls that are exemplary compared to China, compared 
to these Third World countries that are all exempt. So we have our 
businesses going to these places to set up factories where they can 
pollute even more. So the irony of it is the global warming treaty will 
create more pollution, not less, because it exempts the countries that 
permit the dirtiest of industrialization. No. You can count me out on 
that one.
  Let us talk a little bit about global warming. What is it? People 
should understand what is being talked about. Global warming, 
supposedly, is carbon fuel, coal, oil and gas, et cetera, that is being 
put into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, that is 
CO2, and supposedly CO2 will raise the 
temperature of the planet and that will cause drastic changes in our 
weather. The ice flows. Supposedly the ice caps are already melting, 
and animal and plant life are being really threatened by global 
warming. Every time there is a hot day you can hear some global warming 
guy get up and say, oh, well, this is all caused by global warming.
  Well, that is just so much global bologna. First and foremost, all of 
the recent scientific reports agree that there may or may not have been 
a minor change in this planet's temperature, its average temperature 
over the last 100 years. That there is, get this, no conclusive 
evidence that man has caused it. Now, that is what the facts are.
  But if you listen to Dan Rather or you listen to our friends trying 
to push their political agenda here in the House, or if you pay 
attention to the news media besides Dan Rather and the rest of them, 
you are being told that you have all of these reports and the reports 
are confirming that the world is getting hotter and man is the cause.
  In fact, it was not too long ago I saw a report on TV about one of 
these commissions and their study and it said the study has found out 
that it is getting warmer. This is Dan Rather in the beginning. That 
the Earth is getting warmer and man is at fault. By the end of that 
report where his own reporter in Washington said, of course, they have 
not indicated and they cannot prove whether or not man has had anything 
to do with this. A direct contradiction to this headline that Dan 
Rather lead into his own report. That is not something that is an odd 
situation.
  If you take a look at all of the media reports on global warming, you 
will find when you look into the details, by the time you get to the 
end of the story you will find quotes from the report that they are 
supposedly pushing or talking about, and there are weasel words 
throughout the whole report because the scientists that are conducting 
these studies are not sure and, thus, they want to put into the report

[[Page 14828]]

words that they can point to and say, well, we did not really say this. 
We said maybe. We said could lead to the conclusion that or possibly.
  Look at these reports. Do not believe when you read something in the 
newspaper or hear it on television that some scientific body has 
conclusively decided this, do not believe it because it is not true. 
Not only is that not true, it is about as true as the fact that those 
poor kids in my district are being told that air pollution in Southern 
California is worse than it has ever been and they are scared to death 
that it is hurting their life.
  Climate science, by the way, had become really a new entry into this 
whole idea of scientific study. Prior to 1980, there were only a 
handful of climatologists. Now they are everywhere. Why is that? How 
come there are so many climatologists all of the sudden?
  The fact is that it is easy now to get a government grant if you are 
going to prove that global warming exists and it is very difficult to 
get a grant if you are trying to have a scientific study that will or 
will not prove that global warming exists.
  Eight years ago when President Clinton took over the Executive 
Branch, he saw to it that there would be no scientific research grants 
going from the government to scientists who did not support the idea 
that we were under attack from some global warming trends. Unless they 
furthered the global warming theory, they were not going to get a 
government grant.
  We were tipped off to this when the lead scientist, the Director of 
Energy and Research for the Department of Energy, a guy named Dr. Will 
Happer, immediately when Clinton was elected and took office, they 
could not move fast enough to fire this guy from his position because 
he did not agree with the global warming theory.
  Dr. Happer, by the way, now is a professor of physics at Princeton 
University. But his removal back in Clinton's first few weeks in office 
sent a message to the scientific community.

                              {time}  1615

  There does not appear to have been much information about global 
warming prior to the mid 1980s. But what we have been able to find out 
is that that information that was available before the 1980s indicated 
that there was going to be a new ice age. Back in the 1980s, some of 
the same scientists who are now warning us against global warming were 
warning us that there was going to be a new ice age and that global 
cooling was really the problem. This Member of Congress sat through 
hearings in which the advocates of global warming would appear and 
after a few questions they would admit, well, it could be global 
cooling, yes, it could be global cooling.
  What is that all about? Why are we spending billions of dollars? Why 
are we giving up our freedom? Why are we permitting the standard of 
living of our people to go down based on that type of scientific logic? 
I think not. The fact is that in a span of 20 years, climate models 
have gone from predicting that we would all freeze to death in the new 
ice age to now we are all going to have to worry about being baked to 
death in a global furnace.
  Some of the leading proponents, as I say, of global warming went from 
freezing to burning to death. Historically speaking, we know, by the 
way, let us just take a look at it, everybody should understand it a 
little bit, that the global climate changes. Global climate changes. 
There have been ice ages in the earth's past and there have been 
tropical ages. Both of those came about off and on throughout the 
hundreds of millions of years of the earth's life without any 
interference of man.
  Now, the global warming theory, by the way, is that it is getting 
hotter because mankind is putting CO2 into the air. Mankind 
is putting CO2 into the air. Well, what about all those 
climate changes before humankind, before there were any railroads or 
industry or cars? Why did that happen? There is no real explanation for 
that. Well, there is an explanation. What the proponents of global 
warming will not tell you is that all of this CO2 that they 
claim is causing global warming, all of that CO2 that 
mankind puts into the atmosphere is only 5 percent of the 
CO2 that goes into the atmosphere every year from all 
sources. Mother nature is putting 19 times more CO2 into the 
air than human beings. But human beings are being blamed totally 
because we want to have a little higher standard of living.
  By the way, when there is a volcano that erupts violently, all of a 
sudden there is dramatically more CO2 in the atmosphere. One 
volcano like Krakatau or something can put as much CO2 into 
the air as all of our industrialization. So it makes sense for us not 
to have good jobs? It makes sense for us not to have cars? Give me a 
break. The fact is that of all the reforms that global warming people 
want us to go through and restrictions and the Kyoto treaty, it would 
knock a little CO2 out of the air but that is just mankind's 
contribution to that CO2. If there is a volcano that erupts, 
that is taken care of right away and that does not even count anymore.
  I had a Member of this Congress grab me by the arm the last time I 
spoke about this and said, ``You know, Dana, you're wrong. The 
volcanoes do not put CO2 into the air.'' And he cited all of 
these scientists.
  I went back to my office, I got on my Internet, looked up the 
scientific basis and by the time I had to come down to the floor to 
vote the next time, I had the report right in front of me and, sure 
enough, volcanoes do put CO2 into the air. Three percent 
every year of all CO2 going into the air comes from 
volcanoes. Only 5 percent is coming from human activity. So if we have 
a large number of volcanoes or one big eruption, that means they just 
totally cancel out anything that we would do as humankind.
  By the way, one other factor is, all of these people are talking 
about, ``Oh, this horrible global warming, you can see its impact 
starting now.'' What is the global warming? What are these people 
telling us about our weather? Our weather supposedly is 1 degree warmer 
than it was 100 years ago. Let us look at this. One degree over 100 
years and they are saying that that is a trend that is really 
frightening. These people cannot tell us what the weather is going to 
be like next week but they are afraid because they think that the 
weather is 1 degree warmer now than it was 100 years ago.
  I heard about this meeting President Clinton had of climatologists 
and weather reporters from around the United States into the Oval 
Office, into the White House, about 5 or 6 years ago. He was going to 
have all these weathermen there, they were going to talk about global 
warming and this 100 years and the trend that is set up and, oh, my 
gosh, 100 years from now how bad it is going to be, when they all got 
to the White House and they had their meeting and during that meeting 
at the White House, a storm came across Washington, D.C. and there was 
a deluge of rain, it was raining horribly, but of those hundreds of 
weathermen and climatologists who knew all about weather so much, they 
could predict weather for 100 years, only three of them had brought 
their umbrellas to that meeting. What does that tell you? You cannot 
predict what the weather is going to be like 2 weeks from now. And if 
it is just 1 degree over 100 years, they are telling us that we are 
going to be so frightened out of our wits by that that we are going to 
submit to a global treaty that would give powers over our economy and 
bring down our standard of living, exempt Communist China and let them 
get all the development? No way. One degree over 100 years is this 
thing that they are fearful about. And at the same time, let us go back 
to that basic fact that we were just discussing. There have been 
changes in the earth's temperature many, many times. Even if that 1 
degree over 100 years was right and, by the way, we do not know how 
they took the temperatures 100 years ago. We do not know who was taking 
the temperature down in some Pacific Ocean place. Was it a sailor who 
was reading the thermometer right or what about the guys out west or 
out in the jungles or something? Who was taking these temperatures 100 
years ago? How do we know that it was 1 degree cooler 100 years ago? I 
would doubt that it is 1 degree

[[Page 14829]]

warmer, it might be, but if it was and even if we were in a period of 
our earth's history where there was a slight bit of warming, that is 
the way it is sometimes. That is no excuse to change the standard of 
living of the American people.
  Earlier in this millennium, we know, for example, or in the last 
millennium, I should say, Leif Ericson established a colony in 
Greenland. Greenland at that time was free from snow about half the 
year. Half the year it did not have any snow in Greenland. Yet less 
than 100 years after that, the colony had to be abandoned because the 
climate was growing colder. They had a mini ice age. Certainly we know 
that throughout our history, we have seen situations where the glaciers 
came down and then the glaciers receded. Is it possible now that maybe 
we are in a period where the glaciers are receding a little bit and 
then they will come down a couple of hundred years from now or a 
thousand years or a hundred thousand years from now? That is possible. 
Maybe we are in a period of the earth's history in which, as I say, 
those glaciers that came down and dug out the Great Lakes and now they 
have receded, maybe they still are receding. I know one thing, there 
was a report from the Canadian government that debunked the idea that 
the ice cap is melting. How many people have heard that? Again, it is 
like the kids being told in my area that the air pollution is so bad, 
now they are being told, the ice caps are melting, catastrophe is about 
ready to happen. The Canadian government just put out a report about 3 
months ago, I happened to see it, no, the ice caps are not melting. The 
ice caps are not melting. They are not receding. There is just as much 
ice cap as there ever was. This is all baloney. It is called global 
baloney. Give up your freedom because we are going to try to scare you.
  I do not think so. I do not think the American people will buy that. 
I think that George W. Bush deserves a medal for standing strong 
against these fearmongers who are trying to scare us into again 
centralizing power in Washington, D.C. and trying to scare us into 
centralizing power globally.
  Let me just say a few things about George W. Bush overseas, the Kyoto 
Protocol and the media that has been really down on him. Ronald Reagan 
went through the same thing. I saw this personally. I worked in the 
White House with Ronald Reagan. He went through the same personal 
attacks. You had scientists, you had these liberal science groups that 
would get up and make the same claims about Ronald Reagan's theories, 
especially about his defense theories, and they all were proven wrong 
by the end of his administration. But let me just say, when you hear 
these reports by the scientific community, especially, for example, 
there was a report by the National Academy of Sciences, this is the one 
that Dan Rather was reporting on that I mentioned, and that National 
Academy of Sciences report which we were told proved conclusively that 
global warming was happening and that mankind was at fault, when you 
look at that, when you look at that report, it is so filled with 
caveats and weasel words that the scientific community was not putting 
itself on the line to support global warming, it was just drawing 
attention to the debate about the issue.
  I have some documents that I will make part of the record considering 
this. Again, we have to take a look at what is being said and why it is 
being said and look very closely at this issue when people are talking 
about it. I am not suggesting that we should take anyone's word, either 
people who are anti-global warming or pro-global warming and take them 
just on face value. We need to make sure that we are very skeptical 
when people are trying to tell us that something dramatic is happening, 
whether it is to our weather or to anything else and be very careful 
before we make such awesome decisions that would change the standard of 
living and bring down the standard of living of our people.
  One thing that people might want to note is that some people are 
telling us that the global warming phenomenon if there is a 1-degree 
increase in the earth's temperature, that there could be other 
explanations for it other than that mankind is using cars to get around 
in or that CO2 is being put into the air by machines. For 
example, the earth's orbit around the sun is elliptical. What does that 
mean? That means at some time, the earth is closer to the sun and 
sometimes it is further away from the sun. That happens in 100-year 
cycles. We are finding now that maybe we might be a little bit closer 
in that curve and maybe that would account for the fact that things 
were 1 degree warmer over 100 years. Ancient Mayans and Aztecs observed 
that cycle, that solar cycle of 208 years. They have suggested that 
there is a 104-year decline in temperatures and a 104-year increase in 
temperatures just by the fact of how far you are from the sun.
  By the way, also something that we might explain this is the fact 
that there are sun spots and there are solar storms. The sun itself may 
be the cause of global warming which of course has nothing to do with 
industrialization or automobiles or us putting CO2 in the 
air. We also have to remember that water, water comprises so much of 
the volume of this planet. I think it is three-quarters of the planet 
is water. Yet there are no adequate global ocean temperature readings. 
All the readings have been done on land, have not been done of the 
water or of the air. So we have not tested the water temperature nor 
have we tested the atmospheric temperature. In fact, a renowned 
scientist just prior to me coming up here was with me coming here and 
said, there is absolutely no evidence that there has been any 
temperature change, not even that 1 degree over 100 years, no 
temperature change above the atmosphere.
  If there has been no change there and no change in the water, how are 
these people able to come forward and be so fanatical about what they 
are trying to railroad us into?

                              {time}  1640

  So, none of the readings include any deep water, and if there is any 
water temperatures, it is only very shallow water readings. So we have 
zero understanding of the deep waters that cover this planet, and no 
change, we see no change in the upper atmosphere. So how can we then 
try to think that with that type of data, not knowing how the other 
data has been collected, how can we possibly make decisions like the 
ones for the Kyoto Treaty that will so dramatically affect the standing 
of living of our people?
  Let me go on to say one other thing about global warming. About 7 or 
8 years ago, during the height of the Clinton Administration, this 
Member of Congress was visited by a high ranking scientist in the U.S. 
Government, and he made me swear never to tell who he was, but he said, 
Dana, these readings that they are using to back up their theory that 
we are going through global warming, they do not take into 
consideration cloud cover.
  Get that. Not only do they not take water temperature or the sun or 
any of these other things, but cloud cover. They have not taken into 
consideration even if the clouds were covering that day, much less do 
they take into consideration that at one time, maybe 100 years ago, 
there was a lot of open space where they were taking the readings, and 
now that space is covered with concrete because it might be a city.
  Now, what does that have to do with that one degree of increase in 
temperature there has been? These things make a lot of difference, and 
yet those people who are trying to tell us that global warming is a 
problem have not taken any of these things into account.
  So, anyway, what can we determine by all of this? That global 
temperature records are flawed. We know they did not take into account 
what was going on with the sun, whether or not the areas that were 
being recorded were urban or rural over these last 100 years. They have 
not even taken into consideration the humidity factor in terms of the 
Earth's temperature.
  Finally, let us look at the Earth's orbit itself. They do not take 
into account the Earth's orbit. They do not

[[Page 14830]]

take into account the sun's situation. They do not take into account 
the clouds. They do not take into account their own long-term readings. 
They do not take into account the humidity. What they do take into 
account is a theoretical calculation that man-made CO2s have 
something to do with global warming, and they have lots of hypothetical 
data about how human beings are polluting the world.
  Okay, human beings are polluting the world, and that is certainly a 
fact, and we have to work to make sure that we correct pollution by 
better technology all the time. It does not mean that we have a global 
warming problem. It does not mean that we have to make drastic changes 
in our life or increase taxes or centralize power.
  Most of the sources of CO2, and that is the pollutant they 
are looking at, these greenhouse gasses, methane and CO2, 
most of them are coming into the atmosphere naturally and are not man-
made. Now, certainly we contribute a little bit. As I mentioned 
earlier, you have volcanic activity that creates CO2. Three 
percent of all of the CO2 in the world every year comes from 
volcanic activity. If a huge volcano goes off, it goes much more.
  But how about these other sources? That is about the same level as 
mankind. The volcanoes put out about the same thing mankind puts out 
every year, unless there is a big volcano that goes off.
  What about some of the other sources? The other sources of methane 
and CO2 are what? How about insects and termites, and how 
about rotting wood? Do you know that insects and termites and rotting 
wood contribute much more to the CO2 and methane that goes 
into the environment than human beings? All of our industrialization 
does not put into the environment as much CO2 and methane 
that termites and insects and rotting wood do.
  So if our main concern about pollutants is to bring those 
CO2 levels of methane down, because we are so afraid of 
global warming, what would we do? What would be consistent with that? 
Well, they say you want to limit human beings' right to have their own 
automobiles, make it so expensive people cannot own a car, $5, $6 a 
gallon gasoline. We want to make sure there are controls on all the 
factories so we do not have good jobs, ordinary people lose their jobs. 
That is what they say. That would only get to maybe 1 or 2 percent of 
the CO2 that is being put into the atmosphere.
  If you are really consistent with what these fanatics, the global 
warming fanatics, would have you do, what we would do is bulldoze, are 
you listening to this, bulldoze all of the rain forests and all of the 
old growth trees, because, according to the global warming theory, the 
CO2 and the methane that comes in, that is what is causing 
global warming, and rotting wood in rain forests and the insects eating 
that rotting wood and the old growth trees we have here in the United 
States and elsewhere are the major source of that pollutant. So what we 
need to do is bulldoze all those rain forests.
  Now, do you think you are ever going to hear some global warming 
fanatic come down here and admit that? No way. But if you ask them, you 
keep pointing questions, they always try to dodge this question. In a 
hearing you keep on them, and you will get them to admit that yes, this 
is a much greater source for global warming gasses, you know, they call 
them greenhouse gasses, than industrialization.
  Now. Well, I do not happen to think we should, and, by the way, I am 
not advocating that we bulldoze all the forests and all of the rain 
forests. By the way, what you would do then is plant young trees. It is 
young trees and plants that are young that soak in the carbon dioxide 
and give out oxygen. That is what you want for a better balance of 
CO2 and oxygen in the planet. But I would not advocate that. 
But I do not believe in the global warming theory.
  Interestingly enough, many global warming people also oppose nuclear 
power. Making sure we put the power of the atom to work in producing 
electricity would have a tremendous impact in lowering CO2. 
Are you going to find them out here advocating that? No way. Instead, 
what they are advocating are stricter controls on the amount of money 
that is invested in businesses in this country, the amount of money 
that is invested in manufacturing facilities, and restricting the kind 
of activity that we can do industrially in this country. And who does 
that hurt? It hurts ordinary working people who want to have working 
class jobs. That is who it hurts. They are willing to do that. Their 
own theory would suggest they said bulldoze down all of the forests and 
all of the swamps and rain forests we have.
  Do not hold your breath looking for those people to be consistent. 
Instead, what you can do is watch them come to the well day after day 
condemning George W. Bush for not going along with the global warming 
treaty, and being very nebulous about exactly what that means. He 
supposedly is doing nothing.
  George Bush was 100 percent right in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and 
demanding further scientific research before any drastic government 
policies are put into place. The most frightening element of the global 
warming debate is that intelligent people backed up by so-called 
experts are willing to give up the American way of life, and, yes, put 
into place regulations and taxes that would lower our standing of 
living.
  Global warming advocates would have us give authority to unelected 
international officials. And all of this to me, I do not care if they 
call them international environmental bureaucrats or just international 
officials, if they have not been elected, I do not want them making 
decisions over my life. If these global warming fanatics have their 
way, Americans are going to be targeted as the bad guys.
  If you ever listen to these arguments, whether it is Daschle or other 
global warming advocates, it is always the American people that put 
more pollutants into the air. No, that argument does not hold. In fact, 
what every person in the world puts into the air is only a minor, a 
minor, contribution to what global warming is all about. But, yet, the 
American people are trying to be stampeded by this campaign.
  Now, I have seen campaigns like this before. I have seen people 
trying to scare people on various issues since I was a little kid. How 
many people remember when cranberries were supposedly going to cause 
cancer, and then all of a sudden the cranberry business for 2 years 
went to hell. People went bankrupt because our people were frightened 
into believing cranberries caused cancer. That is when I was a little 
kid.
  Guess what? People are drinking cranberry juice. There are so many 
cranberries being consumed in our county, I cannot believe it.
  Then there were cyclamates in soda. That was going to cause cancer. 
It cost our soda pop industry billions of dollars that evaporated. They 
put the cyclamates in, it was something to keep people from gaining 
weight.
  Canada never took the cyclamates out. Then 10 years ago, after 
billions of dollars of cost they mandated in our business, that means 
there are fewer people employed, that comes right out of the general 
welfare of our people, that we do not have that wealth to make our 
lives better, guess what? The FDA said, guess what? We are sorry, the 
cyclamates do not cause cancer after all.
  We also remember a very well-known movie star that convinced us only 
a few years ago that alar in apples caused cancer. Well, I am sorry, 
after about a year that actress was found to be wrong. But what 
happened in that year? Apple farmers suffered tremendous losses. Many 
families lost their whole life savings. They went out of business.
  When we buy on total theories that are haywire and unscientific 
theories, there is an effect to this. There is a cause and effect. We 
buy on to things that are not scientifically proven, they are trying to 
scare us. Just like they are trying to scare the kids in my 
Congressional District about dirty air. That is the cleanest air we 
have had in decades, but if we buy on to those theories and get 
frightened, it will impact in a negative way.

[[Page 14831]]

  Now, with the cranberries and the cyclamates and the alar, it just 
hurt various farmers. But if we buy on to the global warming theory, it 
is going to hurt all of us. It is going to bring down our standard of 
living.
  Thank God we have a President of the United States that is willing to 
say this does not hold water; we need a lot more scientific research 
before we make such decisions; I am not going to go along with this 
global warming Kyoto Protocol. I commend him for that, and I would hope 
that the American people understand his wisdom and his courage and that 
he is standing there to protect us and to protect our standard of 
living.
  With that, I would ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing that 
George W. Bush is doing this kind of job and that he is a good man, and 
wish him well.

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