[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10373-10382]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                             GLOBAL WARMING

  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 will be discussing global warming 
tonight but I would like to just say one or two words and I would hope 
that my colleagues in the next presentation about the strategic defense 
initiative will have a debate. I would be very happy, along with others 
here, to participate on the other side of that issue.
  Let me just say I could not disagree with my colleagues more on the 
issue of missile defense. I am the chairman of the Subcommittee on 
Space and Aeronautics and we do have the capacity and the capability of 
knocking down an enemy missile that might have a nuclear warhead that 
would murder millions of Americans.
  Should we have a defense to prevent millions of Americans from being 
incinerated if the Communist Chinese would launch a rocket at us? I 
think that it is prudent that we try to develop the system.
  The answer to many of the questions that were brought up tonight is 
that if the system does not work and cannot be made to work, we will 
not buy the system. It is incumbent upon us, incumbent upon us, to 
spend the money that is necessary to see if that system can be 
developed. I believe it not only can be developed but we have already 
knocked out of the sky several missiles that were launched from other 
locations without a previous flight plan, I might add.
  What we have today, we knew they were coming but not exactly what the 
flight plan was. Let me just say this, in the future I would hope, 
especially the young lady with two grandchildren, that she does not 
face a situation where an American President is told the Chinese have 
just launched a missile; there is nothing we can do, nothing we can do 
but let it incinerate a part of the United States. I hope her children 
are not there or her grandchildren are not there. We have to look at 
this as a real possibility.
  The Communist Chinese have dramatically expanded the capabilities of 
their missile offense, and mutually assured destruction means nothing 
to that enemy. Those Americans who are listening to this might think it 
would be prudent that America in the future would have a system to 
defend itself in case the Communist Chinese would threaten the United 
States with an attack that would murder millions of its people unless 
we give in. I think it is a very prudent course of action.

[[Page 10374]]

  I will be very happy to debate with my colleagues in the weeks and 
days ahead if they want to have a debate rather than a presentation 
here on the floor.
  Now I do have my presentation tonight, which I have on global 
warming, especially considering that President Bush has come under 
severe attack for his refusal to bow before the pressure of a very 
well-organized effort that they are trying to pressure him to accept 
the idea that the world is in peril because it is becoming more and 
more warm because of industrialization. It is vital that the public 
understand that what is going on in this attack against President Bush 
is about a political agenda; that global warming is not a scientific 
imperative. It is a politically-driven theory.
  Those espousing global warming are building on public fear and 
apprehension. Young people in particular are being lied to about the 
environment and about global warming. Global warming, of course, is one 
of the worst falsehoods that they talk about. When I meet with student 
groups, it is clear they are being told false things about a lot of 
areas of the environment.
  In fact, I meet every student group from my district that comes to 
Washington, D.C. I always ask them the same question: How many of them 
believe that the air today in Southern California is cleaner or worse 
than it was when I went to high school in Southern California 35 years 
ago? Consistently, 95 percent of these students who live in Southern 
California who are coming to my office say they believe that the air 
quality today is so much worse than it was when I went to high school 
and how lucky I was to live in an era, in the early 1960s, when we had 
such clean air in Southern California.
  This, of course, is 180 degrees wrong. These young people have been 
systematically lied to about their environment. They are being told 
they are being poisoned by the air. But, in fact, the air quality in 
Southern California is better than it has ever been in my lifetime. 
They cannot believe it when they hear it.
  They also cannot believe that the quality of the Potomac River, the 
water quality around us, is better, even the quality of the soil. Even 
the number of trees and forests that we have have increased. They have 
been lied to time and again about the environment, and again the global 
warming theory is the worst of all.
  These lies are being used to justify to Americans of all ages, to 
justify a centralization of power in Washington, D.C. and a 
centralization of power in global government through the United Nations 
and other institutions that are run by unelected and unaccountable 
authorities.
  Let us get into what global warming is all about. Global warming is a 
theory that carbon fuel, coal, oil, gas, et cetera, that this carbon-
based fuel is putting CO2 into the atmosphere, and 
CO2 is causing the temperature to rise, which will cause a 
drastic change in the weather, the ice flows, animal life, plant life 
on our planet.
  First and foremost, let us recognize this: All of the recent 
scientific reports agree that there may, or may not, be a minor change 
in the planet's average temperature over this last 100 years. There is 
no conclusive proof that man is the cause of that perhaps minor change.
  That is not what we are being told. The American public is being told 
all of these scientific reports are claiming that global warming is 
absolutely a fact and there is no arguing with it. One reads those 
reports and they will find that there are weasel words and there are 
all sorts of caveats in these reports that suggest the scientific 
community cannot say this.
  Climate science seems to be a very recent entry into the pantheon of 
scientific study. Prior to 1980, there was only a handful of 
climatologists. Now they seem to be everywhere. Try to find a 
researcher on global warming who is not in some way tied to some sort 
of research contract by the Federal Government. Now, could it be that 
the reason for the increase in the numbers of global warming advocates 
has something to do with the access to government funding for research?
  Eight years ago, when President Clinton took over the executive 
branch, he saw to it that there would be no one getting scientific 
research grants from our government unless they furthered the global 
warming theory.
  We were tipped off to this when the lead scientist, and I would say 
the Director of Energy Research for the Department of Energy, Mr. Will 
Happer, was precipitously fired from his position because he did not 
agree with the global warming theory and did not believe that it had 
been proven. He wrote a little article about it, and Vice President 
Gore came down on him like an iron fist and he was out of that job.
  Dr. Happer, I might add, is now a professor of physics at Princeton 
University. But his removal as the director of research at the 
Department of Energy sent a message, clearly heard throughout the 
scientific community, you do not agree with global warming; you are not 
going to get the contract. This has gone on for 8 years.
  There does not appear to be much information on global climate change 
prior to the mid-1980s. What we have been able to find out, prior to 
that time period, is that generally people in those times, the 
scientists, were arguing that we were on the edge of a new ice age. It 
was not global warming. Then it was global cooling.

                              {time}  2215

  In fact, in the span of 20 years, climate models have gone from 
predicting our eminent demise by freezing to death in a new ice age, to 
being baked in an oven to death in a global furnace. Interestingly 
enough, some of the leading proponents of global warming used to be the 
same advocates for global cooling.
  Now, historically speaking we know that the globe and its climate 
have different ebbs and flows, and there have been ice ages in the past 
and there have been tropical ages in the past, without interference 
from man. That is even before man came on the scene.
  In the last 1,000 years, for example, we have witnessed, even since 
man has been on the scene, in this last 1,000 years, we have witnessed 
a huge temperature swing over much of the world. Early in the last 
millennium, Lief Erickson established a colony on Greenland, and that 
colony on Greenland was free of snow for over half a year every year. 
In less than 100 years, 100 years later, that colony had to be 
abandoned because the climate had grown so much colder and the snow so 
much thicker that a new ice age appeared and apparently was on the way, 
a mini-ice age, not making Greenland hospitable to human habitation 
anymore.
  I wonder in the current climate of scientific investigation what 
would have been predicted had scientists been available then to chart 
the course of what direction the world was going. We probably would 
have been told then that the Earth was on its way to an environment in 
which only the Eskimos would survive, and all of this was due to, who 
can tell? Certainly humankind had very little influence on the weather 
and temperatures then. No one could argue that.
  Of course, that trend and lower temperatures reversed itself. Yes, it 
was getting cooler; but it then reversed itself, because at some point 
the Earth naturally has a way to adapt to cooler or warmer 
temperatures.
  This historical recollection gives us a reason for concern about some 
of the trend lines. You take a trend line going in one direction and 
launch it way out into the future to see that that may not be accurate. 
It may not be accurate because the world can adapt.
  If, in fact we have a minuscule trend towards warming, it could be 
that we are in fact emerging. Right now, instead of having the trend 
line being ominous, all it could mean is a trend line of minuscule 
warming, 1 degree in 100 years. It could mean that we are just emerging 
from a cooling period, from a period that is a little bit cooler.
  Now, none of us should forget our lessons that we learned in sixth 
grade about those huge glaciers. Remember that? The huge glaciers once 
covered all of North America. In fact, it happened three or four times. 
The glaciers

[[Page 10375]]

would come down, go back, and most of North America and Europe were 
covered. In fact, the Great Lakes were, if I remember what I was 
taught, were gouged out by these glaciers; and when the glaciers 
receded, these lakes were filled with water.
  Well, when the glaciers moved forward, it represented a major change 
in the global climate towards global cooling. When the glaciers 
retreated, and we are now in a time period when the glaciers are 
retreating, that must mean that the Earth is getting a little bit 
warmer. Well, to use that as some sort of scientific basis to say that 
humankind is creating a warming trend on our planet that threatens and 
puts our planet in peril is nonsense. The one thing that those glaciers 
going back and forth did not indicate was that human beings had 
anything to do with the global weather change that was taking place. 
Nor did human beings have anything to do with the fact that all the 
dinosaurs were killed off by this global change in weather.
  It seems to me that to understand climate change, we need hundreds of 
thousands of years' worth of observation and far more types of data 
than are currently available. Instead of serious scientific 
investigation and debate, most of those currently clamoring about 
climate change are looking at unbelievably shallow evidence and rushing 
to the conclusion that human beings are the cause of this change. But 
human beings were not around when these other traumatic changes 
happened in weather and temperature, which occurred in our distant 
past.
  Recently, we have been treated to yet another spectacle of media 
climate-change hype. As I say, our President is under attack. Our new 
President, George W. Bush, made it clear that the United States will 
not be bound by the so-called Kyoto Protocol.
  The liberal media and academic establishment went berserk. Just think 
of it, the President of the United States is calling into question the 
validity of man's impact on the global climate. Again, elitists have 
arrogantly labeled an American President as some kind of a moron. Well, 
they did the same thing to Ronald Reagan when he tried to end the Cold 
War, and they were dramatically wrong then too.
  George W. Bush is intelligent, and he has common sense. A few days 
ago the American people were presented something to make them believe 
that George W. Bush was not so intelligent. They were presented with a 
National Academy of Science report on climate change.
  Now, if you read your newspaper about a week ago or saw the network 
news coverage, you would think that the President had been dressed down 
by the scientific community and that, once again, the experts had 
solidly, solidly, rallied behind the contention that global warming is 
here and it is a result of human action and that that determination is 
irrefutable. Well, that is what you would believe by the news reports.
  Dan Rather, let us take a look at Dan Rather's report in particular. 
Dan Rather on CBS news was perhaps the worst in terms of his bias and 
inaccuracy of the presentation of that report. His lead to the story 
stated uncategorically that the report had proved global warming was 
here and that humans were the cause. How many listeners noted that 
after 3 minutes of Dan Rather's report, that at the end of that report, 
Dan Rather's own correspondent stated that the National Academy had not 
stated that humans were the cause of the temperature increase, and that 
temperature increase was 1 degree over 100 years?
  Now, how many people noticed that? You had Dan Rather leading into 
his report that the report stated unequivocally that there had been the 
global warming and that humans were the cause. Yet at the end of the 
report, his own reporter put a little tag on that that they could not 
absolutely say that it was caused by human actions and human activity.
  The National Academy of Science report is filled with weasel words 
and caveats. That was true of many of the other scientific 
investigations. Almost every one of the scientific investigations, the 
findings about global warming were not conclusive enough to make any 
solid statement other than words to the effect that further research is 
necessary.
  Just like Dan Rather, it totally misportrayed what that report was 
all about. Over and over and over again, the American people have heard 
about reports that global warming is absolutely here, and it has been 
misportrayed to them. That is not what those reports have said. 
Sometimes reports have said that, and you go back to who did the 
reports, just a very small group of radicals who are not respected by 
the scientific community in those reports. Yet we hear about the 
reports all the time, and we see these same misquoted reports as being 
used to justify dramatic headlines and very frightening reports over 
the broadcast news media.
  For the record, I will submitting two documents highlighting some of 
the caveats and some of the weasel words, you might say, in the NRC 
report that indicates that the NRC is not making that conclusive and 
unequivocal decision that global warming is here and that humans caused 
that, which is what we heard on CBS news and read in the newspapers 
throughout this country and were used to beat our President up. 
Falsehoods. That is what was used to beat our President up. I will 
submit this for the record.
  By the way, the report states that the temperature on Earth, again, 
let me state this, may or may not be, may or may not be, 1 degree 
warmer than it was 100 years ago. One degree change over 100 years. 
Think about that. A 1-degree change? These experts cannot predict the 
weather one day in advance. How can they predict and calculate and 
analyze the weather back 100 years ago, when they did not have any of 
the scientific equipment that was available to them, that is available 
to them today? How can anyone give credibility and be given credibility 
claiming a minuscule temperature change that supposedly has taken place 
across the face of this enormous planet?
  Remember, 100 years ago they did not have any satellites; they did 
not even have telephone communications in most of the world. But across 
the face of this planet, that it was cooler then by a whole 1 degree? 
Can anyone listen to that with a straight face? Give me a break. Give 
the American people a break.
  Well, one remembers just a few years ago President Clinton was so 
committed to proving this theory that he invited hundreds of 
climatologists who agreed with global warming to the White House. These 
were people who he thought were sympathetic to the global warming 
theories. During that time in the White House, I understand a major 
storm broke out in Washington and was just drenching the entire area; 
and well, what happened is that of all those hundreds of climatologists 
that came to the White House to reconfirm global warming, only three of 
them thought ahead enough to bring umbrellas.
  So, what does that tell you? These are the people who are going to 
decide who can guide us down the path of accepting global warming, 
which then would lead us to dramatic changes in our lives because we 
would be giving power and centralization of authority away from what we 
have it today.
  What is essential to the global warming theory, of course, is not 
just that the temperature is on the rise, but that human beings, 
especially western civilization, and particularly those of us who live 
in America, we are at fault; the Americans, the people who live in 
western civilization and human beings in general, we are the ones at 
fault for global warming.
  Okay, so let us concede before we get into that that the Earth may or 
may not be 1 degree hotter than it was 100 years ago. That, however, is 
not necessarily a catastrophe. If the Earth is 1 degree warmer now than 
it was 100 years ago, that may be a good thing. It may be baloney; it 
may be a good thing. I do not know. It may be a good thing, especially 
if that 1 degree warmer is a nighttime temperature in the northern 
hemisphere in the fall or winter. That would be a very wonderful thing, 
to have it a little bit warmer during that time.

[[Page 10376]]

  In fact, some of the people claiming to believe in the global warming 
theory are in fact saying that is how our temperature increases, it is 
1 degree in the northern hemisphere, and I do not think that that is 
such a big calamity.
  Furthermore, let us say that the worst calamity comes true, which is 
we are being told perhaps over the next 100 years we could face a 5-
degree rise in temperature. That is their wildest scenario. Well, that 
may or may not be a bad thing.
  I certainly do not believe that this is happening, but let us just 
suggest it is not bad enough for us to give away our freedom and lower 
the standard of living of our people and do many of the other dramatic 
things that global warming theorists are trying to push off on us.
  People in the northern hemisphere, like us Americans, well, you know, 
we might not be so bad off. Maybe there will be a longer growing period 
in Canada and places like that. However, do not get your shorts on yet 
or sell your winter boots. There probably is no global warming.
  Having said what I just said, the Earth tends to adjust itself 
naturally, and even if there is global warming, the Earth may just well 
adjust for it. It may be some water vapor that is warmed off the ocean, 
and that tends to cool off the Earth. The scaremongers do not want to 
tell us that the Earth has an ability to adjust if things get a little 
warmer; that it is affected by different things and then it gets a 
little cooler.

                              {time}  2230

  What instead the scaremongers want to do is make sure that we believe 
their global baloney. That is what I consider it, global baloney.
  There are a number of reasonable scientific explanations for a 
situation that would have us a few degrees hotter or a few degrees 
cooler. It is not that humankind is living too well.
  The Earth's orbit is elliptical, and there are times when we are 
closer and sometimes when we are further from the sun. That small 
difference of several thousand miles equates to a tremendous difference 
in the amount of energy that reaches the Earth. So where is the data in 
terms of the analysis of this in relationship to global warming? Where 
is that analysis?
  The ancient Mayans and Aztecs observed a 208-year solar cycle where 
solar activities increase for 104 years, followed by 104 years of 
declining activity. We have all seen these solar storms. Modern science 
has confirmed their observations. We are now at a halfway point between 
the cycles of solar activity. Can we expect, and we maybe can expect, 
50 more years of solar activity being on the increase, which would mean 
a moderate warming trend. That is before the temperatures begin to 
fall. A one-degree increase in the global temperature, even if that is 
there, might be explained by these solar storms.
  We know the ancient Mayans and Aztec observations about this solar 
phenomenon have been confirmed. But have the global warming alarmists 
brought this into their calculations?
  How about water? Water comprises three-quarters of the world. Given 
the sheer volume of water on this planet, it surely has a tremendous 
impact on the temperature of the air. However, there are no accurate 
global ocean temperature readings that go back more than 10 years, and 
those that do are primarily based on satellite observations of surface 
temperatures. Those readings do not include deep water. In fact, we 
have absolutely zero understanding of deep water temperatures, and 
almost no understanding of deep water ocean currents. How can we 
possibly ignore that data when trying to calculate something as 
overwhelming as global warming?
  Global warming studies did not take into consideration the ocean 
temperature, and sometimes when they did it did not give them the right 
facts, so they just went on to something else.
  It also did not take into consideration the clouds. Much less the 
oceans, it does not take into consideration the clouds, which are even 
more important to determining the Earth's temperature. Clouds, of 
course, have everything to do with cooling things off.
  Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT has proven that as temperatures rise, more 
clouds are formed. This is part of the natural way the Earth reacts. If 
there is a little more warming, there would be more clouds, and it 
would cool the Earth off. More clouds in turn reflect more heat back 
into space, and thus it cools the Earth.
  It is cooler when there are clouds out. If Members do not believe it, 
I ask them to stand outside on a hot summer day and see what happens 
when a cloud passes overhead.
  Let me tell Members an interesting thing that happened to me. I have 
been in Congress now 13 years, but a few years ago, a Federal 
administrator of an agency came into my office. He made me promise not 
to disclose what my source was. He then went on to tell me that all the 
global warming studies were flawed because they never took into account 
how cloud cover affected the temperature readings that they were 
recording.
  How do we determine whether or not it was a cloudy day when the 
temperature readings were taken in various parts of the world 100 years 
ago? Give us a break. They cannot even tell us how those temperatures 
were taken, who was taking the temperatures. Were they people who were 
trained? Were the instruments calibrated? Much less they cannot tell us 
was it a cloudy day that time they took the temperature.
  Global temperature records either do not exist or are absolutely 
flawed, and they are flawed to such a degree for 100 years ago that 
they might as well be useless in trying to calculate something like 
global warming. Actually, most of the records do not go back any 
further than 50 years in our urban areas, which of course the urban 
areas tend to be much warmer than rural areas because they have all 
that concrete and cement.
  There are few records that extend beyond 100 years, and there is no 
way of determining those records. Even the 50-year records are in 
question, because most of them are in the cities and not spread 
throughout the planet. And these people who are telling us about global 
warming, we are going to say they have a scientific basis for what they 
are talking about?
  Although we talk about global temperatures rising, that in itself may 
mean little because the temperature is not the only measure of heat. 
Humidity is an important measure in terms that are just as important as 
heat. Southern California is a lot easier to live in at 100 degrees 
than if we are down in New Orleans in that humid weather.
  So even when our local weatherman gives the heat index based on 
temperature, he also gives us one that is based on temperature and 
humidity. These things are not being calculated by people talking about 
global warming.
  Finally, let us talk about climate models touted by global warming 
advocates. They do not take into account the Earth's orbital change, as 
we have said. They do not take into account solar activity cycles. They 
do not take into account the temperature of the oceans. They do not 
take into account the cloud covers. They do not take into account the 
accuracy of long-term temperature readings, as I just said, for 100 
years and 50 years back. They do not take into account humidity.
  What they do take into account is a theoretical calculation of 
manmade CO2 content, and lots of hypothetical data about other manmade 
pollutants. But most of the sources of CO2, and that is what they are 
claiming is causing this global warming, that humans are putting CO2 
into the atmosphere, well, most of the sources for CO2 and the other 
so-called greenhouse gases are naturally-occurring and not manmade.
  Let us make sure everybody understands that. Global warming is a 
problem, but mankind is actually one of the smaller contributors of 
CO2. It is overwhelmingly true that the CO2 being put into our 
atmosphere comes from natural sources. The contributions made by human 
beings to these gases that are turned loose in our atmosphere are less 
than 10 percent of the total.

[[Page 10377]]

  Volcanic activity, for example, can add more to the atmosphere in a 
few weeks than all the internal combustion engines on this planet over 
the last decade. Termites and other insects, for example, are such a 
large source of CO2, and it is a larger source of CO2 than all of the 
industrial plants in the civilized world. Rotting wood is another 
offender that dwarfs any human contribution to this so-called threat.
  I do not hear many calls coming from the people talking about global 
warming to bulldoze the rain forests. If they really believe in global 
warming, the rain forests, the rotting wood and the insects in those 
rain forests are the worst contributors. They are the most evil forces 
in this planet in putting global warming out, so we would want to 
bulldoze the rain forests. We would also want to clearcut old growth 
trees and plant new young trees, because the new young trees take the 
CO2 out of the atmosphere and replace it with oxygen.
  Mr. Speaker, we do not hear many people who are global warming 
activists calling for the bulldozing of our rain forests. We do not 
hear many of them calling for the cutting down, the clearcutting, of 
old growth trees, or advocating nuclear energy, which is a tremendous 
source of energy which puts no CO2 into the atmosphere.
  What is most frightening about the public acceptance of the global 
warming theory is that the solutions are not to clearcut old growth, 
they are not to tear down these rain forests. Instead, the solutions we 
are being offered to global warming are policies that would 
dramatically reduce the standard of living of hundreds of millions of 
people, especially the people of the United States.
  President Bush was 100 percent right in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol 
and demanding further scientific research for any drastic government 
policies to be put into place.
  The most frightening element of the global warming debate is that 
intelligent people, backed up by so-called experts, are advocating that 
we Americans give up our way of life, our standard of living, and yes, 
our freedom. Global warming advocates would have us give authority to 
unelected international officials. No one who has ever been elected 
will ever be the one who will be calling the shots if we give up all of 
our authority and the power to run our lives and our economies to 
people in the United Nations or other worldwide authorities that are 
run by unelected environmental bureaucrats.
  These bureaucrats, government officials, will have power over our 
lives if these global warming fanatics get their way. That is the 
purpose of the global warming steamroller that is coming down the 
political road. They are trying to force us to give up our freedoms in 
the name of some threat that does not exist.
  Americans, of course, are the bad guys. We are being portrayed as the 
bad guys to the whole world. Thank goodness we have a President that is 
standing up for us, because here in the United States even poor people 
have a decent standard of living. If the Kyoto Protocol was implemented 
and is implemented, within a generation we would be living as Chinese 
peasants, knee deep in sewage and fighting for grains of rice in order 
to fend off imminent starvation.
  What is not mentioned by these global warming advocates is mentioned 
here, that Americans have maintained a higher standard of living in the 
world for the last century than any other country in the world. That is 
what they are trying to bring down. That is the enemy, our high 
standard of living.
  They have based their analysis on global warming based on units of 
wealth, and when they do, if they base it on units of wealth, the 
United States is one of the smallest polluters, because in terms of the 
amount of wealth we are producing for our people to enjoy a good life, 
we actually produce so much wealth and little pollution per amount of 
wealth. But the Kyoto Protocol is based on CO2 emissions per capita, 
not on given units of wealth.
  This approach by its very nature is aimed at dooming America's high 
standard of living by mandating that we give up this high standard of 
living in order to eliminate the CO2s that are going into the air, when 
in fact we live in a country that has done more to improve the 
environment and to bring in cleaner sources of energy than any country 
of the world, especially third-world countries like China.
  By the way, the Kyoto Protocol exempts China and other so-called 
developing countries from the severe regulatory restraints that will be 
necessary to sustain and to fulfill the Kyoto Protocol. What we will 
have is manufacturing companies closing up in droves in the United 
States to move to the Third World. What it means is our children and 
our grandchildren will suffer tremendously. They will have a lower 
standard of living. We will have a world market dominated, of course, 
by WTO, World Trade Organization regulators who come from third-world 
countries who do not have free elections, who probably are going to be 
bribed by countries like China.
  So we are going to give up our sovereignty, we are going to give up 
our authority, to run our lives as is envisioned by the Kyoto Protocol 
and the WTO and the rest of these folks? We are going to do that?
  What will that mean? That will mean the American middle class will be 
crushed. The working poor in America will see their standard of living 
go down dramatically. As Ross Perot said, that giant sucking sound is 
our money, our jobs, and our future going right down the drain.
  But that is what global warming is all about. They have not proven 
it. It has not been proven to us that global warming even exists, much 
less that mankind has caused it. But they have got to keep us believing 
that that is what these scientific reports claim so we will go along 
with this plan to give up our rights and our freedom and to lower the 
standard of living of the American people.
  The Kyoto treaty never went to the Senate because President Clinton 
knew he could not even get one vote for this monstrously misguided 
proposal, but thank goodness, President Bush is standing up for us and 
against that steamroller.

                              {time}  2245

  Al Gore, of course, was one of the world's strongest advocates for 
the Kyoto Protocol and of global warming restrictions being placed on 
the American people.
  Now, this is not the first time the American people, that people have 
tried to frighten us into accepting some kind of cockamamie idea. I 
remember when I was a kid, I went to Thanksgiving one day, and what do 
you know, my mom did not have any cranberries on the table.
  She did not have any cranberries on the table. I said, mom, you know, 
this is Thanksgiving, where is the cranberries? Cranberries cause 
cancer. And so for 2 years at Thanksgiving, my family, and I might add 
hundreds of millions of other families, did not have cranberries for 
Thanksgiving.
  Then you know what? We found out that it was all just like global 
warming, it was all baloney. Those cranberries did not cause cancer at 
all. But what do those scaremongers manage to do? It lowered this 
festival. It lowered the festivities and the joyous occasion of having 
Thanksgiving by taking away cranberries. And, yeah, guess what? It put 
hundreds of cranberry farmers out of business, drove them out of 
business. People lost their family farms and their lives were destroyed 
for many, many years ahead. Oh, sorry, we were wrong.
  I also remember Dr. Meryl Streep, remember when she came here to 
Congress to testify that alar in apples was the threat to people's 
health. And for one year, the apple industry in our country and other 
countries was destroyed.
  Hundreds of families who owned those apple orchards were put out of 
work. Their families gone forever. Their family fortune gone forever. 
They could not make their payments because for a full year the American 
people were frightened about that and, of course, what did we find out, 
no, alar does not cause cancer, sorry.
  I even remember as a young man when I was told that cyclamates cause 
cancer. The American soda pop industry had invested hundreds of 
millions

[[Page 10378]]

of dollars to develop a new sweetener cyclamates in order to make sure 
that, number one, we would be able to use it and it would be used in 
drinks, and we did not have to depend on sugar, it was healthier for 
you, et cetera, et cetera. But all of a sudden some people began 
claiming that it was causing cancer. Cyclamates cause cancer.
  Well, guess what? Canada never took cyclamates out of their soda pop, 
and then after about 10 years or 12 years of having the cyclamates 
forced out at a cost of again hundreds of millions of dollars that just 
evaporated from our economy, what happened is the Food and Drug 
Administration quietly moved forward and said, oh, by the way we were 
mistaken, cyclamates do not cause cancer after all.
  This is the type of nonsense our young people are being fed in their 
schools every day. They are being told that their environment is 
getting worse and worse and worse, and they might as well give up 
because they can give up their freedoms, trust in the government, trust 
in international organizations, trust in people who have all this 
hoopla on about global warming, and about how the environment is 
getting worse. They are being lied to in the very same way.
  Our young people today, and let me tell my colleagues one other 
incident that happened to me as a young person. Most people know that I 
am one of the few surfers in Congress. And, in fact, I am a scuba 
diver. I am a surfer, and I am an ocean person.
  I was scuba diving just a few months ago, and I will tell you that 3 
days ago I was in the ocean surfing off of my district off of 
Huntington Beach. It was in the Bolsa Chica area and I was surfing 
there for 2 hours. It was a great day of surfing.
  When I was a young reporter and that is how I got into this world of 
politics, I was assigned to cover Jacques Cousteau who happened to be 
one of my heroes. I mean I was a scuba diver and I loved the ocean and 
I went to UCLA, and there he was speaking at UCLA.
  Jacques Cousteau was speaking to these college students, and he was 
very pessimistic and I said, gee, I just do not feel right about being 
so pessimistic about things in the ocean.
  So when I came up to him afterwards to do a short radio interview, 
some other students stood around and listened and I said, Mr. Cousteau, 
is not there some possibility that perhaps the oceans will be used as a 
source of food for us in the future beyond just catching fish, like 
aquaculture and growing oysters and clams and things and lobsters, and 
is that not a possibility? And he just came right up to my face and he 
said, Did you not hear me? Within 10 years, the oceans will be black 
goo, totally dead, destroyed. The oceans will be lifeless. Did not you 
hear me?
  Of course, I never will forget that, because this guy got right in my 
face and he was screaming in my face and he put on a pretty good show 
for those kids. And it has been about 30 years since that happened, 
maybe 25, maybe 25 years since that happened. And guess what? Jacques 
Cousteau is dead, but the oceans are alive.
  I was out surfing a few days ago and I could not help but notice the 
porpoises swimming by, and when they swim up to you, you can rub the 
bottom of your surf board and they will come up to you. And it is a 
wonderful, wonderful experience. The birds were flying and diving into 
the ocean nearby catching little fish.
  I was in the water for 2 hours, and I was not covered with black goo. 
Now, that person, Jacques Cousteau, was a fine man. He obviously is a 
hero to many people like he was to me.
  Why did he feel he had to lie to such a degree? Was it that he did 
not know that he was lying, that he did not know that the oceans were 
not going to be black goo within 20 years or 10 years is what he said. 
No. Jacques Cousteau was part of a movement, part of a movement that 
feels they have a right to lie and they have a right to frighten 
people, because they have a higher calling; their higher calling is to 
save the environment.
  They do not have a right to lie, and they should be honest about it. 
And there are environmental challenges and the environmental challenges 
we face can be corrected and could be met with better technology, 
better machines, better equipment, better energy sources, but, instead, 
what we have had is people lying to us in order for us to give away our 
freedom, to agree to things like the Kyoto Protocol, which would have 
extracted from people of the United States their right to make their 
own economic decisions.
  It would have left us vulnerable to a major assault on the economic 
well-being of our middle class and our poorer people. Yeah, $5 a gallon 
of gasoline would not much hurt millionaires or people with limousines. 
It would hurt some of the people who do not have limousines, but it 
would be a catastrophe to the lower, middle-class and to the working 
people of our country.
  The Kyoto Protocol, the environmental restrictions that we have heard 
from many, many corners quite often are not based on truth, and tonight 
that is what this speech is all about. This speech is nothing more than 
saying that we, as a Congress, and as a people and the American people 
should demand, whether we are talking about the environment, whether we 
are talking about other potential threats to our national security or 
our economics, that all we demand is let us talk about it frankly and 
honestly, and that the environmental movement has not done that.



  I am out surfing, like I say, a few days ago. There are offshore 
wells off of my district, and for 25 years, we have had offshore oil 
drilling in my district. Not once has there been a major spill from 
those wells. But there has been a tanker, an oil tanker, that split 
apart and we had a major oil spill in our area. But yet for years, I 
have been fighting with environmentalists trying to get them to admit 
that if we do not have offshore oil wells, which are relatively safe, 
that means we are going to have to get our oil from tankers which are a 
hundred times more likely to have a spill.
  Yet, these environmental activists continue to try to negate every 
attempt to exploit our offshore natural resources.
  In California today, we have an electric shortage, a horrible 
electric shortage. It is going to cause a major decline in the standard 
of living of many of our citizens. It is going to put a lot of our 
citizens in jeopardy. Our economy in jeopardy. It has already eaten 
billions of dollars that should have been going into education, our 
health care, or other places. Instead, what we have is a shortage of 
energy in our State, even though we have lots of energy, we have not 
been permitted to utilize it.
  Offshore in Santa Barbara there is enough natural gas to provide the 
energy we need to produce all the electricity we would need to make up 
for our shortage of electric in California. We could make up for that 
shortage for 2 decades, but, yet, those people in Santa Barbara who own 
the offshore oil wells that are already there have not been permitted 
even to slant drill from existing platforms to tap in to the natural 
gas that is a huge natural gas deposit right off of Santa Barbara.
  This is the kind of nonsense. This is the type of antitruth that 
brings down economies, but it exemplifies many of the arguments that 
have been presented to us about global warming and other so-called 
environmental challenges.
  Again, I do not want to end this tonight suggesting that there are no 
environmental challenges, because there are, and there are ways that we 
can do it and we can solve these problems and we can make America 
cleaner.
  Today's young people have cleaner water, because today when you look 
down at the Potomac River, when I was a kid, you could not put your 
finger in that water. It is clean today, people are fishing out there.
  We have soil. We have ways to clean the soil in my own district. I 
helped a company develop a system and got them permission and I think 
it ended up about a $300,000 contract to take soil that had been made 
toxic because it used to be an old oil sludge pit, 10 acres of this 
land that was unusable to the citizens of our community, and I got this 
business going.

[[Page 10379]]

  We went down there, and this new technology, within a 60-day time 
period, was able to make that soil totally clean and those 10 acres of 
California real estate perfectly clean and available if they wanted to 
for houses, instead they are going to use it as a park.
  They did not have that technology available 10 years and 20 years 
ago. This is the best time for young people to be alive. They have more 
chance of cleaning up the environment as long as we let people do it at 
a profit. That man who built that machine did not want to do it just 
because he had a social conscience.
  He did it because he wanted his company to make a profit, and the 
people that will finance it will be financing him, cleaning the soil 
because they want that land to be used by families for homes, for their 
children and they will make a profit in building those homes for those 
families.
  This is a wonderful time to be alive. This is not a time for the 
American people to be frightened by scaremongers and people who are not 
telling the truth about global warming and other environmental 
challenges into giving up our freedom and to doing things that will 
result in a lower standard of living for our people.
  Again, every time we do, every time we give into this type of 
nonsense, it is the people at the bottom rung who are hurt the most. It 
is the people at the bottom rung. So as we are finding out in 
California, we need to base our decisions on honesty.
  If offshore oil drilling and gas drilling is going to help our State 
have the energy it needs, we need to move forward with that.
  Let me say, I have a new bill that I am proposing and I will be 
dropping within 2 weeks, a new piece of legislation that will see to it 
that all new oil and gas reserves, offshore oil and gas reserves that 
are brought online by offshore oil and gas development, that one half 
of all the tax revenue from all of this new oil and gas reserves and 
deposits that are being brought online, half of the tax revenue will be 
put into a trust fund that will be used just for coastal purposes, for 
water quality and other coastal projects.

                              {time}  2300

  Ten percent of that new revenue will go directly to the counties 
inland from that development. That way we can develop energy and that 
way we can have cleaner water.
  All up and down California and all throughout our country, people do 
not know how they are going to take care of urban runoff. Perhaps my 
legislation will help provide the resources for that.
  But let us be realistic. Let us not fight offshore oil drilling 
because they say, out of some hysterical nonsense, that it is a threat 
to the ocean, because it is not. I have gone SCUBA diving off the 
offshore oil wells in my district, and that is where all the fish 
congregate. Believe me, if there was some problem, those fish would go 
elsewhere. Their natural instincts would tell them to go.
  So we have a chance. But what has been happening is we have been 
prevented from that because, in the back of the mind of these 
environmental activists, they want the earth to be free from dependence 
on carbon-based energy, on CO2. That is all based on what? 
That there is a global warming taking place that is in some way going 
to jeopardize and put in peril the earth.
  It is time to quit talking nonsense. Let us talk the truth. I am 
open-minded. The people here are open-minded. Let us try to find a way 
to meet the environmental challenges with better technology and in a 
way that will preserve the freedom of the people of the United States, 
which is the most important component to developing a better world.

       Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions

       The following are the key uncertainties highlighted by the 
     report released by the National Research Council on June 6, 
     2001. All items are taken directly from the report.


                                Summary

       The changes observed over the last several decades are 
     likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out 
     that some significant part of these changes are also a 
     reflection of natural variability.
       Because there is considerable uncertainty in current 
     understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and 
     reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current 
     estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be 
     regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments 
     (either upward or downward).
       Reducing the wide range of uncertainty inherent in current 
     model predictions of global climate change will require 
     advances in understanding and modeling of both (1) the 
     factors that determine atmospheric concentrations of 
     greenhouse gases and aerosols, and (2) the so-called 
     ``feedbacks'' that determine the sensitivity of the climate 
     system to a prescribed increase in greenhouse gases. There 
     also is a pressing need for a global observing system 
     designed for monitoring climate.
       Black carbon aerosols are end-products of the incomplete 
     combustion of fossil fuels and biomass burning (forest fires 
     and land clearing). They impact radiation budgets both 
     directly and indirectly; they are believed to contribute to 
     global warming, although their relative importance is 
     difficult to quantify at this point.
       The stated degree of confidence in the IPCC assessment is 
     higher today than it was ten, or even five years ago, but 
     uncertainty remains because of (1) the level of natural 
     variability inherent in the climate system on time scales of 
     decades to centuries, (2) the questionable ability to models 
     to accurately simulate natural variability on those long time 
     scales, and (3) the degree of confidence that can be placed 
     on reconstructions of global mean temperature over the past 
     millennium based on proxy evidence.
       Climate change simulations for the period of 1990 to 2100 
     based on the IPCC emissions scenarios yield a globally-
     averaged surface temperature increase by the end of the 
     century of 1.4 to 5.8+C (2.5 to 10.4+F) 
     relative to 1990. The wide range of uncertainly in these 
     estimates reflects both the different assumptions about 
     future concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols in the 
     various scenarios considered by the IPCC and the differing 
     climate sensitivities of the various climate and models used 
     in the simulations.
       The increase of global fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions 
     in the past decade has averaged 0.6% per year, which is 
     somewhat below the range of IPCC scenarios, and the same is 
     true for atmospheric methane concentrations. It is not known 
     whether these slowdowns in growth rate will persist.
       In addition, changes in cloud cover, in the relative 
     amounts of high versus low clouds, and in the mean and 
     vertical distribution of relative humidity could either 
     enhance or reduce the amplitude of the warming. Much of the 
     difference in predictions of global warming by various 
     climate models is attributable to the fact that each model 
     represents these processes in its own particular way. These 
     uncertainties will remain until a more fundamental 
     understanding of the processes that control atmospheric 
     relative humidity and clouds is achieved.
       The full WG I report and its Technical Summary are not 
     specifically directed at policy. The Summary for Policymakers 
     reflects less emphasis on communicating the basis for 
     uncertainty and a stronger emphasis on areas of major concern 
     associated with human-induced climate change.
       Making progress in reducing the large uncertainties in 
     projections of future climate will require addressing a 
     number of fundamental scientific questions relating to the 
     buildup of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere and the 
     behavior of the climate system. Issues that need to be 
     addressed include, (a) the future usage of fossil fuels, (b) 
     the future emissions of methane, (c) the fraction of the 
     future fossil-fuel carbon that will remain in the atmosphere 
     and provide radiative forcing versus exchange with the oceans 
     or net exchange with the land biosphere, (d) the feedbacks in 
     the climate system that determine both the magnitude of the 
     change and the rate of energy uptake by the oceans, which 
     together determine the magnitude and time history of the 
     temperature increases for a given radiative forcing, (e) 
     details of the regional and local climate change consequent 
     to an overall level of global climate change, (f) the nature 
     and causes of the natural variability of climate and its 
     interactions with forced changes, and (g) the direct and 
     indirect effects of the changing distributions of aerosols.
     1. Climate, climate forcings, climate sensitivity, and 
         transient climate change
       The responses of atmospheric water vapor amount and clouds 
     probably generate the most important global climate 
     feedbacks. The nature and magnitude of these hydrological 
     feedbacks give rise to the largest source of uncertainty 
     about climate sensitivity, and they are in areas of 
     continuing research.
       However, the true climate sensitivity remains uncertain, in 
     part because it is difficult to model the effect of cloud 
     feedback. In particular, the magnitude and even the sign of 
     the feedback can differ according to the composition, 
     thickness and altitude of the clouds, and some studies have 
     suggested a lesser climate sensitivity.

[[Page 10380]]


     2. Natural climatic variations
       It is more difficult to estimate the natural variability of 
     global mean temperature because large areas of the world are 
     not sampled and because of the large uncertainties inherent 
     in temperatures inferred from proxy evidence.
     3. Human caused forcings
       How land contributes, by location and processes, to 
     exchanges of carbon with the atmosphere is still highly 
     uncertain, and is the possibility that the substantial net 
     removal will continue to occur very far into the future.
       About two-thirds of the current emissions of methane are 
     released by human activities. There is no definitive 
     scientific basis for choosing among several possible 
     explanations for these variations in the rates of change of 
     global methane concentrations, making it very difficult to 
     predict its future atmospheric concentrations.
       The study of the role of black carbon in the atmosphere is 
     relatively new. As a result it is characterized poorly as to 
     its composition, emission source strengths, and influence on 
     radiation.
       Because of the scientific uncertainties associated with the 
     sources and composition of carbonaceous aerosols, projections 
     of future impacts on climate are difficult.
       Figure 1 summarizes climate forcings that have been 
     introduced during the period of industrial development, 
     between 1750 and 2000, as estimated by the IPCC. Some of 
     these forcings, mainly greenhouse gases, are known quite 
     accurately, while others are poorly measured. A range of 
     uncertainty has been estimated for each forcing, represented 
     by an uncertainty bar or ``whisker''. However, these 
     estimates are partly subjective and it is possible that the 
     true forcing falls outside the indicated range in some cases.
       These estimates account for the non-linearity caused by 
     partial saturation in some greenhouse gas infrared absorption 
     bands, yet they are only approximate because of uncertainty 
     about how efficiently the ocean and terrestrial biosphere 
     will sequester atmospheric CO2.
       The growth rate of atmospheric methane has slowed by more 
     than half in the past 2 decades for reasons that are not well 
     understood.
       Climate forcing by anthropogenic aerosols is a large source 
     of uncertainty about future climate change. On the basis of 
     estimates of past climate forcings, it seems likely that 
     aerosols, on a global average, have caused a negative climate 
     forcing (cooling) that has tended to offset much of the 
     positive forcing by greenhouse gases. Even though aerosol 
     distributions tend to be regional in scale, the forced 
     climate response is expected to occur on larger, even 
     hemispheric and global, scales. The monitoring of aerosol 
     properties has not been adequate to yield accurate knowledge 
     of the aerosol climate influence.
       The conclusion is that the black carbon aerosol forcing is 
     uncertain but may be substantial.
       The greatest uncertainty about the aerosol climate 
     forcing--indeed, the largest of all the uncertainties about 
     global climate forcings--is probably the indirect effect of 
     aerosols on clouds. . . . The great uncertainty about this 
     indirect aerosol climate forcing presents a severe handicap 
     both for the interpretation of past climate change and for 
     future assessments of climate changes.
       It is not implausible that solar irradiance has been a 
     significant driver of climate during part of the industrial 
     era, as suggested by several modeling studies.
     4. Climate system models
       However, climate models are imperfect. Their simulation 
     skill is limited by uncertainties in their formulation, the 
     limited size of their calculations, and the difficulty of 
     interpreting their answers that exhibit almost as much 
     complexity as in nature.
       They also exhibit plausible analogues for the dominant 
     modes of intrinsic variability, such as the El Nino/Southern 
     Oscillation (ENSO), although some important discrepancies 
     still remain.
     5. Observed climate change during the industrial era
       Because of the large and still uncertain level of natural 
     variability inherent in the climate record and the 
     uncertainties in the time histories of the various forcing 
     agents (and particularly aerosols), a causal linkage between 
     the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the 
     observed climate changes during the 20th century cannot be 
     unequivocally established. The fact that the magnitude of the 
     observed warming is large in comparison to natural 
     variability as simulated in climate models is suggestive of 
     such a linkage, but it does not constitute proof of one 
     because the model simulations could be deficient in natural 
     variability on the decadal to century time scale.
       This result is based on several analyses using a variety of 
     proxy indicators, some with annual resolution and others with 
     less resolved time resolution. The data become relatively 
     sparse prior to 1600, and are subject to uncertainties 
     related to spatial completeness and interpretation making the 
     results somewhat equivocal, e.g., less than 90% confidence. 
     Achieving greater certainty as to the magnitude of climate 
     variations before that time will require more extensive data 
     and analysis. Because of the large and still uncertain level 
     of natural variability inherent in the climate record and the 
     uncertainties in the time histories of the various forcing 
     agents (and particularly aerosols), a causal linkage between 
     the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the 
     observed climate changes during the 20th century cannot be 
     unequivocally established. The fact that the magnitude of the 
     observed warming is large in comparison to natural 
     variability as simulated in climate models is suggestive of 
     such a linkage, but it does not constitute proof of one 
     because the model simulations could be deficient in natural 
     variability on the decadal to century time scale.
     6. Future climate change
       Projecting future climate change first requires projecting 
     the fossil-fuel and land-use sources of CO2 and 
     other gases and aerosols. How much of the carbon from future 
     use of fossil fuels will be seen as increases in carbon 
     dioxide in the atmosphere will depend on what fractions are 
     taken up by land and the oceans. The exchanges with land 
     occur on various time scales, out to centuries for soil 
     decomposition in high latitudes, and they are sensitive to 
     climate change. Their projection into the future is highly 
     problematic.
       IPCC scenarios cover a broad range of assumptions about 
     future economic and technological development, including some 
     that allow greenhouse gas emission reductions. However, there 
     are large uncertainties in underlying assumptions about 
     population growth, economic development, life style choices, 
     technological change, and energy alternatives, so that it is 
     useful to examine scenarios developed from multiple 
     perspectives in considering strategies for dealing with 
     climate change.
       Scenarios for future greenhouse gas amounts, especially for 
     CO2 and CH4, are a major source of 
     uncertainty for projections of future climate. Successive 
     IPCC assessments over the past decade each have developed a 
     new set of scenarios with little discussion of how well 
     observed trends match with previous scenarios. The period of 
     record is now long enough to make it useful to compare recent 
     trends with the scenarios, and such studies will become all 
     the more fruitful as years pass. The increase of global 
     fossil fuel CO2 emissions in the past decade, 
     averaging 0.6% per year, has fallen below the IPCC scenarios. 
     The growth of atmospheric CH4 has fallen well 
     below the IPCC scenarios. These slowdowns in growth rates 
     could be short-term fluctuations that may be reversed. 
     However, they emphasize the need to understand better the 
     factors that influence current and future growth rates.
       On the regional scale and in the longer term, there is much 
     more uncertainty.
       Changes in storm frequency and intensity are one of the 
     more uncertain elements of future climate change prediction.
       Whereas all models project global warming and global 
     increases in precipitation, the sign of the precipitation 
     projections vary between models for some regions.
     7. Assessing progress in climate science
       After analysis, the committee finds that the conclusions 
     presented in the SPM and the Technical Summary (TS) are 
     consistent with the main body of the report. There are, 
     however, differences. The primary differences reflect the 
     manner in which uncertainties are communicated in the SPM. 
     The SPM frequently uses terms (e.g. likely, very likely, 
     unlikely) that convey levels of uncertainty; however, the 
     text less frequently includes either their basis or caveats. 
     This difference is perhaps understandable in terms of a 
     process in which the SPM attempts to underline the major 
     areas of concern associated with a human-induced climate 
     change. However, a thorough understanding of the 
     uncertainties is essential to the development of good policy 
     decisions.
       Climate projections will always be far from perfect. 
     Confidence limits and probabilistic information, with their 
     basis, should always be considered as an integral part of the 
     information that climate scientists provide to policy- and 
     decision-makers. Without them, the IPCC SPM could give an 
     impression that the science of global warming is ``settled,'' 
     even though many uncertainties still remain. The emission 
     scenarios used by IPCC provide a good example. Human 
     decisions will almost certainly alter emissions over the next 
     century. Because we cannot predict either the course of human 
     populations, technology, or societal transitions with any 
     clarity, the actual greenhouse gas emissions could be either 
     greater or less than the IPCC scenarios. Without an 
     understanding of the sources and degree of uncertainty, 
     decision-makers could fail to define the best ways to deal 
     with the serious issue of global warming.
       The most valuable contribution U.S. scientists can make is 
     to continually question basic assumptions and conclusions, 
     promote clear and careful appraisal and presentation of the 
     uncertainties about climate change as well as those areas in 
     which science is leading to robust conclusions, and work 
     toward a significant improvement in the ability to project 
     the future. In the process, we will better define the nature 
     of the problems and ensure that the best possible information 
     is available for policymakers.
       Predictions of global climate change will require major 
     advances in understanding and

[[Page 10381]]

     modeling of (1) the factors that determine atmospheric 
     concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols and (2) the 
     so called `feedbacks' that determine the sensitivity of the 
     climate system to a prescribed increase in greenhouse gases. 
     Specifically, this will involve reducing uncertainty 
     regarding: (a) future usage of fossil fuels, (b) future 
     emissions of methane, (c) the fraction of the future fossil 
     fuel carbon that will remain in the atmosphere and provide 
     radiative forcing versus exchange with the oceans or net 
     exchange with the land biosphere, (d) the feedbacks in the 
     climate system that determine both the magnitude of the 
     change and the rate of energy uptake by the oceans, which 
     together determine the magnitude and time history of the 
     temperature increases for a given radiative forcing, (e) the 
     details of the regional and local climate change consequent 
     to an overall level of global climate change, (f) the nature 
     and causes of the natural variability of climate and its 
     interactions with forced changes, and (g) the direct and 
     indirect effects of the changing distributions of aerosol. 
     Because the total change in radiative forcing from other 
     greenhouse gases over the last century has been nearly as 
     large as that of carbon dioxide, their future evolution also 
     must be addressed. A major limitation of these model 
     forecasts for use around the world is the paucity of data 
     available to evaluate the ability of coupled models to 
     simulate important aspects of past climate. In addition, the 
     observing system available today is a composite of 
     observations that neither provide the information nor the 
     continuity in the data needed to support measurements of 
     climate variables.
                                  ____


 Key Statements on Understanding of the Climate System and Forecasting 
                                Ability

       ``Because there is considerable uncertainty in current 
     understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and 
     reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current 
     estimates of the magnitude of future warning should be 
     regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments 
     upward or downward.'' (Page 1 of the NRC Report)
       ``If a central estimate of climate sensitivity is used, 
     about 40% of the predicted warming is due to the direct 
     effects of greenhouse gases and aerosols. The other 60% is 
     caused by feedbacks. . . . Much of the difference in 
     predictions of global warming by various climate models is 
     attributable to the fact that each model represents these 
     processes in its own particular way.'' (Page 4 of the NRC 
     Report)
       ``The study of the role of black carbon in the atmosphere 
     is relatively new. As a result, it is characterized poorly as 
     to its composition, emission source strengths, and influence 
     on radiation.'' (Page 13 of the NRC Report)
       ``Climate forcing by anthropogenic aerosols is a large 
     source of uncertainty about future climate change.'' (Page 13 
     of the NRC Report)
       ``There is the possibility that decreasing black carbon 
     emissions in the future could have a cooling effect that 
     would at least partially compensate for the warming that 
     might be caused by a decrease in sulfates.'' (Page 13 of the 
     NRC Report)
       ``The greatest uncertainty about the aerosol climate 
     forcing--indeed, the largest of all the uncertainties about 
     global climate forcings--is probably the indirect effect of 
     aerosols on clouds.'' (Page 14 of the NRC Report)
       ``The great uncertainty about this indirect aerosol climate 
     forcing presents a severe handicap both for the 
     interpretation of past climate change and for future 
     assessments of climate change.'' (Page 15 of the NRC Report)
       ``While climate models have many uses, the NRC observes 
     that `However, climate models are imperfect. Their simulation 
     skill is limited by uncertainties in their formulation, the 
     limited size of their calculations, and the difficulty of 
     interpreting their answers that exhibit almost as much 
     complexity as in nature.' '' (Page 15 of the NRC Report)
       ``Projecting future climate change first requires 
     projecting the fossil-fuel and land-use sources of 
     CO2 and other gases and aerosols. . . . However, 
     there are large uncertainties in underlying assumption about 
     population growth, economic development, life style choices, 
     technological change and energy alternatives, so that it is 
     useful to examine scenarios developed from multiple 
     perspectives in considering strategies for dealing with 
     climate change.'' (Page 18 of the NRC Report)
       ``Scenarios for future greenhouse gas amounts, especially 
     for CO2 and CH4 are a major source of 
     uncertainty for projections of future climate. Successive 
     IPCC assessments over the past decade each have developed a 
     new set of scenarios with little discussion of how well 
     observed trends match with previous scenarios.'' (Page 18-19 
     of the NRC Report)
       ``The range of model sensitivities and the challenge of 
     projecting the sign of the precipitation changes for some 
     regions represent a substantial limitation in assessing 
     climate impacts.'' (Page 21 of the NRC Report)

  Key Statements of Human Causation of Observed 20th Century Climate 
                                Changes

       ``Despite the uncertainties, there is general agreement 
     that the observed warming is real and particularly strong 
     within the past twenty years. Whether it is consistent with 
     the change that would be expected in response to human 
     activities is dependent upon what assumptions one makes about 
     the time history of atmospheric concentrations of the various 
     forcing agents, particularly aerosols.'' (Page 3 of the NRC 
     Report)
       ``Because of the large and still uncertain level of natural 
     variability inherent in the climate record and the 
     uncertainties in the time history of the various forcing 
     agents (and particularly aerosols), a causal linkage between 
     the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the 
     observed climate changes during the 20th century cannot be 
     unequivocally established.'' (Page 17 of the NRC Report)
       ``The fact that the magnitude of the observed warming is 
     large in comparison to natural variability as simulated in 
     climate models is suggestive of such a linkage, but it does 
     not constitute proof of one because the model simulations 
     could be deficient in natural variability on the decadal to 
     century time scale.'' (Page 17 of the NRC Report)

                    Key Statements on Research Needs

       ``Reducing the wide range of uncertainty inherent in 
     current model predictions of global climate change will 
     require major advances in understanding and modeling of both 
     (1) the factors that determine atmospheric concentrations of 
     greenhouse gases and aerosols, and (2) the so-called 
     `feedbacks' that determine the sensitivity of the climate 
     system to a prescribed increase in greenhouse gases. 
     Specifically, this will involve reducing uncertainty 
     regarding: (a) future usage of fossil fuels, (b) future 
     emissions of methane, (c) the fraction of fossil fuel carbon 
     that will remain in the atmosphere and provide radiative 
     forcing versus exchange with the oceans or net exchange with 
     the land biosphere, (d) the feedbacks in the climate system 
     that determine both the magnitude of the change and the rate 
     of energy uptake by the oceans, which together determine the 
     magnitude and time history of the temperature increases for a 
     given radiative forcing, (e) the details of the regional and 
     local climate change consequent to an overall level of global 
     climate change, (f) the nature and causes of the natural 
     variability of climate and its interactions with forced 
     changes, and (g) the direct and indirect effects of the 
     changing distributions of aerosol.'' (Page 23 of the NRC 
     Report)

  Key Statements on the IPCC Process, Scientific Representation, and 
          Political Influence on the Summary for Policymakers

       ``The committee finds that the full IPCC Working Group I 
     (WGI) report is an admirable summary of research activities 
     in climate science, and the full report is adequately 
     summarized in the Technical Summary. . . . The Summary for 
     Policymakers reflects less emphasis on communicating the 
     basis for uncertainty, and a stronger emphasis on areas of 
     major concern associated with human-induced climate change. 
     This change in emphasis appears to be the result of a summary 
     process in which scientists work with policy makers on the 
     document.'' (Page 5 of the NRC Report)
       Changes to the Summary for Policymakers are only approved 
     by ``a fraction of the lead and contributing authors,'' not 
     the full body of authors of the WGI report. (Page 5 of the 
     NRC Report)
       ``The committee's concerns focus primarily on whether the 
     process is likely to become less representative in the future 
     because of the growing voluntary time commitment required to 
     participate as a lead or coordinating author and the 
     potential that the scientific process will be viewed as being 
     too heavily influenced by governments which have specific 
     postures with regard to treaties, emission controls and other 
     policy instruments.'' (Page 5 of the NRC Report)
       ``The body of the WGI report is scientifically credible and 
     is not unlike what would be produced by a comparable group of 
     only U.S. scientists working with a similar set of emission 
     scenarios, with perhaps some normal differences in scientific 
     tone and emphasis.'' (Page 22 of the NRC Report)
       ``After analysis, the committee finds that the conclusions 
     presented in the Summary for Policymakers and the Technical 
     Summary are consistent with the main body of the report. 
     There are, however, differences. The primary differences 
     reflect the manner in which uncertainties are communicated in 
     the Summary for Policymakers. The Summary for Policymakers 
     frequently uses terms (e.g., likely, very likely, unlikely) 
     that convey levels of uncertainty; however, the text less 
     frequently includes either their basis or caveats.'' (Page 22 
     of the NRC Report)
       ``However, a thorough understanding of the uncertainties is 
     essential to the development of good policy decisions.'' 
     (Page 22 of the NRC Report)
       ``Confidence limits and probabilistic information, with 
     their basis, should always be considered as an integral part 
     of the information that climate scientists provide to policy- 
     and decision-makers. Without them, the IPCC SPM could give an 
     impression that the science of global warming is `settled,'

[[Page 10382]]

     even though many uncertainties still remain.'' (Page 22 of 
     the NRC Report)
       ``Without an understanding of the sources and degree of 
     uncertainty, decision-makers could fail to define the best 
     ways to deal with the serious issue of global warming.'' 
     (Page 23 of the NRC Report)
       The NRC exposes the reality that the technical elements of 
     the WG1 report are modified after the fact to make it match 
     up with the Summary for Policymakers. While ``most'' of these 
     changes were acceptable to the chapter authors, the NRC 
     suggests that ``Some scientists may find fault with some of 
     the technical details, especially if they appear to 
     underestimate uncertainty.'' (Page 23 of the NRC Report)
       ``The IPCC process demands a significant time commitment by 
     members of the scientific community. As a result, many 
     climate scientists in the United States and elsewhere choose 
     not to participate at the level of a lead author even after 
     being invited.'' They go on to point out that ``As the 
     commitment to the assessment process continues to grow, this 
     could create a form of self-selection for the participants. 
     In such a case, the community of world climate scientists may 
     develop cadres with particularly strong feelings about the 
     outcome: some as favorable to the IPCC and its procedures, 
     and others negative about the use of the IPCC as a policy 
     instrument.'' (Page 23 of the NRC Report)
       ``In addition, the preparation of the SPM involves both 
     scientists and governmental representatives. Governmental 
     representatives are more likely to be tied to specific 
     government postures with regard to treaties, emission 
     controls, and other policy instruments.'' (Page 23 of the NRC 
     Report)

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