[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 6077-6080]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, today I continue my series of talks on the 
four pillars of climate alarmism. Last week I showed the first pillar, 
the 2001 climate change report by the National Academy of Sciences. It 
was really a farce, and we documented it very well. The same is true of 
the 2001 report of the IPCC. That is the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change. It supposedly provides irrefutable evidence of the 
global warming consensus. Simply put, it does not, as my speech today 
will demonstrate.
  The media greeted the release of the IPCC's Third Assessment Report 
with the predictable hysteria with which they normally respond to 
things such as this. From the Independent newspaper of London:

       In a report published today by the United Nations 
     Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), hundreds of 
     the world's leading scientists give their unqualified support 
     to the view that global warming is real and that the release 
     of manmade greenhouse gases is largely responsible.

  It continues:

       The latest three-volume report, amounting to 2,600 pages of 
     detailed analysis, leaves the reader in little doubt that the 
     scientific uncertainties of the previous decade are being 
     resolved in favor of an emerging, and increasingly 
     pessimistic consensus.

  The preceding quotes, and many that followed in the Independent's 
report, came from the Third Assessment's ``Summary for Policymakers.'' 
In fact, the media based much, if not all, of its reporting on the 
summary itself. It did this even though in some respects the summary 
distorted the actual context of the full report.
  The National Academy of Sciences, in its 2001 report, criticized both 
how the summary was written and how the media portrayed it, as in this 
chart No. 1:

       The IPCC Summary for Policymakers could give an impression 
     that the science of global warming is settled, even though 
     many uncertainties still remain.

  This clearly contradicts the claim of the Independent that there is 
little doubt that the scientific uncertainties in the previous decade 
are settled.
  Another claim the media featured prominently was that temperature 
increases over the last century are unprecedented, at least when 
considered on a time scale of the last 1,000 years. According to the 
IPCC, the 1990s were the warmest decade on record, and 1998 was the 
warmest year since temperature records began in 1861. The basis for 
this claim is a so-called hockey stick graph, shown in chart No. 2. 
This is an interesting one because this plots out the temperatures over 
a period of time and then shows the blade, when it gets to be the 19th 
century, coming up.
  The graph was constructed by Dr. Michael Mann of the University of 
Virginia and his colleagues using a combination of proxy data and 
modern temperature records. The hockey stick curve showed a gradual 
cooling period around 1400 A.D., which is the hockey stick handle--that 
is the horizontal line--then a sharp warming starting about 1900, the 
hockey stick blade. Its release was revolutionary, overturning 
widespread evidence adduced over many years confirming significant 
national variability long before the advent of SUVs. The IPCC was so 
impressed that the hockey stick was featured prominently in its Third 
Assessment Report of 2001.
  As Dr. Roy Spencer, the principal research scientist at the 
University of Alabama, noted:

       This was taken as proof that the major climate event of the 
     last 1,000 years was the influence of humans in the 20th 
     century. One of its authors, Dr. Michael Mann, confidently 
     declared in 2003 that the hockey stick ``is the indisputable 
     consensus of the community of scientists actively involved in 
     the research of climate variability and its causes.''

  The hockey stick caused quite a stir, not just in the scientific 
community but also in the world of politics. It galvanized alarmists in 
their push for Kyoto. It is supposedly ironclad proof that manmade 
greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet at an unsustainable 
degree. But here again, one of the essential pillars of the alarmists 
appears to be crumbling.
  Two Canadian researchers have produced the most devastating evidence 
to date that the hockey stick is bad science. Before I describe their 
work, I want to make a prediction. The alarmists will cry foul, saying 
this critique is part of an industry conspiracy. And true to form, they 
will avoid discussion of the substance and engage in personal attacks. 
That is because one of the researchers, Stephen McIntyre, is a mineral 
exploration consultant. Dr. Mann already has accused them of having a 
conflict of interest. This is nonsense.
  First, Stephen McIntyre and his colleague, Ross McKitrick, an 
economist with Canada's University of Guelph, received no outside 
funding for their work. They are both very well recognized professional 
people. Second, they published their peer-reviewed critique in 
geophysical research letters. This is no organ of big oil, but an 
eminent scientific journal, the same journal, in fact, which published 
the version of Dr. Mann's hockey stick that appeared in the IPCC's 
Third Assessment Report. Apparently the journal's editor didn't see 
much evidence of bias. The remarks of one editor are worth quoting in 
full:

       S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick have written a remarkable 
     paper on a subject of great importance. What makes the paper 
     significant is that they show that one of the most widely 
     known results of climate analysis, the ``hockey stick'' 
     diagram of Mann [and company], was based on a mistake in the 
     application of a mathematical technique known as principle 
     component analysis.

  Further, he said:

       I have looked carefully at the McIntyre and McKitrick 
     analysis, and I am convinced that their work is correct.

  What did McKitrick and McIntyre find? In essence, they discovered 
that Dr. Mann misused an established statistical method called 
principal components analysis, PCA. As they explained, Mann created a 
program that ``effectively mines a data set for hockey stick 
patterns.'' In other words, no matter what kind of data one uses, even 
if it is random and totally meaningless, the Mann method always 
produces a hockey stick. After conducting some 10,000 data simulations, 
the result was nearly always the same. ``In over 99 percent of cases,'' 
McIntyre and McKitrick wrote, ``it produced a hockey stick shaped PCI 
series.'' Statistician Francis Zwiers of Environment Canada, a 
government agency, says he

[[Page 6078]]

agrees that Dr. Mann's statistical method ``preferentially produces 
hockey sticks when there are none in the data.'' Even to a non-
statistician, this looks extremely troubling.
  But that statistical error is just the beginning. On a public web 
site where Dr. Mann filed data, McIntyre and McKitrick discovered an 
intriguing folder titled ``BACKTO_1400-CENSORED.'' What McIntyre and 
McKitrick found in the folder was disturbing: Mann's hockey stick blade 
was based on a certain type of tree--a bristlecone pine--that, in 
effect, helped to manufacture the hockey stick.
  Remember, the hockey stick shows a relatively stable climate over 900 
years, and then a dramatic spike in temperature about 1900, the 
inference being that man-made emissions are the cause of rising 
temperatures. So why is the bristlecone pine important? That 
bristlecone experienced a growth pulse in the Western United States in 
the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, this growth pulse, as 
the specialist literature has confirmed, was not attributed to 
temperature. So using those pines, and only those pines, as a proxy for 
temperature during this period is questionable at best. Even Mann's co-
author has stated that the bristlecone growth pulse is a ``mystery.''
  Because of these obvious problems, McIntyre and McKitrick 
appropriately excluded the bristlecone data from their calculations. 
What did they find? Not the Mann hockey stick, to be sure, but a 
confirmation of the Medieval Warm Period, which Mann's work had erased.
  This is very interesting because the chart will show, if you would 
include the calculation--what we refer to as the Medieval Warm Period 
which, as everybody now understands, is a reality--then temperatures at 
that time exceeded the temperatures in the blade of the hockey stick. 
In fact, when I was over in Milan, Italy, at one of the big meetings, I 
pointed this out as evidence it was done, and done intentionally. Why 
would he start with the year when you have a level line going for 900 
years and totally ignore the Medieval Warming Period, at which time the 
temperatures of the Earth exceeded the temperatures in this century?
  As the CENSORED folder revealed, Mann and his colleagues never 
reported results obtained from calculations that excluded the 
bristlecone data. This appears to be a case of selectively using data--
that is, if you don't like the result, remove the offending data until 
you get the answer you want. As McIntyre and McKitrick explained, 
``Imagine the irony of this discovery . . . Mann accused us of 
selectively deleting North American proxy series. Now it appeared that 
he had results that were exactly the same as ours, stuffed away in a 
folder labeled CENSORED.''
  McIntyre and McKitrick believe there are additional errors in the 
Mann hockey stick. To confirm their suspicion, they need additional 
data from Dr. Mann, including the computer code he used to generate the 
graph. But Dr. Mann refuses to supply it. As he told the Wall Street 
Journal, ``Giving them the algorithm would be giving in to the 
intimidation tactics that these people are engaged in.''
  What we are talking about is he refused to give him the necessary 
computerized data to come to the conclusion. There is no way of 
analyzing it.
  Who are ``these people''? And what ``intimidation tactics''? Mr. 
McIntyre and Mr. McKitrick are trying to find the truth. What is Dr. 
Mann trying to hide?
  For many scientists, McIntyre and McKitrick's work is earth-
shattering. For example, Professor Richard Muller of the University of 
California at Berkeley recently wrote in the MIT Technology Review that 
McIntyre and McKitrick's findings ``hit me like a bombshell, and I 
suspect it is having the same effect on many others. Suddenly the 
hockey stick, the poster-child of the global warming community, turns 
out to be an artifact of poor mathematics.'' Dr. Rob van Dorland, of 
the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, and an IPCC lead 
author, said, ``The IPCC made a mistake by only including Mann's 
reconstruction and not those of other researchers.'' He concluded that 
unless the error is corrected, it will ``seriously damage the work of 
the IPCC.''
  Or consider Dr. Hans von Storch, an IPCC contributing author and 
internationally renowned expert in climate statistics at Germany's 
Center for Coastal Research, who said McIntyre and McKitrick's work is 
``entirely valid.'' In an interview last October with the German 
Newspaper Der Spiegel, Dr. von Storch said the Mann hockey stick 
``contains assumptions that are not permissible. Methodologically it is 
wrong: rubbish.'' He stressed that, ``it remains important for science 
to point out the erroneous nature of the Mann curve. In recent years it 
has been elevated to the status of truth by the U.N. appointed science 
body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC. This 
handicapped all that research which strives to make a realistic 
distinction between human influences and climate and natural 
variability.''
  If McIntyre and McKitrick's work isn't convincing enough, consider 
the recent paper published in the February 10 issue of Nature. The 
paper, authored by a group of Swedish climate researchers, once again 
undercuts the scientific credibility of the Mann hockey stick. The 
press release for the study by the Swedish Research Council says, ``A 
new study of climate in the Northern Hemisphere for the past 2000 years 
shows that natural climate change may be larger than generally 
thought.''
  According to the paper's authors, the Mann hockey stick does not 
provide an accurate picture of the last 1,000 years. ``The new 
results,'' they wrote, ``show an appreciable temperature swing between 
the 12th and 20th centuries, with a notable cold period around AD 1600. 
A large part of the 20th century had approximately the same temperature 
as the 11th and 12th centuries.''
  In other words, here's evidence of the Medieval Warm Period and the 
Little Ice Age, demonstrating that climate, long before the burning of 
fossil fuels, varied considerably over the last 2,000 years. The 
researchers note that changes in the sun's output and volcanic 
eruptions appear to have caused considerable natural variations in the 
climate system. ``The fact that these two climate evolutions,'' they 
contend, ``which have been obtained completely independently of each 
other, are very similar supports the case that climate shows an 
appreciable natural variability--and that changes in the sun's output 
and volcanic eruptions on the earth may be the cause.''
  Another important development chipping away at the so-called 
scientific consensus has to do with economics and statistics, and how 
both are used by the IPCC.
  To determine how man-made greenhouse gases might affect the climate 
over the next century, the IPCC had to predict 100 years' worth of 
greenhouse gas emissions. Predicting emissions rates depends on several 
factors, including population growth, technological advances, and 
future economic growth rates in developed and developing countries.
  Based on these and other factors, the IPCC's Third Assessment Report 
projected an average global temperature increase by 2100 ranging 
between 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius, which is about 2.7 to 10.4 degrees 
Fahrenheit. This temperature range was determined from several 
different emission scenarios. In each of those scenarios, the IPCC 
arbitrarily assumed that incomes in poor countries and rich countries 
would converge by the year 2100. According to Warren McKibbin of 
Australia National University's Center for Applied Macroeconomics and 
the Brookings Institution, this assumption is unwarranted. Even if it 
were to happen, McKibbin and his colleagues write:

       The empirical literature suggests that the rate of 
     convergence in income per capita would be very slow.

  Even the IPCC agrees, stating:

       It may well take a century (given all the other factors set 
     favorably) for a poor country to catch up to [income] levels 
     that prevail in the industrial countries today, never mind 
     the levels that might prevail in affluent countries 100 years 
     in the future.


[[Page 6079]]


  Nevertheless, the IPCC assumed poor and rich countries would achieve 
parity by the end of the century. To measure that growth over time, the 
IPCC had to compare what income levels look like today. It did that by 
using market exchange rates, but this raises a major problem. Relying 
on exchange rates fails to account for price differences between 
countries. This has the effect of vastly overstating differences in 
wealth. ``This comparison is valid,'' says Ian Castles, formerly head 
of Australia's National Office of Statistics, now with the National 
Center of Development Studies at Australian National University.
  Castles and his colleague David Henderson, former chief economist for 
the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, now of the 
Westminster Business School, discovered the IPCC's error last year and 
have published their findings in the distinguished scientific journal 
Energy and Environment.
  Castles and Henderson note that using exchange rates is invalid 
because it is based on the assumption that ``[a] poor Bangladeshi 
family has converted the whole of its income into foreign currency, and 
spent it on goods and services at average world prices rather than [at 
much lower] Bangladeshi prices.''
  Through the use of exchange rates, the IPCC concluded the average 
income of rich countries right now is 40 times higher than the average 
income in developing countries in Asia and 12 times higher than the 
average income in other non-Asian developing countries.
  As my colleagues can see, there is a huge gap, which raises a 
significant point. If the initial income gap is large, then poor 
countries will have to grow incredibly fast to catch up. According to 
the IPCC, the greater the economic growth, the greater the emissions 
released into the atmosphere, and hence higher temperatures.
  The IPCC, as the Economist Magazine wrote, is simply wrong. They 
said:

       The developing-country growth rates yielded by this method 
     [market exchange rates] are historically implausible, to put 
     it mildly. The emissions forecasts based on those implausibly 
     high growth rates are accordingly unsound.

  Castles and Henderson have shown convincingly that the IPCC's 
temperature range rests on a majority of major economic error and, 
therefore, is wildly off the mark. Because of this error, even the 
IPCC's low end emission scenario is implausible. As the Economist 
Magazine wrote:

       But, as we pointed out before, even the scenarios that give 
     the lowest cumulative emissions assume that incomes in the 
     developing countries will increase at a much faster rate over 
     the course of the century than they have ever done before.

  The Economist continued:

       Disaggregated projections published by the IPCC say that--
     even in the lowest-emission scenarios--growth in poor 
     countries will be so fast that by the end of the century 
     Americans will be poorer on average than South Africans, 
     Algerians, Argentines, Libyans, Turks and North Koreans.

  And I do not think any of us are ready to accept that.
  Let us get a better sense of why that is odd. Under the IPCC's low-
end scenario, the amount of goods and services produced per person in 
developing countries in Asia would increase 70-fold by 2100, and 
increase nearly 30-fold for other developing countries. To put that in 
perspective, the United States only achieved a 5-fold increase in per 
capita income growth in the 19th century, and Japan achieved a nearly 
20-fold increase in the 20th Century.
  The IPCC's mistakes are fatal. Jacob Ryten, a leading figure in the 
development, evaluation, and implementation of the United Nations 
International Comparisons Programme, said the IPCC suffers from 
``manifest ignorance of the conceptual and practical issues involved in 
developing and using intercountry measures of economic product.''
  The Economist said that the IPCC's method proved it was guilty of 
dangerous economic incompetence.
  Castles and Henderson, along with the Economist and other scientists, 
have pressed the IPCC to abandon its use of market exchange rates in 
its upcoming Fourth Assessment Report. They say this is essential to 
provide a more accurate projection of future emissions. Thus far, the 
IPCC has ignored their request, but this is no surprise. The IPCC has 
become politicized and appears more intent on pursuing propaganda over 
science.
  Consider the case of Dr. Christopher Landsea, the world's foremost 
expert on hurricanes. Dr. Landsea accepted an invitation to provide 
input on Atlantic hurricanes for the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report 
due out in 2007. But over time, Dr. Landsea realized that certain key 
members of the IPCC were bent on advancing a political agenda rather 
than providing an objective, fact-based understanding of climate 
change. As a result, he resigned from the IPCC process.
  Dr. Landsea was outraged that Dr. Kevin Trenberth, the lead author of 
observations for the upcoming Fourth Assessment, and other scientists 
participated in a politically charged press conference at Harvard 
University on the supposed causal link between global warming and 
extreme weather events. The press conference was promoted this way:

       Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring 
     more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity.

  In other words, they were trying to blame these catastrophes that 
come up on what they consider to be global warming.
  As Dr. Landsea explained, the topic was bogus. It has no scientific 
basis, and none of the scientists who participated had any expertise in 
the matter.
  In his resignation letter, Dr. Landsea wrote:

       To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press 
     conference had performed any research on hurricane 
     variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the 
     field . . . It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize 
     the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane 
     activity has been due to global warming.

  What is the real state of the science on this topic?

       All previous and current research in the area of hurricane 
     variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend in the 
     frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either the 
     Atlantic or any other basin.

  Dr. Landsea wrote, and this is in the chart:

       Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by 
     most recent credible studies that any impact in the future 
     from global warming upon hurricanes will likely be quite 
     small.

  Dr. Landsea noted that the most recent science shows that ``by around 
2080 hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5 percent more 
intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may 
be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st 
Century.''
  Dr. Landsea concluded that because the IPCC process has been 
compromised, resigning was his only option. He said:

       I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to 
     a process that I view as both being motivated by preconceived 
     agendas and being scientifically unsound.

  As with Castles and Henderson, the IPCC leadership has brushed off 
Dr. Landsea's concerns. This is outrageous. In doing so, the IPCC is 
seriously undermining its credibility.
  One can only hope that the IPCC will change its ways. Otherwise, we 
can expect yet another assessment report that is unsupported by facts 
and science.
  It is no surprising that alarmists want to fabricate the perception 
that there is consensus about climate change. We know the costs of this 
would be enormous. Wharton Econometrics Forecasting Associates 
estimates that implementing Kyoto would coast an American family of 
four $2,700 annually. Acknowledging a full-fledged debate over global 
warming would undermine their agenda. And what is that agenda? Two 
international leaders have said it best. Margot Wallstrom, the EU's 
Environment Commissioner, states that Kyoto is ``about leveling the 
playing field for big businesses worldwide.'' French President Jacques 
Chirac said during a speech at the Hague in November 2000 that Kyoto 
represents ``the first component of an authentic global governance.''
  Look at this and you realize what is motivating these people. People 
ask me if science is not behind this and

[[Page 6080]]

there is that much damage that can be effected, what is the motive? 
That is what the motive is.
  Facts and science are showing that the catastrophic global warming 
consensus does not exist. The IPCC has been exposed as a political arm 
of U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, with a mission to prop up its flawed 
scientific conclusions.
  The Mann hockey stick, the flagship of the IPCC's claims that global 
warming is real, has now been thoroughly discredited in scientific 
circles. Projections of future carbon emissions--which drive 
temperature model conclusions--have been proven to be based on 
political decisions that, by the end of the century, countries like 
Bangladesh will be as wealthy, or wealthier, than the United States.
  A world renowned scientist has just resigned from the IPCC because it 
is too politicized, saying that the IPCC plans to make claims that 
contradict scientific understanding. Increasingly, it appears that the 
scientific case for catastrophic global warming is a house of cards 
that will soon come tumbling down.
  Despite this, there are still some who choose to ignore science.
  After I spoke about this last week, Duke Energy CEO Paul Anderson 
advocated a tax on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. In doing 
so, the company has seemingly bought into the spurious notion that the 
science is settled. But perhaps it is not. Unfortunately, to some 
global warming advocates, the science is irrelevant.
  As Myron Ebell of the competitive Enterprise Institute says:

       Duke Energy has now admitted that the costs will be 
     significant. But the fact is it will only be expensive for 
     their competitors. Nuclear plants don't emit carbon dioxide 
     and Duke is already one-third nuclear generation. Moreover, 
     the company has announced plans to build even more nuclear 
     plants, giving it an even bigger competitive edge.

  This is a lot of scientific stuff. I have said several times since I 
became chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee that the 
first thing we did was study this because it was assumed that global 
warming is taking place and anthropogenic gases are causing it, methane 
and CO2, only to find out that is not the case. Virtually 
all the science since 1999 has refuted these assertions. I think we 
have an obligation to recognize these far-left environmentalist 
extremist groups are huge contributors to campaigns and they have a lot 
of political power, but in the long run we have to be more concerned 
about America than we are about political campaigns.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Kentucky is recognized.

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