[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9150-9156]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        MAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Space). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Rohrabacher) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I preface my remarks with a personal 
statement that, while I am opposed to the advocates of man-made global 
warming theories, I am committed to a clean and healthy environment, to 
purifying our air, our water, and our soil; all of this for the sake of 
the people of this planet, including my three children, Anika, Tristan 
and Christian. I do this not because of some paranoid theory that 
humans are changing the climate of the world, but instead, I am very 
concerned about the health of the people of the world and, thus, 
committed to clean air, clean soil, and clean water.
  Thus, we have, today, to take a look at the issues of global warming 
and pollution that confront our society because there are enormous 
implications to this whole discussion of what has been called ``man-
made global warming.''
  Only 18 months ago the refrain ``Case closed: Global warming is 
real,'' was repeated as if the mantra from some religious zealots. It 
was pounded into the public consciousness over the airwaves, in print, 
and even at congressional hearings, ``Case closed.'' Well, this was 
obviously a brazen attempt to end open discussion and to silence 
differing views by dismissing the need for seriously contrary arguments 
and seriously listening to both sides of an argument. And rather than 
hearing both sides of the argument, this was an attempt to dismiss 
arguments even though the person making the arguments might have a very 
impressive credential or might be a very educated scientist or someone 
else who should be listened to.
  And yes, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of prominent scientists 
and meteorologists, the heads of science departments at major 
universities, and others, who are highly critical of the man-made 
global warming theory. There is Dr. Richard Lindzen of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been adamant in his 
opposition, as has a Bjarne Andresen of the University of Copenhagen, 
Adreas Prokoph, a professor of earth sciences at the University of 
Ottawa, Dr. William Gray, a famous hurricane expert and former 
President of the American Meteorological Association, and Dr. Kevin 
Trenberth, the head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National 
Center of Atmospheric Research. All of these are respected scholars, 
all skeptical of the unwarranted alarmism that we are being pressured 
to accept.
  But their views and those of so many more prominent scholars and 
scientists don't matter. The debate is over. Al Gore has his Nobel 
Prize, and the film, ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' its Academy Award. So 
shut up and get your mind in lockstep with the politically correct 
prevailing wisdom, or at least what the media tells us is the 
prevailing wisdom. And no questions, please, the case is closed. We 
heard that dozens and dozens of times.
  So what is this theory that now is so accepted that no more debate is 
needed or even tolerated? The man-made global warming theory may be 
presented as scientific truism, but it is not. It is a disturbing 
theory that the Earth began a warming cycle 150 years ago that differed 
greatly from all the other warming and cooling cycles in the Earth's 
past. This warming cycle of 150 years ago, we keep being told, is tied 
directly to mankind's use of fossil fuels, basically oil and coal, 
which, of course, oil and coal and these fuels, these so-called fossil 
fuels, have powered our industries and made modern civilization 
possible.
  Fossil fuels, we are told, puts an ever-increasing so-called level of 
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the most prevalent of these 
gases, of course, being carbon dioxide, CO2. This increase 
in CO2 causes the warming that we are supposedly 
experiencing today. This man-made warming cycle, according to the 
theory, is rapidly approaching a tipping point when the world's 
temperatures will abruptly jump and accelerate with dire and perhaps 
apocalyptic consequences for the entire planet.
  For skeptics of this hypothesis, the consequence of accepting this 
theory, the consequences are far more dire than any of the consequences 
we're supposed to be suffering out of a predicted rise in temperature. 
And by the way, that rise in temperature, of course, isn't really 
happening, which we will discuss a little bit later.
  If one accepts this as fact rather than theory, this idea that man-
made global warming is overwhelming our planet, then one would be 
expected to also accept controls, regulations, taxation, international 
planning and enforcement, mandated lifestyle changes, lowering 
expectations, limiting consumer choice, as well as personal and family 
sacrifices that are all going to be necessary for us to save the planet 
from--well, from us.
  It really takes a lot to frighten people into accepting such 
personally restrictive mandates that would result from implementing a 
global warming-based agenda. People's lives will change if we decide to 
implement a global warming-based agenda. Yes, people's lives will 
change, but not for the better if we have to end, for example, discount 
airline tickets and cheap travel.
  Most people who listen to the global warming advocates don't 
understand that the global warming advocates believe that jet planes 
are some of the worst CO2 polluters, and thus they have to 
be restricted, according to the theory. So how many people really do 
want to end the cheap airline tickets that can be had over the 
Internet?
  Obviously one of the goals will be to severely restrict the use of 
private automobiles. Sure. Now, we know that. The fact that the 
automobile has been targeted for the last 20 years certainly suggests 
that automobiles are on the


[[Page 9151]]


hit list. But don't worry, we may have to 
give up our automobiles, but the rich and the government officials will 
still have their private jets, their Suburbans, and even their 
limousines. But the rest of us, of course, will be relegated to public 
transportation. And we will have very limited travel rights unless we 
can, of course, afford the higher and higher prices.
  Global warming predictions appear designed to strike fear into the 
heart of those malcontents who just won't willingly accept the mandates 
in their lifestyle changes that are needed in order to save the planet. 
These people, of course, won't accept things like higher food prices, 
which will come with an implementation of global warming mandates. And 
of course they certainly won't accept less meat in their diet. That's 
right, part of the manmade global warming theory and how we're going to 
solve this is to wean mankind away from meat.
  A 2006 report entitled ``Livestock's Long Shadow'' to the United 
Nations mentions livestock emissions and grazing, and it places the 
blame for global warming squarely on the hind parts of cows. Livestock, 
the report claims, accounts for 18 percent of the gases that supposedly 
cause the global warming of our climate. Cows are greenhouse-emitting 
machines. Fuel for fertilizer and meat production and transportation, 
as well as clearing the fields for grazing, produce 9 percent of the 
global CO2 emissions, according to the report. And also, 
cows produce ammonia, causing acid rain, of course.
  Now, if that's not bad enough, all of these numbers are projected in 
this report to double by the year 2050. Well, not only are we then 
going to have to cut personal transportation, which will keep us at 
home, but when we stay at home, we can't even have a barbecue. And 
heck, they won't even let us have a hamburger.
  I would like to point out that before the introduction of cattle, 
millions upon millions of buffalo dominated the Great Plains of 
America. They were so thick you could not see where the herd started 
and where it ended. I can only assume that the anti-meat, manmade 
global warming crowd must believe that buffalo farts have more socially 
redeeming value than the same flatulence emitted by cattle. Yes, this 
is absurd, but the deeper one looks into this global warming 
juggernaut, the weirder this movement becomes and the more denial is 
evident.
  Ten years ago, for example, the alarmists predicted that by now we 
would be clearly plagued by surging temperatures. In testimony before 
Congress 20 years ago, now, says James Hansen, a man who has repeatedly 
challenged people who simply want to make sure that his views are 
balanced off at NASA, but NASA's James Hansen 20 years ago predicted 
CO2 would shoot up and global temperatures would shoot up by 
more than one-third of a degree Celsius during the 1990s.
  So a rise in temperature was predicted, and it would lead to what? 
Rising sea levels. In the end, we'll have rising sea levels, perhaps 
even cities under water, droughts and famines, and of course an 
increase in tropical diseases. Yes, tropical diseases. Sometimes it's 
difficult for me to hear it when certain environmentalists use that as 
an example, considering the fact that tropical diseases, namely 
malaria, has killed millions of children in the Third World because the 
environmentalists have been successful in banning DDT. But that's 
another issue.

                              {time}  2230

  But the point is there are serious consequences, perhaps unintended 
consequences to following nonsensical extremism in the arena of the 
environment.
  So were the predictions of global heating correct? Forget ``case 
closed.'' The question needs to be answered. Were all of these 
predictions correct? Mr. Hansen said it would rise by a third of a 
degree just a little over a decade ago. And the answer is that the 
predictions of a decade ago have turned out to be dramatically wrong. 
Temperatures during that decade rose only one-third of the jump 
predicted by Hansen, a modest 0.11, one-third of what he had predicted.
  Furthermore, numerous and powerful hurricanes that were forecast by 
the National Hurricane Center, for example, at NOAA and others, well, 
by now we haven't seen such a trend, and by now we were led to believe 
there would be a drought and a melting of the ice caps would be clearly 
upon us. My beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains in California were due to 
heat up, dry up, brown up, and burn, burn, burn. Yep, during the entire 
Clinton administration, we heard these predictions over and over again. 
During the Clinton administration, we saw scientists produce study 
after study predicting the horrific impact of the unstoppable onslaught 
of man-made global warming, which we were led to believe would be 
overwhelming us right now. Right now. Of course, if there was even a 
hint that the conclusion of their research wouldn't back up the theory 
of man-made global warming, these scientists wouldn't have seen one red 
cent from the Federal research pool during the Clinton administration.
  In a September, 2005, article from Discovery Magazine, Dr. William 
Gray, now an emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado 
State University and a former president of the American Meteorological 
Association, was asked if funding problems that he was experiencing and 
has been experiencing could be traced to his skepticism of man-made 
global warming. His response: ``I had NOAA money for 30 years, and then 
when the Clinton administration came in and Gore started directing some 
of the environmental stuff, I was cut off. I couldn't get any money 
from NOAA. They turned down 13 straight proposals from me.'' This man 
is one of the most prominent hurricane experts in the world, cut off 
during the Clinton-Gore administration because he had been skeptical of 
global warming.
  In fact, Al Gore's first act as Vice President was to insist that 
William Harper be fired as the Chief Scientist at the Department of 
Energy. Now, why was that? Well, that's because William Harper had 
uttered words indicating that he was open minded to the issue of global 
warming. So off with his head. They didn't want someone who was open 
minded. They wanted someone who was going to provide grants based on 
people who would verify this man-made global warming theory. Now, that 
was 1993 when Mr. Harper was relieved, the first year of the Clinton-
Gore administration. So for over a decade, all we got was a drumbeat of 
one-sided research, setting the stage for the false claim that there is 
a scientific consensus about whether or not man-made global warming is 
real.
  Unfortunately, for all those scientists who went along with the 
scheme, now, over a decade later, there is a big problem. Contrary to 
what all those scientists living on their Federal research grants 
predicted, the world hasn't been getting warmer. In fact, for the last 
7 years, there has been no warming at all, which has been verified even 
by, for example, Michel Jarraud of the World Meteorological 
Organization. He's their Secretary General. He reluctantly admitted 
that global temperatures have not risen since 1998, according to a BBC 
article. Global snowfall is at record levels and there are fewer, not 
more, hurricanes.
  Furthermore, there is some melting in the Arctic. We all know that 
there is some melting in the Arctic because we hear about it over and 
over again. In fact, NBC did some special on the melting of the Arctic 
and how bad it is and showed the pictures of penguins sitting on a 
diminishing piece of ice in the Arctic. Except there was a problem with 
that story. You see, penguins don't live in the Arctic; they live in the Antarctic.
There are no penguins in the Arctic. So NBC had it wrong. Somebody must have told 
them that the penguins from the Arctic were being victimized by global 
warming. In fact, in the Antarctic, where the penguins are, there is a 
buildup of ice. It is getting cooler. And in the Arctic, of course, we 
do recognize there has been a warming in the Arctic, likely due to 
ocean currents that have changed in the last few years and not due to 
CO2 that comes from somebody's SUV.
  After hearing about the extinction of the polar bear, which has been 
  
  
[[Page 9152]]  
  
  
  
drummed into our heads, we now hear that--and by the way, just today 
the polar bear was put on an endangered species list. But are the polar 
bears really disappearing? We now hear from Dr. Mitchell Taylor from 
the Department of the Environment under the Canadian territory of 
Nunavut and other experts, I might add, who suggest, yes, all but one 
or two species of the polar bears are flourishing. Yes, of the twenty-
odd species, there are perhaps one or two that are suffering and not 
doing well, but all the rest of the species of polar bear are 
expanding. In fact, we don't have a situation with fewer polar bears; 
we've got more polar bears. Yet our government is putting the polar 
bear on an endangered species list, saying that if the ice cap melts, 
the polar bears will all be going away because their habitat has been 
destroyed.
  Unfortunately, the debate on this case is not closed. So explaining 
emerging obvious differences between the reality and the theory needs 
to be addressed by the people who have been advocating global warming. 
The case is not closed. The gnomes of climate theory now have to come 
up with explanations for us of why it was predicted that the weather 
would be this way at this time and it is not. Why is it that basically 
we've had stable weather, if not a little cooler weather, for the last 
8 years?
  The first attempt to basically cover their tracks about this 
noticeable dichotomy in what they predicted and what was happening 
happened a few years ago, and it went very slowly but very cleverly. 
The words ``climate change'' have now replaced the words ``global 
warming.'' Get that? Every time you hear it now, half the time they are 
going to be using the words ``climate change'' where those very same 
people were so adamant about ``global warming'' only 4 or 5 years ago. 
So no matter what happens now, now that they've changed it to ``climate 
change'' rather than global warming, whatever happens to the weather 
pattern, whether it's hotter or cooler, it can be presented as further 
verification of human-caused change. If you just had ``human-caused 
warming,'' it would have to be at least warming for them to actually 
have any verification of what they were trying to say. But right now by 
using ``climate change,'' they can bolster their right to be taken 
seriously upon recommending policies, even though no matter what 
direction the climate goes, it is justified by how they are labeling 
themselves.
  I'm sorry, fellows. Do you really think the world is filled with 
morons? When it comes to bait and switch, used car salesmen are 
paragons of virtue compared to this global warming crowd. Excuse me. 
It's not the ``global warming'' crowd now; it's the ``climate change'' 
crowd. Of course, they don't want any of us to own automobiles; so what 
the heck. They can act like used car salesmen because there will be 
more jobs for them as being advocates in the climate change arena.
  We just need to ask ourselves, if a salesman gives a strong pitch and 
claims something that is later found to be wrong, totally wrong, when 
does one stop trusting that salesman? Then if he starts playing word 
games, changing the actual words that he's using about the same product 
rather than just admitting an error, isn't it reasonable to stop 
trusting him?
  Yes, Al Gore and company, we have noticed that you are now saying 
``climate change'' rather than ``global warming.'' I know that people 
tried to slip it in, but we have noticed, and there is something behind 
this that the American people should take note of. Why has that 
changed? Well, that's because the world has not been getting warmer in 
these last 7 years, as they predicted it would be.
  So instead of word games, what these advocates need to explain is 
what is happening in the real world today and why it doesn't match what 
they said was going to happen based on their ``case closed, man-made 
global warming is real.'' They must realize that someone is bound to 
notice that last winter was unusually cold and that chilly weather 
seems to be the trend. It actually snowed in Denver just less than a 
month ago, and people have commented on the chilliness of the weather 
this year.
  So now we see a beehive of activity going on. Those federally funded 
scientists are trying to save some modicum of credibility by adjusting 
their computers and coming up with some explanations that keep man-made 
global warming as a theory but explains away the current dichotomy 
between what they said would happen and what is actually happening. Of 
course, computer models were used to justify their hysteria and their 
hysteric warming predictions to begin with. So now the computer's 
information input is readjusted and we can see all these things coming 
out of it.
  Well, there's a lot of questions that need to be answered and a lot 
of things that were told to us that obviously are not true and are not 
consistent with what's been going on and what we see happening around 
us today.
  And why is this of such concern to us? Why are we concerned that 
global warming as a theory has been presented and that it's false, and 
why should we be so concerned that it's being accepted? What could be 
the negative results of just accepting it from some people who might be 
very sincere, very sincere and concerned about the planet?
  Well, what happens in such cases as this is that we have situations 
that occur and people then actually come to the point where they are 
focused on aspects of what's going on in the world that will not make 
it better but instead have terrible consequences in and of themselves.
  For example, a deadly cyclone just brought death and destruction to 
Burma, and it was a horrible thing. Burma is a country that is run by a 
vicious dictatorship, and after the cyclone went through Burma, the 
dictatorship wouldn't even permit our supplies to be given to those 
people of Burma. Well, Al Gore is so committed to this idea of global 
warming, which, of course, most people call ``climate change,'' that 
when commenting on Burma, instead of talking about the monstrous nature 
of the Burmese regime, instead he had to say, ``The trend toward more 
category five storms--the larger ones and the trend toward stronger and 
more destructive storms appears to be linked to global warming and 
specifically to the impact of global warming on higher ocean 
temperatures in the top couple of hundred feet of the ocean, which 
drives convection energy and moisture into these storms and makes them 
more powerful.''
  What should Al Gore's reaction have been? Well, what it should have 
been was ``The Burmese regime is despicable. The Burmese people are 
suffering. They are dying by the hundreds of thousands. It is 
despicable for this dictatorship not to permit our aid in.'' But 
instead that was ignored, and what Al Gore did focus on ``This is a 
chance for me to explain global warming,'' as the quote I just gave 
suggested.

                              {time}  2245

  Well, the Burmese cyclone hit Burma. If you take a look at what Al 
Gore's words were, he is trying to say that it is because of the 
warming of the water. I have in front of me, which I will submit as 
part of the Record, a satellite image of ocean temperatures taken by 
NOAA on May 5 which suggests the ocean in the area of the Burmese 
cyclone is one of the coldest water areas on Earth.
  So what the heck is Mr. Gore talking about? What is all this mumbo 
jumbo? Again, he is warning about global warming because he is grasping 
at an attempt to try to verify in some way
his predictions that have been all wrong for the last 5 years.
  Dr. William Gray, for example, as I mentioned, the former chairman of 
the American Meteorological Association, a pre-eminent hurricane 
expert, has noted ``there is no reliable data available to indicate 
increased hurricane frequency or intensity in any of the globe's seven 
tropical cyclone basins.'' So hurricanes and cyclones are not a product 
of global warming. Dr. Gray, I think, has more credentials than Mr. 
Gore. But most convincingly, the most 


[[Page 9153]]


convincing part of this is that 
no matter what Al Gore says about the warming of this water, that is 
not what we are hearing from other sources.
  I will now submit for the Record indications that actually the water 
temperature is not warming and is expected to cool, especially in the 
northern areas of the world.
  So what is really important here is that we take a look and we see 
that the world is not warming and that those people who have been 
advocating this are grasping to try to find a way out of the fact that 
they are telling us that we need to adopt the policies that they want 
for our country, yet their predictions on the weather were wrong.
  What is happening is, and the articles that I will submit for the 
Record show, is that some of the organizations that were predicting 
that we would be in global warming now are telling us that, yes, there 
will be global warming. We are not giving it up. But it is going to be 
10 to 15 years from now and not in the last 10 years, as was predicted.
  In fact, as I said, we actually have this article that suggests that 
the sea around Europe and North America will cool slightly during the 
next decade, and the Pacific will be about the same. And the article 
suggests that it will be a ``10-year time-out for global warming.'' 
This is based on studies that were conducted by organizations that only 
a few years ago were predicting that global warming would be so evident 
to us today. Well, they have to say something I guess.
  To understand all of this nonsense, you have to go back and look at 
the basic assumptions that are being used by global warming alarmists. 
They believe that excessive amounts of manmade CO2 are being 
deposited into the air which causes a greenhouse effect that warms the 
atmosphere. They call this the ``carbon footprint.'' That is what we 
are led to look for. We don't want to look in Burma for this vicious 
dictatorship causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people 
because of the repression. They won't even let our supplies in. We have 
to blame it on global warming causing a cyclone which hit Burma. No. I 
don't think so. But carbon footprinting is now what we should look at.
  The global warming analysts want us to judge everything by its carbon 
footprint. What that means is how much CO2 is being released 
because of that activity, because they believe it is CO2 
that causes the planet to warm.
  This concept, just like these other extrapolations that we get from 
computers, is wrong. It is dead wrong. A rise in CO2 comes 
after global temperature increases, not before. This has been observed 
in ice cores by prominent scientists, yet ignored by those screaming 
their warnings at us. That's right. Ice cores indicate that there have 
been periods, many periods, of warming and cooling in the history of 
the world. But the warming that has happened preceded the increase in 
the level of CO2 in the world. That is why we have warming. 
That is why we can't say that if we control CO2 that it is 
going to prevent the climate from warming.
  Obviously, if the CO2 increase comes as a result of the 
warming, by changing that, the warming is still going to be with us. 
Well, that is getting things to the core. And I don't mean a pun by 
that in terms of the ice core, but the fact is that this evidence is 
confirmed by ice cores.
  So take note that the very argument upon which global warming is 
built has been proven to be false and that manmade global warming 
advocates will not address that issue. I have been in hearing after 
hearing. I have been involved with debates on this thing. When you tell 
them ``no,'' and you name several scientists, and I will be happy to do 
that for the Record, who are indicating that the CO2 
increases come after the warming of the planet, well, that issue just 
isn't addressed.
  After all, the case is closed. We don't need to discuss any of those 
type of details. To cite one example of experts' findings on this, by 
the way, is Tom Scheffelin of the California Air Resources Board who 
stated on November 5, 2007, that ``CO2 levels track 
temperature changes between 300 to 1,000 years after the temperature 
has changed. CO2 has no direct role in global warming; 
rather, it responds to biological activity, which responds to climate 
changes.''
  The fact is that the global warming community is jumping through 
hoops and bending over backwards struggling to find one little glint of 
new information to cover their arrogant attempt to stampede humankind 
into draconian policies and to cut off the debate and dismiss the 
debate without addressing the issues. The government-financed 
propaganda campaign to convince us that manmade global warming has been 
and continues to be a major threat, this propaganda is a cacophony of 
gibberish presented as a scientific explanation.
  Go back and look at what Mr. Gore's words were about that cyclone. 
That same sort of putting together of pseudoscience wording in order to 
impress people is seen time and again. There are facts now evident, of 
course, that this can't be ignored. And Mr. Gore's mumbo jumbo 
notwithstanding, the predictions have been wrong. And the 
CO2 premise is wrong. The methodology that has been used has 
been wrong. The observations have been wrong. And the attempt to shut 
up those people who disagree has been wrong.
  I remember Al Gore labeling me a Stalinist because when I chaired the 
subcommittee on Research and Science Education, I insisted that both 
sides be presented. There was a study on research and the environment, 
a subcommittee of the Science Committee. And I insisted when I was 
chairman of the committee that expert witnesses on both sides be 
present at hearings and that they address each other's contentions. 
Well, to him, that is Stalinism. Well, I would suggest that the 
propaganda campaign of the manmade global warming alarmists has far 
more in common with Stalinism than does insisting that both sides of an 
argument be heard.
  One has to really believe that he or she has a corner on the truth to 
make such a complaint as the one that he was making against me. He must 
feel really safe in saying that he knows the truth and that is in order 
to justify not having both sides of an argument presented at a hearing. 
Of course, Mr. Gore's documentary, ``An Inconvenient Truth'' by its own 
title suggests that it should be taken as the truth. And I won't go 
into the numerous debatable points and outright errors that are 
presented in the film. Something far worse has recently emerged 
concerning the fundamental veracity and truthfulness of Vice President 
Gore's film.
  In the film, there are numerous film segments of climate and 
environmental incidents to add credibility to the alleged scientific 
points that were being documented in the film. However, what we see is 
not necessarily what we are getting. The audience is being given 
questionable information and questionable views because what they are 
seeing is not necessarily a documentary view but, instead it is a 
special effects creation in an attempt to convince the viewers that 
they are watching an actual occurrence of something.
  Specifically, let me note that the film portrays a huge cracking and 
breaking away of a large portion of the polar ice cap. I have not seen 
the film, but I am told the scene is awesome and somewhat overwhelming, 
leaving the audience feeling that they are witnessing a massive 
occurrence, and this massive occurrence, of course, Mr. Gore 
conveniently ties to human activity, the human activity he wants to 
regulate and of course the human activity that he will profit from if 
we have this carbon credit scheme instituted by the various governments 
of the world.
  Unfortunately, that view of the breakaway of the ice there in the 
Arctic is a total fake. It is not National Geographic footage of a huge 
breaking away of a portion of the ice cap. It is not firsthand, grand 
photographic evidence of the ice breaking. Instead, what the audience 
is looking at is an example of special effects. It was not the ice cap 
that was being looked at. It was Styrofoam. That's right. Styrofoam.
  And the real sin of all of this was not only the sin of presenting 
Styrofoam 


[[Page 9154]]


and trying to trick people into thinking they are watching 
something real, the ice breaking away, but that we haven't heard about 
it. I have only seen this in one or two publications. We haven't heard 
about it.
  If such a trick and attempt to deceive was done by a conservative, I 
could tell you that that conservative would be tarred and feathered in 
the media. In fact, if there is anything wrong, I am sure that one or 
two points that I have in this speech are debatable, and I am sure that 
those will be looked at with a microscope. And if I am wrong, even a 
little bit, they will try to use that to just say ``don't listen to 
anything he says.'' But Mr. Gore can present the breaking away of 
Styrofoam and present it to us as if it is really happening. And he 
doesn't even apologize or comment on it when it is found out. Al Gore 
has no comment on this deception.
  Maybe it is inconvenient for him to comment because, yes, it might 
hurt his credibility. And after all, the world is getting warmer in 
these last 7 years, which is just the opposite of what he predicted. 
And of course, maybe his predictions were based on a Styrofoam computer 
model. But we will go into that later.
  Well, the first time I met Vice President Gore was during my first 
term in Congress back in 1989 and 1990. Al Gore then was a United 
States Senator. And he marched into the Science Committee room followed 
by a platoon of cameras and reporters. He sat in front of the Science 
Committee, and he demanded that President Bush, that is George W.'s 
father, declare an ozone emergency. And he waved in his hand a report 
of evidence that an ozone hole was opening up over the Northeast United 
States.
  A few days later, the report touted by the Senator was found to have 
been based on faulty data, data collected by one so-called researcher 
flying a single-engine Piper Cub with limited technology and not much 
expertise. Senator Gore was demanding emergency shutdowns of factories 
and manufacturing plants in the Northeast. It would have had dire 
consequences for the American economy and for those people who worked 
in those plants. But they be damned, because we are out to save the 
planet.
  Now does anyone here see any type of a pattern here, the ozone hole 
that wasn't there and then we are going to have this drastic action in 
order to save the planet? The scare tactics, the Chicken Little-ism and 
all the rest of these types of things that are trying to create 
hysteria, this isn't a new tactic.
  Let's look at some of the past examples of the nonsense being 
portrayed as science.

                              {time}  2300

  Cranberries, yes, cranberries, shield your children from Ocean Spray. 
That's right, the cranberry industry suffered a loss of nearly $20 
million back in 1957 when it was determined that perhaps cranberries, 
there was something wrong with the cranberries. In fact, later on it 
was admitted to be just a mistake.
  But the cranberry industry went to hell for 2 or 3 years. But if you 
are not growing cranberries, what do you care about cranberry farmers? 
No, you care about people. Many peoples' lives were destroyed because 
over a 2- or 3-year period, cranberries were basically labeled as 
something that they should not have been labeled, and it was a 
catastrophe for them, just like perhaps those people that worked in 
factories that would have been closed up had we taken that ozone scare 
seriously.
  Then there was the scare over cyclamate. Cyclamate was used in 
everyday items like soda, jams, ice cream. It was a sweetening element, 
it's very low in calories, that industry, it was a very fine product 
and generated an enormous profit. In the early 1970s, the FDA banned 
cyclamates. I remember very well.
  People spent billions of dollars building this industry. It was a 
great industry, but it was labeled as a cancer hazard after someone, 
some kind of a researcher, force-fed rats the equivalent of 350 cans of 
soda a day. By giving these rats the equivalent of 350 soda cans a day, 
8 out of 240 got sick.
  Well, even that was a faulty test, and eventually the truth prevailed 
and cyclamates were labeled okay, they were given an okay. That was 
after about 10 years. Canada, by the way, never banned cyclamates, but 
in order to protect us and save us, and it was a terrible situation, 
yes, the cyclamate industry never recovered.
  The damage, however, was done. This episode has had serious 
consequences, because when the cyclamates were banned, that led to the 
introduction of what, high fructose corn syrup, so, yes, and with all 
of the obesity and problems that come with high fructose corn syrup. 
That first got its hold in the food business at a time when cyclamates 
were thought to be the answer, but they were banned.
  So we have had examples of this over and over again, another American 
industry that was decimated by a rotten theory that had hazardous 
consequences for implementing.
  The next example of fear mongering, of pseudoscience, happened in 
1989. February 26, 1989, that evening thousands of Americans tuned into 
``60 Minutes'' and heard Ed Bradley say the most potent cancer-causing 
agent in our food supply is a substance sprayed on apples to keep them 
on the trees longer and make them look better. That's the conclusion of 
a number of scientific experts. And who is at risk? Children who may 
someday develop cancer.
  That one story, by the way, snowballed into a media blitz, a feeding 
frenzy, Meryl Streep testified before Congress, spouting off, again, 
pseudoscientific nonsense. Parents tossed apples out the window, 
schools removed applesauce from the cafeteria and, of course, replaced 
that with much safer nutritious substances like ice cream and pudding.
  Of course, there was only one problem, the Alar didn't cause cancer, 
the apples definitely didn't and even the Alar didn't. The study was 
based on bad science, and 20,000 apple growers in the United States 
suffered major financial harm.
  Okay, so by now such alarmism has become a political tool that scares 
people to try to get them to do things. That's what we are facing with 
global warming, excuse me, climate change.
  The Three Mile Island incident is another example of this. You 
remember Three Mile Island, a near disaster in Pennsylvania which, 
basically, coupled with the movie ``The China Syndrome'' led to a total 
halt in the development of nuclear energy as a means for producing 
energy in the United States.
  The Jane Fonda movie, ``The China Syndrome,'' coupled with a mishap 
at a nuclear power plant, that was, I might add, a mishap that no one 
suffered any health consequences, no one died, no one was hurt. Yet it 
was presented to the public as this catastrophe, and that led to a 
shutdown of the efforts of building any new nuclear power plants.
  Ironically, of course, nuclear power is the most effective means of 
producing power with no carbon footprint. Again, it was a total con job 
on the nuclear energy industry.
  What about the ozone hole over the Antarctic? We are told that it 
would grow and grow for decades, and it was totally out of control.
  Well, Boyce Rensberger, Director of the Knight Fellowship of 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology says that ozone depletion is a 
cyclical event, expanding and contracting throughout the eons of 
history. Here is a scientist from MIT telling us that the current ozone 
depression has been simply part of a reoccurring cycle, not as a result 
of the use of chlorofluorocarbons, meaning your aerosol cans.
  So, what we have got is a situation where at a gigantic shift of 
expense, of shifting away from aerosol, we have basically accomplished nothing 
because the ozone hole opens and closes on its own. I might add, we 
know now, of course, there have been many cycles of warming and 
cooling, and is this a natural thing? Well, if you consider the sun 
being natural, yes.
  Instead of saying that CO2 that's coming out of the use of 
fossil fuels is causing our climate to change now, as compared to all 
the other times it changed in the past, maybe these people should look 
at the sun, and maybe 


[[Page 9155]]


there are natural cycles where you have sunspots 
and it causes warming and cooling on the Earth.
  Could that be an explanation? Well, let's think about it. Otherwise, 
how do we explain the fact that on Jupiter and Mars we have cooling and 
warming cycles that seem to be matching some of the cycles here on 
Earth. Well, maybe there are some SUVs up there on Mars.
  Well, the last example, one of the last examples, of course, that I 
have in my memory of people trying to be frightened into supporting 
policy with this kind of alarmism has been acid rain. The acid rain was 
supposed to decimate our forests, destroy our fresh water bodies and 
roads, our buildings and sidewalks, and, what happened? That was just 
an onslaught that was going on, I worked for Ronald Reagan at the time, 
he was just beaten without mercy for his unwillingness to take costly 
action aimed at thwarting acid rain. He insisted on waiting for an in-
depth study to be completed.
  While he waited, of course, he was vilified as if he doesn't care 
about the environment, he doesn't really care about whether or not our 
environment is being destroyed by acid rain which is being caused by 
us. Well, a 10-year study was going on, Reagan knew about it. He 
waited, as he well should have, and there was a study by the Nation 
Acid Precipitation Assessment Project and was submitted to Congress in 
the 1990s. It minimized the human impact on the acidity on the water 
and especially the rain in America's northeast. The issue died quickly 
after that report, and it just went away.
  After all of the intense attacks on Ronald Reagan, once that report 
was in, it just sort of went away. Well, one reason it went away, maybe 
there was another alarmist scheme to go to.
  Yes, there was, one was emerging about this time, and it was on the 
cover of Time Magazine 30 years ago. This was probably the most pitiful 
of all of these alarmist attempts. It was, three decades ago, the 
scientists were warning us about global cooling. We were told early 
that we were on the edge of another ice age.
  Well, unfortunately, that one went away very quickly because the 
temperatures immediately didn't do what they said it was going to do, 
and the temperatures actually did not go down dramatically or freeze. 
It did get a little bit warmer during those days. It was one of those 
warming cycles, it went up for a few years and it went down.
  It was getting warmer, so even as those predictions of frozen gloom 
and doom, they just changed the words, those same people were making 
the predictions of frozen gloom and doom now were sort of talking about 
global warming gloom and doom. You guessed it, so global cooling became 
global warming almost overnight. Now, after global warming, climate 
change comes almost overnight.
  So the scare tactics are nothing new. It is tied to a tried-and-true 
method of how to try to manipulate people to accept things they 
wouldn't otherwise accept. Unfortunately, there are long-term negative 
consequences that will be very clear to our future generations. Of 
course, they are being lied to all the time.
  I often asked students from my district, who are here visiting in 
Washington, whether they believe the air in southern California is 
better now or worse now than when I went to high school in southern 
California 40 years ago. A huge percentage, maybe 80 percent of these 
students, believe that the air quality of 40 years ago was dramatically 
better than today. Of course, that's not just a lie, that's a big lie.
  This generation has every reason to be optimistic about the future, 
and they are being lied to, being told that they are poisoned, and 
things are getting worse and worse. In fact, man-made global warming is 
going to devastate the whole planet any way. No, these kids now, when I 
tell them that, no, when I went to high school, the air pollution in 
southern California was much worse than it is today, they are 
incredulous.
  What is all this lying about? Why are all these children being lied 
to? Why are we all being lied to?
  I remember as a college student, the first Earth Day--I am quoting 
someone here--``I remember as a college student at the first Earth Day 
being told that it was a certainty that by the year 2000, the world 
would be starving and out of energy,'' writes Dr. John Christy, a 
professor of atmospheric science at University of Alabama.
  Dr. Christy goes on to say ``Similar pronouncements today about 
catastrophes due to human-induced climate change sound all too familiar 
and all too exaggerated to me as someone who actually produces and 
analyzes climate information.''
  So, we are told that polar bears are dying, but they aren't. As we 
have known that we have all of these other predictions, we are told 
that the polar ice caps are melting, but now we know that the polar ice 
caps are melting yes, only in the Arctic, but in the Antarctic, ice is 
actually growing.
  Hurricane Katrina, we were told would only be the first of many 
horrendous hurricanes to hit the United States in the next few years 
but, of course, no hurricane equal or close to has been on the horizon. 
In fact, a hurricane that was just as strong as Katrina hit the United 
States 100 years earlier, long before this effective ``global 
warming.'' So when you look at facts like this, an honest debate is 
long overdue but yet we see an attempt to shut down an honest debate.
  I will submit an advertisement, the Hill newspaper from the 
Environmental Defense Action Fund, and it says ``What's next? The Bond-
Voinovich Cigarettes Aren't Addictive Act?'' What they are saying, it's 
a cute way of saying, anybody who questions global warning, it is the 
equivalent of saying that cigarettes aren't addictive. Well, that's a 
great way to dismiss someone's arguments without addressing them. It 
says here, ``Some senators,'' this is in the add, ``are asking you to 
ignore . . . an international scientific consensus.''
  Well, let's put it this way, we hear that, there is a consensus over 
and over again. There is no consensus. The world is not getting warmer, 
and I would submit a list of 400 members of the scientific community 
who do not agree with a man-made global warming theory and, I might 
add, I quoted numerous very prestigious members of the scientific 
community already in this speech. So what we have is alarmism at its 
worst, and the consequences will be very, very severe if we let these 
people get away with this.
  Now, what we have done is we have, again, permitted people to make 
their case without having to defend their case. This is never more 
evident than in the dealings with the Intergovernmental Panel on 
Climate Change, which is the United Nations panel.
  I will submit several statements that indicate that the IPCC was 
wrong in its approach, in its entire methodology in trying to determine 
whether or not global warming, whether there is global warming and 
whether or not it is caused by man-made activity.
  So with this said, we need to look and say, What is the negative 
impact of all of this lack of truthful information? What could possibly 
happen? If someone says well, aren't we all against pollution? So what 
if someone is making a claim that global warming exists and it is 
caused by humankind and in reality it is just the pollution that we are 
both trying to get it at. Well, that just doesn't work.
  The fact is if we accept this theory of man-made global warming, we 
will be focusing our activities on trying to eliminate CO2 
rather than eliminate toxic substances from our air. If I am concerned 
about my children, my three triplets, Christian, Anika and Tristan, I 
am concerned about their health,
that is something that I think I share with every parent. Their health 
is not in any way threatened by CO2. CO2 is 
nontoxic. It is threatened by NOX and other toxin materials 
that come out of engines in cars and other sources. So if we only focus 
on CO2, we will end up focusing on the wrong target.
  What we need to do is make sure that we develop clean energy sources, 
not because of global warming but because of the health of our 
children. And also, we need to be independent of foreign sources. The 
fact is that foreign


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sources of oil, because we are not developing our 
own oil resources as a result of the dynamics created by the global 
warming juggernaut that we have been experiencing, the fact is that we 
have not drilled for our own oil. We have not focused on real 
alternatives to energy like nuclear energy. The fact is that we need to 
make sure right now that we do our very best not to be captured by 
this, what I consider to be one of the greatest hoaxes that I have seen 
in my lifetime, but instead focus our efforts on accomplishing 
something that is real and positive for the people of the world and the 
people of the United States of America. We should be drilling for oil 
so that the terrorists overseas are denied the revenue when we are 
forced to buy oil from countries that are allied with these terrorists.
  We need to make sure that we develop better engines, and make sure 
that those engines are not putting pollutants into the air and forget 
about the CO2, go to the pollutants.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank you and I will submit these articles for the 
Record.

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