[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 21]
[Senate]
[Pages 27921-27928]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             GLOBAL WARMING

  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, next month, thousands of U.N. delegates 
from over 190 nations, members of the press, and eco-activists from 
around the world will descend upon Copenhagen as a part of the U.N. 
Conference on Global Warming. Yet, even before it begins, that U.N. 
conference is being called a disaster.
  Just this morning, the Telegraph--a UK newspaper--noted:

       The worst-kept secret in the world is finally out--the 
     climate change summit in Copenhagen is going to be little 
     more than a photo opportunity for world leaders.

  Not too long ago, however, the Copenhagen meeting was hailed to be 
the time when an international agreement with binding limits on carbon 
dioxide and other greenhouse gases would finally be agreed upon.
  The eco-activists believed that with a Democratic President in the 
United States and a Democratically controlled House and a 
Democratically controlled Senate, we would finally push through 
mandatory cap-and-trade legislation, and the United States would 
finally be ready to succumb to the demands of the U.N. I say demands of 
the United Nations because there are so many people in this Chamber who 
think if something isn't multinational, U.N. or something else, it is 
not good. You have to ask: Whatever happened to sovereignty in this 
country?
  Not too long ago, the Copenhagen meeting was hailed as a time that 
all this would come to an end and they would be successful and pass in 
this country the largest tax increase in history. In reality, it will 
be a disaster. Failure comes at a high cost. Despite the millions of 
dollars spent by Al Gore, the Hollywood elite, the U.N., climate 
alarmists, it has failed.

[[Page 27922]]

  Perhaps the Wall Street Journal said it best in an article entitled 
``Copenhagen's Collapse.'' I will read this because I think it is 
worthwhile:

       The Climate Change Sequel is a Bust.

  The editorial states:

       ``Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for 
     all,'' President-elect Obama said of global warming last 
     November. ``Delay is no longer an option.'' It turns out that 
     delay really is an option--the only one that has worldwide 
     support. Over the weekend, Mr. Obama bowed to reality and 
     admitted that little of substance will come of the climate 
     change summit at Copenhagen next month. For the last year, 
     the President has been promising a binding international 
     carbon-regulation treaty a la the Kyoto Protocol.

  We remember that.

       But instead, negotiators from 192 countries now hope to 
     reach a preliminary agreement that they'll sign such a treaty 
     when they meet in Mexico City in 2010.

  Wait a minute. That is 2010. That is next year. This year, it hasn't 
even come yet. This is Copenhagen 2009.
  I am continuing to read:

       The environmental lobby is blaming Copenhagen's preemptive 
     collapse on the Senate's failure to ram through a cap-and-
     trade scheme like the House did in June, arguing that ``the 
     world'' won't make commitments until the United States does. 
     But there will always be one excuse or another, given that 
     developing countries like China and India will never be 
     masochistic enough to subject their economies to the West's 
     climate neuroses. Meanwhile, Europe has proved with Kyoto 
     that the only emissions quotas it will accept are those that 
     don't actually have to be met.

  We say that because many of these Western European countries made 
commitments for emissions and they have not met them.
  During my position as chairman and ranking member of the Environment 
and Public Works Committee, since 2003, I have been the lead Senator 
standing and exposing the science, the cost, and the hysteria about 
global warming alarmism. I will be traveling to Copenhagen leading what 
has been called the truth squad, to say what I said 6 years ago in 
Milan, Italy. Let's keep in mind what these meetings are. The U.N.--
that is where this all started, with the IPCC at the U.N.--said that 
the world is going to come to an end because of CO2 
emissions. They started having these meetings, and they have had--I 
don't know how many. They started in 1999, I think. They had the one in 
Milan, Italy, in 2003, the only one I went to. They were inviting all 
the countries to come in and join this club, saying we are going to do 
away with CO2.
  It is interesting that one of the participants I ran into in 2003 was 
from West Africa--and I remember this well because I knew this guy knew 
better. I said: What are you here supporting this for? He said: This is 
the biggest party of the year. We have 190 countries coming in, and it 
is a big party. It is all you can eat and drink. So anyway, the United 
States is not going to support a global warming treaty that will 
significantly damage the American economy, cost American jobs, and 
impose the largest tax increase in American history. Further, as I 
stated in 2003, unless developing countries are part of the binding 
agreement, the United States will not go along, given the unemployment 
rate of 10 percent--10.2 now--and given all the out-of-control spending 
in Washington. The last thing we need is another 1,000-page bill that 
increases costs and ships jobs overseas, all with no impact on climate 
change.
  That was in Milan, Italy. I remember in Milan, Italy, all the 
telephone poles had my picture on them, ``wanted'' posters, because of 
something I said, which I will quote in a minute. I said then that the 
science was not settled, and it was an unpopular view. Since Al Gore's 
science fiction movie, more and more scientists, reporters, and 
politicians are questioning global warming alarmism. I am proud to 
declare 2009 the year of the skeptic, the year in which scientists who 
question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard.
  Rather than continue down a road that will harm the U.S. economy and 
international community, we should forge a new path forward that builds 
on international trade, new and innovative technology, jobs, 
development, and economic growth.
  If you have followed the Senate, you will know that the Senate's 
position on global warming treaties couldn't be more clear. In 1997, 
let's remember what happened then. President Clinton and Vice President 
Al Gore were attempting to get us to ratify the Kyoto treaty. We passed 
something in the Chamber called the Byrd-Hagel resolution. It passed 95 
to 0. It said this: If you bring back anything from Kyoto or anywhere 
else for us to ratify, and if that treaty we are supposed to ratify 
either doesn't include developing countries or is harmful to our 
economy, then we will not ratify it. I think the Byrd-Hagel resolution 
still commands strong support in the Senate. Therefore, any treaty 
President Obama submits must meet this criteria or it will be easily 
defeated.
  Proponents of securing an international treaty are slowly 
acknowledging that the gulf is widening between the United States and 
other industrialized nations that are willing to do what developing 
countries such as China want them to do. The gulf has always been wide, 
but it is continuing to get wider. When we talk about China and about 
the fact that they are talking about restricting CO2 
emissions in the United States, some think that surely China will 
follow our lead. It is interesting that China is cranking out two coal-
fired power-generating plants every week.
  With certain failure at Copenhagen, it is safe to say cap and trade 
is dead. Look at the record: the Byrd-Hagel amendment in 1997, the 
defeat in the Senate of the McCain-Lieberman bill in 2003, and defeat 
of McCain-Lieberman in 2005, defeat of the Warner-Lieberman bill, and 
no bill on the Senate floor in 2009.
  From my very first speech on the Senate floor as chairman of the 
Environment and Public Works Committee, on July 28, 2003, I outlined 
the staggering cost of global warming solutions such as Kyoto. In my 
speech, I said the most widely--I am quoting now from what I stated in 
2003:

       The most widely cited and most definitive economic analysis 
     of Kyoto came from Wharton Econometric Forecasting 
     Associates.

  According to the Wharton School, their economists, Kyoto would cost 
2.4 million U.S. jobs, reduce GDP by 3.2 percent, and that would equate 
to somewhere between a $300 billion and $330 billion tax increase 
annually--an amount greater than the total expenditure on primary and 
secondary education.
  In terms of a tax, when I looked at that tax--and this was back in 
2003 and they talked about a $300 billion tax increase--I wanted to 
look and see how I could better understand that. I recall, prior to 
that, the largest tax increase in the last three decades was called the 
Clinton-Gore tax increase of 1993. That tax increase was a $32 billion 
tax increase. I thought, wait a minute, we are about to impose upon the 
American people a tax increase that is 10 times greater than the 1993 
Clinton-Gore tax increase. This chart shows what that would be. These 
are the tax increases. This is the increase we are talking about, the 
$32 billion tax increase. This is what it would have been had we signed 
the Kyoto treaty or any of the accords since that time. So we are 
talking about huge amounts of money. I said that because of Kyoto, 
American consumers would face the higher food, medical, and housing 
costs--costs for food, an increase of 11 percent; medicine, an increase 
of 14 percent; housing, an increase of 7 percent; and at the same time, 
an average household of 4 would see its real income drop by $2,700 in 
2010 and each year thereafter. Under Kyoto, energy and electricity 
prices would nearly double, and gasoline prices would go up an 
additional 65 cents a gallon.
  Again, we are not talking about Jim Inhofe, a Senator, making these 
statements. This was actually out of the Wharton School of Economics 
and their forecast at that time. I went on to note that CBO found that 
``cap and tax'' is a regressive tax, arguing that the Congressional 
Budget Office found that the price increases resulting from a carbon 
cap would be regressive; that is, they would place a relatively greater 
burden on lower income households

[[Page 27923]]

than on higher income ones. As to the broader macroeconomic effects of 
carbon cap-and-trade schemes, CBO said:

       A cap and trade program for carbon emissions could impose 
     significant costs on the economy in the form of welfare 
     losses. Welfare losses are real costs to the economy in that 
     they would not be recovered elsewhere in the form of higher 
     income. Those losses would be borne by people in their roles 
     as shareholders, consumers, and workers.

  Some might respond that government can simply redistribute income in 
the form of welfare programs to mitigate the impacts on the poor, but 
CBO found otherwise. They said:

       The government could use the allowance value to partly 
     redistribute the costs of a carbon cap-and-trade program, but 
     it could not recover these costs entirely.

  Further:

       Available research indicates that providing compensation 
     could actually raise the cost to the economy of a carbon cap.

  That was what we quoted from the CBO in 2003. Yet, as the saying 
goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. CBO, EPA, 
the DOE, CRS, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, NAM--everyone now 
agrees that cap and trade would be extremely costly and destroy jobs. 
No matter how hard alarmists try to recast their cause--whether it is 
green jobs or clean energy jobs or clean energy revolution--and they 
are starting to reword it from ``global warming'' to ``climate 
change.'' The general public has realized global warming isn't taking 
place, and they cannot use that, so they changed that to climate 
change. Now they cannot use that anymore, and they can't use cap and 
trade, so they talk about a green jobs program.
  Cap and trade is a loser for America. I have also pointed out the 
inconvenient fact that cap-and-trade solutions are all pain and no 
climate gain. In the first speech in 2001, I noted that even Al Gore's 
own scientist admitted Kyoto would do nothing to solve global warming. 
Let me refresh the memory of the American people. In 2003, Al Gore had 
hired Dr. Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for 
Atmospheric Research. The challenge he posed to him was, if we, along 
with all other developed nations, were to sign on to the Kyoto Treaty 
and live by its emissions restrictions, how much would this reduce the 
temperature in 50 years?
  The answer was it would be 0.07 of 1 degree Celsius by 2050. It would 
actually be 0.13 degrees Celsius by 2100. These things are not even 
measurable. We go through 50 years of the highest tax increase in the 
history of America. What do we get for it? Maybe you will get, 
according to his own scientist, Dr. Tom Wigley, 0.07 of 1 degree 
Celsius.
  I also mentioned in the 2003 speech everyone's favorite alarmist, 
James Hansen. I said at that time:

       Similarly, Dr. James Hansen of NASA, considered the father 
     of global warming theory, said the Kyoto Protocol ``will have 
     little effect'' on global temperature in the 21st century. In 
     a rather stunning follow-up, Hansen said it would take 30 
     Kyotos--let me repeat that--30 Kyotos to reduce warming to an 
     acceptable level. If one Kyoto devastates the American 
     economy, what would 30 do?

  Those following the climate debate closely know James Hansen went on 
record this summer against the Waxman-Markey-Kerry-Boxer bill. It is 
not going to pass now. At that time, it looked as if it was going to 
pass. Even James Hansen, one of the strongest proponents, said:

       Cap and trade is the temple of doom. It would lock in 
     disasters for our children and grandchildren. Why do people 
     continue to worship a disastrous approach? Its fecklessness 
     was proven by the Kyoto Protocol.

  That is James Hansen on the other side of the issue.
  Now we have top Obama officials making the same points. EPA 
Administrator Lisa Jackson was before our committee. Keep in mind, she 
is an Obama appointee. She is now Administrator of the EPA. She said in 
response to a question I had--I said: Is this chart correct? In other 
words, if we were to pass this bill and to restrict our emissions of 
CO2, would it have any effect? She said: No, I agree with 
that chart. Of course, I am encouraged. She said:

       I believe the central parts of the [EPA] chart--

  That is this chart--

     are that U.S. action alone will not impact world 
     CO2 levels.

  I often said how I appreciate the honesty of Lisa Jackson. It is 
difficult for her to admit that if we passed a bill, it would not have 
any effect on reducing worldwide emissions of CO2.
  You could carry that argument a little bit further because if we were 
to ration CO2 in our country, that would cause jobs to 
leave. We understand that. They would go to countries such as China, 
India, and Mexico, where they don't have any restrictions at all. So it 
would have the effect of increasing CO2.
  Over the past several years, we have seen a growing number of 
Democrats--yes, Democrats--agreeing with my position. Today, with a 
Democratic Congress and a Democratic President, some may be surprised 
by the number of Democrats who want nothing to do with cap and trade.
  Politico--we are all familiar with that publication--reported on 
Monday that:

       Lawmakers from coal and manufacturing-heavy States aren't 
     happy that more liberal Democrats are using the Copenhagen 
     negotiations to ratchet up pressure to move the bill forward. 
     ``I'm totally unconcerned about Copenhagen.''

  This is a quote by Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller from West 
Virginia.
  He said:

       I'm concerned about West Virginia.

  I am glad to hear some of my Democratic colleagues making these 
statements.
  They also reported--still quoting from Politico:

       Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb said on Monday he would 
     not back the cap-and-trade legislation sponsored by Sens. 
     John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, another blow to the troubled 
     Senate climate change bill. ``In its present form I would not 
     vote for it,'' he said. ``I have some real questions about 
     the real complexities on cap and trade.'' Webb is the latest 
     in a series of Democratic moderates to raise significant 
     concerns with the climate bill, which has floundered since 
     passing the House in late June.

  That is quite some time ago.
  Or consider Democratic Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska. The Hill 
recently reported on a CNBC interview with Senator Nelson, writing:

       ``A cap-and-trade bill to address climate change cannot 
     pass Congress this session,'' said Sen. Ben Nelson, Democrat 
     from Nebraska. Nelson, a centrist Democrat whose vote is key 
     to leaders wielding its 60-vote majority in the Senate, said 
     he and his constituents had not been sold on the cap-and-
     trade system proposed in the House and Senate bills to 
     address global warming. ``No,'' Nelson simply responded when 
     asked if those cap-and-trade bills can pass through this 
     Congress during an interview with CNBC. ``I haven't been able 
     to sell that argument to my farmers, and I don't think 
     they're going to buy it from anybody else,'' Nelson said. ``I 
     think at the end of the day, the people who turn the switch 
     on at home will be disadvantaged.'' The pessimistic 
     assessment makes Nelson a thorn in the side of his party's 
     leaders--

  Who are trying to push this through from the Democratic Party.
  Perhaps the biggest blow to any Senate climate bill came last week 
from 14 Senate Democrats, primarily from the Midwest, who in a letter 
challenged the allocation formula of Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey. The 
letter was signed by Senators Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Mark Udall, 
Michael Bennet, Robert Byrd, Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow, and Sherrod 
Brown.
  What about the prospects for 2010? As Lisa Lerer of Politico reported 
last week:

       An aggressive White House push on jobs and deficit 
     reduction in 2010 may be yet another sign that climate-change 
     legislation will stay on the back burner next year. ``There 
     is a growing chorus in the party that thinks we should be 
     doing something more to spur job creation and not necessarily 
     tackle cap and trade right now,'' said a moderate democratic 
     Senate aide. White House officials told Politico on Friday 
     that President Barack Obama plans to curb new domestic 
     spending beyond jobs programs and focus on cutting the 
     federal deficit next year. In the Senate, Majority Leader 
     Harry Reid has hinted that Democrats plan to take up a job-
     creation bill, in the wake of the announcement of the 10.2 
     percent unemployment rate. In the House, some lawmakers are 
     beginning to push a major highway bill for next year to focus 
     on job creation. None of this is promising for the major 
     climate change bill.

  That was a quote that came out of Politico.

[[Page 27924]]

  Also, Darren Samuelsohn with E&E News reported this week that:

       Next November's midterm elections loom large, leaving the 
     climate bill sponsors until about the end of March to notch 
     the 60 votes necessary to pass their bill off the floor and 
     into a conference with the House that would best be finished 
     before the summer. ``Conventional wisdom is that you have 
     until the spring to get controversial issues moving,'' said 
     Sen. Ben Cardin, a lead co-author of the climate bill that 
     the Environment and Public Works Committee passed earlier 
     this month. ``If not, it's difficult to see getting through 
     closer to the elections.''

  What he is saying there, when you get closer to the elections, then 
you want to be more consistent with what Americans believe.
  Mr. Samuelsohn reported that the Democrats fear a repeat of the 
disastrous 1992 Btu tax vote. He quotes Al Gore as saying, ``Yes, I 
think the Btu [post-traumatic stress disorder] is a factor in this 
debate.''
  To refresh your memory, Madam President, the Btu, back in 1992, was a 
huge tax increase on energy. People realized they would have to pay for 
it. That passed the House, ironically, with 219 votes, the same narrow 
margin this cap-and-trade bill passed 15 years later.
  Samuelsohn also writes that according to Democratic Senator Jay 
Rockefeller of West Virginia, ``the talk on the street'' was that an 
election year cannot be good for passing the climate bill in the 
Senate, even though he did not agree with that opinion. ``There's some 
possibility of people saying that it's too controversial a bill in an 
election year,'' quoting Rockefeller, ``which is sort of the opposite 
of how a democracy ought to work.'' I do agree with him on that. ``You 
go ahead and take your chances on that and get reelected. But people's 
business should come first.''
  By now the message should be clear: It is not just Republicans but 
Democrats who are blocking passage of cap and trade in the Senate. The 
sooner we are honest with the international community of the 
impossibility of the Senate moving forward with cap and trade, the 
sooner we can begin work on an all-of-the-above energy bill to develop 
domestic energy resources, create jobs, and provide consumers with 
affordable, reliable energy.
  I don't like the idea that sometimes promoters of cap and trade say 
this is an energy bill. What you are doing is restricting energy. Right 
now, we are dependent on coal, oil, gas, and, hopefully in the future, 
nuclear. Those who are pushing for this green energy, which we all want 
someday--what do we do 10, 15, 20 years from now? Just 2 weeks ago, 
they came out with a study that said the United States of America is 
No. 1 in possession of recoverable natural resources. Yet 83 percent of 
these natural resources are off limits, primarily due to the moratorium 
set by Democrats saying: We don't want you to drill offshore or some of 
these other places. It seems inconceivable to me that we are the only 
nation in the world that does not develop its own resources.
  Anyway, the tipping point from the most memorable tidbit from my 2-
hour global warming speech in July of 2003 was my comments about the 
science behind global warming. Now 6 years later, as I head to the next 
U.N. global warming conference, I am pleased by the vast and growing 
number of scientists, politicians, and reporters all over the world who 
are publicly rejecting climate alarmism, those who want to scare people 
into some kind of action: Water is going to rise up, the world is 
coming to an end--all of that. They are rejecting these alarmists now.
  When I made those comments on the Senate floor, few people were there 
to stand with me. Today, I have been vindicated, and I am proud to 
share the stage with all those who now dare to question Al Gore, 
Hollywood elites, and the United Nations.
  Early in my 2003 speech, 6 years ago, I said:

       Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on 
     fear rather than science. Global warming alarmists see a 
     future plagued by catastrophic flooding, war, terrorism, 
     economic dislocations, droughts, crop failures, mosquito-
     borne diseases, and harsh weather--all caused by man-made 
     greenhouse gas emissions.

  For the next 2 hours, I presented arguments by a number of leading 
scientists who disputed that picture of the future. I argued that 
activists attempting to propagate fear would fail to convince the 
American people. I then concluded my remarks saying:

       With all the hysteria, all the fear, all of the phony 
     science, could it be that man-made global warming is the 
     greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It 
     sure sounds like it is.

  My remarks were immediately ridiculed by alarmists in the mainstream 
media. Alarmists then and since have used every name in the book to 
discredit me. Nevertheless, I continued to make my case in speech after 
speech on the Senate floor, highlighting arguments by numerous 
scientists that contradicted the notion that the science behind global 
warming was ``settled.''
  Every time you quote a scientist, they always come back and say: Oh, 
no, you can't talk about the science; the science is settled.
  The first time the McCain-Lieberman bill came to the Senate floor was 
2003. McCain-Lieberman was essentially a cap-and-trade bill similar to 
what we are looking at today. I remember well, Republicans were in the 
majority. I was chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works 
Committee. I can remember we were given 5 days on the floor to debate 
this bill, 10 hours a day, roughly 50 hours. I remember going over this 
and debating this on this very floor of the Senate in 2005. It was the 
McCain-Lieberman bill, and only two Senators came down during that week 
to give me support. Fast forward to 2008. The same bill came up, except 
this time it was called the Warner-Lieberman bill, another cap-and-
trade bill, just like we are talking about today. At that time, it 
didn't take 5 days to defeat it; it took 2 days, and 23 Senators came 
down to join me in that effort. What do I credit for the reversal? You 
might be surprised by my answer. It is none other than the winner of a 
Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar. It is Al Gore.
  The media blitz of 2006, which included an avalanche of magazine 
covers, hour-long global warming documentaries, celebrity rock concerts 
around the world, and, of course, Al Gore's very own science fiction 
movie, caused an unprecedented response from scientists from around the 
world.
  Later that year, I took to the Senate floor debunking much of Al 
Gore's movie and the media hype. I said then--and this is, again, 2006:

       In May, our Nation was exposed to perhaps one of the 
     slickest science propaganda films of all time: former Vice 
     President Al Gore's ``An Inconvenient Truth.'' In addition to 
     having the backing of Paramount Pictures to market this film, 
     Gore had the full backing of the media, and leading the 
     cheerleading charge was none other than the Associated Press.

  I noted a report that appeared on June 27, 2006, by Seth Borenstein 
of the Associated Press that boldly declared ``Scientists give two 
thumbs up to Gore's movie.'' I took issue with the Borenstein article 
and pointed out--and this is a quote from 3 years ago:
  ``The article quoted only 5''--listen, Madam President--``only 5 
scientists praising Gore's science, despite AP's having contacted 100 
scientists.''
  They contacted 100 scientists and they could only find 5 scientists 
who praised it.

       The fact that over 80 percent of the scientists contacted 
     by the AP had not even seen the movie or that many scientists 
     have harshly criticized the science presented by Gore did not 
     dissuade the news outlet one bit from its mission to promote 
     Gore's brand of climate alarmism. I am almost at a loss [I am 
     quoting from 3 years ago] as to how to begin to address the 
     series of errors, misleading science and unfounded 
     speculation that appear in the former Vice President's film. 
     Here is what Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist from MIT, has 
     written about ``An Inconvenient Truth.'' He said: ``A general 
     characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously 
     ignore the fact that the Earth and its climate are dynamic; 
     they are always changing even without any external forcing. 
     To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do 
     so in order to exploit that fear is much worse.''

  That is Richard Lindzen, one of the top scientists at MIT. In that 
same 2006 speech I then proceeded to give a brief summary of the 
science that the former Vice President promoted in either an inaccurate 
or misleading way. Let me read a list of these.

[[Page 27925]]

  He promoted the now debunked ``hockey stick'' temperature chart in an 
attempt to prove man's overwhelming impact on the climate. He attempted 
to minimize the significance of the medieval warm period and the little 
ice age.
  Let's put them together. If you remember the famous hockey stick, 
that was the one that showed climate, increasing temperature, and then 
all of a sudden there is a hockey stick. That is when it started going 
up.
  It ignored the fact that in the 14th century and again in the 16th 
century we had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. In the 
medieval warm period it was far warmer than it has been since that 
time.
  In that same movie, insisting on a link between increasing hurricane 
activity and global warming that most scientists at this time do not 
believe--and it doesn't exist. The science has come out since that time 
and said very clearly that science is not there. Every year they say 
this coming year it is going to be greater hurricanes. It doesn't 
happen. For 5 consecutive years they predicted that and it hasn't 
happened.
  He asserted that today's Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth, 
while ignoring that the temperatures in the 1930s were warmer than in 
that time. He claimed the Antarctic was warming and losing ice, but 
failed to note this is only true of a small region and that the vast 
bulk has been cooling and gaining ice during that period. He hyped 
unfounded fears that Greenland's ice is in danger of disappearing.
  If you were to say that maybe there is some truth in the global 
warming issue, I had occasion, I say to my good friend who is 
presiding, a few years ago, not too many years ago--my background is 
aviation. I decided to replicate the flight of Wylie Post going around 
the world. One of my stops there, where Wylie Post stopped, was in 
Greenland. Their history books are full of the time things were 
flourishing in Greenland. The Vikings came in, they were growing things 
that hadn't been grown. Then when the cycle went through and it started 
getting colder, they died and disappeared. I think you can argue we are 
going to have these cycles. God is still up there. We have always had 
Him; we are going to continue to have Him.
  Back to the film. He erroneously claimed the icecap on Mount 
Kilimanjaro is disappearing--and that is not supported--due to global 
warming, even while the region cools and researchers blame the ice loss 
on local land use practices.
  He made assertions of massive future sea level rise far afield from 
any supposed scientific ``consensus'' and not supported in even the 
most alarmist literature. He incorrectly implied that a Peruvian 
glacier's retreat is due to global warming, ignoring the fact that the 
region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South 
America are advancing. He blamed global warming for water loss in 
Africa's Lake Chad, despite NASA scientists concluding that local 
population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits. He 
inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers 
due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving.
  The population of the polar bear has quadrupled since 1960 and today, 
of the 13 polar bear populations in Canada, they are all increasing 
except for one and that is in the western Hudson Bay area where they 
have hunting regulations and issues they are working on now not related 
to weather.
  He completely failed to inform the viewers that the 48 scientists who 
accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political 
advocacy group set up to support Democratic Presidential candidate John 
Kerry in 2004.
  You could make a whole speech on each of the assertions made in that 
science fiction movie called ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' and they have 
been disproven. At the end of the speech I challenged those in the 
media to reverse course and report on the objective science of climate 
change, to stop ignoring legitimate voices in the scientific community, 
question the so-called consensus, and to stop acting as a vehicle for 
unsustainable hype.
  The reaction by the American public was so overwhelming that my 
Senate Web site crashed after that. Thousands of people came to my site 
to read and watch the speech. In fact, I was flooded with e-mails 
supporting the work.
  I also noted in 2006, in that speech, many scientists were just 
starting to speak out against the so-called consensus on global 
warming. In April of that year, 60 prominent scientists who questioned 
the basis for climate alarmism sent a letter--these were Canadian 
scientists, 60 of them sent a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister and 
they wrote:

       If, back in the mid-1990s we knew what we know today about 
     climate Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we 
     would have concluded it was not necessary.
       I say that because Canada was one of the countries that did 
     sign onto the Kyoto treaty. They are saying today, if we had 
     known then what we know now, we wouldn't have done it.

  I discovered how many prominent scientists were disputing the claims 
of global warming alarmism in 2007 and I released my first report 
detailing over 400 scientists who did not buy the consensus. If you 
want to go back to any of these, I have a Web site, inhofe.senate.gov. 
You can see who they are.
  After that report, the list continued to grow and more scientists 
began publicly challenging global warming fears. In 2008, I updated the 
report with over 650 scientists and today that stands at well over 700 
skeptical scientists. The chorus of skeptical scientific voices 
continues to grow louder every day as the consensus collapses.
  I think this is important. A lot of the scientists were intimidated 
at that time with the withdrawal of various grants and other things 
coming from both the Federal Government or some more liberal groups 
that are out there. The fact is they had the courage to come forward 
and say the consensus is not there even though everyone thought it was 
for so many years. This momentous shift has caused the mainstream media 
to take notice of the expanding number of scientists serving as 
``consensus busters.'' A November 25, 2008 article in Politico noted 
that a ``growing accumulation'' of science is challenging warming 
fears, and that the ``science behind global warming may still be too 
shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.'' That was a year ago.
  In Canada's National Post, it noted on October 20 of 2008 that ``the 
number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly.'' The New York 
Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin noted on March 6, 2008, ``As 
we all know, climate science is not a numbers game. There are heaps of 
signed statements by folks with advanced degrees on all sides of the 
issue.''
  In 2007 a Washington Post staff writer, Juliet Eilperin, conceded the 
obvious, writing that climate skeptics ``appear to be expanding rather 
than shrinking.''
  We have seen this happening for the last 2 years. Yet it will be 2009 
that will be remembered as the year of the skeptic. Until this year, 
any scientist, reporter, or politician who dared raise even the 
slightest suspicion about the science behind global warming was 
dismissed and repeatedly mocked. Who can forget Dr. Heidi Cullen of the 
Weather Channel. She was on every week. I don't think she is on 
anymore; I haven't seen her in quite some time. She was the one who 
said, in 2007, that the American Meteorological Society should revoke 
its seal of approval for any television weatherman who expresses 
skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.
  She said:

       If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science 
     of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them the 
     seal of approval.

  This is what she wrote in December 21 in a blog on the Weather 
Channel:

       It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on air and say 
     that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by 
     the weather. It's not a political statement . . . it's just 
     an incorrect statement.

  Of course there was Robert Kennedy, Jr., also in 2007, who called 
anyone who didn't agree with his views on global

[[Page 27926]]

warming ``traitors.'' He spoke before a liberal group called the Live 
Earth Concert in July of 2007. He stated, Robert Kennedy, Jr.:

       Get rid of these rotten politicians that we have in 
     Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies for 
     companies like Exxon and Southern Company. These villainous 
     companies that consistently put their private financial 
     interest ahead of the interests of all of humanity. This is 
     treason and we need to start treating them as traitors.

  Al Gore, of course, said anyone who dares question the science should 
be equated with those who question the Moon landing.
  Aside from the distasteful and derogatory ridicule by such alarmists, 
a major statement by a manmade-to-global-warming believer severely 
undercut their claims. This year one of the United Nations IPCC--let me 
make sure people understand this. The IPCC, Intergovernmental--this is 
a panel put together in the United Nations of people to try to sell the 
idea that manmade gases--anthropogenic gases, CO2, methane--
cause global warming. One of the U.N. scientists told more than 1,500 
scientists gathered at the conference in Geneva, Switzerland: ``People 
will say this is global warming disappearing. I am not one of the 
skeptics. However, we have to ask the nasty question ourselves, or 
other people will do it.''
  Remember, this quote comes from Mojib Latif, who Andrew Revkin from 
the New York Times describes as ``a prize-winning climate and ocean 
scientist from the Liebniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the 
University of Kiel, in Germany.''
  This remarkable admission of the need to ask nasty questions comes 
nearly 2 years after I first pointed out these very facts on the Senate 
floor in my October 26 of 2007 speech on the Senate floor. This is what 
I said at that time. I am quoting now. I always hesitate quoting myself 
but it is important that we were talking about this 2 years ago. I 
said:

       It's important to point out that the phase of global 
     warming that started in 1979 has, itself, been halted since 
     1979. You can almost hear my critics skeptical of that 
     assertion. Well, it turns out not to be an assertion but an 
     irrefutable fact, according to the temperature data United 
     Nations relies on. Paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter, who 
     has testified before the United States Senate Committee on 
     Environment and Public Works, noted on June 18 of this year: 
     ``The accepted global average temperature statistics used by 
     the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--that's the 
     United Nations--showed that no ground-based warming has 
     occurred since 1998. Oddly, this 8-year-long temperature 
     stability has occurred despite an increase over the period of 
     time of 15 parts per million or 4 percent in the atmospheric 
     CO2. Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based 
     temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse 
     influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic 
     eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a 
     period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 
     55 parts per million, or 17 percent.

  To try to say it is tied to CO2 is interesting because 
immediately following World War II, the largest increase in the 
emissions of CO2 took place starting about 1946. Yet that 
didn't precipitate a warming period, it precipitated a cooling period 
during that time.
  The very people who had long called the science settled and those who 
went so far to say the science behind global warming was unequivocal 
now admitted that nasty questions must be raised. Those questions are 
now being raised by the media. On October 8, the BBC, the British 
Broadcasting Company, stunned the journalism community with an article 
by their climate correspondent Paul Hudson. The headline asked, ``What 
happened to global warming?'' Hudson wrote in that article, October 8:
       This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might 
     the fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not 2008 
     or 2007, but [was] in 1998. But it is true. For the last 11 
     years we have not observed any increase in global 
     temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it, 
     even though manmade carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be 
     responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

  (Mr. CARDIN assumed the chair.)
  Mr. INHOFE. The article continues to note the lack of global warming 
recently and mentions the fact that many scientists are predicting a 
coming global cooling.
  Following the BBC, other British news outlets have run similar 
headlines. The UK Sunday Times wrote ``Why everything you think you 
know about global warming is wrong.'' This is coming from Great 
Britain. The Daily Mail, another major publication in Great Britain, 
had a headline: ``Whatever happened to global warming? How freezing 
temperatures are starting to shatter climate change theory.'' 
Australia's Herald Sun has picked up on the trend as well. Columnist 
Andrew Bolt, noting the turning tide of media around the world, wrote:

       This is like the moment in the Emperor's New Clothes, in 
     which the boy calls out ``but he's naked!"

  Let's be clear. Some of the media were already beginning to question 
the consensus even before that announcement.
  Television personalities were coming around as well. In April, 
Charles Osgood, host of ``CBS News Sunday Morning'' and a noted 
environmentalist, questioned global warming projections. He asked:

       Right now, global warming is a given to so many, it raises 
     the question: Could another minimum activity period on the 
     Sun counteract, in any way, the effects of global warming?

  Osgood later scolded himself for even questioning global warming 
before stating:

       I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this solar dimming 
     business, now that the story is out. Remember, you heard it 
     here first . . .

  Lou Dobbs, formerly with CNN, has also joined the chorus questioning 
the alarmists, consensus. In January, Dobbs compared the belief in 
manmade global warming to a religion.
  He stated:

       They bring this thing to a personal belief system. It's 
     almost a religion, without any question . . .

  Dobbs also criticized what he called ``crowding out of facts and 
objective assessment of those facts . . . there's such selective 
choices of data as one discusses and tries to understand the reality of 
the issues that make up global warming.''
  In September, another dramatic announcement came from Houston 
Chronicle science reporter Eric Berger. He stated:

       Earth seems to have at least temporarily stopped warming. 
     If we can't have confidence in short-term prognosis for 
     climate change, how can we have confidence in long-term?

  The bright light is also fading on the U.N. IPCC. In August, the New 
York Times ran the headline ``Nobel Halo Fades Fast for Climate Change 
Panel.'' The article notes:

       As the panel gears up for its next climate review, many 
     specialists in climate science and policy, both inside and 
     out of the network, are warning that it could quickly lose 
     relevance unless it adjusts its methods and focus.

  Weeks later, on September 23, the New York Times again acknowledged a 
shift in public moods and scientific evidence when it stated that the 
U.N. faced an ``intricate challenge: building momentum for an 
international climate treaty at a time when global temperatures have 
been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few 
years.''
  Given the media's track record, this is hardly surprising. As I noted 
in my 2006 speech, the media runs hot and cold in their coverage of 
climate change. Quoting here, I said at the time:

       Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling 
     and warming scares during four separate and sometimes 
     overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930s, the 
     media peddled the coming ice age.

  Everyone is going to die. We are going to freeze to death.

       From the late 1920's until the 1960's they warned of global 
     warming. From the 1950's until the 1970's they warned again 
     of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the 
     fourth estate's fourth attempt to promote opposing climate 
     change fears during the last 100 years. Recently, advocates 
     of alarmism have grown increasingly desperate to try to 
     convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral 
     issue of a generation. Last year, the vice president of 
     London's Royal Society sent a chilling letter to the media 
     encouraging them to stifle the voices of scientists skeptical 
     of climate alarmism. During the past year, the American 
     people have been served up an unprecedented parade of 
     environmental alarmism by

[[Page 27927]]

     the media and entertainment industry, which link every 
     possible weather event to global warming. The year 2006 saw 
     many major organs of the media dismiss any pretense of 
     balance and objectivity on climate change coverage and 
     instead crossed squarely into global warming advocacy.

  Maybe one reason the media is starting to come around is that the 
public is shifting as well. It is easy to sell magazines, books, and 
movie tickets when you have everyone eating out of your hand believing 
that a climate catastrophe is right around the corner. Once the 
audience isn't buying that story anymore, it might be time to start 
acknowledging the other side.
  If we look at Time magazine, I remember back in 1975, Time magazine--
and Newsweek of the same year--said another ice age is coming. There it 
is. This is 1974. This was in Time magazine. Another ice age is coming. 
Then you fast forward to about 3 years ago. That same Time magazine had 
a picture of the last polar bear in the world standing on the last ice 
cube and saying: Now it is global warming.
  This is why the media is coming around. Polls are showing an 
unprecedented shift in public opinion on the science of climate change 
as well as cap-and-trade proposals in Congress. Only a few weeks ago, 
in October, Politico reported:

       As the nation struggles to climb out of a recession, 45 
     percent rated the economy as the most important issue in 
     deciding their vote if the congressional election were held 
     today, followed by 21 percent who said government spending, 
     20 percent who chose health care reform and 9 percent who 
     said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just 4 percent of the 
     people said climate change was the top issue.

  I can remember when that was 60 percent.
  The people have caught on. You are going to see the media, if they 
want to sell their stuff, come back and change their position. We are 
seeing that now.
  Economic worries also led a majority of Americans to place jump-
starting the economy ahead of concerns about the environment. Even as 
the Obama administration is pushing for climate protection legislation, 
62 percent of those polled agreed that ``economic growth should be 
given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent.'' The 
remaining 38 percent believe that ``protection of the environment 
should be given priority, even at the risk of curbing economic 
growth.''
  Further, earlier this year Gallup released a poll that found that 41 
percent of the people believe global warming claims are exaggerated. 
What about the effect of Al Gore's climate scare campaign? The Gallup 
poll editor Frank Newport says he sees no evidence that Gore is 
winning. Newport said:

       It's just not caught on, they have failed. Any measure that 
     we look at shows Al Gore's losing at the moment. The public 
     is just not that concerned. [ . . . ] Ask people to name the 
     biggest concerns, and just 1 percent to 2 percent cite the 
     environment. The environment doesn't show up at all, it's Al 
     Gore's greatest frustration. We seem less concerned than more 
     about global warming over the years . . . Despite the movies 
     and publicity and all that, we're just not seeing it take off 
     with the American public. And that was occurring even before 
     the latest economic recession.

  Again, further quoting Frank Newport:

       As Al Gore I think would say, the greatest challenge facing 
     humanity . . . has failed to show up in our data.

  Polls have also shown that when looking at environmental issues only, 
climate change continually ranks dead last among concerns. This wasn't 
true a few years ago. This is what is taking place now. This is after 
all the media hype, all the hysteria.
  The Gallup poll in March found global warming ranked last in the 
United States among environmental issues. This is just environmental 
issues. Air and water pollution, toxic waste, animal and plant 
extinctions, the loss of tropical rain forests all ranked as a greater 
concern than global warming.
  As Gallup stated:

       Since more Americans express little to no worry about 
     global warming than say this about extinction, global warming 
     is clearly the environmental issue of least concern to them.

  These are the environmentalists.

       In fact, global warming is the only issue for which more 
     Americans say they have little to no concern than say they 
     have a great deal of concern.

  The public is also unwilling to accept legislation on climate change 
that would cost them money. Rasmussen found that 56 percent of 
Americans said they are not willing to pay any additional taxes or 
utility costs to fight global warming.
  The clear rejection of fear and hysteria is leading many on Capitol 
Hill to change their tune on climate legislation. Turning away from 
using scare tactics, the left is now trying to sell cap and trade as 
clean energy legislation. Don't say climate change, don't say global 
warming, don't say cap and trade anymore. Say clean energy economy--
that is something that sells. So if you keep renaming the same thing, 
maybe it will sell.
  As the New York and the L.A. Times have recently reported, the White 
House, concerned by the lack of support for their cap-and-trade 
initiatives, is using poll-tested talking points to help push one of 
the President's biggest priorities. The New York Times caught on to 
these new talking points earlier this year, reporting:

       The problem with global warming, some environmentalists 
     believe, is ``global warming.'' The term turns people off, 
     fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic 
     sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to 
     extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by 
     ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging 
     firms in Washington.

  The L.A. Times also reported:

       Scratch ``cap and trade'' and ``global warming,'' 
     Democratic pollsters tell Obama. They're ineffective . . . 
     Control the language, politicians know, and you stand a 
     better chance of controlling the debate. So the Obama 
     administration, in its push to enact sweeping energy and 
     healthcare policies, has begun refining the phrases it uses 
     in an effort to shape public opinion. Words that have been 
     vetted in focus groups and polls are seeping into the White 
     House lexicon, while others considered too scary or 
     confounding are falling away.

  Despite his longtime work on cap and trade, Senator John Kerry 
actually went so far as to say he didn't even know what cap and trade 
is, saying in September:

       I don't know what ``cap and trade'' means. I don't think 
     the average American does. This is not a cap-and-trade bill, 
     it's a pollution reduction bill.

  While Senator Kerry says he doesn't know what cap and trade is, the 
American public knows what it is: a massive new energy tax, plain and 
simple.
  It has been kind of interesting to watch this change, watch the 
phraseology change as time has gone by. But we know this: Nothing has 
really changed since Kyoto. It is the same thing, cap and trade, the 
largest tax increase in the history of America.
  Let me conclude by saying just how encouraged I am to say that the 
tide has turned--not is turning, it has turned. The skeptics' challenge 
has been heard, and I am glad to see that more and more journalists are 
no longer reporting the hyped fears that many want the American public 
to believe. Media outlets around the world are more skeptical today of 
manmade climate fears, and they are also more aware of the enormous 
cost of climate legislation. More importantly, polls are showing that 
the people are no longer buying the hype either.
  The bottom line is that efforts to pass the largest tax increase in 
America's history have clearly failed, handing the American people a 
tremendous victory.
  It has been a long time, some 8 years.
  I see the Senator from Vermont is very anxious to counter these 
things I have been saying. That is perfectly all right. That is one 
thing about this body--you have the opportunity to do that. There is no 
one I consider a better friend than the person presiding right now, 
from Maryland. He and I were elected together many years ago to the 
House of Representatives. We disagree on this issue.
  What I am reporting here is science, and the people have come to an 
agreement. After 8 years, the truth finally does come out.
  Winston Churchill said: Truth is incontrovertible. Ignorance may 
prevent it. Panic may resent it. Malice may destroy it. But there it 
is.

[[Page 27928]]

  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.

                          ____________________