[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 11766]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Illinois (Mr. Quigley) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. QUIGLEY. Mr. Speaker, if anecdotal evidence were science, I would 
be standing here proclaiming that global warming is real, just step 
outside. It is severely hot, oppressive, simply unenjoyable. Often, I 
feel as if I'm standing behind an 18-wheeler blowing heat and exhaust 
in my face. But no, I'm just walking my dogs in Chicago no less. 
Chicago, the city of snow. Yes, snow, the stuff that emboldened those 
who said that global warming was a farce. ``Just think about that snow 
piled up against your door,'' they said.
  But global warming is part of a larger climate crisis--climate 
change. It is something the Union of Concerned Scientists say includes 
such events as more extreme storms, more severe droughts, deadly heat 
waves, rising sea levels, and more acidic oceans, to name a few. You 
might have noticed I'm citing the Union of Concerned Scientists, not 
the group of folks who notice anecdotally that the weather was extreme. 
It would do us good to heed the words of science and not the remarks of 
a few casual observers.
  I don't make my case that global warming is real because it's hot, 
just as it doesn't follow that global warming isn't real when it's 
cold. Extreme weather is climate change. Over 200 peer-reviewed 
scientific studies have concluded that global warming is real and 
potentially catastrophic. No scientific peer-reviewed studies have 
found the opposite--none.
  As of July 3, 56 percent of the continental United States was 
experiencing drought conditions. This marks the largest area affected 
by drought in the 12-year record kept by the U.S. Drought Monitor. 
Scientists note that temperature records reveal a long-term trend for 
warming that has been picking up speed. The first decade of this 
century was the warmest on record, according to NOAA's State of Climate 
in a 2010 report. It is real because science tells us so.
  We have sustained 1,644 record heat days from January to June of 
2012. We have endured 631 days of record rainfall. We have shoveled our 
way out of 98 days of record snowfall. The prolonged heat wave this 
past spring included the hottest March since recordkeeping began in 
1894. There were 671 records that were broken, according to the 
National Weather Service. April marked the end of the warmest 12-month 
stretch ever in the United States.
  What does all this snow, rain, heat, drought, ocean acidity, and 
raging forest fires mean? Scientists say it's global warming. 
Scientists say that our warming climate is causing more and more 
extreme weather events, and they can and will get worse by our 
inaction.
  Several weeks of snowmageddon, which prompted taunts of Al Gore by 
Congress, do not disprove scientific fact. At the same time, the 
brutality of today's untenable heat does not solidify my stance any 
more than the snow disproves Al Gore. Local temperatures taken as 
individual data points have nothing to do with the long-term trend of 
global warming.
  To get a real hand on global reading, scientists rely on changes in 
weather over a long period of time. Looking at high- and low-
temperature data from recent decades shows that new record highs occur 
nearly twice as often as new record lows.
  So, no, my belief in global warming isn't sprung from a conversation 
with my neighbor nor a straw poll of people I'm sitting and sweating 
with at a Cubs game. My belief in global warming is borne of a 
respected acknowledgement of sound science that tells us that global 
warming is real.
  As Winston Churchill said, ``I never worry about action, but only 
about inaction.'' My concern--my fear--is that we have gone too far to 
save the planet we've neglected to protect because we've traded science 
for reading the wind.
  Global warming is real, and the extreme weather and sound science 
demonstrate that this is so. Let us know the crippling fear of inaction 
no longer.

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