[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 767-769]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. So on the subject of what we leave to our children 
and grandchildren, let me turn to the point of my remarks, which is 
that it is time to wake up in this body to the reality of what we are 
doing to our climate. It is time to wake up.
  Madam President, 2012 was the warmest year in the continental United 
States since records began being kept in 1895. It is not a unique 
single anomaly of a year. If you look at the first 12 years of this 
century, 2000 to 2012, they are all in the 14 warmest years on record. 
This is not just about future generations, it is not just about polar 
bears and sea turtles. These trends are being felt right now in real 
places by real people.
  The recent draft of the Federal Government's National Climate 
Assessment shows, at a local level, why every one of us should care 
that carbon emissions are causing climate change.
  Let's take a little tour. I will start in the Northeast, which 
includes my home State of Rhode Island. In this region, which is 
defined in the assessment as from West Virginia to Maine--that is not 
the Northeast we usually talk about, but that is the way it is defined 
in this report--annual temperatures have increased by almost 2 degrees 
Fahrenheit since records began. The entire range between high and low 
is only about 4.2 degrees, so an increase of 2 full degrees is a big 
deal in that scale.
  If greenhouse gas emissions remain at current levels, the projection 
is another 4.5 degrees to 10 degrees Fahrenheit of warming by the end 
of the century. That will change all of our lives in very significant 
ways. Even if we do reduce emissions, the Northeast is still projected 
to experience an increase in the frequency, intensity, and duration of 
heat waves.

[[Page 768]]

  By as soon as 2050, Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia could 
experience twice as many days per year--that is 15 more days in some 
places--with temperatures over 95 degrees Fahrenheit. In western New 
York and Massachusetts, where 95-degree days are rare, there may be an 
additional 5 days per year over that mark. In Rhode Island, a lot of 
people stay cool in the summer by opening the windows at night, letting 
the cool night air fill the house, and then closing the drapes or the 
screens or the shades in the morning. That is not going to work any 
longer when persistent high nighttime temperatures allow no relief from 
the heat.
  Without significant upgrades, our region's electric grid will not be 
able to sustain the power demand as more and more air-conditioning 
becomes necessary for people to be comfortable in the summertime. As we 
see more hot days, we also see more bad ozone days, which still keep 
people indoors in Rhode Island or even send them to the hospital, as 
pollution from Midwest coal plants settles in on us.
  In addition to heat, precipitation in the Northeast increased almost 
one-half of an inch per decade over the last century. Extreme 
precipitation--very heavy rain or snow--has increased 74 percent 
between 1958 and 2010. That is the sharpest increase in the Nation.
  On our shores--we are a very coastal State--due to a combination of 
warming and expanding oceans and other tectonic conditions, sea level 
has risen about 1 foot in the Northeast since 1900.
  That is higher than the 8-inch global average sea-level rise. Sea-
level rise is actually up 10 inches at the Newport tide gauge since our 
terrible hurricane of 1938. Because of extreme precipitation and sea-
level rise, more and more populated areas are at risk of flooding.
  Let's move to the Southeast where the draft assessment predicts more 
extreme heat with the number of 95-degree or hotter days in the region 
from Louisiana through central Florida expected to quadruple by mid-
century. If you like it hot down there, you are a lucky person because 
you are going to get a lot more of it.
  Southerners will likely see something much less appealing, which is 
more ground-level ozone, better known as smog, which poses serious 
health risks especially to children and the elderly. But the real story 
of the Southeast is one of disastrous weather. Between 1980 and 2011, 
the Southeast was struck by more billion-dollar disasters than any 
other part of the country. The region is particularly vulnerable to 
extreme weather, and sea-level rise makes things worse.
  The RAND Corporation notes that 1,800 square miles of Louisiana have 
been lost to the sea since the 1930s. Entergy, a regional utility, 
predicts $23 billion in losses by 2030, factoring just a 6-inch 
increase in sea level and a 3-percent increase in hurricane wind speed. 
Communities in the Southeast need to take real steps to become more 
resilient in the changing environment. North Carolina, for instance, is 
raising highway bridges out to the Outer Banks as seas rise and storms 
worsen.
  In the Midwest, temperatures are increasing rapidly. From 1900 to 
2010, average temperatures increased about 1 degree Fahrenheit, and the 
rate of warming tripled between 1980 and 2010. Under the assessment's 
worst-case scenarios, temperatures across the Midwest are projected to 
rise 8.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. If you are a farmer, that 
means everything will have changed.
  Hotter temperatures are having a far-reaching impact on the Great 
Lakes. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, scientists at NOAA's 
Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory have found that the Great 
Lakes are taking in more heat from the air during the summer and 
storing it longer. The result: On average, ice on the Great Lakes is 
forming later in the winter and disappearing earlier. In fact, total 
ice cover has fallen 71 percent on the Great Lakes from 1973 to 2010.
  That is not good for the lakes, the people, and species of this 
region. Ice cover protects the lakes from evaporation, and it protects 
the eggs of fall-spawning fish from winter weather. Coastal areas 
unprotected by shore ice are more susceptible to erosion. Less ice 
means less snowmobiling or ice fishing. As anyone in Cleveland or 
Buffalo can tell you, open water fuels the dread lake-effect snows that 
wallop leeward shores. All of this can be traced, in part, to climate 
change driven by greenhouse gases.
  In the Great Plains, the most significant consequence of a changing 
climate will be changes in rainfall. This is already beginning to 
happen. Total rain is expected to increase in Wyoming, Montana, North 
Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska, while Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas 
are projected to get less. Farming and the energy sector, including oil 
and gas exploration, will feel increased pressure and competition for 
water supplies. Eighty percent of the population of the Great Plains 
depends on the High Plains aquifer for drinking water. Projected 
temperature increases, more frequent droughts, and higher rates of 
evaporation spell serious trouble for the region's water supply if 
water isn't managed better.
  The availability of water, and even snow, will also affect the 
Southwest. People of the Southwest are acutely aware of how their 
history and their fate is tied to the availability of water. According 
to the draft assessment:

       Over the past 50 years across most of the Southwest, there 
     has been less late-winter precipitation falling as snow, 
     earlier snow melt, and earlier arrival of most of the year's 
     streamflow.

  These changes can ripple through the economy and the health of the 
region.
  In the western mountains, massive forests stand dead on the 
mountainsides, as warmer winters allow the killer bark beetle to swarm 
northward into higher latitudes and uphill into higher altitudes. 
Ominously, the draft assessment says that the combined impact of 
increasing wildfire, insect outbreaks, and diseases will cause:

       Almost complete loss of subalpine forests . . . by the 
     2080s.

  Separate studies by scientists at NASA and at the University of 
Washington predict increasing frequency of severe wildfires.
  The Park City Foundation in Utah predicted an annual local 
temperature increase of 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2075, which would 
cause a total loss of snowpack in the Park City resort area. This would 
result, obviously, in thousands of lost jobs, tens of millions in lost 
earnings, and hundreds of millions in lost economic output.
  In the coastal zone of the Pacific Northwest, erosion inundation and 
ocean acidity are all major threats. More than 140,000 acres of coastal 
Washington and Oregon lie within 3.3 feet of high tide. Sea-level rise 
of 4 feet or more is entirely plausible by the end of the century.
  Ocean acidification caused a 70- to 80-percent loss of oyster larvae 
at an oyster hatchery in Oregon from 2006 to 2008. Wild oyster stocks 
in Washington State have also failed as weather patterns caused more 
acidic water to rise to the surface at the shore. This is an industry 
worth about $73 million annually.
  For Hawaii, the rapidly changing climate presents a unique threat. 
Tourism and agriculture, among Hawaii's top economic sectors, are each 
distinctly vulnerable. Changes in precipitation, erosion, ocean 
warming, and acidification will irreversibly alter Hawaiian ecosystems, 
home to about one-quarter of all threatened and endangered species in 
the United States.
  For example, we know that warm enough water causes corals to bleach. 
Bleaching is a technical term that I won't go into right now. Bleaching 
can help coral survive short-term stresses, but in response to 
persistent ocean warming, bleaching signals the start of a long-term 
downward spiral toward the death of the coral and the reefs, the 
incubators of the oceans.
  Perhaps no other region of the United States is experiencing the 
effects of climate change more dramatically than Alaska. Alaska is, of 
course, supposed to be cold. The animals and plants have adapted to 
that, and so have the people.
  Since the 1960s, however, Alaska has been warming twice as fast as 
the rest

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of the United States. Annual air temperature has already increased by 3 
degrees Fahrenheit. Winter temperatures are up 6 degrees.
  According to the draft assessment highlights, Alaska is seeing--and 
this is a graph of the sea ice:

       Earlier spring snow melt, reduced sea ice, widespread 
     glacier retreat, warmer permafrost, and dryer landscapes.

  By mid-century, summer sea ice could disappear altogether. As in the 
Great Lakes, less ice along the Alaska coast means more severe coastal 
erosion without the ice to buffer the shores from storms. Most of the 
permafrost in Alaska is tens of thousands of years old, but it too is 
disappearing as the Alaska climate warms. Permafrost is a natural 
wonder whose loss threatens structures such as buildings, roads, as 
well as plants and wildlife that have adapted to the frozen tundra. 
Thawing permafrost buckles roads and air strips, causing costly 
disruptions in transportation.
  It appears, as we take this tour of the country, that there is only 
one region that isn't yet awakening to the effects of climate change, 
and that is here, Capitol Hill. History is calling out to us to meet 
our duty, and the call is loud and clear, but we are sleepwalking. It 
is time to wake up. The public has every reason to want to grab us and 
give us a good shake. An AP poll out in December found that 83 percent 
of Democrats, 77 percent of Independents, and 70 percent of Republicans 
accept the reality of climate change and understand that it will be a 
serious problem for our United States.
  A recent poll conducted by Yale University and George Mason 
University found that a large majority of Americans, 77 percent, say 
climate change should be a priority for President Obama and for all of 
us in Congress. But we snooze on, listening to the lullabies of the 
polluters.
  Carbon pollution from fossil fuels is threatening our future, and 
unless we take serious action to scale back the pollution, the 
consequences are looking increasingly dire all across our country. It 
is time to hear the alarms, to roll up our sleeves, to get to work, and 
to do what needs to be done. It is time, indeed, to wake up.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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