[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3661-3662]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here now for the 60th time to ask 
my colleagues to wake up to the threats of climate change. To see the 
damage that is being caused by our shifting climate, we need look no 
further than the Winter Olympics. The most recent Winter Olympics 
concluded last month. Over 200 countries broadcast the event to an 
estimated 3.8 billion people worldwide. In Rhode Island, we rooted for 
our very own Marissa Castelli, who brought home a bronze medal in pairs 
figure skating.
  But what does the future hold for the Winter Olympics? As global 
temperatures rise and weather patterns shift, the world's glaciers are 
receding and snowpack in traditionally snowy regions is declining.
  A report from the University of Waterloo found that February daytime 
high temperatures during the Winter Games have been steadily increasing 
from the 1920s and the 1950s to the 21st century. This forced the 
International Olympic Committee to take drastic measures to ensure 
adequate conditions: ramping up the use of snow-making machines and 
physically transferring large amounts of snow to the site of the games.
  This is just the beginning of things to come. If our emissions are 
left unchecked, as the Republicans and the polluters prefer, the 
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports we will likely see 
warming between 4.7 and 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the 
century. The Waterloo report found that only 10 of the 19 cities to 
previously host the Winter Olympics would be cold enough to host the 
games by the 2080s. There could be no Sochi Olympics, no Vancouver or 
Squaw Valley or Sarajevo Olympics, and that is if we are able to 
stabilize and ultimately reduce our global carbon emissions before the 
year 2100. If carbon pollution continues on the current pace, only six 
of these cities could host the games. Forget about Torino and Nagano, 
Lake Placid and Lillehammer.
  Over 100 Olympic athletes from 10 different countries signed a letter 
asking world leaders to take action to curb climate change. They said:

       As winter Olympic athletes, our lives revolve around the 
     winter and if climate change continues at this pace, the 
     economies of the small towns where we live and train will be 
     ruined. Our sports will be forever changed and the winter 
     Olympics as we know it will be a thing of the past.

  Much as we all love the Winter Olympics, we could do without them. We 
cannot very well do without freshwater. Glaciers represent the largest 
reserves of freshwater on Earth. Their freshwater feeds our rivers and 
streams, waters our farms and ranches, and provides some of our 
drinking water. Glacier loss is happening all over the world, including 
right here in the United States.
  Just like atmospheric warming, ocean acidification, and sea-level 
rise, this evidence of climate change is not a theoretical projection. 
It is not a complex scientific model. It is simply observation and 
measurement.
  This is Grinnell Glacier in Montana's Glacier National Park. On top 
we see the glacier in 1940. On the bottom is the same spot in 2004. 
Grinnell Glacier has lost 90 percent of its ice in the last century. 
The glacier has almost disappeared or, as the U.S. Geological Survey 
puts it, ``effects of global climate change are strikingly clear.'' The 
U.S. Geological Survey further explains:

       Glacier recession is underway, and many glaciers have 
     already disappeared. The retreat of these small alpine 
     glaciers reflects changes in recent climate as glaciers 
     respond to altered temperature and precipitation. It has been 
     estimated that there were approximately 150 glaciers present 
     in 1850 and most glaciers were still present in 1910 when the 
     park was established. In 2010 we considered there to be only 
     twenty-five glaciers larger than twenty-five acres remaining 
     in Glacier National Park.

  So there were 150 glaciers 100 years ago, 25 now.
  Here we see a similar change at Lillian Glacier in Washington's 
Olympic National Park. On the top we see a large healthy glacier in 
1905, and this almost unrecognizable view of the same landscape in 
2010.
  Of course, this is not just happening in the United States. Countries 
across the world are seeing rapid glacier loss.
  A 2013 article published in Nature found clear evidence that the 
Tibetan glaciers--the world's third largest ice reservoir behind 
Antarctica and Greenland--are shrinking, even at altitudes above 20,000 
feet.
  South America's Andean glaciers are retreating at an amazing rate. 
Climatologists from Ohio State University and NASA loaned my office a 
piece of a plant that had been preserved under the Quelccaya icecap in 
Peru for at least 5,200 years, a little bitty piece of plant. But under 
the pressure of the ice and the cold, it had been preserved for 52 
centuries. Today, due to glacial retreat, it was exposed and I now have 
that piece of plant in my office.
  Glaciers are some of the largest reservoirs of fresh matter on Earth. 
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, glaciers store 69 percent of 
the world's fresh water. Annual spring glacial melt provides a 
dependable source of water for streams, plants, spawning fish, farming, 
and now often hydroelectricity. In Central Asia hundreds of millions of 
people rely on the Tibetan glaciers to supply drinking water. The same 
goes for the people of Peru and Bolivia in the Andes.
  This is a crisis we must take seriously. Unfortunately, Congress 
remains barricaded behind a blockade of polluter influence. Only last 
week a Republican witness at an Environment and Public Works hearing on 
adapting to climate change argued that we would all be better off if 
the glaciers just went away--if they just melted away. After all, he 
told the committee:

       We evolved at the equator in a climate where freezing 
     weather did not exist. . . . It could be said that frost and 
     ice are the enemies of life.

  He continued:

       Obviously if the glaciers stop melting, there will be no 
     more meltwater from them. So my questions . . . are, Are you 
     saying you want the glaciers to stop melting? Then where 
     would the irrigation water come from? . . . I say let the 
     glaciers melt.

  That is the witness the Republicans put up. Let the glaciers melt.
  I guess he missed the difference between seasonal melting, whose 
annual rhythms fill our streams and rivers for drinking water, fishing 
and farming, and glaciers outright melting away.
  There is another little trick the deniers like to play when it is 
wintertime. Every time there is a cold snap or a little snow falls in 
Washington, DC, or back in their home States, they say: How can there 
be global warming when it is cold out? And, yes, we have had a cold 
winter. But what scientists and other level-headed observers understand 
is the changes occurring in the climate are happening over longer 
periods than just one winter and across broader regions than only one 
State or even the United States. Moreover, short-term temperature 
anomalies such as a cold snap might be worse because of climate change, 
because of changes in the jetstream, for instance. This chart shows how 
worldwide winter temperatures every year since 1880 compare with the 
20th century average.
  Do you think there is a trend visible there? Over 100 years, yes, 
winter is still cold, but it is not as cold as it used to be. This 
change is ravaging winter sports and tourism across the United States. 
The National Resources

[[Page 3662]]

Defense Council found that between 1999 and 2010, a lack of snowfall 
cost our ski industry $1 billion and up to 27,000 jobs. Before the end 
of the century, the number of economically viable ski locations in New 
Hampshire and Maine will be cut in half. Skiing in New York will be cut 
by three-quarters and, the report says, there will be no ski area in 
Connecticut or Massachusetts. If we know our geography, we know if that 
is true of Connecticut and Massachusetts, there goes Rhode Island's 
Yawgoo Valley ski area and slope.
  The Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, which I started with 
Representative Henry Waxman, asked the National Basketball Association, 
Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, National Football 
League, and the United States Olympic Committee, to tell us what 
climate change means for their sports.
  National Hockey League Deputy Commissioner William Daly wrote:

       Hockey's relationship with the environment is unique. Our 
     sport was born on frozen ponds, where--to this day--players 
     of all ages and skill levels learn to skate. For this 
     magnificent tradition to continue, it is imperative that we 
     recognize the importance of maintaining the environment.

  The Park City Foundation in Utah predicts an annual local temperature 
increase of 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2075, which could cause a 
complete loss of snowpack in the lower Park City resort area of the 
Rocky Mountains. The foundation estimates that this will result in 
thousands of lost jobs, tens of millions in lost earnings, and hundreds 
of millions in lost economic growth.
  While we in Congress equivocate and stall, the evidence of climate 
change relentlessly mounts. The damage is being done in our atmosphere 
and our oceans. The longer it takes us to wake up, the harder and more 
expensive it will be to fix it.
  The sickening part is that everyone else is waking up. Sixty-five 
percent of voters support the President taking significant steps to 
address climate change now. Another poll found that 82 percent of 
Americans believe we should start preparing now for rising sea levels 
and severe storms from climate change.
  Even in the party that won't speak the words ``climate change'' any 
longer--not since Citizens United cleared the way for big spending by 
polluters in Republican primaries--even in the Republican Party, among 
young Republican voters 35 and under, the majority of them feel that 
climate denial is either ignorant, out of touch, or crazy. If that is 
what young Republicans feel, that is a very poor foundation for the 
Republican Party to maintain this denier policy.
  The campaign of money and denial that imprisons Congress is as 
poisonous to our American democracy as carbon pollution is to our 
atmosphere, oceans and, yes, glaciers. It is time to fight back. It is 
time to wake up.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

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