[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 4125-4127]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I spoke last night in anticipation of this 
all-night session that was going to take place. I was not surprised at 
the general topics that were covered. There are probably five all 
together that they were stated over and over. I would like to clarify a 
couple of things that probably are worthwhile this afternoon.
  One is my good friend from California--this is a quote, we took it 
down--said:

       When 97 to 98 percent of the scientists say something is 
     real, they do not have anything pressing them to say that 
     other than the truth. They do not have any other agenda. They 
     don't work for oil companies. And I will tell you, as 
     chairman of the environment committee, every time the 
     Republicans chose a so-called expert on climate, we have 
     tracked them down to special interest funding, those 3 
     percent. They know where their bread is buttered.

  That is kind of an interesting and a timely statement to make because 
what they are not telling you--and I am talking about the Senator from 
California and the other Democrats--is that the hedge fund billionaire 
and climate activist Tom Steyer plans to spend $100 million through his 
NextGen PAC. The NextGen PAC is his political action committee. He has 
made the statement that he is going to be spending $100 million in the 
midterm elections of 2014 and is going to be looking very carefully to 
make sure that all of the Democrats go along with his activist agenda.
  That was actually a statement that was made, that has been written 
up. It is all documented. I am going to submit for the Record at this 
point all of the newspaper articles, the Washington Post, the 
Washington Times, and others that talk about this climate activist Tom 
Steyer, who is going to be spending $100 million in the next election.
  What I would like to do is cover the points that were made. As I say, 
they were made over and over, different people saying them, the same 
talking points. I am sure Tom Steyer's people had the talking points 
well prepared and moveon.org and George Soros and Michael Moore and the 
Hollywood elites and that crowd all had their talking points to sound 
real good. I noticed that so many of them were reading those points and 
were not familiar with the issues.
  But last night many of my colleagues pointed to weather as the reason 
for manmade climate change. Yet they failed to quote meteorologists in 
the speeches. Let me read just what the meteorologists are saying about 
climate change.
  A recent study by George Mason University reported--that was over 400 
TV meteorologists--they reported that 63 percent of the weathercasters 
believe that any global warming that occurs is the result of natural 
variations and not human activity. That is a significant 2-to-1 
majority.
  Another study by the American Meteorological Society last year found 
that of their members, nearly half did not believe in manmade global 
warming. Furthermore, the survey found that scientists who professed 
liberal political views were more likely to proclaim manmade climate 
change than the rest of their colleagues.
  I think we can name names here. Certainly one of the more prominent 
names is Heidi Cullen. She was with the Weather Channel. She spent most 
of her time with a background of very liberal thinking, liberal agenda, 
talking about this until she is no longer there anymore. She is now 
with one of the groups, the very liberal groups.
  This is a good one, a lifelong liberal Democrat. His name is Dr. 
Martin Hertzberg. He is a retired Navy meteorologist with a Ph.D. in 
physical chemistry who also declared his dissent of warming fears in 
2008. This is a quote from Dr. Martin Hertzberg:

       As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the 
     constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-
     trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to 
     science. The global warming alarmists don't even bother with 
     data! All they have are half-baked computer models that are 
     totally out of touch with reality and have already been 
     proven to be false.

  CNN, not exactly a bastion of conservatism, had yet another of its 
meteorologists dissent from global warming fears. His name is Chad 
Myers, a meteorologist for 22 years and certified by the American 
Meteorological Society, spoke out against anthropogenic climate change 
on CNN in December of 2008.
  He said, ``You know, to think that we could affect weather all that 
much is pretty arrogant.''
  Since they are talking about the weather, here are a few facts that 
are not mentioned on drought and hurricanes. Several of the people came 
to the floor during the evening to talk about increase in drought, the 
increase in hurricanes and all of that. According to NOAA, hurricanes 
have been in decline in the United States since the beginning of 
records in the 19th century. The worst decade for major--category 3, 4, 
5--hurricanes was in the 1940s. Severe drought in 1934 covered 80 
percent of the country. The current one, the drought we went through a 
year and a half ago was 25 percent of the country.
  Then they talked about, last night, the icecaps are melting and all 
of that. My colleague Senator Feinstein from California pointed to 
melting icecaps as proof of climate change. Yet reports on what is not 
melting show a different story. This past December a research 
expedition of climate scientists got stuck in deep ice in Antarctica. 
We all remember that. I remember talking about that and showing 
pictures on the floor when that took place. That was a bunch of people 
who were going up there to try to solidify their case on global 
warming. They were stuck in ice for weeks on end. It took a couple of 
weeks and a couple more icebreakers getting stuck before the research 
vessel was finally freed.
  A paper published in the October Journal of Climate examines the 
trend of sea ice extent along the east Antarctic coast from 2000 to 
2008 and finds a significant increase, average of 1.43. That is 1.5 
percent a year of increase of ice in the Antarctic.
  Greenland, the IPCC--now, keep in mind, I talked yesterday about the 
IPCC. That is the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 
Change. In a minute, I will show how it was discredited. But in 
Greenland they said--they admitted that in 2001, to melt Greenland the 
ice sheet would require temperatures to rise by 5.5 degrees Celsius and 
remain for 1,000 years. The ice sheet is actually growing by 2 percent 
a year. That is what is going on right now on this very ice sheet. 
Everyone is concerned about Greenland. Yet it is actually growing, not 
decreasing.
  In January 2010, Time magazine: Himalayan Melting: How a Climate 
Panel Got it Wrong: ``Glaciergate'' is a black eye for the IPCC and the 
climate-science community as a whole.

[[Page 4126]]

  In December of 2008, Al Gore said--this is good. Al Gore said, ``The 
entire--
  That is a little over 5 years ago. Gore said, ``The entire North 
polar icecap will disappear in 5 years.'' It is now 5 years and 1 month 
past the deadline, December of 2013, and the Arctic ice is actually 
doing pretty well. Last month, BBC reported that the Arctic icecap 
coverage is close to 50 percent more than in the corresponding period 
in 2012. So contrary to what Al Gore predicted, that it would be gone 
by now, it did not disappear.
  I had a good quote there by Richard Lindzen talking about Gore. This 
is Richard Lindzen, one of the foremost authorities, scientific 
authorities on climate anywhere in the world. He is MIT. He has been 
quoted extensively. He said, talking about Gore:

       To treat all changes as something to fear is bad enough. To 
     do it in order to exploit that fear is much worse.

  I mentioned last night that the New York Times designated Al Gore as 
perhaps the first environmental billionaire in the United States. He 
said the entire North polar icecap would disappear in 5 years. It has 
actually increased substantially.
  Last night they talked about the IPCC is the gold standard of climate 
science. Senator Whitehouse defended the credibility of the IPCC 
despite climategate, saying last night:

       So after all that, after six published reviews whose 
     results confirmed that there was nothing wrong with the 
     science as a result of these emails--

  We are talking about climategate now.

     --for people to continue to come to the floor and suggest 
     that the email chains revealed some flaw in the data or some 
     flaw in the science, it's untrue. It's as simple as that. 
     It's just not true.

  But we know this is not the case. The emails are very clear that the 
scientists were manipulating the data to generate a result they wanted. 
This is what some of the emails disclose: One of the scientists said, 
and the emails disclosed, that the IPCC was systematically distorting 
facts, cooking the science of global warming to either cover up data 
that did not tell the story they wanted everyone to hear and 
exaggerating the impacts of the changing climate to help drive people--
out of fear--into action.
  Here are two examples. We have about 12 examples. I have read them 
all in the past on the floor of the Senate. But here are a couple of 
examples of how the IPCC was cooking the science. The IPCC claimed the 
Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035. Of course it is not true. Yet it 
was put into the IPCC's fourth assessment report.
  The assessment report is a report the IPCC has that the media picks 
up and the public consumes. According to the Sunday Times, that is in 
the UK, this claim was based off of a brochure that was used by the 
World Wildlife Fund to promote global warming activism. They put it on 
a brochure after finding a paper from a little-known scientist in 
India.
  That scientist was wrong. According to the Times, Himalayan glaciers 
are so thick and at such a high altitude that most glaciologists 
believe it would take several hundred years to melt them at the present 
rate. More alarming, from the East Anglia University's Climatic 
Research Unit, the CRU, disturbing evidence was revealed that the 
climatologists had been increasingly cooking the books. One leaked 
email from 1999--keep in mind, these are the guys who are giving the 
science to the IPCC.

       I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding the real 
     temps to each series for the last 20 years, i.e., from 1981 
     onwards, and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.

  In other words, they were falsifying the increase in the temperature. 
What he is saying is that he changed the numbers to show the warming is 
happening when it has not happened.
  Another e-mail that was revealed in 2009:

       The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming 
     at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't. Our 
     observing system is inadequate.

  Despite this, the IPCC has continued to say global warming is 
continuing to happen.
  The media outcry from these email leaks was surprising because we did 
not hear as much about it in the United States as we did in the UK and 
other places. It seemed to be the mainstream press organizations that 
have been strong partners with the global warming activists, alarmists, 
that began to question their confidence in the whole premise.
  Here are some quotes. Keep in mind these are from legitimate 
organizations, publications, major publications that are credible.
  Christopher Booker of the UK, the Telegraph--one of the largest 
papers in the United Kingdom--said that what has happened with climate 
change is they are talking about falsifying the information to make the 
public believe this is actually happening. They said it is the ``worst 
scientific scandal of our generation.'' That is very serious, I say to 
the Presiding Officer, the ``worst scientific scandal of our 
generation.''
  Clive Crook of the Financial Times stated: ``The closed mindedness of 
these supposed men of science . . . is surprising, even to me. The 
stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.'' That was from the 
Financial Times. We are all familiar with that publication.
  A prominent IPCC physicist said: ``Climategate was a fraud on a scale 
I've never seen.''
  U.N. scientist Dr. Philip Lloyd said: ``The result is NOT 
scientific.''
  Newsweek magazine said: ``Once celebrated climate researchers feeling 
like the used-car salesman.''
  ``Some of the IPCC's most quoted data and recommendations were taken 
straight out of unchecked activist brochures.''
  George Monbiot is a columnist for the Guardian. He was on the other 
side of this issue. He was upset because people were finding out the 
truth and said: ``It is no use pretending that this isn't a major blow. 
The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic unit at the 
University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging . . . I'm 
dismayed and deeply shaken by them . . . I was too trusting of some of 
those who provided the evidence I championed. I would have been a 
better journalist if I had investigated their claims more closely.'' He 
is one of the strongest supporters of global warming.
  Last night we heard more and more, and now we get to the rest of the 
story, and that would be what is most important. I say this is the most 
important because many years ago--this would have been about 2002, when 
almost everyone believed the world was coming to an end and it was 
global warming that was causing it--they all talked about how it must 
be true. Frankly, I thought it was true at that time until we did some 
checking to find out what would it cost to regulate greenhouse gases. I 
mean, even if it were a legitimate problem that was destroying this 
country, what would it cost?
  The first reports we got were from Charles Rivers and from the 
Wharton School. Some of their economists came up with it. The range is 
between $300 to $400 billion a year. This is based off of a regulatory 
threshold of 25,000 tons. This is very tough.
  I have a good friend, Senator Ed Markey, who was in the House with me 
for quite some time. We disagree on this issue, but the last bill that 
came up, the last legislation to force us to have a type of cap-and-
trade, was based on capping these people who emit 25,000 tons or more. 
That is based off of the regulatory threshold of 25,000 tons. Only the 
largest facilities, such as oil refineries and powerplants, would have 
been affected. But doing by regulation what they cannot do by 
legislation, they have to do it under the Clean Air Act.
  This is kind of under the weeds, but it is very important. I thought 
the bill was too costly for the American people. It would regulate 
those who emitted 25,000 tons or more, but the Clean Air Act would 
regulate those at 250 tons or more. That is every church, every school, 
every small shop would be covered, apartment buildings in America.
  So when you stop and think about it, we have never been able to 
calculate. No one disagrees with the fact that if we did it through 
regulation, it would cost between $300 to $400 billion a year.

[[Page 4127]]

For those people who are listening right now, $300 to $400 billion a 
year may not mean too much. But every year I calculate, in my State of 
Oklahoma, how many people, families we have who file a federal tax 
return. Then I do the math. That would have meant $3,000 to each family 
in the State of Oklahoma. So it is a big deal. That is what it would 
cost them.
  While they are extremely costly, the agency is busy doing other 
things that also include other types of regulations. The ozone, for 
example, their regulation--and it hasn't gone through yet--all 77 of my 
counties in Oklahoma would be out of attainment. That would be 7,000 
jobs lost in my State.
  Utility MACT is something that has already been implemented. That is 
what put coal out of business--$100 billion in cost, 1.65 million jobs.
  Boiler MACT is already implemented also. Every manufacturing company 
has a boiler, and so they would regulate those boilers. The cost of 
that is $63 billion, costing 800,000 jobs that were lost. That is 
already implemented.
  The BLM fracking regulations would be about $100,000 per well. On 
fracking, I can remember when hydraulic fracturing was something not 
many people knew much about. I did because the first hydraulic 
fracturing took place in my State of Oklahoma. It was 1948.
  I remember when the last Administrator of the Environmental 
Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, made the statement when I asked her 
the question live on TV--I said: Is it causing groundwater 
contamination? She is the one who said there has never been a 
documented case of groundwater contamination by using hydraulic 
fracturing.
  President Obama, in his effort and his war on fossil fuels, is trying 
to stop them. We have heard him say several times: Well, we have good, 
cheap, abundant, plentiful natural gas to take care of our energy needs 
in America. That part was true, but then the next thing he said was: We 
have to stop hydraulic fracturing. Without hydraulic fracturing, we 
can't get 1 cubic foot of gas.
  What I have tried to do is let the public know the cumulative impact 
of all of these regulations. A lot of people think of regulations as 
only affecting large corporations. If someone talks to Tom Buchanan of 
the State of Oklahoma--he was recently elected president of the 
Oklahoma Farm Bureau. If we ask him what the most critical thing is for 
the farmers in the State of Oklahoma, he will say the overregulation by 
the EPA. He said: Overregulation by the EPA is much more significant to 
the ag community in Oklahoma and across the country than anything in 
the farm bill.
  So the cumulative impact of all of these regulations so far is about 
$630 billion annually and about 9 million jobs lost.
  I would only say that last night they had a good time talking about 
these things, and the same story was told over and over using a 
slightly different slant on it.
  But in terms of the cost, this is the reason that they have tried 
ever since the Kyoto Convention. The first bill was introduced in 2002 
and several of them since then. They were never able to pass a bill 
through the House and the Senate on regulating greenhouse gases because 
cap and trade is so costly.
  But what people have to realize--I know right now as I speak that 
there are a lot of people out there who really believe global warming 
is happening, really believe the world is going to come to an end, 
really believe we are going to have to do something about it, and so we 
start in the United States. So knowing that these people are out 
there--and there are even people in my State of Oklahoma who have 
bought into this--when Lisa Jackson, who at that time--she is not there 
anymore. She was Obama's pick and was the Administrator of the 
Environmental Protection Agency. I asked her the question on the 
record, live on TV in one of our committee hearings--I said: Let's 
assume that we pass legislation and that we impose the cost of $300 to 
$400 billion on the American taxpayer. If that is the case and if they 
did that, would that have the effect of reducing greenhouse gases 
worldwide? Her answer: No, it wouldn't, because the problem isn't in 
the United States; the problem is in China and India and Mexico and 
other places.
  Now, you could carry out that argument even further and say that 
those people who want to do away with emissions and have cap and trade 
in the United States--that could cause it to have actually more, not 
less, emissions of CO2 because we would be chasing our 
manufacturing base to countries that didn't have any requirements. So 
if you really believe it, then still it isn't true.
  I would end with one more quote. Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT, whom we 
talked about 1 minute ago, was asked this question: Why is it that so 
many of the bureaucrats, the very liberals who want government to be 
controlled from Washington, want our lives to be controlled from 
Washington, why is it that they are so concerned with carbon 
regulations? Richard Lindzen's answer was this: ``Controlling carbon is 
a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life.''
  It is unfortunate. There are a lot of people even in this body who 
believe we should have much more power in the Senate. I can assure you 
that the problems we are facing now are problems because of too much 
power being concentrated in Washington, DC.
  With that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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