[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 7240-7242]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CLIMATE CHANGE

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am back with my increasingly scuffed 
and battered ``Time to Wake Up'' sign now for the 138th time to urge 
that we stop sleepwalking through history. Climate change, as we know, 
is already harming our oceans and our farms, our health and our 
communities. Yet here in the Senate we continue to just stand idly by 
as carbon pollution piles up in the atmosphere, driving unprecedented 
changes in our States. I urge us again to wake up and to act with 
urgency.
  Just 3 years ago the monitoring station atop Hawaii's Mauna Loa 
measured a significant milestone--400 parts per million of carbon 
dioxide in the atmosphere.
  This chart of the data from Mauna Loa illustrates the negligible 
march upwards of our carbon levels. And it is not just at this one spot 
in the Pacific. The World Meteorological Organization maintains a 
global atmosphere watch network of atmospheric monitoring stations that 
spans 100 countries, including stations high in the Alps, Andes, 
Himalayas, as well as in the Arctic and Antarctic. Earlier this month, 
the Cape Grim Station--perhaps aptly named--in remote northwestern 
Tasmania saw its first measurement above 400 parts per million. A few 
days later, Casey Station in Antarctica measured carbon dioxide 
concentrations above 400 parts per million.
  What is significant about 400 parts per million? The Earth has 
existed in a range between 170 and 300 parts per million of carbon 
dioxide for at least the last 800,000 years--probably millions of years 
but at least the last 800,000 years. Homo sapiens as a species have 
only been around for about 200,000 years, so 800,000 really goes back a 
ways. Primitive farming began only

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about 20,000 years ago. Before that, we were just hunter-gatherers. So 
800,000 in that context is a long, safe, comfortable run for this 
planet that has been very good to humankind in that carbon 
concentration window of 170 to 300. Since the Industrial Revolution, 
when the great carbon dump began, we have completely blown out of that 
range.
  At the bottom of this chart is 300.
  What is also apparent in this chart is the breathing, if you will, of 
the planet. The sawtooth effect of this line comes from carbon dioxide 
levels changing as spring triggers the collective inhale of trees and 
other plant life in the Northern Hemisphere.
  This is another version of the same data. The line at the border 
between the white and the lavender is the carbon data for the year 
2011--between 388 and 393 parts per million, going up and then going 
back down and then going up as the Earth inhales and exhales the carbon 
dioxide. In 2012, this was the line, up above 2011. In 2013, this was 
the line. In 2014, this was the line. In 2015--it is hard to see, but 
it is right here where my finger is tracing and then onward from here. 
And this is 2016 to date, and then the data stops. It is going to 
continue. That shelf is just the data ending because of the time of 
year we are in. So every single year we see the carbon dioxide levels 
marching up and up and up.
  Dr. Ralph Keeling is director of the Mauna Loa CO2 Program 
at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a sort of hero among 
scientists. He has said that he doubts carbon dioxide levels at Mauna 
Loa will ever again dip below 400 parts per million.
  As our carbon pollution accumulates, we can actually measure the 
change in the amount of energy trapped by the atmosphere from the Sun. 
NOAA calls this the ``Annual Greenhouse Gas Index,'' and the latest 
edition shows that in just the past 25 years, our carbon emissions have 
increased the heat-trapping capacity of our atmosphere by 50 percent 
above preindustrial levels. That is our doing.
  The director of NOAA's Global Monitoring Division, Dr. Jim Butler, 
said: ``We're dialing up Earth's thermostat in a way that will lock 
more heat into the ocean and atmosphere for thousands of years.''
  Last week the Washington Post reported that both NOAA and NASA found 
April 2016 to have been the warmest April ever recorded. What is 
remarkable is that April was the 12th consecutive month in a row in 
which that month was the warmest ever recorded for that month. That is 
a full year's worth of months that topped every previous such month for 
temperature, and it is the longest streak ever in NOAA's 137-year 
temperature record.
  One thing we know about all of this excess heat is that the oceans 
have absorbed more than 90 percent of it. You think things are weird 
now with the weather, imagine if the oceans had not absorbed more than 
90 percent of that excess heat. That is a measurement, not a theory. 
Unless we are going to repeal the laws of physics, we know that when 
water warms from absorbing that 90-plus percent of the heat energy, it 
expands. That is the law of thermal expansion. As a result, sea levels 
around the world are measurably rising because oceans are warming and 
expanding, as well as because of ice sheets and glaciers melting.
  Sea level rise is a serious matter for my constituents and for all 
coastal communities. We measure approximately 10 inches of sea level 
rise at Naval Station Newport, RI, since the 1930s. Higher sea levels 
erode our shoreline. They push saltwater up into our marshes. Worst of 
all, from our human perspective, the big storms that get launched in 
this weather come riding ashore on higher seas, and they inflict more 
damage and worse flooding in our homes.
  A couple of years ago, I visited South Florida with our friend 
Senator Nelson. In parts of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, sea water 
continues to flood streets and homes at high tide on perfectly calm and 
sunny days. It is not rain. These flooding events are occurring because 
sea level is rising.
  A study published in February by Climate Central determined climate 
change was to blame for approximately three-quarters of the coastal 
floods recorded in the United States between 2005 and 2014, most of 
which were high-tide floods. The blue is the natural floods they 
experienced and the red is the flooding that was driven by climate 
change.
  Dr. Ben Strauss, who led this analysis, said: ``[T]his is really the 
first placing of human fingerprints on coastal floods, and thousands of 
them.'' And the body of science revealing those human fingerprints from 
climate change is growing. In the past, I have said that climate change 
``loads the dice'' for extreme weather, but it is hard to link a 
particular event to climate change. That is beginning to change as the 
science continues to develop and the evidence continues to pile up.
  In March, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and 
Medicine released a report outlining a rigorous science-based system 
for attributing extreme weather events to climate change with 
statistical confidence. In other words, scientists are now able to 
assess how the risk of an extreme weather event has changed since these 
heat-trapping greenhouse gases have altered our climate.
  Certain kinds of extreme events are relatively straightforward to 
assess and attribute heat waves, heavy rains, certain types of drought. 
Other kinds of extreme events, such as tornadoes, wildfires, and the 
frequency and intensity of hurricanes, are more complicated to dissect.
  For example, heat waves are expected to become more common, more 
intense, and longer lasting because of the increase in heat-trapping 
gases in the atmosphere. An analysis of an extreme heat wave last May 
in Australia found it was made 23 times more likely to have happened 
because of climate change. When the odds in favor have become so great, 
it is fair to say, according to one scientist associated with that 
report, that ``some episodes of extreme heat would have been virtually 
impossible without climate change.'' The attribution to specific events 
is closing in.
  Dr. Heidi Cullen, chief scientist at Climate Central and a 
contributor to the National Academies report, has said:

       The days of saying no single weather event can be linked to 
     climate change are over. For many extreme weather events, the 
     link is now strong.

  Australian researchers have determined that the ocean warming that 
led to widespread and devastating coral bleaching on the Great Barrier 
Reef in March was made not 23 times more likely but 175 times more 
likely by human-caused climate change. Average water temperatures in 
the Coral Sea are up about 1.5 degrees Celsius since 1900. We measure 
that. And about one-half of that 1.5 degrees is due to natural 
variability, and 1 whole degree of it is from greenhouse gas emissions.
  David Kline, a coral reef scientist at the Scripps Institution of 
Oceanography, has said: ``We've had evidence before'' that ``human-
induced climate change is behind the increase in severity and frequency 
of bleaching events. But this is the smoking gun.''
  By the way, a bleaching event on a coral reef is like a heart attack 
in a human. The reef may survive it, but it will take a long time to 
recover, and very often the reef simply dies. With all of that 
happening, here we are in this Chamber, sitting on our hands, helpless. 
We have a responsibility, not only to the voters of today but to the 
generations who will follow us and inherit the world as we leave it to 
them.
  Here is how Professor of Oceanography, Dr. Laura Faye Tenenbaum, at 
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, describes her predicament:

       As a college professor who lectures on climate change, I 
     will have to find a way to look into those 70 sets of eyes 
     that have learned all semester long to trust me and somehow 
     explain to those students, my students--who still believe in 
     their young minds that success mostly depends on good grades 
     and hard work, who believe in fairness, evenhandedness and 
     opportunity--how much we as people have altered our 
     environment, and that they will end up facing the 
     consequences of our inability to act.


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  Where do we look for leadership? Not to one of the leading 
Presidential contenders. This character says he is just ``not a great 
believer in man-made climate change.'' So there. Like the science cares 
what his opinion is. All the science? The decades of research by 
thousands of scientists across the globe, the pride of the scientific 
profession? It is a ``hoax,'' he said, a ``con job,'' 
``pseudoscience,'' and ``BS.'' I guess in that latter characterization, 
he can claim some real expertise. To my Republican colleagues, I have 
to ask: Is that really the line that we want to have about this 
problem? Is this your guy? Are you going to stand by him on this stuff?
  But wait, it actually gets better. Yesterday POLITICO reported the 
New York billionaire is also applying for permission to build a 
seawall. He is a wall-building kind of guy, and he wants to build a 
seawall to protect his seaside golf resort. What does he want to 
protect his golf resort from with a wall--rapist Mexicans coming across 
the border? No. What he wants to defend his seaside golf resort from 
with a wall is ``global warming and its effects.''
  Remember the sea level rise I talked about? That is correct. That is 
what he said. Climate change is a hoax when his political interests 
dictate, but then it is real and a threat when his economic interests 
are involved. Throughout the discussion of climate change, how often we 
see this--say one thing, do another.
  I have to close by reminding my colleagues that my home State of 
Rhode Island is the Ocean State. We cannot fail to take climate change 
seriously. If this is uncomfortable for my colleagues, I apologize, but 
I don't care. I have obligations to my State that I must discharge. We 
in Rhode Island are going to stand with America's leading research 
institutions and scientists, we are going to stand with our national 
security experts, we are going to stand with the great American 
corporations such as Apple, Google, Mars, and National Grid, we are 
going to stand with President Obama, and we are going to stand with 
Pope Francis to do everything we can to face this climate challenge 
head-on. I hope that soon one day it will be time when we can all wake 
up and stand together.
  I yield the floor.

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