Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, first of all, I appreciate your coming from your meeting to preside. As we begin the new Congress and a new administration, we begin a new chapter on energy and environmental policy, and it is a time that environmental activists, the United Nations, and many of my Democratic colleagues have been salivating for for years. The stars are all aligned. Democrats control both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, and the Supreme Court has spoken now that carbon dioxide is a pollutant under the Clear Air Act, even though it was a 5-to-4 decision. It is kind of interesting how something can be a pollutant with a 5-to-4 decision.
It is believed the stage has been set for a home run on mandatory Kyoto-like climate controls and the dawn of a new bustling green energy economy. However, before many of my colleagues rush to leap before they look, I wish to remind them of some very unfortunate developments that may complicate their early action on items on their wish lists. I ask my colleagues to at least consider some of the facts I will be revealing over the next series of speeches and to keep an open mind before rushing to sweeping action after waiting for so many years.
The scale and pace of the climate proposals and the regulatory actions we have debated in the past, including the recently failed Lieberman-Warner bill and the ones we will likely be debating this Congress, leave little room for error in this fragile, recession-ridden economy, and the inflated promises of a sweeping green jobs revolution need an honest and frank reality. The proponents of mandatory global warming controls need to be honest with the American people. The purpose of these programs is to ration fossil-based energy by making it more expensive and therefore less appealing for public consumption. It is a regressive tax that imposes a greater burden relative to resources on the poor than it does on the rich. Let me say that again. The purpose of these programs is to ration the fossil fuel-based energy by making it more expensive to all Americans and therefore less appealing for public consumption. But it is a regressive tax, and we have talked about this before. It is one that punishes those whose resources have to be used for such purposes as being able to operate their vehicles and heat their homes.
Advocates may argue that the redistribution of wealth toward the income consumers will offset the balance of revenue or taxes being taken in, but we learned firsthand during the Lieberman-Warner debate that this simply is not true. I don't like the argument that we have equal distribution of wealth efforts that are going to take a regressive nature out of the punitive values of this type of program. To me, there is something un-American about that. But while the bill's sponsors try to convince us there is actually tax relief in the bill, we learn that families--now I am talking about the Lieberman-Warner bill, and this was only about 8 months ago, the Lieberman-Warner bill--we learn that families with workers will still have to pay $6.7 trillion into the system in the form of higher energy costs to get back an estimated $802 billion in tax relief. That is a return of $1 out of every $8.40 paid. It is time that proponents of climate policies be honest. It is expensive, and it is going to cost taxpayers a lot of money.
You know, it doesn't really matter which form we use. We have gone through, first of all, the Kyoto Treaty. We came this close to passing the Kyoto Treaty, and it wasn't until the Wharton School of Economics came along with the econometrics survey and they determined it would cost some $300 billion a year to join onto and actually try to achieve the emission requirements of Kyoto. Then along came the McCain-Lieberman bill and then after that the Warner- Lieberman bill. And cap and trade is going to be about the same amount. They may massage it a little bit, but we are still talking in the neighborhood of $300 billion a year. That equates to over $2,000 for each taxpaying family in America. So it is huge.
In the coming weeks, I will go into more detail about other false promises proponents of mandatory global warming policies are advocating. Among them are a reality check on green projects--the number of new green jobs from a climate regime are overstated compared to the number of manufacturing jobs lost, and we know from the National Association of Manufacturers how many jobs would have been lost with any of these schemes in the past; a review of the weaknesses of offset policies--companies have bought offsets which are not real; and a review of the attempts to estimate the cost of inaction. Many advocates are claiming it [Page: S198] is more expensive to do nothing than the cost of a cap and trade, but they are untested and nontransparent economic modeling.
All these issues will play a vital role in the debate on both energy and global warming policy, which have become unavoidably intertwined. You can't really talk about one without the other. You can't talk about what you are going to do on greenhouse gases or CO
2 or cap and trade without affecting our overall energy policy. When there are sensible proposals debated in Congress that can achieve double benefits of reducing emissions and making America's energy supply more stable, diverse, and affordable, then we will look forward to working on a bipartisan basis to achieving these goals. Increasing our domestic energy production and lowering our dependence on foreign oil are two issues that are critically important to myself and my State of Oklahoma, and of course this will include renewables and new green jobs.
However, we need to be smart and realistic about these policies. Unfortunately, I fear that the scale and pace many of my colleagues will be advocating with mandatory climate policies are unrealistic, extraordinarily narrowly expensive, and ill-advised. What is the driver for these unrealistic proposals that seem to make unnecessarily abrupt and painful increases in our energy costs in the near term? It is all rooted in global warming science.
I have given over 12 speeches, averaging over an hour apiece, on the science of global warming over the past few years. Today, I wish to update my colleagues on some of the latest science that has not yet been reported in the mainstream media. I will simply be a disseminator of this information and not a commentator. I have to say that because I am not a scientist, nor is anyone else that I know of in this body a scientist. So the statements I will make will be quoting people who are qualified and are scientists, and this is what my role will be.
Before I do that, I ask all my colleagues to think about the issue. Science should not be reviewed through any one frame. It is not partisan, it is not regional; however, the political process has largely engulfed science behind climate change. As I have documented in speeches before, the politicizing of the global warming science has become one of the most unfortunate developments in the last 8 years. Anytime one questions a hypothesis or a conclusion that does not fall in line with ``the sky is falling'' doom and gloom scenario of global warming alarmists, it is ridiculed, written off, denigrated, and not reported by the mainstream media. Yet anytime a more severe interpretation or alarming statistic is related, it is headline grabbing in the news. Objective, transparent, and verifiable science gets lost in the public dialog.
Funding has a way of influencing this debate. The other day there was an article in the Bloomberg News--and I say this for those individuals who might be feeling sorry for Al Gore--it was reported that his net worth in 2000 was between $1 million and $2 million and it is now in excess of $100 million today, so he will be all right.
When the stakes of the policy outcomes with cap and trade and other mandatory climate proposals are this high for the American people, I hope the Senate this year will embrace my calls for objectivity and transparency in science and modeling. As policymakers, it is our duty to make sure models developed by agencies and used in policy are useful for their intended purpose, articulate major assumptions and
uncertainties, and separate scientific conclusions from policy judgments.
However, with global warming science this has not been the case. With many left-of-center scientists, the environmental activists now realize the so-called consensus on manmade global warming is not holding up.
The leftwing blog Huffington Post--this is a left-leaning organization--surprised a lot of people by featuring an article on January 3, 2008, by Harold Ambler demanding an apology from Gore for promoting unfounded global warming fears. The Huffington Post--again, left leaning--article accused Gore of telling the biggest whopper ever sold to the American public in the history of mankind because he claimed the science was settled on global warming. The Huffington Post article, entitled ``Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted,'' adds, ``It is Mr. Gore and his brethren who are flat-Earthers, not the skeptics.'' Again, it is not myself, not Jim Inhofe saying this about Gore; it is the leftwing blog, the Huffington Post, saying these things.
The Huffington Post article continues:
Let us neither cripple our own economy by mislabeling carbon dioxide a pollutant nor discourage development in the Third World, where suffering continues unabated day after day.
Another left-of-center atmospheric scientist who has descended on the manmade climate fears is the U.K.'s Richard Courtney, a U.N.--and let's keep in mind where all this started. A lot of people forget this was started by the United Nations--the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They came out and said: Oh, it is manmade gases, anthropogenic gases, CO
2, methane that are causing climate change. And this person used to be on that panel. He was an expert reviewer in the U.K.-based climate and atmospheric science, a consultant, and a self-described Socialist who also happens to reject manmade climate fears. Joining Courtney are many of the other progressive environmental scientists. Former Green Peace member and Finnish scientist Dr. Jarl Ahlbeck, a lecturer of environmental technology and a chemical engineer at the University of Finland who has authored 200 scientific publications, is also skeptical of manmade climate doom. Ahlbeck wrote in 2008:
Contrary to common belief, there has been no or little global warming since 1995, and this is shown by two completely independent data sets. But so far, real measurements give no ground for concern about catastrophic future warming.
This is kind of interesting because what he is saying--and this is a guy who started out with the United Nations in the beginning, with the IPCC--is that right now we are actually in a cooling period. I think no one debates that now. We have had the most severe weather, and I will have another talk I will try to get in next week about what is happening around the country right now. It isn't global warming, it is global cooling. People forget God is still up there and we go through these cycles. I can remember the middle 1970s when they were saying there is another ice age coming and we are all going to die. Those same people--and there was an article in Time magazine at that time--are the ones now saying we are going to die, but it is for a different reason, it is global warming.
Lifelong liberal Democrat Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a retired Navy meteorologist with a Ph.D. in physical chemistry, also declared his dissent of warming fears in 2008. He said:
As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering claptrap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science.
Finally, CNN--not a bastion of conservatism--had yet another of its meteorologists dissent from warming fears. Meteorologist Chad Myers, a meteorologist for 22 years, certified by the American Meteorological Society, spoke out against anthropogenic climate claims on CNN in December.
You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant. Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big--I think we are going to die from the lack of fresh water or we are going to die from some type of ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.
Myers joins fellow CNN meteorologist--by the way, CNN has been very biased all this time. I think we know that, as has the Weather Channel, because there is a lot of money in perpetuating this myth. Myers was joined by his fellow CNN meteorologist, Rob Marciano, who compared Gore's film to fiction in 2007, and CNN anchor Lou Dobbs just said of a global warming fear promotion on January 5 of this year, ``It's almost a religion without any question.''
Recently, I released a new report on climate scientists which documents many of the studies ignored by the mainstream media.
Here it is right here. This is one that is actually too large to put into the Congressional Record. In here, in the report, are 650 scientists who have challenged manmade global warming [Page: S199] claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We talked about that. I have been detailing these science issues for a number of years.
In a July 28, 2003, floor speech in this Chamber I said: The issue of global warming ``is far from settled, and indeed is seriously disputed.'' The science continues to evolve.
I explained that ``anyone who pays even cursory attention to the issue understands that scientists vigorously disagree over whether human activities are responsible for global warming, or whether those activities will precipitate natural disasters.''
I noted--and this is what I said in 2003:
Not only is there a debate, but (at least in certain corridors) the debate is shifting away from those who subscribe to global warming alarmism.
That was in 2005. After that speech, I led the charge against the McCain-Lieberman global warming cap-and-trade bill--that would be in 2003, then again in 2005--both times easily defeating the bills. At the time it was a lonely battle. Only a few people came down to help me on the floor. I remember so well in 2005 when I was alone down here on the floor of the Senate for 5 consecutive days that we had it on the floor, about 10 hours a day. Very few people came down and were willing to join me on the Senate floor.
That has changed. If you fastforward from 2005 to 2008, we had the Warner-Lieberman bill on the floor. At that time I had over 25 Senators come down and join me. You are seeing people who no longer fear the money generated by the moveon.orgs, the Hollywood elitists, those individuals who have millions of dollars to put into campaigns, to throw into the system. We are getting a lot of encouragement. Things have changed. In fact, at the end of the bill that we had that is referred to sometimes as either the Lieberman-Warner bill or the Boxer climate tax bill, they are only able to get about 37 people from their own party, from this side of the aisle over here, who would support it. That is a major change from the past.
After this election that number has only gone up from 37 to 39. You are not getting close to the 60 votes necessary to try to inflict this economic damage on the United States.
The Republicans were prepared to debate the bill--this is the Warner-Lieberman bill--and were ready to offer amendments, but the Democrats didn't want to debate, much less vote, on our amendments that were aimed at protecting American families and workers from the devastating economic impacts of the bill. When faced with the inconvenient truth of the bill's impact on skyrocketing gas prices, it was Democratic Senators who wanted to see the bill die a quick death.
By the way, we had a list of some 10 Democratic Senators who, in a very responsible way, said we will go ahead and vote on some of these amendments, but when it comes to final passage, we are not going to vote on it.
After the bill failed, the Wall Street Journal aptly noted that environmentalists are stunned that their global warming agenda is in collapse. The paper added:
The green groups now look as politically intimidating as the skinny kid on the beach who has sand kicked in his face.
The paper quoted a political analyst who noted that ``this issue is starting to feel like the Hillary health care plan again.''
Despite the claims that we must act now to prevent climate crisis, the climate tax bill would not have resulted in any action whatsoever. The bill, often touted as an insurance policy against global warming, would instead have been all economic pain and no climate gain. This is because without a global treaty, the binding commitments by both the developing and developed countries is not going to work.
Let's say we believed that manmade, anthropogenic gases were the major cause of climate change and the debate was over if we do something just unilaterally in the United States of America. All that would do is cause a flight of our manufacturing jobs overseas to countries such as India and China and Mexico--places where they do not have any kind of a restriction on the greenhouse gases. So it would have a net increase, if we were to pass one of these. Yet we are the ones who would be saddled with a $300 billion-a-year tax bill.
Americans are suspicious of the need for solutions to global warming. The Gallup Poll released on Earth Day 2008 revealed the American public's concern about manmade global warming has remained unchanged since 1989. According to Gallup, and this is a quote from the report, they said:
Despite the enormous attention paid to global warming over the past several years, the average American is in some ways no more worried about it than they were in years past.
In other words, after all the money, all the hype, all the biased media over the past few years, people have not moved in that direction. They know better. They know when they have been duped.
What perhaps is the most striking is that, aside from the economics of global warming solutions, the science has continued to move in the direction I predicted in 2003. In 2007 I released a Senate minority report detailing over 400 scientists disputing manmade global warming claims. In the inconvenient real world climate study, developments are refuting global warming fears. That was 2007, just a year ago.
In 2008, in the tail end of 2008, for the benefit of public dissemination we have updated our report, and the so-called consensus on global warming is even more in dispute. That is the report I have right here. Over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe challenge manmade global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and by former Vice President Al Gore. Our new 233-page U.S. Senate minority report features the skeptical voices of over 650 prominent international scientists, including many current and former U.N. IPCC scientists who have now turned against the U.N. IPCC.
This updated report includes an additional 250--and growing, I might add; it has grown since then--scientists and climate researchers since the initial release in December of 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of the U.N. scientists--only 52 of them--who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.
This is very significant. I know it is kind of heavy
lifting to understand this, but the U.N. IPCC, that started this whole thing, they have this analysis that is made and updated, but you never get the full report by any of the scientists. It is merely the summary for policymakers. That is us. That is for the politicians out there. So they only have 52 scientists who signed this report. We are talking about 650 scientists versus 52.
The chorus of skeptical scientific voices grew louder in 2008 as a steady stream of peer-reviewed studies, analyses, real-world data, and inconvenient developments challenged the U.N.'s and former Vice President Al Gore's claims that the ``science is settled,'' and there is a ``consensus.'' Despite what is now being portrayed in the media on a range of issues, 2008 proved to be devastating for the promoters of manmade climate fears.
In addition, the following developments further secured 2008 as the year the ``consensus collapsed.'' Russian scientists ``rejected the very idea that carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming.
Frankly, they laugh. I have had meetings with them. They laugh at it. In Milan, when they had one of the big United Nations meetings where they tried to coerce countries into supporting this, the Russians at that time were in a position, since they have these vast areas that are totally undeveloped--I remember flying across Siberia a few years ago. I am a pilot and flew an airplane across the world, and I remember flying across Siberia and looking down and seeing time zone after time zone where you don't see any people, nothing but natural resources. Yet all of those would go in the formula, so they would be great big recipients if they are able to get some kind of international treaty.
In addition to that, the American Physical Society editor conceded that ``a considerable presence'' of scientific skeptics exists. An international team of scientists countered the U.N. IPCC, declaring, ``Nature, not human activity, rules the climate.''
India issued a report challenging global warming fears. A team of international scientists demanded the U.N. [Page: S200] IPCC ``be called to account and cease its deceptive practices,'' and a canvass of more than 51,000 Canadian scientists revealed that 68 percent disagree that global warming science is ``settled.''
We are not talking about politicians, people, Senators like me and others in this room. We are talking about real scientists who are out there. We are talking about 68 percent of the scientists in Canada now have come to recognize this. That was not true 5 years ago. Most were on the other side of this issue, but they have now looked at it and realize they have been duped. This new report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition challenging significant aspects of the claims of the United Nations IPCC and Al Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologist's equivalent of the Olympic Games, and held in very high esteem, was held in Norway in August 2008, just a few months ago, and prominently featured the voices of scientists skeptical of manmade global warming fears. The conference was reportedly overwhelmed with skeptical scientists, with ``two-thirds of the presenters and question-askers who were hostile to, even dismissive of, the United Nations IPCC.''
Even the mainstream media in 2008 began to take notice of the expanding number of scientists serving as ``consensus busters.'' A November 25, 2008, article in Politico--everyone in Washington reads that--noted that a ``growing accumulation'' of science is challenging warming fears, and added that the ``science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.'' Canada's National Post noted on October 20, 2008, that ``the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly.'' New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin noted on March 6, 2008, ``As we all know, climate science is not a numbers game (there are heaps of signed statements by folks with advanced degrees on all sides of this issue).'' I agree with him, and it's a shame that we have had to resort to a numbers game. It should be focused on objective, transparent and peer reviewed science, and debate should not be quarantined. In 2007, Washington Post staff writer Juliet Eilperin conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics ``appear to be expanding rather than shrinking.''
Skeptical scientists are gaining recognition despite what many say is a bias against them in parts of the scientific community and are facing significant funding disadvantages. Dr. William M. Briggs, a climate statistician who serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee, explained that his colleagues described ``absolute horror stories of what happened to them when they tried getting papers published that explored non-`consensus' views.'' In a March 4, 2008, report Briggs described the behavior as ``really outrageous and unethical ..... on the parts of some editors. I was shocked.''
Again, this is not me saying this; there are scientists. Here are some of the highlights of my 2008 Senate minority report featuring over 650 international scientists dissenting from man-made climate claims.
Incidentally, this report I have--it was my intention to make this report of these 650 scientists a part of the Record. However, very wisely this body has said we do not want the expense. Something like this would be so overwhelming that some Senators who are conservatives would rather not do it. The report is here. It is a matter of public record. You can get a lot of this on my Web site, ewo.senate.com.
Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever, stated:
I am a skeptic ..... Global warming has become a new religion.
Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called ``among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years,'' stated:
Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly. ..... As a scientist I remain skeptical ..... The main basis of the claim that man's release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models.
We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.
Here, no one can argue with Dr. Simpson.
The United Nations IPCC Japanese scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning Ph.D. environmental physical chemist, stated--this is from all over the world now, this is in Japan.
Warming fears are the worst scientific scandal in the history. ..... When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.
Indian geologist Dr. Arun Ahluwalia of Punjab University, and a board member of the U.N.-supported International Year of the Planet, stated:
The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it does not listen to others. It does not have open minds. I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Price has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists.
Solar physicist Dr. Pal Brekke, senior advisor to the Norwegian Space Center in Oslo, has published more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the Sun and solar interaction with the Earth. Brekke stated:
Anyone who claims that the debate is over and the conclusions are firm has a fundamentally unscientific approach to one of the most momentous issues of our time.
These are all top scientists. No one can discredit these people. You might wonder, why is it that so many people want us to believe that maybe bad old man is responsible for those horrible things that are going to happen, that are not going to happen? There are a lot of reasons for that. A lot of money behind this comes from organizations such as those we find in some of the Hollywood groups, moveon.org, George Soros, and different foundations such as the Hines Foundation that do want to stop the progress in this country.
But, anyway, back to some of these scientists. Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico--I am covering all of these countries now. These are the top scientists in these countries--states:
Models and forecasts of the UN IPCC are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results and scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.
Surprise, surprise. The Sun warms things.
U.S. Government atmospheric scientist Stanley Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA stated:
It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem that there is only a fringe of scientists who do not buy into anthropogenic global warming.
Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, stated:
Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapor and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.
This has always happened. We have gone through these stages. I do not want to make this part without documentation, but when we went through one of the other warming periods in this country, it was back before they had the combustion engine, back before CO
2 was even around yet. Here we are today with all of these people, the names are the top scientists in the world who are making these statements. A lot of them used to be on the other side of this issue. That was back when they were being threatened with withdrawal of various funding for the projects they had, and now they are back on the other side. Andrei Kapitsa, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher, stated:
The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way around ..... A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 United Nations conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact.
Prominent Hungarian physicist and environmental researcher Dr. Miklos Zagoni reversed his view. He was on the other side of this issue, on manmade warming. He is now a skeptic. Zagoni, once Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol, stated that:
Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less [Page: S201] moisture in the air, keeping the overall greenhouse gases content in accord with the necessary balance conditions.
Again, that is a very prominent scientist, perhaps considered the most prominent scientist in Hungary.
Geologist Dr. David Gee, the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress, who has authored 130-plus peer-reviewed papers, who is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden, stated:
For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?
Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief--he was another one on the other side of this issue, another one of the many scientists who reversed his belief on manmade warming to become a skeptic--is a former member of the Dutch U.N. IPCC committee. He stated:
Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp ..... Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.
South African nuclear physicist and chemical engineer Dr. Philip Lloyd was also one of them who was very prominent in the United Nations IPCC in years past. He was the co-coordinating lead author who has authored over 150 refereed publications, and he stated:
The quality of CO
2 we produce is insignificant in terms of natural circulation between air, water and soil ..... I am doing a detailed assessment of the U.N. IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policymakers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science.
I am actually getting that report. As we have said, we have been looking at these reports for policymakers for a long time. And those people on the other side would have you believe that is the National Academy of Sciences, that is the United Nations. It is not scientists. This is a summary for policymakers. These are politicians who have an agenda.
Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh, stated:
Many scientists are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.
This is the intimidation I was talking about.
Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut, who served as staff physicist at MIT, stated:
All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.
Which, incidentally, happens to be going on right now. Environmental scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast Group, who has more than 150 published articles--these guys are smart guys. This is not politicians talking, these are the incontrovertible scientists who cannot be challenged--stated:
Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is dangerous nonsense ..... The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major business and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.
Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan, stated:
CO
2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another ..... Every scientist knows this, but it doesn't pay to say so ..... Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver's seat and developing nations walking barefoot.
Award-winning paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and the head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata said:
The global warming scaremongering has its justifications in the fact that it is something that generates funds.
There we go again. All of these different groups and these foundations who will fund people who will agree to support their political positions.
Atmospheric scientist Dr. Art Douglas, former chair of the Atmospheric Sciences Department at Creighton University in Omaha, NE, and author of numerous peer-reviewed publications, stated:
Whatever the weather, it's not being caused by global warming. If anything, the climate may be starting into a cooling period.
And this is, by the way, something that nobody questions now; we are going well into a cooling period.
Chemist Dr. Patrick Frank, who has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, stated:
But there is no falsifiable scientific basis whatever to assert this warming is caused by human-produced greenhouse gasses, because current physical theory is too grossly inadequate to establish any cause at all.
Award-winning NASA astronaut and moonwalker Jack Schmitt, who flew on the Apollo 17 mission and formerly of the Norwegian Geological Survey, and for the U.S. Geological Survey, stated:
The global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decisionmaking. It has no place in the Society's activities.
By the way, I would have to add to that, another one of the motivations in the United Nations is they are always critical of us when we threaten to withhold some of the funding, when they are advocating policies that are contrary to our policies in the United States. They would love nothing more than to have some type of a funding mechanism where they did not have to be accountable to the United States or any other nation.
Climatologist Dr. Richard Keen, of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado, stated:
Earth has cooled since 1998 in defiance of the predictions by the U.N. IPCC ..... The global temperature for 2007 was the coldest in a decade and the coldest of the millennium ..... which is why global warming is now called climate change.
This is kind of interesting. Next week I am going to put together what has been happening recently in this cooling period, the fact that we have had records that are set all around the United States and all around the world, and that is exactly what Dr. Richard Keen is talking about now. We are in a cooling period. It has to drive these global warming people nuts to have to recognize that.
Dr. G. LeBlanc Smith, a retired principal research scientist with Australia's CSIRO, stated:
I have yet to see credible proof of carbon dioxide driving climate change, let alone manmade CO
2 driving it. The atmosphere hot-spot is missing and the ice core data refute this. When will we collectively awake from this deceptive delusion?
That is G. LeBlanc Smith of Australia, one of the top scientists in Australia.
The distinguished scientists featured in this new report are experts in diverse fields, including climatology, geology, biology, glaciology, biogeography, meteorology, oceanography, economics, chemistry, mathematics, environmental sciences, astrophysics, engineering physics, and paleoclimatology.
Some of those profiled have won Nobel Prizes for their outstanding contribution to their field of expertise and many shared a portion of the U.N. IPCC Nobel Peace Price with Al Gore.
The notion of hundreds or thousands of U.N. scientists agreeing to a scientific statement does not hold up to scrutiny--just not true.
Recent research by Australian climate data analyst John McLean revealed that the IPCC's peer-review process for the Summary for Policymakers leaves much to be desired. The 52 scientists who participated in the 2007 IPCC Summary for Policymakers had to adhere to the wishes of the United Nations political leaders and delegates in a process described as more closely resembling a political party's convention platform battle, not a scientific process.
Only 52 scientists wrote the media-hyped U.N. summary for policymakers, and it was actually published by the politicians and not the scientists. One former U.N. IPCC scientist bluntly told EPW, our committee, how the United Nations' IPCC summary for policymakers distorted the scientists' work. He said:
I have found examples of a Summary saying precisely the opposite of what the scientists said.
This was from South African nuclear physicist and chemical engineer Dr. Philip Lloyd, a U.N. IPCC co-coordinating lead author who has authored over 150 referred publications. A 2008 international report of the U.N. found [Page: S202] its climate agency ``rife with bad practices.'' Others like to note that the National Academy of Sciences and the American Meteorological Society have issued statements endorsing the so-called consensus view that man is driving global warming. But both the NAS and the AMS never allowed member scientists to directly vote on these climate statements. Essentially only two dozen or so members of the governing bodies of these institutions produced a consensus statement. This report gives a voice to the rank-and-file scientists who were shut out of the process. So they are very thankful.
Many of these scientists are glad that we have this report so that they now have access to the truth and they can come out from hiding.
The more than 650 scientists expressing skepticism comes after the U.N. IPCC Chairman Pachauri implied that there were only about a dozen skeptical scientists left in the world. Former Vice President Gore has claimed that scientists skeptical of climate change are akin to flat Earth society members and similar in number to those who believe that the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona. It is a shame that proponents have now been reduced to name calling. That is what we are getting now, name calling and insults. When you lose your logic, this is what happens. They start the name calling and insults because they don't have logic.
Examples of consensus claims made by promoters of manmade climate fears: The U.N. special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harmel Brundtland, on May 10, 2007, declared that the debate is over and added that ``it's completely immoral, even, to question the U.N.'s scientific consensus.''
The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Executive Secretary said it was criminally irresponsible to ignore the urgency of global warming. This was on November 12, 2007.
ABC News global warming reporter Bill Blakemore reported on August 30, 2006:
After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such [scientific] debate on global warming.
While the dissenting scientists contained in the report hold a diverse range of views, they generally rally around four key points. No. 1, the Earth is currently well within national climate variability. We are talking about 650 of the top scientists in the world. No. 2, almost all climate fear is generated by unproven computer model predictions. No. 3, an abundance of peer-reviewed studies continues to debunk rising CO
2 fears. No. 4, consensus has been manufactured for political and not scientific purposes. Those four things, all of these 650 top scientists in the world agree to. Since I released the report on December 11, other scientists have contacted us to be included.
On December 22, 11 more scientists were added, including meteorologists from Germany, the Netherlands, and CNN. Even CNN, very much on the other side of this issue, two more of their meteorologists have come over and become skeptics, as well as professors from MIT, the University of Arizona, and other institutions. One prominent scientist added was award-winning Princeton University physicist Will Happer, who was reportedly fired by former Vice President Al Gore in 1993 for failing to adhere to Gore's scientific views. Happer has now declared manmade global warming fears as mistaken. Happer is a professor in the Department of Physics at Princeton University and former director of energy research at the Department of Energy who has published over 200 scientific papers and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Scientists, and the National Academy of Sciences. Happer does not mince words when it comes to warming fears. He said:
I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken ..... Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science.
As we face a new administration and a U.N. eager to draw the U.S. into its climate policy, let's not forget that this aspect of the debate is still alive and well and only growing. We should not become weary of calling into question policy choices when they are driven by still evolving scientific assessment, especially when the stakes are so high and the costs are so extraordinary. Let us hope this administration and our news media recognize this new reality as we move forward into this new Congress.
On a personal note, it has been a lonely fight. For the last 6 years I have been talking about the Hollywood and media-driven fear that tries to convince us that those who are fueling this machine called America are somehow evil and fully responsible for global warming. This is absurd. We all know better. It does take power to run this machine we call America. In the past, the only argument that defeated all the cap-and-trade schemes was the economic argument. I think you can argue each one differently, saying no, this wouldn't cost the same as adhering to emissions required by Kyoto back in the Kyoto treaty days. But any time you get into a cap and trade of CO
2, it is going to cost about $300 billion annually in taxes. I was critical of my colleagues, the 75 Senators who voted to give an unelected bureaucrat, Secretary Paulson, $700 billion to do with as he wished with no oversight. I was critical of that. Of course, that is a one-shot deal. This was every year, a $300 billion annual tax increase. It was too much, even if the science was fully settled. Now the science is shifting dramatically to the other side. So I believe we need to be looking, even if we use their own figures of $6.7 trillion as the cost of the life of a similar bill to the Lieberman-Warner bill.
I conclude by repeating something I have said many times: Even if you believe this, if you believe that manmade gas is a major cause of climate change, what good would it do for us unilaterally in the United States to impose a financial hardship, $300 billion a year, on people in the United States, when all that would do logically is cause our manufacturing base to further erode and to go to countries such as China and India and Mexico, other countries that have no emission restrictions at all. It would be a $300 billion tax on us every year, and it would have the effect of increasing the net amount of emissions worldwide.
Last year I didn't say very much about the science. In fact, when we had the Lieberman-Warner bill up, I made the statement: Let's assume, for debate of this bill, that the science is all there and that it is settled. Then I pursued the economic argument. The other side didn't like it because they wanted to debate the science. I said: Let's assume you are right. You are not, but let's assume you are. This is something that we could not afford, the cost. Sometimes we throw around big figures. I often have said about the $700 billion bailout that I opposed and that 75 Senators voted for, if you stopped and realized the number of taxpayers or families who file a tax return and do the math, this comes to $5,000 a family. If you look at this, this would be over $2,000 a family every year. We want to be sure we are right if we do something. Let's go forward. Let's look at it, but let's pay attention more than anything else at this time not just to the economics but the fact that without doubt, the science is shifting. This report, 650 of the top scientists and growing every day, is conclusive in my mind that many of those individuals who were on the other side of this issue are now standing up to the intimidation and have become skeptics.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
