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Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, simple fact: Climate change is real. It is actually pretty widely known. I think it is a true statement that every person knowledgeable about climate science who is not on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry or its denial operation agrees with that. Actually, a lot of people knowledgeable about climate science who are on the payroll of the fossil fuel industry agree with that. In fact, scientists from Exxon, from Chevron, in a report for API 30, 40 years ago, acknowledged climate science, predicted the harms, and indeed quite accurately predicted the harms we are seeing now.

Given that, I came to the floor to ask my colleagues if they could simply agree on that simple scientific fact--climate change is actually real. Well, unfortunately, to no one's surprise, Republican colleagues could not. So I came back to the floor and broke down the big question--the scientific fact that climate change is real--into some of its component truths, the smaller truths that make up the big truth that climate change is real. Each time faced with simple, well- documented truths, such as sea level rise and economic fallout from climate change, Republicans objected.

Objectors have protested that they are not climate change deniers. Well, you would never know that from their willingness to consider solutions. Indeed, the objectors are stridently opposed to any--any-- climate solutions, and they have made their opposition clear. The problem is that that comes with consequences.

So I will try another simple truth today. It is actually a pair. One, climate change-driven extreme weather events are increasing, and at the same time, the government is dismantling weather monitoring and alert systems. I will ask you to accept those two truths together. I don't think either one is subject to much debate, so I hope we can all agree on that.

As I have explained repeatedly and as anybody knowledgeable in this space pretty well knows, climate change exacerbates extreme weather and disaster events. You can see on this chart the billion-dollar disasters from 1980 to today. It gets worse and worse. It includes winter storms, wildfires, hurricanes, and other severe storms; freezes, flooding, and drought. But to make the chart, it has got to be a billion-dollar disaster. Climate change increases both the frequency and the intensity of these events. Scientists have known this to be true for decades now. It has actually developed to the point where the National Academies could release a report just this month making clear that the attribution science--linking extreme weather to climate change to emissions--is advancing. It is now quite well established.

So what do we know?

We know that the fossil fuel industry is making extreme weather worse. Now we have an even better sense of how much worse; how it is attributable to those companies.

I mentioned flooding. Climate change drives flooding in several ways: wetter hurricanes, for one; sea-level rise for another. And I say this as a Rhode Islander: It is not just our coastal communities that are at risk; climate change increases rainfall intensity--powerful rain bursts--that deliver unprecedented upland flooding. That happens because a warmer atmosphere, just as a matter of simple physics, holds more water.

This chart shows that, from 1970 to 2025, average rainfall intensity increased by 28 percent. That is a lot more water, and it results in more frequent and intense extreme rainfall, which can occur far away from coasts. Ask Asheville, NC.

So how can communities like Asheville know when floods like that are coming?

Well, the answer is, government warning systems from our National Weather Service, which is part of the NOAA.

Most of us use National Weather Service data every day because smartphones rely on Weather Service data to power the weather apps that we look at. If you have gotten a thunderstorm warning, a tornado warning, or a flood alert on your smartphone, that is the Weather Service and its hundreds of civil servants diligently doing the science, tracking the data, and putting out the warnings.

Well, since President Trump took office and unleashed Elon Musk and his team of little DOGE boys, the Weather Service has lost about 600 employees--600. Half of those employees were meteorologists and hydrologists--the people who work on doing the forecasting and the warnings.

As climate change-driven extreme weather continues to worsen these dangers, well, that spells trouble, and people need warnings. We can trace the impact of those DOGE losses to the Weather Service already.

For instance, at the time of the deadly flooding in Kerr County, TX, last year, the Weather Service's San Angelo office was missing a senior hydrologist, a staff forecaster, and a chief meteorologist. They are just not there anymore. The San Antonio office was missing a science officer and a warning coordination meteorologist. What could possibly go wrong? Well, they found out in Kerr County, TX.

In April of this year, East-Central Kansas got a Weather Service tornado warning out with just minutes to spare. Weather forecasters can usually issue tornado warnings hours in advance and then update. They can do those early warnings because, when the government is properly staffed and hasn't had Elon Musk's little minions wrecking it, it can release daily weather balloons in the predawn hours to build the dataset of what is going on. Well, due to staffing cuts, several Weather Service offices now don't have the people to do the predawn launches, so the balloons don't go up until regular office hours. By then, when those balloons went up on April 13, the storms were already on the move. This time, Kansans were warned to seek shelter just in the nick of time, but that is not an acceptable gamble for the U.S. Government.

You know, it is pretty basic government stuff to fund and maintain weather monitoring and alert systems, including adequate staff at the weather Agencies. If we can't do that, well, we will see more lives lost as ever more frequent and dangerous climate-driven weather events catch people by surprise because our Weather Service is understaffed and underfunded. We should certainly be able to agree on that. Climate- driven extreme weather is worsening, and the administration is taking down the capabilities for weather forecasting and warnings. Both are true. I hope that we can agree to this one.

Res. 558. I further ask consent that the resolution be agreed to; that the preamble be agreed to; and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, just a few quick things. First of all, Medicaid, from the budget discussion this morning, is facing a trillion dollars in cuts. Second of all, that is being done by a redtape bomb being dropped on Medicaid recipients that will fall the hardest on the people least capable of the additional redtape and paperwork who have-- you know, are in addiction recovery, have severe mental health issues, have such disabling physical health issues that it is hard for them to take on the new project of keeping up with the Republican redtape and bureaucracy.

And the question of whether it is real or not, you don't have to go any further than looking at the organizations, hospitals, doctors groups, nursing homes, that are having to prepare their finances for that cut. They are not preparing their finances for level Medicaid funding; they are preparing their finances for massive cuts. So that is just the truth of the matter.

With respect to the Weather Service, 600 employees are gone. They were driven out by Elon Musk and his little minions, and there are vacancies in meteorological, hydrological, and weather forecasting positions as a result. That is just another fact.

And, last of all, my colleague from Wisconsin's view of what is happening with climate change is certainly entertaining in certain circles. But if you want to take a look at what is real, you might want to consider going to the universities in Wisconsin--like the quite renown University of Wisconsin--to see that legitimate climate science is what is taught in Wisconsin's own universities, not the entertaining version that we just heard here on the Senate floor, but the real stuff, taught by the people who really know to students who want to know what the truth is. That is the choice Wisconsin made in its universities. They teach the real stuff, and there is no way you can reconcile the real stuff with the entertaining version of climate that we just heard from the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin.

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