Climate Change

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, as Senator Franken has pointed out, despite the efforts to mislead and create doubt, the jury is not out on whether climate change is happening and being caused by manmade carbon pollution; the verdict is, in fact, in, and the verdict is clear, as shown by this group of scientific organizations that signed a letter supporting our efforts to do something about carbon pollution in the Senate back in October of 2009: the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the Geophysical Union, the Meteorological Society, the Natural Science Collections Alliance, the Botanical Society of America.

Virtually every significant scientific organization accepts that these are the facts and that the verdict is in, and, indeed, there is some recent added support. The scientific community continues to examine this question.

A recent report by James Hansen and Makiko Sato says:

Climate change is likely to be the predominant scientific, economic, political and moral issue of the 21st century. The fate of humanity and nature may depend upon early recognition and understanding of human-made effects on Earth's climate.

They continue:

Earth is poised to experience strong amplifying polar feedbacks in response to moderate global warming. Thus, goals of limiting human-made warming to 2 degrees Celsius are not sufficient--they are prescriptions for disaster.

Another recent report, ``Climate Change and European Marine Ecosystem Research,'' reads as follows:

There is no doubt that rapid global warming and ocean acidification are real, and very high confidence that both are forced by human activities and emissions of carbon dioxide. Climate change effects are especially evident in the oceans.

I will get into that later on in our colloquy a little bit further.

Levels of atmospheric CO

2 are accelerating.

A third report, ``The World Energy Outlook for 2011,'' says:

Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions reached 30.4 Gt in 2010, 5.3% above 2009, representing almost unprecedented annual growth. In the New Policies Scenario, our central scenario, CO

2 emissions continue to increase, reaching 36.4 Gt in 2035, and leading to an emissions trajectory consistent with a long-term global temperature increase of 3.5 degrees Centigrade.

What does that mean?

The expected warming of more than 3.5 degrees Centigrade in the New Policies Scenario would have severe consequences: a sea level rise of up to 2 metres, causing dislocation of human settlements and changes to rainfall patterns, drought, flood, and heat-wave incidence that would severely affect food production, human disease and mortality.

There are also iconic American companies that have made the considered business judgment that climate change is real and we need to prepare. But we can get more on that later in the colloquy.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. It is actually quite a good example, because we have some of the phony science that has attacked the science of climate change, which is actually a pretty good comparison to what the Senator described.

Take, for instance, the bogus Marshall Institute, which was founded in 1984 by a physicist who had been the chief scientist behind the tobacco industry's campaign to convince Americans that tobacco is actually OK for you, and that there was doubt about whether it would actually do you any harm. A few years later, he organized something called the Oregon Petition, which denied that climate change was happening. They phonied up the Oregon Petition to look like official papers of the National Academy of Sciences. So the National Academy of Sciences had to take the unusual step of responding that the petition ``does not reflect the conclusion of expert reports of the academy,'' and further, that it was ``a deliberate attempt to mislead.'' So he is an ``expert'' saying that tobacco is OK for you. Suddenly, he turns up as a climate denier, and he phonies up his report to look like----

Mr. FRANKEN. Was he part of a foundation?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. This is founded by the Marshall Institute. There are others of these out there. The other example is the Heartland Institute, another so-called think tank with backers from tobacco and the fossil fuel industries, founded also in 1984. It has written reports to try to manufacture doubt about climate science and about the risks of secondhand smoke. Heartland received nearly $700,000 from ExxonMobil through 2006. Their bogus policy documents include false claims that climate change is poorly understood, and simply wrong assertions, that there is no consensus about the causes, effects, or future rate of global warming.

Picking these two--but there are others in the constellation of bogus science--they are commonly funded by the Bradley Foundation, the folks who brought you the John Birch Society; by the Scaife foundations, which are constantly behind rightwing causes; the Olan Foundation, which is against public health causes; ExxonMobil; and by the Koch brothers. Although it may look like different voices, it is actually the same money speaking through different fronts.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And it is not enough that they have a stable of paid-for scientists to create doubt, to create phony science that raises the level of doubt; they also go out of their way to attack legitimate scientists. You would not think this would carry much weight in a proper debate, but amplified by the corporate money behind it, and designed, as the Senator said, with the purpose not to win the argument but to create doubt so that the public moves on, it is actually worse.

One example of this attack on lifetime scientists has been the phony so-called Climategate scandal, which was an effort to derail international climate science and climate negotiations.

Mr. FRANKEN. Climategate. Sometimes the Senator and I refer to it as ``Climategate-gate.''

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes, Climategate-gate. In fact, the real scandal here wasn't what the scientists did; the real scandal was the phony attack on the scientists.

Mr. FRANKEN. I thank my colleague for bringing this up. Let's talk about that. This is the leak of thousands of e-mails from scientists at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit back in 2009. It was done right before the Copenhagen conference, right?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I believe that is correct.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And it provoked considerable review afterward because of the alarmist claims that were made in this phony attack on the climate science. A number of pretty respectable organizations took a look at this. One was the university itself, and the university itself reached the conclusion on the specific allegations made against the behavior of CRU scientists, ``We find that their rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt. In addition, we do not find that their behavior has prejudiced the balance of advice given the policymakers. In particular, we did not find any evidence of behavior that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessment.'' That was the university review.

Not enough? The National Science Foundation also----

Mr. FRANKEN. The university could be biased.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. That is why we go on to the National Science Foundation, which found no direct evidence of research misconduct and therefore said, ``We are closing this investigation with no further action.''

Parliament looked into it as well, because the university was in Great Britain.

And the House of Commons did an investigation. The Commons' investigation concluded that the challenged actions by Professor Jones and others ``were in line with common practice in the climate science community.'' They went on to say:

Insofar as we have been able to consider accusations of dishonesty, we consider that there is no case to answer.

No case to answer. Finally, they said:

We have found no reason in this unfortunate episode to challenge the scientific consensus as expressed by Professor Bennington that ``global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity.''

So the studies that looked at whether the climate science was phony or whether the climategate scandal was phony have all come down supporting the science and pointing out that climategate should properly be known as climategate-gate because it was the scandal that was phony.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The challenge of climate change being extremely real, one of the things that is so frustrating about this campaign of phony, manufactured doubt is that in real life we are seeing the predictions of climate science come true around us.

Climate scientists predicted the atmosphere would warm, and the atmosphere is warming. Climate scientists predicted the ocean would absorb heat, and sure enough, the ocean has absorbed heat and ocean waters are warming. Climate scientists predicted the ocean would absorb CO

2 and that would then lower the pH level of our ocean waters. The ocean is now more acidic than it has been in 2 million years, threatening coral reefs, shellfish, and the tiny creatures, such as plankton, that make up the base of the entire oceanic food chain.

Climate scientists predicted glaciers and Arctic sea ice would melt and, sure enough, we are seeing record melting. We just saw that notorious leftwing publication, USA Today, report:

Federal Report Arctic Much Worse Since 2006. Federal officials say the Arctic region has changed dramatically in the past 5 years for the worse. It is melting at a near record pace and it is darkening and absorbing too much of the sun's heat.

Climate scientists predicted ecosystem shifts, and we are seeing ecosystem shifts, such as the million-plus-acre forests in the American West--dead to the bark beetle, gone from being green and healthy forests to just mile after mile of brown and dead trees.

Mr. FRANKEN. Explain why the bark beetle is doing this. What is happening and how does that relates to climate change?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The bark beetle relates to climate change because what was keeping those trees free from the bark beetle was cold winters that killed off the bark beetle larvae. As temperatures have warmed, the larvae lived through the winters, and they attacked the trees. So trees that were protected by cold winters are no longer protected, and there are literally millions of acres of forest lost in the West.

On a smaller scale, but more important to me in my home State of Rhode Island, the preeminent fish that was taken out of Narragansett Bay was called the winter flounder. My wife wrote her Ph.D. thesis about the winter flounder. It was a very significant cash crop for our fishermen and is now virtually gone because the mean water temperature of Narragansett Bay is up nearly 4 degrees.

Scientists also predicted we would be loading the dice for extreme weather with climate change, and we are seeing an unusual amount of extreme weather. The number of billion-dollar disasters has hit a record. A recent press clip noted:

With an almost biblical onslaught of twisters, floods, snow, drought, heat, and wildfire, the U.S., in 2011, has seen more weather catastrophes that caused at least $1 billion in damage than it did in all of the 1980s, even after the dollar figures from back then are adjusted for inflation.

Serious, grown-up corporate entities, like the biggest insurance companies in the world, are noticing this and are concerned. Munich Reinsurance has written the following:

The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures, both globally and in different regions of the world, provide further indications of advancing climate change.

Throughout the corporate world we are seeing this. Here is a list of companies that have gone public with the need for us to do something about climate change: American Electric, Bank of America, Chrysler, Cysco, DuPont, Duke Energy, eBay, Toyota, Timberland, Starbucks, Google, GM, General Electric, Ford, Siemens, PepsiCo, Nike, Nishiland, and John Deere. I am picking these at random, but these are not fringe organizations. These are the core of the American business community, and they recognize what is going on.

I want to single out one company, which is Coca-Cola. I was going to bring to the floor the new can of Coca-Cola as an exhibit to demonstrate this major international corporation--this huge American success story based in Atlanta--has taken probably the most iconic product in America--the Coke can--and has redesigned it to reflect what the climate change is doing in the Arctic and to polar bears. Unfortunately, my Coke can was confiscated by the cloakroom staff because I am not allowed to bring exhibits to the floor unless they are this. I should have snuck it out here, but that is why I don't have it.

Coca-Cola is a serious American business, and here is what they say:

The consensus on climate science is increasingly unequivocal--global climate change is happening and man-made greenhouse gas emissions are a crucial factor. The implications of climate change for our planet are profound and wide-ranging, with expected impacts on biodiversity, water resources, public health, and agriculture.

So we put against that the core business community--iconic companies such as Coca-Cola, putting their very label behind the need to address climate change--and the phony-baloney-paid-for scientists who are creating this doubt, and it is time to close this episode.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. If the Senator doesn't mind, if I change elements from fire to water since I represent an ocean State, another place where climate change is creating dangerous consequences is in our oceans. Let me cite a few reports that have come out recently.

Climate Change & European Marine Ecosystem Research says:

Close to one-third of the carbon dioxide produced by humans from burning fossil fuels and other sources has been absorbed by the oceans since the beginning of industrialization, and that has buffered the cause and effects of climate change.

A resulting lowered pH--

When carbon goes into the ocean, it acidifies it. It lowers the pH.

A resulting lowered pH and saturation states of the carbonate minerals that form the shells and body structures of many marine organisms makes these groups especially vulnerable. The growth of individual coral skeletons and the ability of reefs to remain structurally viable are likely to be severely affected. Continuing acidification may also affect the ability of the oceans to take up CO2.

So they will not be absorbing the one-third that they have absorbed any longer. It will stay in the atmosphere and atmospheric concentrations will increase even faster.

The Annual Review of Marine Science reports that:

Growing human pressures, including climate change, are having profound and diverse consequences for marine ecosystems. These effects are globally pervasive and irreversible on ecological time scales. Direct consequences include increasing ocean temperature and acidity, rising sea level, increased ocean stratification, decreased sea ice, and altered patterns of ocean circulation, precipitation, and fresh water.

The context for this is a pretty astounding one; that is, when we look back through history, we don't look at changes in terms of decades or even generations. We look at changes in terms of millions of years.

There is a special issue of Oceanography with a feature on ocean acidification, and it is called ``Ocean Acidification in Deep Time.''

We have now an atmosphere that already contains more carbon dioxide than at any time in the last 800,000 years of earth history and probably more than has occurred in several tens of millions of years.

We have had agriculture as humans for about 10,000 years, to give you an idea of what 800,000 years or several tens of millions of years means. The report goes on:

There are no precedents in recent earth history for what will be the immediate and direct consequences of the release of CO2 into the atmosphere and its concurrent dissolution in the ocean's waters.

But we are playing with very dangerous effects when we ignore climate change at the behest of a tiny minority of scientists and their polluter industry funders behind them.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. We had similar testimony in the Senate Intelligence Committee. The witness who testified before us released his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee and very much the same conclusion:

We judge that global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for U.S. national security interests over the next 20 years.

The factors that would affect U.S. national security interests as a result of climate change would include food and water shortages, increased health problems, including the spread of disease, increased potential for conflict, ground subsidence--the Earth lowering--flooding, coastal erosion, extreme weather events, increases in the severity of storms in the Gulf of Mexico, disruptions in U.S. and Arctic infrastructure, and increases in immigration from resource-scarce regions of the world.

There are probably climate deniers who say: That is all part of the conspiracy. The Defense Department is in on it. All those companies are in on it. The intelligence community is in on it.

But if there is a hoax, what is more mainstream than National Geographic? Is National Geographic in on it too? They would have to be because they did a special report a few years ago on climate change and they showed a polar bear stranded on the melting ice. Here is what they said:

It's here. Melting glaciers, heat waves, rising seas, trees flowering earlier, lakes freezing later, migratory birds delaying their flight south. The unmistakable signs of climate change are everywhere.

How do we know this? We know this because of the science. What do they say about the science?

How do we know our climate is changing? Historical records, decades of careful observations and precise measurements--

As the Senator said, with things such as thermometers--around the globe along with basic scientific principles.

If you think National Geographic is in on it and you can't have faith in the Defense establishment and you can't have faith in the corporate establishment and you can't have faith even in National Geographic, perhaps you can have faith in the Pope, who said recently:

I hope that all members of the international community can agree on a responsible, credible, and supportive response to this worrisome and complex phenomenon, keeping in mind the needs of the poorest populations and of future generations.

The press release from Catholic News Service then quotes one of his bishops, Cardinal Rodriguez, who says:

Our climate is changing. Urgent action is necessary.

He called on our political leaders around the world ``to curb the threat of climate change and set the world on a path to a more just and sustainable future.''

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. We are proud of what is going on in Rhode Island as well. We plan to meet 16 percent of our energy needs through renewable energy sources by 2020, and that is on top of a goal to cut energy use by 10 percent. So we will cut energy use by 10 percent and, of the remaining 90, get 16 percent of that out of renewable energy sources. Everybody is getting involved--utilities, towns, the State, the private sector. One of our cities, East Providence, is right now converting a brownfield which has been vacant for 40 years, nearly, into New England's largest solar institution. As my colleague says, there will be a payback and they will earn money on that for their taxpayers.

Our State of Rhode Island has been the national leader at how you map and prepare for offshore wind development. In the State and Federal waters off the coast of Rhode Island we are positioned to lead the country in offshore wind siting, with all the jobs that building those giant wind turbines and assembling them and erecting them offshore creates.

We have exciting companies such as BioProcess Algae, of Portsmouth, RI, which opened a spectacular facility in Iowa, which takes the exhaust from ethanol plants and runs it through algae farms and creates biofuels. They are at the cutting edge of that technology.

When you see these great technologies and these great opportunities--in this colloquy, we are ending on what I hope is a very strong, positive note for the economy. If we can pull away from the lies and the phony science and the polluter-paid nonsense that has so far distracted us from doing our duty as a nation, we can get into the race that is going on in this world for the energy future. The economy of this century is going to be driven by the $6 trillion clean energy industry. We do not want to fall out the back of that race and leave it to the Chinese and the Europeans. We want to be winning that race and the jobs and the economic success that can bring that not only can power our homes and our factories, it can power our economy back to security for all Americans.

I thank Senator Franken for inviting me to join him in this colloquy. I think our time is coming close to expiring, so I yield the remainder of our time to you, and I ask unanimous consent Senator Franken be allowed as much time as he needs to conclude. This has been a wonderful opportunity for me.

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