S.Amdt. 3349

1. Adds Sec. 11__. (a) The Senate finds that-- after section 1105

   Adds a section

   Inserted: Sec. 11__. (a) The Senate finds that--

   Inserted: (1) extreme weather events threaten lives, property, the economy, national security, and sense of place;

   Inserted: (2) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international body for the assessment of climate change, concludes that a changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, spatial extent, duration, and timing of extreme weather and climate events;

   Inserted: (3) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change further concludes that it is at least 90 percent likely that--

   Inserted: (A) the length, frequency, and intensity of warm spells or heat waves will increase over most land areas;

   Inserted: (B) mean sea level rise will contribute to upward trends in extreme coastal high water levels; and

   Inserted: (C) locations currently experiencing adverse impacts, such as coastal erosion and inundation, will continue to be adversely impacted due to increased sea levels;

   Inserted: (4) Congress has been asked to approve an emergency aid package at a cost of $60,400,000,000 to assist recovery efforts from Hurricane Sandy, the second costliest Atlantic hurricane on record;

   Inserted: (5) in addition to Federal disaster assistance, private insurance companies are expected to pay billions of dollars in claims related to Hurricane Sandy;

   Inserted: (6) global insurance and reinsurance businesses acknowledge that climate change is real;

   Inserted: (7) Munich Re, the largest global reinsurer in the world, has reported that "there is evidence that, as a result of warming, events associated with severe windstorms, such as thunderstorms, hail and cloudbursts, have become more frequent in parts of the USA, southwest Germany, and other regions";

   Inserted: (8) the Munich Re natural catastrophe database shows "a marked increase in the number of weather-related events", including, globally, "a more than threefold increase in loss-related floods since 1980 and more than double the number of windstorm natural catastrophes, with particularly heavy losses as a result of Atlantic hurricanes";

   Show 7 more inserted paragraphsShow less

   Inserted: (9) Swiss Re, the second largest global reinsurer in the world, has reported "that climate change will exacerbate the weather impacts we have seen in recent years";

   Inserted: (10) RenaissanceRe, a global provider of insurance coverage, has stated that it has "taken a proactive course to begin modeling the risk and uncertainty associated with climate change"; and

   Inserted: (11) adaptation measures can mitigate future disasters and increase resilience to extreme weather events.

   Inserted: (b) It is the sense of the Senate that--

   Inserted: (1) current trends for air and ocean temperature, sea level, and ocean chemistry are associated with an increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events and are related to the release of man-made carbon dioxide, affecting the atmosphere and oceans;

   Inserted: (2) the response to extreme weather events presents significant costs to the Federal, State, and local governments, businesses, insurers, and individuals; and

   Inserted: (3) actions to mitigate the effects of extreme weather events, including actions taken to reduce human contributions to climate change, are economically prudent and in the fiscal best interests of the United States.

   Original wording

   After section 1105, insert the following:

Read automatically from the Congressional Record. Check the original before relying on it.

As printed