Climate Stewardship Act of 2003

Mr. President, as chairman of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, I have previously addressed the Senate to discuss the issue of so-called global warming. I have taken a special interest in this issue because the gravity of what is at stake demands it. I have taken a simple, yet profound approach to dealing with environmental issues, working to

ensure that the laws we pass represent sound public policy. Of my three guiding principles for all committee work, the first principle is that Government should rely on the most objective science.

Unfortunately, a commitment to drawing conclusions based on science is not a popular approach. What has most galled my critics is that I do not ``spin the science'' to make it something it is not. Good science is and should remain the product of well designed and reproducible studies and research.

All too often, however, the studies that are touted by my critics are tainted by political and ideological agendas and cannot be reproduced because the authors will not release the data that supposedly supports their conclusions--all of which raises the eyebrows of credible scientists. Such science has no place in our system of government and should not be used to drive major U.S. policy.

When I led the congressional delegation to Milan last December, I was greeted by posters that quoted me as saying global warming is ``the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.'' I thanked the green activists for uncharacteristically quoting me correctly. Global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. It was true when I said it before, and it remains true today.

Perhaps what has made this hoax so effective is that we hear over and over that the science is settled and that there is consensus that, unless we fundamentally change our way of life by limiting greenhouse gas emissions, we will cause catastrophic global warming. This is simply a false statement.

Mr. President, 4,000 scientists, 70 of whom are Nobel Prize winners, signed the Heidelberg Appeal, which says that no compelling evidence exists to justify controls of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Over 17,000 scientists signed another document that directly contradicts the false claims of consensus. The Oregon Petition, compiled by Dr. Frederick Seitz, a past president of the National Academy of Sciences and a professor emeritus at Rockefeller University, reads as follows:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human

release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse

gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause

catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption

of the Earth's climate.

What a powerful, unequivocal statement that is. So powerful, in fact, that ideologues fraudulently sent in made-up names and belittled legitimate scientists on the Petition, such as Dr. Perry Mason, simply because he and a few others shared their names with famous fictional characters. Such immature acts belong on a grade school playground, but are simply shameful in a serious policy debate. Yet we have heard these baseless charges repeatedly. But these distortions only serve to underscore the fragileness of the myth that there is consensus. If there truly is consensus, why would so many renowned scientists sign such statements? If there truly is consensus, why would these environmental activists be so threatened by these documents that they would make fraudulent submissions? In short, if there is such controversy over whether there is consensus, how can there possibly be consensus? The controversy over its existence is itself proof that no consensus exists.

This point was made succinctly by former Carter administration Energy Secretary James Schlesinger, who wrote in the Washington Post: ``There is an idea among the public that the science is settled. That remains far from the truth.'' He also wrote that the global warming theory has hardened into orthodoxy that searches out heretics and seeks to punish them.

And that was James Schlesinger, Energy Secretary in a Democrat administration.

Thankfully, despite the efforts to ``punish them,'' credible scientists continue to conduct well-designed, reproducible studies, and I will list some of them here today. Last year, I spoke at length to describe the great number of uncertainties surrounding claims of global warming. I described real science that contradicts the alarmists, who, wracked by fear, see a future plagued by catastrophic flooding, war, terrorism, economic dislocations, droughts, crop failures, mosquito- borne diseases, and harsh weather--all caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

We cannot afford to forget that climate change alarmists' visions have been with us for decades. In 1972, the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation, observed:

Judging from the record of the past inter-glacial ages, the

present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end

. . . leading into the next glacial age.

In 1974, Time magazine in an article entitled ``Another Ice Age?'' warned:

However widely the weather varies from place to place and

time to time, when metrologists take an average of

temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere

has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades.

The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological

Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the

weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger

of another ice age.

These fears became the motivation of a drumbeat from environmentalists that we must fundamentally alter our way of living to avoid a cataclysmic ice age. Of course, these fears proved baseless.

And when this 30-year cooling cycle ceased, these same alarmists again proclaimed we must fundamentally alter our way of living to avoid cataclysmic global warming. From the scientific literature, I believe these fears are equally baseless.

I believe it would be unconscionable to heed the alarmists' cries for economic disarmament without subjecting these claims of doom to the scrutiny they deserve. Predictably, those who peddle fear do not want discussions of science. Hiding behind claims of ``the science is settled,'' they conjure ever more creative ways to market the myth.

The most recent example is the movie, ``The Day After Tomorrow,'' in which the laws of physics are repeatedly violated to create fear of an ice age caused by global warming. First it was an ice age. Then it was global warming. Now it is an ice age caused within days because of global warming. Seems they can't make up their minds what they are afraid of--but their solution is always the same, restrict the economy and outsource American jobs overseas.

Of course, the movie was widely panned, not simply as a ``bad'' movie, but a ``stupid'' movie. Even some environmentalists had to admit there was no science to support the movie. For instance, Dan Schrag, a paleoclimatologist, said:

My first reaction was, ``Oh my God, this is a disaster

because it is such a distortion of science.

What disturbed me was not the movie, which after all is simply the vision of a German film producer with a dislike for Americans who says, ``My secret dream is that this film moves politicians to act.'' No, what disturbed me was he may get his wish. Former Vice President Gore teamed up with the activist group, MoveOn.org, to use the movie as an opportunity to market their alarmist views and economy-capping solutions. This is exactly what is wrong with how alarmists discuss this issue. Rather than joining me and those like me in a commitment to using the best, nonpoliticized science--whatever it finds--politically motivated groups, such as MoveOn.org, pander to our worst fears to drive their political agenda.

I would rather discuss what real science is showing. I said last July that:

After studying the issue over the last several years, I

believe that the balance of the evidence offers strong proof

that natural variability is the overwhelming factor

influencing climate.

After continuing to study the science over the last year, that belief has been strengthened. I submit, furthermore, that the scientific debate is shifting away from those who subscribe to global warming alarmism.

IPPC incorrectly attributes ground station temperature rise to climate change instead of local activity. One of the areas that has caused global warming advocates the most heartburn has been the inconvenient, yet inescapable, fact that records from satellites using highly reliable microwave sounding units show little warming, on a globally averaged basis, in comparison to ground station records. This important discrepancy on its face would suggest the ground-based data is contaminated.

It is now widely recognized that ground-based measurements are affected by such things as the ``heat island'' effect, large-scale land-use changes and problems with maintaining ground-stations.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, report published in 2001 is claimed to be the most authoritative source for claims that temperatures are rising due to climate change. The IPCC has become increasingly alarmist in its three successive reports. In its summary referring to globally averaged temperature data, it says only that ``These numbers take into account various adjustments, including heat island effects.'' The discussion within the body of the report to this important issue, which must be thoroughly explained if ground- based data is to be considered of more importance than highly reliable satellite data, is disappointingly brief and uninformative as well. Moreover, it leaves the impression that everything except for temperature changes due to climate has been factored out.

Thus, the entire validity of the conclusions from ground-station temperature data rests on the claim that these temperature bias effects in the data from such things as growing cities, construction, agricultural practices and other economic activities which potentially could impact temperature measurements have been completely subtracted out from the conclusions. But this may not be true.

A new study by Drs. Ross McKitrick and Patrick Michaels that was presented in an article published in the May 25 issue of ``Climate Research,'' throws these assurances of the IPCC into serious doubt.

The study examined temperature records for 218 individual stations located in 93 countries since 1979, when satellite data first began being collected. The study then compared these to the IPCC grid cells containing these 218 stations.

The study concluded that the differences between the satellite data and the ground station data were almost completely explained by local economic and social factors, and data quality control. Moreover, it found that:

outside the dry/cold regions the measured temperature change

is primarily explained by economic and social variables.

In short, the IPCC's claims of increasing temperatures based on ground-based data appear to be greatly overstated. As the article puts it, non-climate-related variables ``add up to a significant net warming bias at the global level.''

This finding is of tremendous importance, seriously eroding the foundation for the house of cards upon which the global warming hysteria is built. Moreover, the study is well-designed and reproducible.

Mann's hockey stick is flawed and irreproducible. That study's design and reproducibility stands in stark contrast to another study heavily relied upon by global warming advocates--the famous, or perhaps I should say, infamous hockey stick chart published by Dr. Michael Mann. The conclusions of this study have become a rallying cry for alarmists who would have us believe this is final proof that 20th century temperatures have spiked up dramatically. These results are routinely used in presentations to corporate officers to demonstrate that they had better restructure their companies' operations and annual reports.

But Mann's conclusions have come under intense criticism recently, as other researchers have challenged both the methodology he used and the reliability of the results.

A team of scientists led by Dr. Willie Soon and Dr. Sally Baliunas, who are astrophysicists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, surveyed 240 articles concerning local and regional-scale climate reconstructions over the last 1,000 years. The proxy record they examined was far more extensive than that used by Mann. While Mann's analysis relied mostly on tree-ring data from the Northern Hemisphere, the researchers offer a detailed look at climate changes that occurred in different regions around the world over the last 1000 years using over 20 different proxies.

As a result of this extensive survey, Drs. Soon and Baliunas concluded that:

the 20th century does not contain the warmest anomaly of the

past millennium in most proxy records, which have been

sampled world-wide. Past researchers implied that unusual

20th century warming means a global human impact. However,

the proxies show that the 20th century is not unusually warm

or extreme.

Other studies that are devastating to Mann's conclusion focus not on its inconsistency with the results of work of a multitude of other researchers, but on his extremely questionable and improper methods. In an attempt last year to perform an audit of Mann's unique conclusions, Drs. McIntyre and McKitrick found that Mann's work was irreproducible without resorting to the use of flawed data sets, inappropriate data manipulation, or ill-advised statistical procedures. To quote the researchers, ``the dataset used to make [the Mann reconstruction] contained collation errors, unjustified truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, incorrect [methodological] calculations, geographical mislocations and other serious defects.''

When the researchers corrected for these data and methodological flaws, they conclude that temperatures in the early 1400s rivaled those of today, indicating that human influences have not taken the climate to unprecedented territory.

Dr. Esper, a paleoclimate researcher, and his colleagues published a paper that suggests that the tree-ring histories heavily relied upon by Mann in his temperature reconstructions were manipulated in such a way as to have most of the long term variability removed, making the 20th century temperatures appear much more unusual than they in fact were. Esper and his colleagues produced temperature reconstructions for the past 1,000 years using a more scientifically defensible approach to handling tree-ring records that preserves long-term variability.

The study concludes that the past 1,000 years have been characterized by periods of warm and cold, and that as far back as about 1,000 years ago, temperatures were as warm or warmer than in the late 20th century.

Of course, these studies show that the ``shaft'' of the hockey stick created by Mann is wrong. And it is intuitively true that the shaft is wrong. We have known for years about the Medieval Warm Period from 800 to 1400 A.D. We have known for years about what has been called the Little Ice Age from 1600 to 1850 A.D. And the new studies I've just described confirm these well-established naturally occurring climatic events.

In other words, in creating his so-called hockey stick, Mann deliberately eliminated the first blade of the hockey stick. By eliminating the blade he left the false conclusion that the 20th century temperatures are unprecedented. They are not. The fact is that the real temperatures spike far higher during the period he portrays as a straight shaft than current temperatures--despite that his extraordinarily flawed results indicate we are living in the hottest period in the last 1,000 years.

Ironically, the often-criticized IPCC report itself contradicts Mann's findings. As I described earlier, a new reproducible study indicates the IPCC's estimates of temperature rise themselves appear to mistakenly attribute socioeconomic and data quality factors that affect temperature readings to climate change. Yet even so, the IPCC shows a far smaller temperature increase than Mann. The IPCC shows an increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius over the last 100 years, but the ``blade'' of the Mann hockey stick shows an increase of 0.95 Celsius--more than a 50 percent larger increase.

Moreover, the so-called hockey stick ``blade'' does not appear to be explained by the statistical techniques Mann claims he used. In a recent letter published in Geophysical Research Letters, Drs. Soon, Baliunas, and Legates closely examined the ``blade'' and found that it could not be reproduced using either the technique Mann says he used, or other common statistical techniques. Once again, this key requirement of reproducibility seems missing from the flagship study of those crying that the sky is falling.

Most recently, Dr. Chapman and his colleagues commented on a comparison of borehole temperature measurements with Dr. Mann's proxy records and questioned Dr. Mann's analysis techniques, concluding they are ``just bad

science'' and that Dr. Mann had undertaken a ``selective and inappropriate presentation'' of results.

Thus, as Dr. Legates concluded in testimony before the Environment and Public Works Committee, this so-called flagship study:

certainly does not conform to the requirements of open access

and reproducibility, required by the Data Quality Act, nor

does it meet even minimal quality standards.

Dr. Legates went on to say in respect to the many problems inherent in Mann's study:

This leads me to reject Dr. Mann's . . . conclusions . . .

that anthropogenic factors provide the overwhelming influence

on global and hemispheric temperatures in the last 1800 years

and that the 1990s are the warmest decade, and 1998 the

warmest year, of the last 1800 years.

Some may try to defend the Mann conclusions, and believe his work is unimpeachable. But a recent article published in the July 1st, 2004 issue of Nature magazine repudiates that belief. In a brief ``corrigendum,'' Mann makes a clear admission that the disclosure of data and other methods supporting the hockey stick was materially inaccurate. This corrigendum was ordered by the Editorial Board after two other scientists, Dr. McIntyre and Dr. McKitrick filed a ``Materials Complaint.'' According to these scientists, the on-line supplemental information accompanying Mann's correction notice essentially concedes for the first time that key steps in the computations behind his conclusions were left out of and conflict with the description of methods in the original paper.

Despite this, Mann continues to assert that these errors do not affect his results, saying: None of these errors affect our previously published results.

But as McIntyre and McKitrick point out:

if this were true, then a simple constructive proof could

have been provided, showing before and after calculations.

This is conspicuously missing . . . We have done the

calculations and can assert categorically that the claim is

false. We have made a journal submission to this effect and

will explain the matter fully when that paper is published.

While this sad spectacle clearly is not yet over, three things are clear. Mann's hockey stick has never been reproduced, efforts to do so showed that the study was replete with errors and miscalculations, and despite his continuing faith in his hockey stick conclusions, Mann has yet to offer any proof whatsoever that they are correct. And yet the alarmists continue to claim we should unilaterally disarm America's economy based on Mann's unbelievable--literally unbelievable--results.

Another controversial claim is that sea level is rising, and that this is due to climate change. It has been claimed for years that sea level was rising rapidly, yet again fueling the call for action. Based on modeling, the IPCC estimates that sea level will rise 1.8 millimeters annually, or about one-fourteenth of an inch.

In a study published this year in Global and Planetary Change, Dr. Nils-Axel Morner of Sweden found that sea level rise hysteria was overblown. In his study, which relied not only on old observational records, but satellite altimetry as well, he concluded that:

there is a total absence of any recent ``acceleration in sea

level rise'' as often claimed by IPCC and related groups.

Morner's findings go to the heart of the debate--the reliance by global warming advocates on faulty models that conflict with observational records instead of observational records themselves. According to Morner, the:

IPCC made an estimate of all variables and their possible

contribution to sea level rise. They arrived at a mean value

of 0.9 millimeters per year. This value is in harmony with

the records of the present and near-past . . . Still--and

this is remarkable, [says Morner,]--IPCC compared their own

value with a model value of 1.8 millimeters per year and

discarded their own estimate as unrealistic.

Morner has blunt words for the IPCC approach, saying that he ``discard[s] the model output of IPCC as untenable, not to say impossible.''

Using satellite altimetry and other observational data, Morner finds that the late 20th century lacks any sign of acceleration of sea rise, including the last decade. He concludes that, based on long-term observational data as well as the newest technology, sea level in a century can be expected to be within the range of a 10 centimeter sea level decline to a 20 centimeter sea level rise, which translates to about a four inch sea level decline to an eight inch sea level increase.

Yet, remarkably, we still hear fears that the world will become flooded due to global warming. Such claims are, to be blunt, completely out of touch with most comprehensive science. As Sweden's Morner puts it, ``there is no fear of massive future flooding as claimed in most global warming scenarios.''

Something else I am told is that there has been an increase in the number and intensity of severe weather events. Typically these doomsayers point to the droughts in the Southwest or point to more violent hurricanes to prove that global warming is occurring.

In response to the current 5-year drought in the southwest, the New York Times proclaimed on May 10 that ``Drought may be normal, but there may be nothing normal about this drought.'' Of course, the paper inserted a weasel word to avoid actually describing how it was abnormal.

This is one of those claims that makes me want to utter the old insult, ``You are so wrong, I don't know where to begin.'' If an increased number of severe droughts is to prove global warming, it would have to be true that the number and severity of these droughts are, in fact, increasing. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

Drought is a serious and damaging climate-related hazard. But this fact should not obscure the fact that carbon dioxide is not the cause of this recurring disaster that plagued even the Ancient Egyptians. The two worst droughts to hit this country in the last century occurred in the 1930s--known as the Great Dustbowl--and the 1950s. But they were neither the longest droughts to afflict this country, nor the most severe.

According to an article published in the December 1998 Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Dr. Connie Woodhouse and Dr. Jonathan Overpeck conducted tree-ring reconstructions in the Southwest that suggest the lengths and severity of droughts of the 1930s and 50s have been equaled or, in some regions, surpassed by droughts in the past several centuries.

They further concluded that it is clear that major multi-year Great Plains droughts have occurred naturally once or twice a century over the last 400 years. And there is evidence that during the 13th and 16th centuries, there were two megadroughts that exceeded the severity, length and spatial extent of 20th century droughts.

Of course, this study was published before the onset of the most recent 5-year drought in the Southwest. More recent studies published just last year, however, confirm its findings. In a 2003 article in Geophysical Research Letters, Dr. Stephen Gray and his colleagues stated that:

like the 1950s drought, the late 16th century megadrought was

followed by a wet period, and both events were associated

with intense La Nina episodes typical of southwestern U.S.

and Great Plains droughts.

In an article in the July 2003 issue of the American Meteorological Society, Dr. Falko Fye and his colleagues found that:

There appear to have been at least 12 droughts since 1500AD

that were analogous to the 1950s drought in terms of

location, intensity, and duration. . . . [and] the 16th century megadrought lasted some 18 years and the tree-ring data indicate it was the most severe sustained drought to impact North America in the past 500 to perhaps 1000 years.

What is also worth noting is that the global temperature record doesn't provide any useful information concerning drought conditions.

In the wake of this year's successive hurricanes hitting Southeast and Gulf States, some have even had the gall to claim it is due to global warming. Credible meteorologists have been quick to dismiss such claims. As Hugh Willoughby, senior scientist at the International Hurricane Research Center of Florida International University stated in the plain language we non-scientists can understand:

This isn't a global-warming sort of thing. . . . It's a

natural cycle.

Benjamin Preston, senior research fellow at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change--a green activist organization that promotes the global warming theory echoed his sentiments, saying about the link between hurricanes and global warming:

The general consensus is that it's unlikely. . . . We can

actually explain an active hurricane season using natural

variability.

If even the Pew Center has said that, it seems pretty obvious that the activists and writers who have been quick to implicate global warming should be dismissed as the opportunists they are. Weather simply changes. In the words of Professor Perry Samson, associate chair of the Department of the Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Sciences at the University of Michigan:

Abnormal weather is normal.

When it comes to the argument that hurricanes are getting worse, it is typical to hear statistics about increasing costs due to hurricane damage. Of course, we can expect monetary damage from hurricanes to increase in the future, ``not as a result of anthropogenic climate change, but from natural climate cycles, and . . . increasingly expensive properties along the coast.''

These are not my words, but of a top U.S. Government scientist named Dr. Christopher Landsea.

Science simply doesn't support the claims that there is a link between hurricanes and global warming. A team led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Dr. Landsea concluded that the relationship of global temperatures to the number of intense landfalling hurricanes is either not present, or is very weak. In fact, if we examine hurricane records for which we have good data going back to the 1800s, there is much evidence supporting the conclusion that we have had more hurricane activity historically than in the last few decades, so an increase the last several years should perhaps be expected as part of natural variability. The overall number of hurricanes and the number of the strongest hurricanes fluctuated greatly during the last century, with a great number in the 1940s. In fact, through the last decade, the intensity of these storms has declined somewhat.

Hopefully, we can finally put to rest the unsubstantiated claim that global warming is leading to more severe and unpredictable weather. What is certain is that the drought record in the Southwest over the last 1,000 years and the hurricane record flatly refutes that claim.

Global warming advocates will often recite statistics that glaciers are in retreat. For instance, it is said that the number of glaciers in Glacier National Park has dwindled from 150 more than a century ago to about 35 today and that the part of the Arctic Ocean that remains frozen year-round has been shrinking.

But what do these examples really say about global warming? Scientists know very little about glacial activity, but what they do know suggests there are as many expanding glaciers as there are shrinking ones--this even happens with two glaciers within a few miles of each other--and that there is no universal trend either way. There are more than 160,000 glaciers on the planet. Scientists have good, long-term mass balance measurements on a comparative handful of them. So how can someone assert that glaciers are shrinking?

Dr. Roger Braithwaite last year looked at mass balance trends in 246 glaciers worldwide from 1946 to 1995. He found that ``there are several regions with highly negative mass balances in agreement with a public perception of ``the glaciers are melting,' but there are also regions with positive balances.'' This holds true even within continents. In Europe, ``Alpine glaciers are generally shrinking, Scandinavian glaciers are growing, and glaciers in the Caucasus are close to equilibrium for 1980-95.'' Globally, adding all the results together, ``there is no obvious common or global trend of increasing glacier melt in recent years.''

Indeed, the observed variability of Arctic sea ice thickness, which shows that the sea ice mass can change by up to 16 percent within one year, contrasts with the concept of a slowly dwindling ice pack, produced by global warming.

But if global warming is not the cause, what is? In 2002, work done by Dr. Greg Holloway and Dr. Tessa Sou, showed that the decadal-scale wind pattern changes were responsible for rearranging the ice, giving some regions thinner and others thicker amount of ice. Research by Dr. Ignatius Rigor in 2002 confirmed this, finding much of the so-called Arctic ice thinning is caused by decadal variations in wind patterns over the Arctic.

Alarmists also speak eloquently about Kilimanjaro, and like to show two pictures--one from the early 1990s with a modest snow cap on it, and another from 2000 showing the snow caps had shrunk.

Of course, those are just two pictures. Let me tell you about three. Yes, Kilimanjaro's snows were smaller in the late 90s than the 80s, but they were bigger in the 80s than in the 70s. In fact, the snows of Kilimanjaro in 1997 appear to resemble the snows of Kilimanjaro in 1976.

This makes a simple point. If you are given only partial facts, you can easily be misled into thinking you see something when in fact you are seeing a very different thing indeed. The pictures you have been shown are simply transient snows and are meaningless. To quote an April white paper from the Center for Science and Public Policy entitled The Consensus on Kilimanjaro is Wrong, ``though a photograph may be worth a thousand sound bytes, those words and photos do not go together.''

Of course, the real question is what does the issue of melting glaciers on Kilimanjaro have to do with man-induced global warming? Not much. On November 26, the New York Times had some interesting insights into Kilimanjaro and global warming. Here's what the Times had to say:

The glaciers on Kilimanjaro have been in retreat for at

least a century, shrinking by 80 percent between 1912 and

2000. Although it is tempting to blame global warming, the

most likely culprit is deforestation.

As explained in Nature's Science update, with forest present, the natural updraft from the slopes carried moist air to the summit and helped reinforce and sustain the ice cap. Without those forests, the updrafts are dry and fail to replenish the ravages of the sun on the summit ice cap. And since the equatorial sun is extremely hot, deforestation also means the updrafts are warmer than they were when Kilamanjaro's forests were abundant.

Conjuring up fears of global warming because of Kilimanjaro's glaciers--to my mind--represents exactly the kind of misuse of science that leads to increased misunderstanding instead of understanding. If the problem is deforestation and there is public will to fix the problem, fix it. Don't try to mislead people into thinking the problem is something else simply because that fits your agenda.

This is a point I have made repeatedly. I believe it is extremely important for the future of this country that the facts and the science get a fair hearing. Without proper knowledge and understanding, alarmists will scare the country into enacting its ultimate goal: making energy suppression, in the form of harmful mandatory restrictions on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions, the official policy of the United States.

While the science underlying hysterical claims of catastrophic global warming is thin, the analyses showing the costs of capping our economy are not. Perhaps the most well known study examining the Kyoto Protocol came from Wharton Econometric Forecasing Associates, or WEFA. According to WEFA economists, Kyoto would cost 2.4 million American jobs and reduce GDP by 3.2 percent, or about $300 billion annually, an amount greater than the total annual expenditure on primary and secondary education.

It is hard to imagine such huge amounts, so I will put the findings in context. Because of Kyoto, American consumers would pay 11 percent more for food, 14 percent more for medicine, and 7 percent more for housing. Electricity prices would nearly double and gasoline prices would go up an additional 65 cents per gallon.

New studies that have come out since my last speech on global warming examining the consequences of unilaterally putting a cap on the economy through carbon restrictions are also revealing. Using perhaps the most sophisticated model to assess the issue--what is known as a dynamic model that incorporates future changes in behavior--the renowned economic forecasting firm of Charles River Associates has concluded that under the McCain-Lieberman bill, S. 139, economic growth would slow.

The Nation would lose up to a quarter million jobs by 2010, increasing to

up to 610,000 jobs by 2020. Energy-intensive industries would be the hardest sector hit. Natural gas prices would increase by up to 82 percent, driving thousands of companies overseas, as we have already seen happen to fertilizer manufacturers, who cannot afford to make their product at even today's natural gas prices. Production from these energy-intensive industries alone would decline annually by up to $160 billion.

The bill would hit specific state economies harder. For instance, Ohio and West Virginia, both with economies that rely on coal production, would see their industries decimated, with production decreasing by as much as 73 percent.

Average households in the United States would incur a financial cost up to $1,300 in the year 2010, with the annual cost rising up to $2,300 by 2020. Families' direct costs in the form of higher electricity and gasoline prices would increase dramatically. Within 6 years, residential electricity prices would rise by up to 30 percent, dramatically increasing families' monthly electricity bills. By 2020, those prices would rise by up to 43 percent due to carbon restrictions.

Regardless of which study one looks at, gasoline price increases will be substantial. According to the Energy Information Administration, gas prices will increase by 27 percent, or 40 cents. The more sophisticated Charles River Associates assessment puts the cost even higher, with gasoline prices increasing by up to 50 cents.

Of course, for many wealthier people, these may seem like trivial costs. Rich people don't think about their electric bills or the cost of gasoline at the pump. But average Americans do. And the elderly living on fixed income, and the poor, pay attention to these costs even more. What is worse, these costs are regressive, which means that poor people will bear a bigger burden because they spend a larger share of their income on energy, such as gasoline and electricity. When the costs go up, they must give up something else important to them.

And what do we buy for costs?

As even James Hansen, the NASA scientist who popularized the global warming theory, admits, it would take massive reductions in carbon emissions to have any appreciable impact on climate change. And, of course, his views are based on the assumption it even exists. Calculating what affect implementing the Kyoto Protocol would have, Martin Parry and other researchers concluded in Nature that Kyoto would only reduce global surface temperatures by 0.06 Celsius by 2050. Coming to a nearly identical conclusion, U.S. Global Change Research Program researcher Tom Wigley estimated in Geophysical Research Letters that implementing the Kyoto Protocol would reduce global surface temperatures by 0.07 Celsius by 2050. The temperature differences within this room exceed such a minuscule amount.

Despite these studies which increasingly suggest that precipitous action to combat global warming is unjustified, alarmists often trot out a concept known as the precautionary principle--which is that it is better to be safe than sorry. But they misunderstand or at least, misapply this concept. From all I have learned about the subject of global warming, I believe that the safest course is to reject the hypothetical claims of those who fear planetary doom is around the corner and are willing to doom the economy to avert it. The science of global warming is uncertain, the costs of capping our economy with carbon restriction are high, and even if the doomsayers were correct, it would do little to nothing to reduce the temperature increases.

But there is more to the story. Taking precipitous action will actually do more harm than good.

A 2003 study by Indur Goklany of the Department of Interior examined this question in some depth. In the study, which did not challenge the validity of global warming's existence and its consequences in its assumptions, Goklany examined the benefits and opportunity costs of taking action to mitigate global warming. In essence, the study examined whether humanity would be better off if we tried to avert or otherwise mitigate global warming or whether humanity would better off adapting to it.

What the study concluded was remarkable. Even if global warming were real, money spent to combat global warming would do comparatively little--as a percentage of the problem to reduce the afflictions of hunger, malaria, and water shortages versus if no action were taken at all. Yet it went farther--it then examined the benefits of diverting the money spent on global warming and using the monies to directly fight these afflictions through such activities as agricultural research and development and investments in treatment and prevention in combating malaria. The final results? Fewer people would go hungry, fewer would suffer from malaria, and fewer would lack access to adequate supplies of water if we simply adapted rather than attempted to combat global warming. And at far less cost, meaning those resources can be invested productively.

So rationing our energy supply would make the world not safe, but sorry. And that is assuming global warming is happening. How much sorrier will we be if it isn't?

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's goal of serious investment in public health and infrastructure for energy and water, and delivering real progress on African development is in conflict with his aims on global warming. His Science Advisor, Sir David King, has stated that choices won't have to be made as to how to spend resources. But that flies in the face of basic economics. If resources are spent in one way, they are not available to be spent another. In short, even a wealthy future world will have constraints on the resources it can devote to disease and other problems. How much more will those constraints be in a poorer world.

The point is clear. Back in the earlier part of the last century, when Asia was far poorer than it is today, deaths from climate events were far higher than now, when the region is wealthier. And let's look at the hurricanes from this hurricane season. Unfortunately, 100 Americans died during four naturally occurring hurricanes to hit land. But compare the fate of this wealthy country to that of Haiti, where in that small, terribly poor country 2,000 people died and 300,000 become homeless from a single hurricane--Hurricane Jeanne.

It is not simply common sense, its backed up by data. Capping carbon will cap the economy. There is an incredibly strong relationship between a country's GDP growth rate and its carbon dioxide growth rate. Because carbon is synonymous with economic activity. While we can and should increase our energy efficiency because its good business, we must realize that we are tied to carbon.

Fossil fuel is the energy base of this country. And while some may claim we can simply and easily move to a non-carbon based society, they are not being honest. We have an enormous infrastructure reliant on fossil energy that will be with us for many, many decades to come. And for those few alternatives that could replace older units such as building wind-farms off Nantucket or building new dams or new nuclear plants, green activists bring efforts to a grinding halt. As the chart shows, technology will not quickly restructure our energy infrastructure.

Unfortunately, despite the many studies, facts and figures I have shared with you today demonstrating that the science does not support catastrophic global warming claims, well-designed, reproducible studies are not the driving force behind today's climate science debate. Rather, ideology is.

This point was made by Dr. Richard Lindzen in regards to his contributions to the preparation of the United Nations IPCC report. Lindzen stated:

I personally witnessed coauthors forced to assert their

`green' credentials in defense of their statements.

But Lindzen's words are tame compared to those spoken earlier this year in Russia. At a press conference on global warming and the Kyoto Protocol, Russian Presidential Economic Advisor Andrei Illarionov made some comments about ideology that are nothing short of remarkable. Let me share with you what he says is driving the global warming debate. Illarionov stated:

There have been examples in our fairly recent history of

how a considerable portion of Europe was flooded with the

brown Nazi ideology, the red Commie ideology that caused

severe casualties and consequences for Europe and the entire

world. Now there is a big

likelihood that a considerable part of Europe has been

flooded with another type, another color of ideology--[and he

is speaking of global warming here--again, another type,

another color of ideology]--but with very similar

implications for European societies and human societies the

world over.

He also said that imposition of the Kyoto Protocol ``would deal a powerful blow on the whole humanity similar to the one humanity experienced when Nazism and communism flourished.''

And that was the chief economic advisor to Russian President Putin. The world has certainly turned on its head that we Americans must look to Russians for speaking out strongly against irrational authoritarian ideologies. Putin's economic advisor's words are underscored by the conclusion of the Russian Academy of Science which this last May concluded that there is a high degree of uncertainty that global warming is caused by anthropogenic factors, that the Kyoto Protocol does not have a scientific basis and it would not be effective in achieving the IPCC's aims.

And while the Russia legislature may well indeed ratify the Kyoto Protocol, Illarionov has stated that it would occur for political considerations, not scientific or economic. Last May, it was reported that the European Union had promised to help Russia enter the World Trade Organization and would smooth over WTO requirements in exchange for signing the Kyoto Protocol. Additionally, there is speculation within Russia that the Kyoto Protocol will fail of its own weight since only two European countries will meet their carbon emission targets. So, clearly, Russia is playing politics with the issue for its purposes just as others have for their own.

That much of this debate is about world governance and not science is not news. At the Hague in November 2002, French President Jacques Chirac stated that Kyoto represents ``the first component of an authentic global governance.''

Those are his words, not my characterization of his words.

To summarize my remarks today, it makes no sense to take action on climate change when the costs are so profound and the benefits are non- existent.

Last year, I spent two hours addressing the Senate about the state of science regarding the global warming debate. And today, I have spent another two hours providing the latest, most up-to-date information on the science about global warming--or more to the point--the lack of credible science supporting it.

I have been told many times that the science is irrelevant--that we have moved beyond the science, and that we must now concentrate on what to do to stop global warming from happening. I, for one, would hope that we never abandon the science. Those who are afraid of the newest and best science are usually the same people who are afraid that the more the public actually knows, the more it will interfere with their grand geopolitical plans to ration America's energy.

I believe we should be held accountable for the actions we take, and not bet the American economy on something unless it is firmly rooted in science, and our actions can have some beneficial effect. Global warming ideology has no place in policy debates regarding scientific issues. Credible, reproducible studies should be our gold standard--our minimum standard. By that standard, carbon restrictions fail the test.

Unfortunately, we are in a political season and some legislators believe that they can score political points with this issue. Last year, when Senator John Kerry was focusing on the liberal base in his primary, he criticized President George Bush on his campaign website for rejecting the global warming treaty, stating:

Dropping out of international implementation of the Kyoto

Protocol was foolhardy then, and it is even more obviously

foolhardy today.

But now that John Kerry is trying to be more mainstream he has removed that statement from his website and replaced it with the following:

John Kerry and John Edwards believe that the Kyoto Protocol

is not the answer. The near-term emission reductions it would

require of the United States are infeasible, while the long-

term obligations imposed on all nations are too little to

solve the problem.

Yet in the September 30 presidential debate, he criticized President Bush when he said:

You don't help yourself with other nations when you turn

away from the global warming treaty, for instance, or when

you refuse to deal at length with the United Nations.

I am trying to figure out what he means by those statements.

And unless he is simply doing another of his all-too-familiar flip- flops, I can only conclude that while he does not believe the Kyoto Protocol is the answer, he would support it anyway. If I lived in the Midwest, I would find his shifting stances worrisome.

I have laid out my case today for why capping our economy with carbon restrictions is wrong-headed and rash. And I believe that the future health of our great Nation and the world is too important to have an issue as vital as this one relegated to the status of a political football. My hope is that the legislators who have moved beyond the science will, once again, develop a healthy respect for what it has to say in guiding our actions.

Mr. President, it is my understanding there are 3 hours tonight equally divided, which would be an hour and a half for each side. Because of something that happened today in Colorado, I yield up to 7 minutes of our time to the Senator from Colorado, Mr. Allard.

Mr. President, first of all, let me just make a couple of comments, and then I will yield to the Senator from Missouri.

I know it is so easy to stand up here and talk about ``the science is irrefutable,'' talk about how different groups are supporting S. 139. I know neither the distinguished Senator from Arizona nor the distinguished Senator from Connecticut would intentionally say something that is not true. However, some of the things they are saying are not true. They are not factual.

A little bit later I am going to be going into detail on this science question. The science that has been reviewed since 1999 is overwhelmingly on the side that global warming, in fact, is not occurring and, if it is occurring, is not a result of manmade anthropogenic gases.

I would also like to say, I will be talking about some of these groups that supposedly are supporting this bill who, in fact, are not supporting this bill. But I am going to save that for a few minutes because we have several Members who will be coming in on our side who will be wanting to address this issue. For that reason, I now yield to the Senator from Missouri 7 minutes.

Mr. President, I have talked to our good friend, my brother, the Senator from Hawaii, and he has graciously agreed to let one of our Members go first before he is recognized.

At this time, I yield to the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Voinovich.

Before yielding to Senator Voinovich, I was honored to chair the Clean Air Subcommittee prior to the time I chaired the Environment and Public Works Committee. During that time, Senator Voinovich was Governor Voinovich. He was the chairman of the Governors Clean Air Committee. I don't believe there is anyone in this Senate who has a better knowledge of air problems or who has higher credentials than the Senator from Ohio.

At this time, I yield to the Senator from Ohio.

Will the Senator yield?

I am glad you brought that up. That was the information I had on who is opposed to it, naming Synergy. The Senator from Connecticut said they are now supporting S. 139. You have information to the contrary, is that correct?

Mr. President, I yield an additional 3 minutes from our side to the Senator from Ohio.

Mr. President, we have agreed to go back and forth. I know Senator Akaka has been waiting for a while. Certainly it is all right to go to him. I wish to make one point first.

It is a little unfair and unrealistic--and I want to make sure everyone interested in this issue understands, we have had the McCain- Lieberman bill for months now, and we have all had a chance to study it. The fact they changed this bill and they are saying you are not talking about the bill before you now, that did not happen until 11:53 this morning. We have not had a chance to see it.

The bottom line is this: As was stated by the Senator from Connecticut, this is just a start. So if their bill is just a start, what it does is recognize CO2 as a pollutant, and that changes the policy for America. I think the debate from this point forward should go on as if we are talking about the original McCain- Lieberman bill. That is what we will be doing.

I yield to the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. President, I had yielded to the Senator from Connecticut, so let me respond. There are other provisions that arose this morning that no one has seen. It is a new bill. It is a different bill. The Senator may have talked about it in the Commerce Committee. I am not on the Commerce Committee.

I will say this: To receive a bill after months and months of having this bill to look at, preparing our case, only to find out at the last minute, since they obviously didn't have the votes, it was changed, and we received it at 11:53, is not realistic.

I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Alabama, Mr. Sessions.

Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Utah.

Mr. President, I would like to inquire as to the amount of time we have left on our side.

All right. Mr. President, I was telling my good friend from Connecticut a few minutes ago, if we keep hearing it repeated that ``the science is real, the science is real, the science is real,'' sooner or later they are going to start believing it. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let me just say, first of all, reference was made by one of the speakers to the Byrd-Hagel resolution that was passed 95 to 0. What did that resolution say? The resolution said, if there is economic damage or if the developing countries do not have to do the same thing the developed nations do, then we are not going to ratify the treaty. That is exactly what they came back with.

So here we have a situation now that is even worse because we are talking about passing a bill that would put the United States of America in a position where they have to do something that not only the developing nations do not have to do, but even the developed nations do not have to do.

So I can tell you right now, there are a lot of people in China who are rejoicing, thinking: Boy, all those American jobs are going to come to us if they pass this. In India, they are rejoicing; in Brazil, the same thing. In South Korea, President Roh, and President Vincente Fox of Mexico would be delighted to think about the great jobs that would go there--many of which have already gone there because of some of our overregulation in this country.

Like Kyoto, this is an extreme approach. I am not going to try to figure out which bill we are talking about. The McCain-Lieberman bill has been around now for months. And now, at 11:53 this morning, they changed it. I don't know what was changed.

But I would say this: This is a cartoon that appeared that I think you will enjoy, I say to Senator Lieberman. It is the camel's nose under the tent, the fact that if you get just a little bit here, then all of a sudden the rest of it will come in. And the rest of it is the body of Kyoto.

Now, why do I say that? I say that because they are actually saying one thing. I don't care how they change their bill, they are changing the policy of America to make us believe and have, as a new policy, that CO2 is a pollutant. CO2 is not a pollutant. Other things are pollutants.

In fact, we have the Clear Skies Act which the President of the United States, President Bush, is promoting. It has the largest reduction in emissions that any President has ever promoted, with a 70- percent reduction. And those are in sulfur dioxide and mercury.

But in this case here, just to show you that nothing really has changed by the last minute change, these features--the covered gases, emission caps, timetables, emissions trading, wealth transfer, emissions reporting, sequestration and sinks, verification, and future racheting--those are the same things that are in the current bill that appeared in the bill mysteriously at 11:53.

Now, I would like to suggest we have heard a lot of hysteria tonight. We are going to hear it tomorrow for 2 more hours--no, 1 more hour. That time is going to be equally divided, and they are going to be talking about the horrible things that are going to happen, the ice caps are going to be breaking, all these things.

I would suggest to you, Mr. President, we heard the same thing a few years ago. Looking at a couple magazines--this is Science Digest. They came out, and they said: ``Brace Yourself for Another Ice Age.'' The same people who are talking about warming today were talking about bracing yourself for another ice age. If there were time, I would read the script. It is really enlightening to do so. I would encourage my fellow Senators to do that.

Then, Time magazine came out, and they have ``Another Ice Age?'' They talked about these horrible things that are going to happen: We are not going to be able to grow anything anymore. We are going to have to shut down businesses because we are no longer going to be able to function because we have another ice age--not global warming, global cooling.

Then along came Newsweek, and it says: ``The Cooling World.'' They talk about the horrible things that are going to happen.

So it seems to me it is the strategy of those individuals who are catering to the extreme environmental left to try to scare people. And there is no reason to do that.

Now, I think probably the most significant thing I am going to be talking about tonight is to try to make people realize that if you say something enough times, as we keep hearing--as I mentioned a minute ago, about the science being real, about it is proven, and all that-- sooner or later people believe it. One reason is we do have a liberal national media, and they would like to have people believe that.

Now, we heard a lot of discussion about the National Academy of Sciences. I would like to quote Dr. Frederick Seitz, who is the former president of the National Academy of Sciences, and 17,800 other independently verified signers.

Now, the Senator from Arizona talked about the 1,010 scientists. We are talking about 17,800. This is what the Oregon petition said. This is a petition that was put together by the lead, Dr. Frederick Seitz, the former president of the National Academy of Sciences, along with 17,800 other signatures:

We urge the U.S. government to reject the global warming

agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan, in December,

1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on

greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the

advance of science and technology, and damage the health and

welfare of mankind.

This is the former president of the National Academy of Sciences. He goes on to say:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human

release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases

is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause

catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption

of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial

scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon

dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural

plant and animal environments of the Earth.

Now, this is significant. We are talking about not only is CO2 not a pollutant--which it is not a pollutant--but it is a fertilizer. It is something that helps us and something that would be to the benefit to have more of, not less.

Now, in addition, there are over 4,000 scientists, 70 of whom are Nobel prize winners, who have signed the Heidelberg appeal.

The Heidelberg appeal says: No compelling evidence exists to justify controls of anthropogenic greenhouse gas

emissions. Anthropogenic is the term meaning ``man-made.'' We keep hearing the Senator from New York talking about the man-made gases. It does not exist. These are 4,000 scientists. Look at some of the scientists we are talking about. They are on this list. It is too many to delineate at this time. The bottom line is that the science just flat is not there.

Ninety percent of the science--in fact, 100 percent of the science I have heard the other side talk about tonight is all science that they allege happened, but it was all before 1999. What we are talking about are things that have happened since then. There has been a turnaround.

Last July 8, James Schlesinger--we all remember him; he certainly is no Republican--the Energy Secretary to former President Carter, said:

There is an idea among the public that the science is

settled. That remains far from the truth.

He goes on to talk about the fact that the science is not sound behind the myth, the hoax of global warming.

It is important to realize that the IPCC, which is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, came from the United Nations with the idea that they are making the recommendations. The lead scientist behind that was a scientist named Dr. Michael Mann.

What we have done here is talk about what has happened in terms of the science that has come from this recent 2003 science, as opposed to what came under Michael Mann or the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One is the detail, less hemispheric, and the information that they used, the age of the data. Under Michael Mann it was older, 1999 or before. The newer is after the IPCC. This is all new stuff. I will submit this for the Record because it is all very self- explanatory.

Several times reference was made by the distinguished Senator from Connecticut to MIT and what MIT is saying to us. I would like to quote Dr. Richard Lindzen, an MIT scientist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Both of these--MIT and National Academy of Sciences--were used to fortify the case that this hoax called greenhouse gas is a reality. This is what Dr. Rich Lindzen said. He has specialized in the climate issue for over 30 years. He told the Committee on Environment and Public Works, the committee I chair:

There is a definite disconnect between Kyoto and science.

Should a catastrophic scenario prove correct, Kyoto would not

prevent it.

These are new discussions that are coming from scientists whose credentials cannot be questioned. Again, it is MIT science--we heard that a few minutes ago--and the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr. David Legates is director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware. This is going back to Michael Mann, the guy who is the scientist behind the IPCC, all this stuff that we have been hearing. Dr. Legates said:

Although [Mann's work] is now widely used as proof of

anthropogenic global warming, we've become concerned that

such an analysis is in direct contradiction to most of the

research and written histories available. Our paper shows

this contradiction and argues that the results of Mann . . .

are out of step with the preponderance of the evidence.

Preponderance of the evidence, we keep hearing the other side say the science there. No one is going to question it. We are all questioning it.

This is from a publication called ``Energy and Environment,'' and this was November 15, last week. It starts talking about the flaws in the logic that were used by the Mann study. The flaws all come out. I will show the greatest flaw of all.

Let me hold this piece of paper up to this side. This is what Dr. Mann has been talking about. He referred to the famous hockey stick. Here is the hockey stick. The shaft goes along here and all of a sudden that is the hockey stick part. That is supposed to be where it is getting so warm. What he failed to do was to go back to the 1400s. If you look at this, the Earth was much warmer, the temperatures were much warmer back then than they are today by a long ways. So it is just leaving out these little convenient things that causes the truth to be distorted.

I think this is probably the most important chart. It shows you what the other side does. They will cover up the part that disclaims everything they are saying and come out and use it as evidence to promote it. I am saying that the temperatures on the Earth's surface were higher in the 1400s than they are today.

One of the most recent things that came out just in March was the Harvard Smithsonian study. This was the most far-reaching study ever made on climate change. It examined the results of more than 240 peer- reviewed papers published by thousands of researchers over the past four decades. The study covers a multitude of geophysical and biological climate indicators. They came to the conclusion that climate change is not real, that the science is not accurate. We will be coming back to that from time to time, probably tomorrow also.

This is the range of climate proxies that were used to come up with the conclusions of the Harvard Smithsonian study. If you read them all, it starts with borehole data, cultural data, glacier advance and retreats, geomorphology, all these things were used. Primarily what was used by Dr. Mann were the tree rings. And this covers every known type of a proxy that could be used. All of this was in the Harvard Smithsonian study.

So I think if you go back one more time to the chart that we had up here that shows how they are misrepresenting the data, if you stop and think about it, just use logic on things that we know. What is incontrovertible? What do we know right now that no one can question? What we know is that there was a medieval warming period. That period was around from 800 A.D. to about 1300. Then there was the little ice age that came along. The little ice age went from 1300 to 1900. Then we went into another warming period that endured from 1900 until 1940.

Something significant happened in 1940. In 1940, we started going into another cooling period. But wait a minute. The 1940s was the decade when the surge came in CO2 emissions. That was during the time when more people were driving, and it happened right after the war. So we had the greatest increase in releases of CO2 during that time, an 80-percent increase.

What did that do? Did that cause warming? It did not. It precipitated a cooling period that endured through the 1970s. I think if you look at that, I don't know how anyone can say that the science is at all favoring--and certainly not recent science--the concept, I call it a hoax, of global warming.

Since I gave a speech on the floor when I used these charts, which I may not have time to do tonight, there have been a lot of things that have come out. The University of Colorado researched the Arctic Circle information. To do that, they actually went down beneath the snowpack in the Colorado Rockies, and the scientists discovered fungi emitting large quantities of carbon dioxide in methane. Of course, this is totally unrelated to manmade emissions. That is not man-made. They are talking about man-made emissions. That is something that was there that was never considered until it was discovered about a month ago. They said in an article in the Washington Post, quoting the scientist:

Indeed, scientists said, if other regions of the world have

similar fungal communities thriving under the winter snows,

as seems likely, climatologists will have to revise their

models of global warming to accommodate fungi surprisingly

massive role in the winter production of greenhouse gases,

such as carbon dioxide.

It went on to say--these are the scientists now, after this discovery just a month ago:

The global warming models can no longer ignore fungi in

snowy regions and seasons as they had, scientists said,

especially because about 40 percent of the landmass is

covered with snow for at least part of the year.

We will revisit this issue, but there is no question that the science refutes everything the alarmists we have heard about have been trying to promote. I think something that would be more meaningful to the Members of this body would be, so what, there is. There is a preacher named Lon Solomon. On the rare occasions I am here on Sunday, I will go out to the McLean Bible Church. Right in the middle of his sermon he says: So what.

We have gone through all this, the science is flawed, it doesn't exist. So what. What is the big deal? The big deal is the economic harm that would

come to this country. Let's examine it for a moment.

Later on I will go over all of the letters, but here is what the teamsters, boilermakers, electrical workers, and others wrote me in a letter on September 9--this past September 9. This is not in 1999. They write:

Mandatory reduction requirements for carbon dioxide and

other greenhouse gases would create much higher energy prices

for consumers and put the economic recovery at risk, while

providing little or no tangible benefit for the global

environment. We, therefore, urge you to vote against S. 139,

the Climate Stewardship Act.

CBO, the Congressional Budget Office--we depend on them for scoring, for coming up with numbers we use to make economic decisions in this body. They said it best:

The price increases resulting from a carbon cap would be

regressive. That is, they would place a relatively greater

burden on lower income households than on higher income

households.

A minute ago we heard Senator Voinovich from Ohio. During one of our committee hearings, a guy named Tom Mullen, who is the president of Catholic Charities, testified before our committee and said:

The overall impact on the economy in northeast Ohio would

be overwhelming, and the needs that we address at Catholic

Charities in Ohio with the elderly and poor would be well

beyond our capacity and that of our current partners in

government and the private sector.

You heard about the harassment he has been subjected to because he cares--sincerely, genuinely cares--about these older people.

What about minorities? According to a study by the National Black Chamber of Commerce and the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, if the United States ratifies Kyoto or passes domestic climate policies--that is what we are talking about, effectively implementing the treaty; that is their goal--the result would ``disproportionately harm America's minority communities, and place the economic advancement of millions of U.S. Blacks and Hispanics at risk.''

That was the Center for Energy and Economic Development doing a study for the Black Chamber of Commerce and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

It gets down to being more specific. We find out from this study that the Kyoto issue we are talking about right now would cost 511,000 jobs by Hispanic workers and 864,000 jobs held by black workers. Poverty rates for minority families will increase dramatically, and because Kyoto will bring about higher energy prices, many minority businesses would be lost.

Here is a chart that shows the unemployment rate this study revealed. This study was sanctioned by the Black and Hispanic Chambers of Commerce because of their concern. Keep in mind all these things will happen to them, and yet there is no science or logic behind those decisions.

This information came from Pennsylvania State University. They did a study. In this study, they break it down by State as to how many jobs are going to be lost. I will point out a couple of States.

Illinois would lose, if we were to pass S. 139, 159,000 jobs. I hope the Senators from Illinois are watching right now because 159,000 jobs is not what they would want. Ironically, in Indiana, they would lose 194,000 jobs. In Michigan--and that is a big auto State--they would lose 133,000 jobs. They tell you we are going to carve out a special deal for the autos. Look, this is the nose-under-the-tent concept. They now say if we adopt this, our policy is the science is real and global warming, in fact, exists.

In Pennsylvania--and I am sure the Pennsylvania Senators are very sensitive to this--they would lose, if we pass this bill, 178,000 jobs. In the State of West Virginia, it will be 126,000 jobs; in Wisconsin, 113,000 jobs; for the interest of the Senator presiding, over 100,000 jobs in the State of Minnesota.

Something was stated by the Senator from Connecticut concerning farms. He said we are going to carve out farmers and agriculture, that nothing is going to happen there. Standard & Poor's Data Resource International did a study--again, a very recent study. They talked about what is going to happen.

Let me share with my colleagues what will happen to the agricultural families in America, according to Standard & Poor's. You can discredit Standard & Poor's, but I don't think you will get by with it. They are legitimate.

Fewer small family farms: Higher energy costs, together with the reduced domestic and export demand, would lead to a severe decline in agricultural investment and a sharp increase in farm consolidations. The number of small farms likely would decline much more rapidly than under business-as-usual conditions.

Higher production costs: Production costs would increase by up to $16 billion, an increase of almost 9 percent, and would be difficult for agriculture to pass on to the consumers. These higher production costs include a $13 billion increase in manufactured input--that is fuel, fertilizer, and chemicals--expenditures, and $1.6 billion increase in farm origin.

Lower demand for agricultural products: Weaker demand for agricultural products results both from the 1.6 percent decline in GDP and 2.4 percent decrease in consumers' disposable income. It goes on and on.

Higher food program costs: If you are not sensitive to the farmer, you ought to be sensitive to the people who have to eat in this country. For example, USDA spends more than $39 billion for six food assistance programs, including the Food Stamp Program--there are a lot of people interested in that program--and child nutrition programs. We talk about that every day.

For these programs alone, emission controls from the protocol would add 500,000 persons to the food stamp rolls and increase program costs up to 5 percent annually.

Again, this is not Senator Jim Inhofe talking. I am not qualified to make these assessments. This is a study made by a Standard & Poor's research group.

Getting back to the MIT joint program, since they have been used quite a bit, the MIT Joint Program on Science and Policy of Global Change, the average crop yield is 30 percent higher in a CO2-enhanced world.

That is what the Senator from Utah was talking about.

I inquire from the Chair as to our remaining time.

I reserve the remainder of my time. I am anxious to hear from the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Arizona.

May I interrupt for a question?

I do not believe I mentioned Dr. Wigley in my remarks. It must have been somebody else.

Since it was called to our attention that tradition would have it you wrap up, you may have the last 23 seconds. Let me say to my good friend from Arizona--and he is a good friend--you can talk about these people. He talked about 1,010 scientists. I talked about over 20,000 scientists who have agreed with this, looked at this, and said it doesn't really exist. I have talked about sources that cannot be impugned by anyone. I am talking about the Smithsonian, Harvard, Standard & Poor's, and others.

Let me just mention I have saved, I think, the best for last because, yes, we are concerned about jobs. That is the biggest concern we have in America now. Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates came out with something that delineated exactly the damage that would be done to America and that it would cost 2.4 million U.S. jobs. That is why the labor unions are involved in this. It would reduce GDP by 3.2 percent, or about $300 billion, which is more than we spend on primary and secondary education combined.

They said because of Kyoto, American consumers would face higher medical, food, and housing costs. Tomorrow I will delineate exactly how much that is. At the same time, an average household of four would see its real income drop by $2,700 by 2010, and each year thereafter.

They go on to say--this is the Wharton School of Economics:

Under Kyoto, energy and electricity prices would nearly

double and gasoline prices would go up an additional 65 cents

a gallon.

I know I am almost out of time. Since it was brought up by the distinguished Senator from Connecticut about the farmers, let me tell you who is frantically trying to stop us from destroying the American farmer: the International Dairy Foods Association, the National Association of Wheat Growers, National Cattle and Beef Association, National Food Processors Association, National Grange, the National Oilseed Producers, the American Farm Bureau, the National Corn Growers Association. The list goes on and on, because these people are very much concerned about the competitive disadvantage in which they would find themselves.

I would also have to say I invite my very good friend from Arizona to go back and search the record of my remarks, the 40-minute talk I made a few minutes ago. Nowhere in that talk are the two names--what were they, Wigley and Schneider?--who were mentioned during that time. Tomorrow there will be ample opportunity to address that issue.

We are talking about a big deal. You wonder what the motivation is? I will quote a couple of people. If the science is not real, if it inflicts all this damage on America, then what could possibly be the motivation? I think maybe Jacques Chirac, the President of France, the other day was correct when he said, ``Kyoto is not about climate. It is the first component of an authentic global governance.''

Do we really want to have France dictating policies to us?

Let me just say I will yield the remainder of my time. I think it would be only fair if I get an additional 3 minutes, that they get an additional 3 minutes, too, and I don't want that to happen.

Mr. President, I have an amendment on behalf of the Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, myself, and several other Senators, which I send to the desk at this time.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I am very proud to speak on behalf of this amendment, which I am delighted to cosponsor with my good friend and colleague from Arizona, Senator McCain. We have worked on this for a long time. We have worked on it with environmentalists, leaders in the business community, thinkers about this problem, and public health officials, and with just plain citizens who are worried about global warming.

Global warming is one of the great challenges of our time. It challenges us in many ways. Greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels threaten our environment, of course, but they also threaten our economy and our public health. They also represent a challenge to political leadership, which is whether we are going to be prepared to look at the science, to face the facts, and to do something about a problem that is appearing but its most difficult, and potentially devastating, consequences are yet over the horizon. Should we continue to allow unabated our current rate of greenhouse gas pollution, we threaten to disrupt the delicate ecological balance on which our lives and our livelihoods depend.

Global warming is not just a global challenge; it is also a very local one, impacting lives of Americans in critical and potentially disastrous ways. Every family has reason to fear the effects of global warming. Scientists predict that rising temperatures and rising sea levels through global warming will lead to damaged water supplies, increased flooding, depleted fisheries, sunken wetlands, devastating droughts, intensified forest fires.

The parched conditions that are contributing to the ravaging fires raging now in southern California could become more widespread if the Earth's temperature increases. Over the long term, in a much more personal way, global warming will spell higher energy bills, increased insurance premiums, and lost jobs.

I know that over the course of the debate this evening and tomorrow several of our colleagues will speak to the local physical and biological impacts of global warming. I want to tell one story that I heard about a year ago, which made this all real to me. It comes from the Native American population of Alaska and northern Canada.

In the past few years, a robin appeared in one of the Native American villages in Alaska. The elders there, despite a very intimate awareness of their 10,000-year-old language, did not know what to call the bird. There is no word for robin in their language. Robins, by virtue of the climate of that area, for thousands of years preceding, felt--if I can put it this way--unwelcome there.

The second example comes from Tanana in Alaska, which has an annual lottery to determine when a tripod placed on the frozen Tanana River would break through the ice. Over the past 50 years, the breakthrough has continued to occur earlier and earlier.

So it is not only in the language of science and statistics that climate change and global warming is occurring, it is in the language of everyday life.

The American public clearly understands this and, in fact, there is a gap between the public and our political leadership that Senator McCain and I hope we can close with this amendment. According to a recent Zogby poll, 75 percent of Americans support this legislation, this amendment, we are debating this evening.

My colleagues now have to choose between meeting the public's support for action, demand for action, or siding with the minority who would ignore the scientific consensus and delay action on this critical problem.

Meeting this monumental challenge and addressing this growing environmental threat demands strong leadership. I am afraid that, to date, such leadership has been lacking in the current administration. Today's Senate debate represents the first of its kind since 1998, which testifies, I am afraid, to a lack of leadership here. This debate provides us with an excellent opportunity to take action before it costs us so much more to deal with the consequences of inaction.

I must say that even more dramatic has been the Bush administration's failure of responsible leadership on global warming. President Bush and his Environmental Protection Agency have not only offered no meaningful proposals to deal with global warming, they have tried to deny the very existence of the problem.

Last summer the White House called for yet another study. This time it focused on whether global warming is caused by human behavior. Let me speak directly. That call is a shameless stalling tactic. As the New Orleans Times-Picayune described, ``It calls for further investigation of what the scientific community already widely accepts.'' In fact, as Don Kennedy, chief editor of the International Journal of Science, argued:

Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around

this topic [climate change] is rare in science. . . . There

is little room for doubt about the seriousness of the problem

the world faces, and other nations, including most of our

trading partners in the Organization for Economic Cooperation

and Development, understand that.

Yet in the face of these facts, President Bush has given us only a call to action, a call for more study and not action on global warming. I cannot resist saying this President has fiddled while the globe continues to warm.

The plan the administration has put out would allow emissions of global warming pollutants to continue to grow at exactly the same alarming rate as they have grown over the past decade. Earlier this month, the General Accounting Office found that the plan of the administration would do nothing to reduce our emissions growth. In fact, the GAO was even unable to discern the extent to which the administration's identified methods and tools

would contribute to reducing emissions. They found that the administration was not going to evaluate whether they had made progress toward their goals until 2012. Too late.

This deny-and-delay approach to meeting the real threat of global warming is no longer acceptable. It is an abdication of leadership-- environmental leadership, public health leadership, economic leadership, international diplomatic leadership.

Senator McCain and I offer our bill, the Climate Stewardship Act, to confront this growing threat in a systematic and serious way. It is patterned after the highly successful market-based acid rain program of the Clean Air Act.

The amendment was crafted in close consultation with industry leaders and, I am so pleased to say, enjoys strong support of many of them and leaders within the environmental community. It represents the most serious and balanced attempt at solving the crisis before us, and it does so by harnessing market forces and directing them to new economic opportunities in the future.

Our bill limits emissions of global warming pollutants by electric utilities, major industrial and commercial entities, and refiners of transportation fuels. Those sectors represent about 85 percent of U.S. emissions of global warming pollutants.

The amendment does not apply to farmers, individual residences, or to automobile manufacturers for the cars they sell. Because our current emissions are now at 2000 levels from a practical standpoint, our legislation simply holds them at those current levels in some ways, a modest goal--but a very significant step forward in American responsibility for the global problem of global warming.

That is the full extent of national action that our amendment would require. More modest, yes, than the cuts envisioned by the Kyoto protocol, but a significant step forward, one that I think will not only get us on the road to protecting the public's health and the great environmental treasures of the United States of America but will reestablish our credibility and responsibility in the world. As the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, we will show that we are accepting our responsibility to be part of the global solution to this global problem.

Our amendment achieves these significant reductions while embracing free market principles. By setting reasonable caps on emissions and permitting industry to trade in pollution allowance, we create a new market for reducing greenhouse gases. In this way, we hope and believe our amendment will change the fundamental terms of the debate because for too long the national dialog on global warming has seemed to be deadlocked, pitting business leaders on one side against environmentalists on the other in a zero sum struggle. It ought not to be. We ought to find common ground, and that is what this amendment attempts to do.

The debate for too long has itself been overheated with acrimony and polluted with misinformation. Our hope is that this amendment will break through both of those obstacles. Environmental protection and economic growth are not mutually exclusive; they are mutually reinforcing over the long run.

Measured steps to curb global warming in a business-friendly way promise to not only save us from environmental degradation but to open new opportunities and to spur innovative new technologies for American business to seize.

In a July 25 letter this year, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy endorsed the concept that market-based climate policies can reduce gas emissions while promoting technology-based solutions, reduce energy dependence, and bolster the competitiveness of U.S. industry.

In a July 18 letter to my office, a group called Environmental Entrepreneurs, which represents over $20 billion in investment capital, wrote that the bill will stimulate economic growth and give the United States a competitive edge in bringing these products to market.

Finally, a letter of July 24 of this year from several of our Nation's most prominent investors encouraging the efforts Senator McCain, the other cosponsors, and I are making says:

By employing strict goals and flexible means, we expect

your proposal will unleash the power of competition and spur

innovation to protect the environment. A healthy economy and

a healthy environment are not mutually exclusive; they go

hand in hand.

I ask unanimous consent that all three of those letters be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, corporate America, fortunately, has already given us some models of companies that are dealing with global warming and, I believe, profiting from doing so. Companies such as Alcoa, British Petroleum, DuPont, Eastman Kodak, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, and Nike have all accepted targets for greenhouse gas pollution reduction that meet or exceed this amendment's requirements. These and other companies have cut their emissions of greenhouse gases not just because they sought to be good environmental citizens, which they are, but because their boards of directors and their senior management are convinced that a proactive stance on climate change makes good business sense.

Perhaps the most compelling examples of that new corporate mindset on global warming come from American Electric Power and Cinergy, the biggest burners of coal by tonnage and percentage in our country. Both companies have now announced enforceable obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels that are below what our proposal requires. And Cinergy has said it can make these reductions for no increased cost and with no additional fuel switching.

It is quite remarkable that they say they can make the reductions at no increased cost. But for every BP and DuPont, IBM and Cinergy, there are scores of other enterprises that I fear are inefficient, that are refusing to rise to new environmental standards and curb their greenhouse gas emissions. That is why we must pass this amendment. We must set standards. We must exercise responsible leadership.

I understand that taking action to combat global warming is not without cost, but it is worth the cost. The sacrifice of the Climate Stewardship Act is a minimal sacrifice. The cost of our amendment is reasonable and affordable by any measure and under any economic model employed to date. A recent MIT study estimated that our amendment would annually cost less than $20 per household. That is not a lot to ask for stemming the warming of the planet and all the devastating consequences it could bring.

A second independent study released this summer by the Tellus Institute reaffirms that same conclusion. Tellus, in fact, found that net savings to consumers of $48 billion would be realized by 2020 and household electricity bills would decrease because of reduced energy demand.

Finally, the recent study of the Bush administration's Department of Energy of our entire proposal found similar minimal economic impacts overall, but did find some spikes in natural gas usage at the expense of the coal industry.

We feel very strongly that was a flawed study. Its assumptions only allowed compliance with the program through fuel switching. So the outcome

was preordained. In fact, the Pew Center for Global Climate Change has examined this analysis and believes the study's structure, combined with unrealistic input assumptions, results in unrealistically high cost projections.

Senator McCain and I have worked very hard on this proposal. We have worked hard to achieve common ground on it, both among businesses and industries that are involved in emitting greenhouse gases, environmentalists, citizens, and among Members of the Senate. We are seeking a consensus position that will allow our Nation to move forward to take action on this critical challenge. As a result, we have modified our original bill to drop the second phase of its requirements.

As time goes on, we will look forward to bringing that back up and convincing the Senate to adopt the entire program, but let's deal with the first phase amendment. It does not require or create a significant fuel switching, even according to the administration's own Energy Information Agency, and has a very low economic impact. It is a beginning in dealing with this problem.

The true cost comparison is not between the cost of doing business now versus the cost of new regulations. It is between the cost of action now and the cost of inaction in the future, because the fact is the carbon we emit to the atmosphere today will remain there for a century. Every extra ton of emissions means we are going to need tighter controls. It will be more costly and more difficult to protect the environment and public health later on.

A recent study calculated every ton of pollutants needlessly emitted into our atmosphere costs Americans $160, and we are currently emitting billions of tons each year. Property lost to rising sea levels, cropland lost to drought, revenue lost to dwindling fishing stocks caused by global warming, all represent real costs, not to mention the ultimately immeasurable damage to our health and quality of life.

It is very interesting to follow the judgments of the insurance industry on this question if we want to gauge the cost of inaction. Uncertain about the potential increased liability from severe weather events and other costly side effects of global warming, insurers are now charging higher premiums to businesses and homeowners to cover higher expected costs. SwissRe, North America's leading reinsurer, says that ``global warming is a fact'' which ``has the potential to affect the number and severity of these natural disasters and result in a very significant impact on our business.''

This reinsurance company projects that climate-change-driven natural disasters could cost global financial centers more than $150 billion per year within the next 10 years. Just think of that. We are making a proposal that the MIT study says will cost every American family $20 a year, compared to $150 billion a year within 10 years globally.

Wall Street is also concerned about the future if we fail to act. A number of institutional investors recently joined with several utilities to call for the kind of market-based approach to global warming that is part of our amendment. There is also an opportunity for our American enterprise and innovation to produce the products that will respond to the global warming challenge, and in that sense to be ready to meet the global demand for such products.

According to one reputable estimate I have seen, over the next 20 years, $10 trillion to $20 trillion will be spent globally on new energy technologies. Our Asian and European competitors see this potential and, by complying with Kyoto protocol standards, are adapting their practices to seize that enormous international market.

I want to say a special word about farmers and ranchers under our plan. They will be able to make money by adopting pro-environment practices. That would include increasing carbon levels in their land and selling emission credits to polluters. Rough estimates show that new, more sustainable management practices will sequester approximately one-half ton of carbon per acre for a farmer with a 5,000-acre farm. This would represent thousands of additional dollars a year. Many of those practices are better for the long-term health of our farms but, of course, can be of great benefit to cash-strapped farmers.

Global warming is, of course, about more than the numbers about which I have talked. It is about our values. Do we take action to protect our children and grandchildren from having to bear the full cost and health risks and life changes from the pollution we are generating today or do we, as leaders of the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, duck our responsibility and let the next generation take it?

I am particularly pleased by the strong support Senator McCain and I have received from a broad and diverse coalition of religious organizations that affirms the moral imperative for action now on global warming. I cite the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, representing an alliance of faith groups, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches of Christ, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, and the Evangelical Environmental Network.

I am reminded of the words from Scripture that the Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, which is surely the truth and reminds us we are only visitors. We do not own the Earth. We are blessed to live on it for some period of time. With that time comes a responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth. I always remember the words from the story of creation, Adam and Eve, where it says in the Bible they were put there to work and guard the garden. In a very direct sense, that responsibility to work, enjoy, and develop is combined with a responsibility that we have to guard the garden, guard the Earth.

We have failed in that responsibility. This amendment is an attempt to accept that responsibility and do something about it.

This is an historic debate. It is a debate I believe our children and grandchildren and perhaps historians will look back on and ask, as the votes are counted, did the Senate of the United States rise to a challenge almost everyone sees is coming or did we wait until the consequences, the effects of global warming, were so serious that it was too late? It was certainly too late to deal with those consequences without drastic effects on our environment, on our health, on our economy, and on the way we live.

I would yield.

I expect that will be true.

I will.

Mr. President, I thank my friend from Arizona. He is known globally, I might say, as a straight talker. He is basing that straight talk in this debate on scientific fact that is widely accepted--he is absolutely right--by international panels of scientists, by the independent National Academy of Sciences, and the National Research Panel.

I want to quote again from Don Kennedy, chief editor of the international, very reputable journal, Science. He says:

Consensus strong as the one that has developed around the

topic of climate change is rare in science. There is little

room for doubt about the seriousness of the problem the world

faces.

I expect, unfortunately, that we will debate the science here. You and I, I know, are prepared to debate the science. But the fact is, we ought to be debating what we are going to do about it. We might argue, and some presumably will argue, that our proposal costs more than the American people are willing to spend. I don't think so. The polls don't show that to be true. People I talk to are ready to be part of solving a problem before it gets out of hand.

Some may say our methods are wrong, although a market-based system, such as the one that worked to deal with acid rain in the Clean Air Act amendments, proposed and signed by the first President Bush, has a pretty good track record.

But let's have that debate. It really takes us back way beyond where the science is to have a debate whether this is a real problem. I say again, to have a debate about what we should do about it, that might get our blood going, but that is a reasonable debate. But to see the administration ask for yet another study, I just can't see that as anything more than a stalling tactic.

That is why I regret to say that this President really is fiddling while the globe is warming. We better do something about it before it gets so serious that we are going to look back and say: Why didn't we act?

This is a chance to have debate, the first debate in 5 years in the Senate Chamber on this critical problem. Let's have a healthy debate. Let's try to find common ground.

Senator McCain and I have worked very hard to reach a consensus. This is not a sharp-edged bill. It is a bill that is progressive and builds toward common ground. And then let's move forward together so we can say to our children and grandchildren: We saved you from a result that we saw coming that many were not willing to do anything about, but we finally got together and did something about it.

I thank my friend from Arizona for his very good questions. I thank him for his principled partnership in this effort, and I look forward to the remainder of the debate.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I just want to, very briefly, respond to a few of the remarks of my friend from Ohio.

My friend from Ohio is talking about a bill that is not the one before us. The EIA estimate was of the original McCain-Lieberman bill. In an attempt to achieve consensus, we took off the second set of requirements. So now the bill says, to put it simply, that the Nation has to reach the 2000 level by 2010 of greenhouse gas emissions. No EIA study has been done on this bill.

We have a study from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Just to put the minds of viewers at ease about what the impact of this will be on the cost of energy, MIT estimates that the bill before us will have a positive effect on coal prices, in fact, dropping them by 5 percent, natural gas prices by 5 percent, and crude oil prices by 2 percent.

Secondly, there has been some reference to Cinergy and American Electric Power. I want to make clear, I did not say--I certainly did not intend to say; I do not believe I did say--that those companies endorsed our proposal. But the fact is, Cinergy did testify that they could live by the amendment without additional cost. And that is the relevant part of it.

I am happy to yield to the Senator from Arizona.

I thank the Senator from Arizona. I will yield the floor, but I ask unanimous consent that a summary of this MIT study of the bill before us and its cost impacts be printed in the Record.

I believe the Senator from Maine is next on our side. I yield to her at this time.

Mr. President, I thank my friend from Oklahoma. With all respect, I say the Senator and others opposing our amendment may continue to talk about the original McCain-Lieberman bill, but that is not the one before us. We announced at a Commerce Committee hearing on October 1 that in an attempt to achieve consensus and find common ground, we were pulling back the second part of our proposal. The first part sets a goal of achieving the standards of emission of 2000 by 2010. The second part would have taken us back to 1990 standards by 2016. We pulled that back.

This is an attempt to try to see if we can move forward together. It has been out there for some period of time now, and the estimate we have seen of its effects comes from MIT, which I submitted for the Record earlier.

We will continue to debate whether the facts being presented are relevant to our amendment. I say respectfully they are not.

I thank the Chair. Mr. President, we did distribute a draft of this amendment last week, according to staff. I suppose in some sense we are progressing in this disagreement. I would rather disagree about the impact of the bill than disagree about the science that I think says so clearly the world has a problem. The globe is warming. It is the result of human activity, and we ought to figure out what to do about it.

We will continue this debate. I thank the Senator from Maine for her very eloquent statement on behalf of the amendment. I am very proud of the bipartisan support for the amendment. The truth is, this is a nonpartisan amendment, as the public support for doing something about global warming is truly nonpartisan.

Mr. President, I also thank my friend and colleague, the very distinguished Senator from Hawaii, for his patience and support of the bill. His experience as a Senator from Hawaii with the evidence of global warming is real. It goes beyond statistics and arguments. They have begun to see it with their own eyes. It is, therefore, with a real sense of gratitude I yield whatever time the Senator from Hawaii needs to make his statement.

Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from Alabama for smiling his way through that intensive interrogation by the Senator from Arizona.

I now yield 10 minutes to the Senator from New York whose support for our amendment I greatly appreciate.

Would the Chair advise us how much time remains?

Mr. President, as many of my colleagues in the Senate know, I have been fascinated and awed by the complexity of the climate change issue for quite some time.

Certainly, being born and raised in the high desert region of the State of Idaho located in the rugged and majestic Pacific Northwest, I grew up with reverence for the natural beauty of our world and a deep respect for the awesome power of nature.

I have stated several times on the floor of the Senate that climate change is one of the most significant issues of our time. I have not changed my view.

I come to the floor of the Senate today to both compliment my colleagues, Senators McCain and Lieberman, for their determination to legislatively address the issue of climate change and to object to the manner in which they have chosen to do so.

Their proposal, S. 139, The Climate Stewardship Act, is portrayed by its proponents to be a modest legislative attempt to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

It is hard for me accept the word ``modest'' as an accurate descriptive term for the legislation when I measure the bill by what it does--it regulates carbon dioxide--a gas that is not a criteria pollutant under the Clean Air Act is not a poisonous gas or toxic substance, and does not represent a direct threat to public health.

When I decided to enter politics, I was guided by a deep belief in personal freedom--the maximum amount possible for the citizens of our Nation that is consistent with an orderly society.

By freedom I mean the opportunity to achieve one's true potential, whether as an individual, a community, or a business. Freedom spawns discovery and innovation and in turn discovery and innovation solve problems and create opportunities. Regulation is the antithesis of freedom. It certainly retards, if not completely extinguishes our natural desire to discover and be innovative, and yet, we, as a Nation, seem more and more inclined to willingly accept the form of a regulatory state.

I am periodically awed by the prescience of Alexis de Tocqueville's 1839 work--``Democracy in America.'' In Part II of Chapter 6, Tocqueville voiced perhaps his greatest concern for the future conditions of American democracy.

In general terms, he said that democracies have a sort of soft ``despotism'' to fear. That is, conditions of democracy include toward men's equality, and in that equality, the government takes care of all of man's necessities, needs, and desires, in order to maintain this patterned equality among men. Tocqueville's description of this ``soft despotism'' aptly describes the modern regulatory state.

I note that there are 2,620 pages in the 1936 Federal Register, a year after the Federal Register Act was passed in 1935. In the Federal Register for the year 2000, there are 74,258.

A quote from Chapter 6 of Tocqueville's work is quite pertinent

to our discussion here. In discussing the regulatory threat, he states:

That power is absolute, thoughtful of detail, orderly,

provident, and gentle . . . It provides for their security,

foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their

pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their

industry, makes rules for their testaments, and divides their

inheritances . . . Thus it makes the exercise of free choice

less useful and rare, restricts the activity of free will

within a narrower compass, and little by little robs

each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties.

Tocqueville goes on to note that regulation:

is not at all tyrannical, but it hinders, restrains,

enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end

each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking

animals with the government as its shepherd.

Now, let me be clear, regulation, indeed, has its place. But this extremely powerful Government tool should be employed only as a last resort after facts developed by a comprehensive and systematic analysis clearly indicate that it is necessary to protect the public welfare.

It is with this analytical perspective that I have reviewed carefully the underlying scientific and economic support for this bill, S. 139.

The bill assumes that there is currently a definitive scientific basis for imposing a regulatory structure on industry. I am unable to agree with that basic assumption. There is no definitive evidence supporting regulation. Surface temperatures have warmed. We are not sure why. Since the mid-1990s, I have paid close attention to the developing science on global warming.

Indeed, I have organized and attended meetings at scientific research venues, set-up and participated in numerous conference calls with scientists from the National Academy of Sciences, and, along with the Board of the NAS convened a high level conference at the Academy's headquarters in Washington, DC to discuss the state of the science on global warming.

That conference, held on June 6, 2001, was a marvelous opportunity to talk with eleven scientists that included several Nobel Laureates who just finished responding to the now well publicized ``Key Questions'' request of President Bush.

We couldn't have had better timing for such a conference and the conference was set up solely to address concerns of the U.S. Senate.

Yet there were only two other Senators besides myself who made the effort to attend. Senators Bingaman and Sessions joined me, former Treasury Secretary O'Neill and former Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, Glenn Hubbard.

I can say to all in the Chamber today that the forum was a veritable feast for the mind and wonderfully successful in explaining matters of extraordinary scientific complexity. But it had to be quite a disappointment for the Academy. Only three U.S. Senators took the time to attend.

The National Academy made extraordinary efforts to get Members of the Senate to attend its intensive Climate Science Forum, including sending a letter one month in advance of the forum to each Member of the Senate, followed by a personal phone call to each Senate office.

What more could the Academy have done to encourage attendance? I don't think much else could have been done.

For some, it appears contentment on the science issue comes from simply learning about it from media reports contained in newspapers and popular magazines. Is that a fair knowledge base for regulation?

Indeed, a little over a year before the NAS conference I organized and attended, with Senator Lincoln Chafee and former Senator Bob Smith, a meeting of over 30 scientists working at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, MA, to discuss the state of science on climate change.

Again, I could tweak the interest of only a handful of Members to join me at that excellent scientific conference held exclusively for members of the United States Senate. This issue is too economically and environmentally important for Congress to continue to have only casual interest in its scientific complexity.

Sure, there have been several congressional hearings during the last year debating different views of the science. But how much do we really learn in a couple of hours under restrictive time limits for questions, particularly when we invite mostly ``advocates'' of a particular position, instead of objective scientists? Not much. Surely, not as much as we learned at reputable scientific forums.

So, today, the Senate is asked to pass legislation that will regulate carbon dioxide, an emission that has no health impacts--we humans exhale it with every breath--and heretofore has never been listed as an ``air pollutant.'' Stated simply, the scientific case for regulation is unpersuasive.

Those Senators who assert that the science is settled are, in my opinion, simply wrong.

The 2001 NAS Report on the ``Analysis of Some Key Questions,'' often quoted to establish the basis for regulatory action, contains a sentence that is often half-quoted, and I will read it here in its entirety:

The changes observed over the last several decades are

likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out

that some significant part of these changes is also a

reflection of natural variability.

This is the third sentence in the summary at the very beginning of the report.

Even a cursory reading of the report indicates that the uncertainties are real and they are significant. Indeed, the report uses the words ``uncertain'' and ``uncertainty'' 43 times in its 28 pages.

Some press accounts have said that this report acknowledged a dire, near term threat to the environment from climate change. This is not true.

One of the conclusions of the Report was that:

[a] causal linkage between the buildup of greenhouse gases

in the atmosphere and the observed climate changes during the

20th Century cannot be unequivocally established.

Natural variations in climate that occur over decades and even centuries have been identified by the NAS as also playing a role in climate change, and so it is not correct to say that this problem results only from human activities, or that reduction of emissions of heat-trapping gases will entirely solve it.

Mr. President, 2 years before the NAS prepared its 2001 ``Analysis of Some Key Questions'' it issued one of this country's most comprehensive reports on climate change science entitled: ``Research Pathways for the Next Decade.''

The Pathways report is short on creative literature and long on technical issue framing--not particularly suitable for catchy media headlines, which may explain why many newspapers showed little interest in its existence or import. But its critical and thorough scientific analysis of the current state of our climate change knowledge is what makes the Pathways report so important to policy makers.

Now, if you are like me and you find out that America's National Research Council has just published the most comprehensive report in history on the state of Climate Science, you don't want to read all 550 pages!

You want to cut to the chase and read the report's bottom line conclusion. And the last thing you want is a report that provides more questions than answers.

But the Pathways Report authors are brutally honest. To best explain the current state of climate science they had no choice but to lay out a whole series of potentially show-stopping questions.

Let me stop for a moment and reflect on my trip to Woods Hole, MA, that I mentioned earlier. I spent a day at the Oceanographic Institute exploring these questions with over 30 scientists. It was a real eye- opening experience.

Dr. Berrien Moore, who coordinated the publication of the Pathways Report, helped lead a discussion on where science and public policy intersect.

Two themes came through clearly in those discussions:

No. 1, there are significant gaps in scientific understanding of the way oceans and the atmosphere interact to affect climate; and

No. 2, scientists need more data, especially from the oceans to better understand and predict possible changes.

It was humbling to get a glimpse of how much we don't know.

You need to know what is in the ``Pathways Report'' in order to fully understand the Research Council's ``Analysis of Some Key Questions''-- if

read objectively, I think you will find that both Reports are consistent--both highlight the uncertainty of our current understanding of climate science.

Another important point to highlight is that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change does not define what is meant by ``dangerous interference with the climate system'' nor does it specify a ``dangerous'' level of greenhouse gas concentrations.

To my knowledge, no Federal or federally supported scientific entity has firmly established what is a ``dangerous'' level of greenhouse gas. We simply don't know!

Recently, James Schlesinger, a former Secretary of Energy under President Jimmy Carter stated in the Washington Post:

We cannot tell how much of the recent warming trend can be

attributed to the greenhouse effect and how much to other

factors. In climate change, we have only a limited grasp of

the overall forces at work. Uncertainties have continued to

abound--and must be reduced. Any approach to policy formation

under conditions of such uncertainty should be taken only on

an exploratory and sequential basis. A premature commitment

to a fixed policy can only proceed with fear and trembling.

The President understands that reality.

The administration's Scientific Strategic Plan for climate change research is a valuable effort to develop a framework for acquiring and applying knowledge of the Earth's global environment through research and observations. It is a long overdue decision and should be welcomed by all.

The President's approach is most prudent. At this time, it is my preferred option over regulation. Despite claims to the contrary, no government administration has aggressively pursued a voluntary action program. The President's plan is well conceived and deserves a chance.

The simply truth is that any cap-and-trade scheme is a hidden tax on consumption. Like a tax, it would raise the cost of production.

Moreover, a cap-and-trade on CO2 emissions will be a regressive tax which will hurt those on low or fixed income--that is the poor and elderly--disproportionately. I will submit for the record a letter sent to me as Chairman of the Aging Committee from ``The 60 Plus Association'' with membership of 4.5 million senior citizens including 10,000 in Idaho, asking me to oppose S. 139.

A quote from a June, 2001 CBO study entitled ``An Evaluation of Cap- and-Trade Programs for Reducing U.S. Carbon Emissions'' is revealing on this subject:

This analysis does not address the issue of taxing carbon

emissions. However, the economic impacts of cap-and-trade

programs would be similar to those of a carbon tax: both

would raise the cost of using carbon-based fuels, lead to

higher energy prices, and impose costs on users and some

suppliers of energy.

Another instructive quote from that study states:

The higher prices for energy and energy-intensive products

that would result from a cap-and-trade program would reduce

the real income that people received from working and

investing, thus tending to discourage them from productive

activity. That would compound the fact that existing taxes on

capital and labor already discourage economic activity.

The only way to reduce CO2 emissions from powerplants is to reduce the amount of coal, oil or natural gas consumed at the power plant.

Placing a cap on CO2 emissions from powerplants means those plants simply will not be able to generate any significant amounts of new electricity. There are no control technologies like selective catalytic reduction or scrubbers for CO2.

Capping CO2 emissions from power plants will make the current crisis in electricity markets permanent. It will force shuttering of most of U.S. coal fired steam electric generation prematurely and will essentially mandate reliance on new natural gas fired power plants without any assurance that adequate gas supplies will be available.

Further, a report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration found that reductions of SO2, NOX, and CO2 at levels consistent with the current proposal drives up electricity costs substantially. The report shows that electricity prices would rise by 21 percent by 2005 and 55 percent by 2010.

The report goes on to attribute most of the rise in prices to controlling CO2 emissions.

The report, Mr. President, also was prepared when natural gas prices were a third of what they are today which means that future electricity prices likely would be much higher because the report assumes that most new generating capacity would be gas fired.

The last point that must be addressed is the assertion that the United States is somehow out of step with the rest of the world on this issue. Climate change is as much an economic issue as it is an environmental issue. We must ensure that our global competitiveness is not compromised. Let's not allow our nation to be duped into assisting our competitors in the global market to achieve competitive advantage under the subterfuge of environmental policy. When viewed in comparative perspective, the process by which environmental policy is developed and implemented has been far more ``conflictual and adversarial'' in the United States than in Europe or Japan. In the U.S., while fines for violations have grown larger, numerous violations of environmental laws have been reclassified as ``felonies'' and many now carry prison sentences.

Contrast this with Europe and Japan. Japan implements its policies without resorting to legal coercion or overt enforcement. Japanese MUST negotiate and compromise to ensure compliance. Europe emphasizes mutual problem-solving rather than arm's length enforcement and punishment.

Our legal system allows Third Party lawsuits. Europe and Asian countries do not. In a 2003 study on the direct costs of the U.S. Tort system, it was estimated that costs equal 2.2 percent of our nations GDP. Europe and Asian countries give no standing to Third Parties in environmental compliance and enforcement cases.

Perhaps, if we were a less litigious nation, we could accomplish more in environmental compliance, and be less fearful of international environmental treaties becoming law. However, for better or worse, when our nation commits to a particular environmental policy, we enforce that commitment with the heavy hammer of civil penalties and criminal prosecution. Europe, Japan, and other nations do not. Our global competitiveness and economic security is ``in the balance.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from a large senior citizen organization expressing their fear about high costs of energy based on S. 139 be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I have come to the floor on more than one occasion over the last 5 years to discuss and debate the issue of climate change.

Many of us engaged in this issue believe it to be a serious and important issue. That I cannot deny. The Senator from Florida talked about it being of critical character. I do not dispute that. The question is, Can we do anything about it and are we the cause of it? And I am speaking ``we'' as mankind. That is the essence of the debate today.

Also, S. 139, the Climate Stewardship Act, would portray, in part, that we are the cause and, therefore, let us make some moderate adjustment changes in our regulatory structure in this country to begin to mitigate greenhouse gases.

Let me suggest that the word ``modest'' has been used, but I would guess if you read the legislation, and then you downstreamed it through the regulatory process, it might be anything less than modest.

Here is what is most important about regulating carbon dioxide. It is a gas. It is not a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. It is not a poisonous gas or a toxic substance. It does not represent a direct threat to public health. That is what scientists tell us. Yet somehow we are going to be able to regulate and shape it in a way that controls what we believe to be the cause of producing greenhouse gas.

I suggest that probably the most invasive process we are going through right here with this legislation is the regulatory process that will ultimately come.

The Senator from Arizona and I, more often than not, are critics of big government and the regulatory process. What De Tocqueville said a good number of years ago--in fact, well over a century ago--was about the great democracy of America and the despotism of fear that is produced in the regulatory process that limits freedom.

He talks about the regulatory process as being soft despotism.

I note that in 1936, there were about 2,600 pages of the Federal Register. In the year 2000, there were 74,258 pages of the Federal Register. We have become a phenomenally regulated and controlled economy and country. In so doing, de Tocqueville would note very clearly, as we all understand and as the Senator from Arizona understands as well as anyone, we begin to shape our freedoms, control our freedoms in a very interesting way. That is what this bill is all about, a massive new regulatory process to reshape certain utilizations of energy in a way that will have a significant impact on our economy. And we would be led to believe that somehow it is going to improve the environment in which we live.

That is the issue at hand. That is the one that we now need to discuss. That is, does scientific evidence support what S. 139 is all about.

I have spent a good deal of time on the science. You have to. That is probably the greatest frustration that all of us have, is trying to comprehend this massive body of science that is assembling out there and what it means and is it valid and, from it, should we begin to reshape our economy; if it is invalid or inaccurate, what would be the impact of the reshaping that S. 139 might accomplish.

Organized meetings have been held all over. I organized one with the assistance of the National Academy of Sciences in June 2001. It was a high-level conference meeting here in our Nation's Capital. Every Senator was invited to come. Three showed up. Only three showed up to listen. Senator Bingaman and Senator Sessions attended, along with Secretary O'Neill, to listen to the President and the President's Council of Economic Advisers, to listen to some of our noted scientists from all over the world. No one else came. O'Neill at that time was serving as Secretary of the Treasury and was a somewhat outspoken advocate of changing our economy for the sake of climate change. He went away from that meeting not confused but recognizing that there was a broad field of science out there that he had not yet explored and that scientists had not, in fact, come together in a way to understand.

We worked with a variety of scientists from the National Academy of Scientists. In 2000, I went up to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Senator Chafee and Senator Bob Smith went along at that time. We listened to the best scientists out there, scientists who have studied this for decades. They cannot in any absolute way suggest that greenhouse gases are the creator of a heating trend or a warming trend that does exist and most agree does exist.

The Senator from Arizona, the authors of S. 139, would suggest that this is the definitive document, the ``Analysis of Some Key Questions,'' of climate change science by the National Research Council. This is a total of 27, 28 pages. I am not saying this document is wrong, but I am saying, to understand this document, you better read this document: ``Pathways Study,'' 550 pages. Now, it is not a hot topic, and it will put you to sleep. It is all science. From this document, they concluded this document.

And what does this document conclude? That the science today is not yet assembled that can in any definitive way argue that greenhouse gases and man's presence in the production of those greenhouse gases is creating the heating trend in our global environment at this time.

There are not many sound bites here. The press did ignore this. Those who want the politics of this issue largely ignored this document. But they must go hand in glove. I am not a critic of this document at all. I have not read all of them, not all 550 pages. But I have thumbed through a lot of it. I have read a good deal of it. Anyone who wants to be the advocate of climate change darn well better read the bible on it first before they conclude that all of the world's scientists have come together with a single statement to suggest that the global warming we are experiencing can be in any way clearly the product of the production of greenhouse gas around this globe and as a part of it.

Because we have not totally understood it yet, there is no question that we ought to try to understand it before we begin to craft a massive body of regulation to reshape the economy, all in the name of climate change. That is what the President understood. That is why the President denounced Kyoto.

The administration's strategic scientific plan for climate change research is a valuable effort to build the body of science that can truly allow those of us as policymakers a foundation from which to make the right choices. If we fail to make the right choices, if we head this massive regulatory effort in the wrong direction without question--and many have spoken to it over the last few hours--we could badly damage, if not curtail, much of the growth in our economy.

I think the effort that is underway ought to be the preferred option over regulation. Voluntary action based on clear evidence is a much preferred way to go.

Let me talk for a moment about economic impact because that ultimately is the issue. S. 139 wants to change our country, wants to change the utilization of carbon and the emission of gases. You do it through a regulatory process. Between 1990 and the year 2000, industrial GDP increased 35 percent.

The reality is, our industrial growth is climbing. Its emissions have rapidly dropped. The emission today of greenhouse-like gases, as we would argue, do not come from our industrial base. Yet this is where we send our regulatory effort.

I oppose the legislation. I hope the Senate will vote against it.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Crane Conservation Act of 2003. I am very pleased that the Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, has joined me as a cosponsor of this bill. I propose this legislation in the hope that Congress will do its part to protect the existence of these birds, whose cultural significance and popular appeal can be seen worldwide. This legislation is important to the people of Wisconsin, as our State provides habitat and refuge to several crane species. But this legislation, which authorizes the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to distribute funds and grants to crane conservation efforts both domestically and in developing countries, promises to have a larger environmental and cultural impact that will go far beyond the boundaries of my home State. This bill is similar to legislation that I introduced in the 107th Congress, which was reported by the Environment and Public Works Committee but unfortunately did not receive floor action before the Congress adjourned. I have incorporated many of the changes made to my bill by the Environment Committee last year, and I hope that, by doing so, this bill can be swiftly reported and passed.

In October of 1994, Congress passed and the President signed the Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Act. The passage of this act provided support for multinational rhino and tiger conservation through the creation of the Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Fund, or RTCF. Administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the RTCF distributes up to $10 million in grants every year to conservation groups to support projects in developing countries. Since its establishment in 1994, the RTCF has been expanded by Congress to cover other species, such as elephants and great apes.

Today, with the legislation I am introducing, I am asking Congress to add cranes to this list. Cranes are the most endangered family of birds in the world, with ten of the world's fifteen species at risk of extinction. Specifically, this legislation would authorize up to $3 million of funds per year to be distributed in the form of conservation project grants to protect cranes and their habitat. The financial resources authorized by this bill can be made available to qualifying conservation groups operating in Asia, Africa, and North America. The program is authorized from Fiscal Year 2004 through Fiscal Year 2008.

In keeping with my belief that we should balance the budget, this bill proposes that the $15 million in authorized spending over five years for the Crane Conservation Act established in this legislation should be offset by rescinding $18 million in unspent funds from funds carried over by the Department of Energy's Clean Coal Technology Program in the Fiscal Year 2002 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill. The Secretary of the Interior would be required to transfer any funds it does not expend under the Crane Conservation Act back to the Treasury at the end of Fiscal Year 2007. I do not intend my bill to make any particular judgments about the Clean Coal program or its effectiveness, but I do think, in general, that programs should expend resources that we appropriate in a timely fashion.

I am offering this legislation due to the serious and significant decline that can be expected in crane populations worldwide without conservation efforts. The decline of the North American whooping crane, the rarest crane on earth, perfectly illustrates the dangers faced by these birds. In 1941, only 21 whooping cranes existed in the entire world. This stands in contrast to the almost 400 birds in existence today. The North American whooping crane's resurgence is attributed to the birds' tenacity for survival and to the efforts of conservationists in the United States and Canada. Today, the only wild flock of North American whooping cranes breeds in northwest Canada, and spends its winters in coastal Texas. Two new flocks of cranes are currently being reintroduced to the wild, one of which is a migratory flock on the Wisconsin to Florida flyway.

This flock of birds illustrates that any effort by Congress to regulate crane conservation needs to cross both national and international lines. As this flock of birds makes its journey from Wisconsin to Florida, the birds rely on the ecosystems of a multitude of states in this country. In its journey from the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin to the Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge in Florida in the fall and eventual return to my home state in the spring, this flock also faces threats from pollution of traditional watering grounds, collision with utility lines, human disturbance, disease, predation, loss of genetic diversity within the population, and vulnerability to catastrophes, both natural and man-made. Despite the conservation efforts taken since 1941, this symbol of conservation is still very much in danger of extinction.

While over the course of the last half-century, North American whooping cranes have begun to make a slow recovery, many species of crane in Africa and Asia have declined, including the sarus crane of Asia and the wattled crane of Africa.

The sarus crane stands four feet tall and can be found in the wetlands of northern India and south Asia. These birds require large, open, well watered plains or marshes to breed and survive.

Due to agricultural expansion, industrial development, river basin development, pollution, warfare, and heavy use of pesticides prevalent in India and southeast Asia, the sarus crane population has been in decline. Furthermore, in many areas, a high human population concentration compounds these factors. On the Mekong River, which runs through Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and China, human population growth and planned development projects threaten the sarus crane. Reports from India, Cambodia, and Thailand have also cited incidences of the trading of adult birds and chicks, as well as hunting and egg stealing in the drop-in population of the sarus crane.

Only three subspecies of the sarus crane exist today. One resides in northern India and Nepal, one resides in southeast Asia, and one resides in northern Australia. Their population is about 8,000 in the main Indian population, with recent numbers showing a rapid decline. In Southeast Asia, only 1,000 birds remain.

The situation of the sarus crane in Asia is mirrored by the situation of the wattled crane in Africa. In Africa, the wattled crane is found in the southern and eastern regions, with an isolated population in the mountains of Ethiopia. Current population estimates range between 6,000 to 8,000 and are declining rapidly, due to loss and degradation of wetland habitats, as well as intensified agriculture, dam construction, and industrialization. In other parts of the range, the creation of dams has changed the dynamics of the flood plains, thus further endangering these cranes and their habitats. Human disturbance at or near breeding sites also continues to be a major threat. Lack of oversight and education over the actions of people, industry, and agriculture is leading to reduced preservation for the lands on which cranes live, thereby threatening the ability of cranes to survive in these regions.

If we do not act now, not only will cranes face extinction, but the ecosystems that depend on their contributions will suffer. With the decline of the crane population, the wetlands and marshes they inhabit can potentially be thrown off balance. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting legislation that can provide funding to the local farming, education and enforcement projects that can have the greatest positive effect on the preservation of both cranes and fragile habitats. This small investment can secure the future of these exemplary birds and the beautiful areas in which they live. Therefore, I ask my colleagues to support the Crane Conservation Act of 2003.

Mr. President, this week, the University of Maryland released the findings of its landmark 2-year study on Maryland's death penalty system. The report reveals disturbing racial and geographic disparities in the administration of the death penalty in Maryland. It confirms the alarming conclusion that the administration of our criminal justice system's ultimate punishment is flawed and far from fair or just.

That is why I rise today to reintroduce the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act. This bill seeks to apply the wisdom of out-going Maryland Governor Parris Glendening and out-going

Illinois Governor George Ryan to the Federal Government and all States that authorize the use of capital punishment. The bill would place a moratorium on Federal executions and urge States to do the same. The bill would also create a National Commission on the Death Penalty to review the fairness of the administration of the death penalty at the State and Federal levels. This Commission would be an independent, blue ribbon panel of distinguished prosecutors, defense attorneys, jurists and others. I am pleased that my distinguished colleagues, Senators Levin, Corzine, and Durbin, have joined me in cosponsoring this bill.

The University of Maryland study was conducted by Professor Raymond Paternoster of the University's Institute of Criminal Justice and Criminology, and is the most exhaustive study of Maryland's application of the death penalty in history. Professor Paternoster and other researchers examined records of every homicide prosecution in which the death penalty could have been sought, dating back to 1978.

The study released this week found that blacks accused of killing whites are simply more likely to receive a death sentence than blacks who kill blacks, or than white killers. According to the report, black offenders who kill whites are four times as likely to be sentenced to death as blacks who kill blacks, and twice as likely to get a death sentence as whites who kill whites.

The study also confirms geographic disparity in Maryland's death penalty system. Those convicted of murder in Baltimore County, a jurisdiction with a high number of white murder victims, are 26 times as likely to be sentenced to death as those convicted in Baltimore City, and 14 times as likely as those convicted in Montgomery County.

Two years ago, when Governor Glendening learned of these suspected disparities, he did not look the other way. Then last year, faced with the rapid approach of a scheduled execution, he acknowledged that it was unacceptable to allow executions to take place while the study he had ordered was not yet complete. So, in May 2002, he placed a moratorium on executions. That was the right thing to do.

I urge Governor-elect Ehrlich to do the right thing by extending the moratorium. It would be contrary to our Nation's founding principles of fairness and justice to execute anyone in Maryland before the questions raised by the study are addressed.

The year 2002 was a landmark year for the examination of the death penalty. Last year the 102nd person was exonerated from death row in the modern death penalty era; 102 innocent people have been exonerated, in some cases just days from execution, after being found innocent of crimes for which they served sometimes years on death row. That is not a small number. In the modern death penalty era, our Nation has executed 820 people. That means that according to our best estimates, since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, for every 8 people executed, one who had been convicted and sentenced to death has been found innocent.

That is an unacceptable high error rate in the administration of a punishment for which errors caught too late cannot be fixed. That's a rate of error with which none of us should be comfortable.

We should learn from the example set by Governor Glendening and by Governor Ryan. Their voices are two of the many that have chimed in over recent years to express doubt about the fairness of our Nation's system of capital punishment. As evidence of the flaws in our system mounts, it has created an awareness that has not escaped the attention of the American people. Layer after layer of confidence in the death penalty system has been gradually peeling away, and the voices of those questioning its fairness are growing louder and louder. Now they can be heard from college campuses and court rooms and podiums across the nation, to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room, to the Supreme Court. We must not ignore them.

In 2002, Governor Ryan's Commission on Capital Punishment issued its report, which concluded with 85 recommendations for reforming the death penalty system. In June 2002, I held a hearing in the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution on the report of the Illinois Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment. We were fortunate to have Governor Ryan and other members of the Commission testify about the many flaws in the Illinois death penalty system and their recommendations for reform.

The Illinois study and report are invaluable to the study of fairness in our justice system. Governor Ryan's Commission provides a model for the nation for how we can respond to the indisputable proof of errors in our justice system. I am confident that as Governor Ryan leaves office next week, his greatest legacy to our nation will be the courage he showed three years ago when he suspended executions and acknowledged that the death penalty system in Illinois was broken.

If we are prepared to admit, as Illinois and Maryland have, that there are flaws in the death penalty system, then it is unconscionable to allow executions to continue without a thorough, nationwide review. The problems in the Illinois and Maryland systems are not unique to their states. Since reinstatement of the modern death penalty, 81 percent of capital cases have involved white victims, even though only 50 percent of murder victims are white. Nationwide, more than half of the death row inmates are African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans. There is evidence of racial disparities, inadequate counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, and false scientific evidence in death penalty systems across the country.

In 2002, we saw progress here in Congress in addressing problems plaguing the death penalty. The Innocence Protection Act, introduced by my distinguished colleague and ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, was favorably reported from the Judiciary Committee in July. This legislation takes an important step by recognizing the need for access to modern DNA testing and certain minimum standards of competency for defense counsel in capital cases.

I commend Senator Leahy and the bipartisan effort of my colleagues who helped move this important bill and I hope we will finish the job and enact it into law this year. But I also urge them and the rest of the Senate to recognize that if we are prepared to admit that we need these reforms, a time-out is also needed to ensure that we do not execute a single innocent person. The stakes are too high and the consequences are far too devastating to allow executions to proceed.

Also in 2002, in a significant turning point for our Nation, the Supreme Court reversed itself and ruled unconstitutional the execution of the mentally retarded in Atkins versus Virginia. The Court's decision further confirms that our Nation's standards of decency concerning the ultimate punishment are indeed evolving and maturing.

While last year's events are steps toward fairness and indications of progress, they also serve as shocking reminders that our system is seriously flawed. The statistics reflecting unfairness and stories of innocent people wrongly convicted are clear and disturbing to all Americans who believe in the founding principles of our Nation, liberty and justice for all.

When examined collectively, these facts paint a devastating picture that needs to be examined in much greater detail.

That is why I urge my colleagues to join me in cosponsoring the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act.

The courts in this country have already made, by our best, conservative estimates, 102 very grave mistakes. One hundred and two mistakes in the death penalty system qualifies as a crisis. And a crisis calls for immediate action. The time for a moratorium is now.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.