First, I would like to identify myself with the remarks that I have just heard from my two colleagues, and congratulate them on presenting to the people the hard facts that have not been faced in this country for over 30 years. And those…
First, I would like to identify myself with the remarks that I have just heard from my two colleagues, and congratulate them on presenting to the people the hard facts that have not been faced in this country for over 30 years. And those hard facts are some of the basic reasons that we are in trouble today.
Mr. Speaker, I will preface my remarks tonight, and what I have to say tonight I would like to say totally is in parallel with the spirit of what was just said. But I preface my remarks to underscore, just as my colleagues would underscore their commitment.
While I adamantly reject the man-made global warming theory, I am committed to a clean and healthy environment, to purifying the air, to purifying our water and our soil, all of this for the sake of the people of this planet, especially the children of this planet, and especially my three children, Christian, Tristan, and Anika, and all the children of the world who we hope will receive a world that we hand them that will be a better world, a healthier world. And I have no doubt that unless we thwart the onslaught of the nonsense being foisted upon humankind in the name of man-made global warming, our next generation will be deprived of freedom, prosperity, and a healthy environment.
The radical environmental crusade behind the man-made global warming theory may well be well motivated. Motives and good intentions, however, do not count. What counts are facts. And when it comes to the facts about so-called man-made global warming, the public has been denied an honest debate.
Only 18 months ago, the refrain, ``Case Closed, Global Warming is Real,'' was repeated as if a mantra of some religious sect. It was pounded into the public's consciousness over the airwaves, in print, and even at congressional hearings. This was obviously a brazen attempt to end open discussion and to silence differing views by dismissing the need to take seriously contrary arguments by anyone, no matter how impressive his or her credentials might be, if that person happened to doubt global warming.
Just a short time ago, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, the OISM, released the names of some 31,000 scientists who signed a petition rejecting the claims of human-caused global warming. Of the 31,072 Americans who signed, 9,021 had Ph.D.s; many of the 31,000 signers currently work in climatology, meteorology, atmospheric, environmental, and geophysical studies, astronomical studies, as well as the biological fields that directly relate to the climate change controversy. And note, of the 31,000 signatories, these signers are American scientists.
There are many prominent scientists throughout the world who are stepping up to expose the well-financed propaganda campaign behind the man-made global warming theory. But the views of these American scientists and those
of so many scholars and scientists throughout the world don't count. The debate is over. It has been declared over. Al Gore has his Nobel Prize, and the film An Inconvenient Truth has its Academy Award. So shut up, case is closed.
So what is this theory that now is so accepted that no more debate is needed or even tolerated?
Man-made global warming is a disturbing theory that the Earth began a warming cycle 150 years ago that differed greatly from all the other warming and cooling cycles in the Earth's primordial past. And over the life of this planet over the millions of years, there have been many, many such situations of warming and cooling, sometimes lasting 10 years, sometimes lasting hundreds of thousands of years, glaciers that went back and forth.
This warming cycle that we are now talking about and we are being told that it is unlike the warming cycle of all of those past warming and cooling cycles, this one we are told is tied directly to mankind's use of fossil fuels, as of course compared to all the other warming and cooling cycles even before mankind was present on the planet.
Basically, they are saying that our use of fossil fuels, again, basically oil and coal, are causing the Earth's temperature to change; and they are blaming oil and coal, which happen to be fuels that have powered our industries and made modern civilization possible. Fossil fuels, we are told, are rapidly increasing the level of so-called greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, the most prevalent of these greenhouse gases being CO2, carbon dioxide. This increase in CO2 we are told causes the warming cycle we are now supposedly experiencing.
This man-made warming cycle, according to the theory, is rapidly approaching a tipping point when the world's temperature will abruptly jump and accelerate with dire consequences, perhaps apocalyptic consequences, for the entire planet. Well, that is basically the global warming theory.
For skeptics of this hypothesis, the consequences of accepting this theory are far more dire than any of the predicted rise in temperature predictions: We will live with the consequences of the social engineering being touted as necessary to prevent man-made global warming.
It's a package. Accept the man-made global warming theory, and one is expected to accept the controls, regulations, taxation, international planning and enforcement, mandated lifestyle changes, the lowering of expectations, the limiting of consumer choice, and personal as well as family sacrifices that are necessary to save the planet from, well, from us.
It really takes a lot to frighten people into accepting such personal restrictive mandates that would result from implementing a global warming based agenda. People's lives will be changed if we accept this agenda as being real, and if we cave in to this onslaught of propaganda. People's lives will change, but it won't be a change for the better.
For example, jets are considered some of the worst CO2 polluters, according to the theory. So, how will our lives be different when low-priced airfares are eliminated? Let me repeat that. Low-priced airfares to be eliminated. How will that affect our lives? And how about the restricting the number of flights, themselves? How will that affect our lives?
Oh, I guess we never thought about that. Well, we never thought about that because those clamoring for us to accept the man-made global warming agenda never mentioned the price that we have to pay, not just in dollars, but in the freedom that we have today to make such choices in our lives, choices, for example, when and how many times we should travel with our families and where we should travel.
What we do know about the man-made global warming fanatics is that they don't want us using our cars. They've hidden the fact about the airplane restrictions, but we do know they don't like us in our private cars. Private automobiles will be on the way out. They want us to be regulated into public transportation, and basically, we will have gone out of our cars and have limited air travel.
But don't worry. Don't worry about it because the rich and high government officials will still have private jets, Suburbans and limousines, because they will just buy carbon credits, which Al Gore will arrange for them, and he'll arrange it for them at a tidy profit for himself, of course.
Global warming and global warming predictions appear to be designed to strike fear into the hearts of those malcontents, those of us malcontents who won't willingly accept these mandates and these changes in our lifestyle that will be demanded of us. And who, for example, among us, and we know that there will be people who just won't accept the idea that we have to have higher food prices; or they won't accept the fact that we need less meat in our diet.
That's right. Man-made global warming fanatics want us to change our diet in a big way, not just low price airfare tickets, but our diet.
A 2006 report to the United Nations entitled Livestock's Long Shadow focuses right on the hind parts of cows. Livestock, the report claims, accounts for 18 percent of the gases that supposedly cause the Earth's climate to change, the warming of the Earth's climate. Cows are greenhouse gas-causing machines, according to this report.
Fuel for fertilizer and meat production and transportation, as well as the clearing of fields for grazing, produced 9 percent of the globe's CO2 emissions, according to the report.
Cows produce ammonia, causing acid rain. And if that's not bad enough, all these numbers that I just mentioned are projected, in this report, are projected in the report's computer models that they will double by the year 2050. So not only is it bad today to eat meat, it's going to be so much worse by 2050, we've got to act now to get meat out of the diet.
Not only are they going to cut our personal transportation, but we can't even stay at home and have a barbecue. Heck, they're not even going to let us have a hamburger.
I'd point out that before the introduction of cattle to the United States, millions upon millions of buffalo dominated the great plains of America. They were so thick that you could not see where the herd began or where it ended. One can only assume that the anti-meat, man-made global warming crowd must believe that buffalo farts have some social redeeming value that's better than the flatulence emitted by cattle.
I have to be very careful about such jokes. I was making light of this supposition at a hearing about a year ago. And I suggested, in jest, that perhaps dinosaur flatulence changed the climate back in those ancient days. Well, it was reported, widely reported as if I was serious, which demonstrates something that we should all understand about the global warming debate.
The global warming debate has been totally dishonest. Anyone who could suggest that I was saying that as a serious matter was either a fool, or was intentionally portraying something that they knew was not to be true.
Yes, what we have here, of course, is steely-eyed fanaticism by those on the other side of this debate, and maybe they can't understand humor when they see it or hear it. Yes, this is an absurd theory to be talking about animal flatulence when we're talking about the future of the planet and the restrictions, massive restrictions on our way of life.
This would be absurd, but the deeper that one looks into this global warming juggernaut, the weirder this movement becomes, and the more denial in it is evident.
Ten years ago, for example, alarmists predicted that by now we would be clearly plagued by surging temperatures. In testimony before Congress 20 years ago, NASA's global warming guru, James Hanson, predicted CO2 levels would shoot up the global temperatures by more than a third of a degree Celsius during the 1990s.
Well, we were warned that we'd soon be seeing rising sea levels. And you've all seen all of these predictions, rising sea levels, perhaps even our cities under water, drought and famine and increase in tropical diseases. Yeah, an increase in tropical diseases. Of course the only increase in tropical diseases we've seen can be directly traced to the success of environmental extremists in banning DDT, which has resulted in millions of Third World children dying of malaria, something else that they were wrong about.
So what about Hanson's and others predictions of imminent global overheating?
Well, forget case closed. The question needs to be answered. And the answer is that Hanson's and the other predictions have turned out to be dramatically wrong. Temperatures during this last decade rose only one- third of the predicted jump, a modest 0.11-degree change.
Remember, Mr. Hanson has been so arrogant over the years that he has insisted that his opinions be emblazoned on government documents as the official position of NASA, rather than acknowledging that existing other opinions may be worthy of consideration. And now, we are finding out that the predictions made by Mr. Hanson, who doesn't want any other people's opinions even to be considered as part of an official NASA presentation, that this, Mr. Hanson and other self-anointed elitists have been wrong, dead wrong in their predictions of what should be happening right now.
Over the years, we've been led to expect an increased number of even more powerful hurricanes, for example. There would also be drought and melting ice caps. My beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains in California were due to heat up, dry up, brown up and burn, burn, burn, and we've been told this for almost 20 years now.
During the entire Clinton administration, scientists produced study after study predicting the horrific impact of the unstoppable onslaught of man-made global warming, which we were all led to believe by those studies would be overwhelming us right now.
Of course, if there was even a hint that the conclusion of their research wouldn't back up the man-made global warming theory, the scientists and researchers wouldn't get one red cent from the Federal research pool during the Clinton and Gore administration.
In a September 2005 article from Discovery magazine, Dr. William Gray, now emeritus professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University and, more importantly, the former president of the American Meteorological Association, said that he had paid a price for his skepticism of man-made global warming. Quote, ``I had NOAA money for 30 years, for 30 some years,'' Dr. Gray said. ``And then, when the Clinton administration came in,'' and this is still part of the quote, ``and Gore started directing some of the environmental stuff, I was cut off. I couldn't get any money, any NOAA money. They turned down 13 straight proposals from me.''
Here's from one of America's great, eminent meteorologists, and the Clinton administration just kept turning him down because he had expressed some skepticism about whether man-made global warming was a reality. Dr. Gray made the mistake of being a skeptic about global warming. And however he was skeptic about that, that made him wrong with the Clinton administration.
But he was right about hurricanes which were being blamed on global warming. Remember, we were told that global warming was going to cause more hurricanes. And Dr. Gray, one of the great meteorologists, said there's no reliable data available to indicate increased hurricane frequency or intensity in any of the globe's seven tropical cyclone basins.''
So, with that type of skepticism, no matter what his credentials were, no matter how preeminent a scientist and respected scientist he was, he couldn't get a grant during the Clinton/Gore administration. So Dr. Gray was cut off. The predictors of gloom and doom were left to shout out their paranoid nonsense every time a hurricane was detected.
And just recently, one of those shouters, Tom Knutsen, research meteorologist for the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, that's NOAA, that's the ones who ended up not being able to give Dr. Gray any research grants, this gentleman, Mr. Knutsen, who was, during that time when Dr. Gray said there wasn't a relationship, he was a hurricane alarmist, suggesting there would be more and more hurricanes because of global warming, has now published a study in the Journal of Native Geoscience admitting that he was wrong.
For the record, he now says his studies indicate that warming is not to blame for more hurricanes, and that warmer temperatures, if they do come, will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic. He unequivocally stated that his most recent finding argues against this notion that we've already seen a dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from greenhouse warming gases.
So here is a scientist with integrity. Dr. Gray, of course, was punished. He couldn't even get a research grant. But here we have a scientist who did get the grant and made wrong conclusions, but now he's stepping forward because he has integrity, to admit that he was wrong and now he has openly changed his mind.
Unfortunately, such scientific integrity did not always rise to the occasion. Perhaps it's because scientists saw the raw power exercised during the Clinton/Gore administration, which may well revisit us in the next administration if we don't watch out.
But there was raw power being exercised. Al Gore's first act as Vice President was to insist that William Harper be fired as the chief scientist at the Department of Energy. Why? Because he had uttered some words indicating that he was open minded about the man-made global warming theory, just like Dr. Gray.
Well, anybody who talks about that way, off with his head. No more position for you. That was back in 1993, the first year of the Clinton- Gore administration. So for over a decade, all we got was a drum beat of one-sided research setting the stage for a false claim of scientific consensus that we heard 18 months ago. Case closed. Case closed.
The argument is over. Global warming is real.
How many times did we hear that? Let us remember that refrain and how false it was and how dishonest it was.
Unfortunately, for all of those scientists who went along with the scheme back in the 1990s, now over a decade later there is a big problem. Contrary to what all of those scientists living on their Federal research grants predicted, the world hasn't been getting warmer. In fact, for the last 7 years when we were told there would be this dramatic increase in temperature, there has been no warming at all. Last year was colder, not hotter. Snow levels were high, temperatures have been low, and there are fewer hurricanes.
Furthermore, while there is some melting in the Arctic, which we hear about over and over and over again about the melting in the Arctic, which we need to sort of compensate that and balance that off with the fact that there is an actual ice buildup in the Antarctic, which is almost never stated during those global-warming's-real-the-Arctic-is- melting. What is happening, of course, in the Arctic is probably based--I can't say for certain; we need studies on this--but is probably based on ocean currents. But it is not CO2-related global warming; otherwise, it would be a global impact on both ends of the planet.
After hearing about the extinction of the polar bear again and again, and it has been drummed into our heads, the polar bear--all of the things about the Arctic out there, showing the poor polar bears. A few weeks ago, we were treated to the spectacle of our government placing polar bears on the Endangered Species List even though almost every article about placing the polar bears on the Endangered Species List contained a caveat that the number of polar bears is actually expanding, and with some of the species of polar bears, it's a dramatic expansion.
There are more, not fewer, polar bears. Let me repeat that so everyone knows. There are more polar bears. Yet we are, because of the onslaught of this global warming nonsense that has colored people's vision by words rather than reality, we put the polar bear on the Endangered Species List even though their numbers are expanding. Unfortunately, the debate is over and the case is closed. So explaining the emerging obvious differences between reality and the theory need not be addressed.
Maybe that's why they kept saying ``case closed'' because the observable data that was going on was in such contrast to the predictions that were being made, this was the time they had to declare the case was closed or we would basically be able to see with our very eyes the contradiction in what they had predicted.
So what we need to do is to close our eyes, close our eyes and pretend that there are fewer polar bears. That's the way to do it. That's the way we should make policy, according to the scare-mongers. But the case is not closed. The gnomes of climate theory are now coming up with self-serving explanations and verbal maneuvers.
The first attempt to cover their tracks has been slow but ever so clever. The words ``climate change'' have now replaced the words ``global warming.'' Now, if we accept this, no matter what happens with the global weather pattern, whether it be cooler or hotter for 4 years or 5 years, could be cooler, could be hotter, it will still be presented by the global warming crowd as further verification of human- caused change. Thus, they can claim credit that no matter what happens, no matter what happens in the climate, their predictions are correct because it's climate change now and not global warming, even though for over a decade and a half that was drummed into us that they were so certain that it was going to be global warming.
Well, if we accept this shift of words, we know that we will be in a position now of being unable to intellectually say, well, there's not global warming like you predicted, so we actually are going to oppose and reject the oppressive policies that you are advocating to deal with the issue that you are describing.
But if they use the words ``climate change,'' how are we going to counteract their policy recommendations when now whatever happens to the climate, they can justify it based on climate change? Sorry, fellows. Do you really think the world and the United States is filled with morons? I mean, bait-and-switch is an old game, and we've seen it in car salesmen; and car salesmen, I might add, are paragons of virtue compared to this global warming crowd.
We just need to ask ourselves if a salesman keeps giving a strong pitch and claims something that later is found to be totally wrong, when does one stop trusting him? If he starts playing word games rather than admitting an error, isn't it reasonable to stop trusting him? If his prediction is that, well, this car is going to get 50 miles to the gallon and it only gets 5 miles to the gallon, isn't that really when we should stop trusting that used car salesmen?
Well, yes, Al Gore and Company, we need to let Al Gore and Company know that we have noticed that they are now using the words ``climate change'' instead of ``global warming.'' And they're not just sort of slipping it in. They are trying to, but we've noticed, and that has important meaning.
In and of itself that is an admission that they were wrong for over a decade in claiming that there would be global warming. Now it's climate change. Every time they use the word, it indicates they were wrong or they were lying before about how absolutely sure they were about what their predictions were and about what all of the statistics and what all of the research indicated. They were either lying or they were wrong. And every time they use the words ``climate change,'' it should reinforce us in understanding they were wrong or they were lying.
Perhaps instead of word games, they need to explain why what is happening in the real world today doesn't match what they all said was going to happen based on their case-closed, man-made global warming is real. Okay. They must realize that someone is bound to notice that last winter was a really cold winter. I mean, it was a cold winter and it has been unusually chilly. And now chilly weather seems to be the norm, and where we've not yet had a full analysis of last year's winter, full winter, and we are looking forward to seeing exactly what a full study of the temperature ranges around the world had for us last winter. According to the global warming crowd, we should have seen a dramatic increase in the temperatures last winter. We will see.
We are now seeing, of course, a beehive of activity. Those federally funded scientists who we mentioned are trying to save a modicum of credibility by readjusting their computers and coming up with some explanations that will keep the man-made global warming theory from being totally rejected but at the same time trying to explain away the current dichotomy between what they said would happen and then what is actually happening.
Some scientists have simply adjusted their computer models and are now claiming that the warming isn't going to happen now, it's going to happen 10 to 15 years from now. Oh. So we can keep giving them their research grants for the next 10 to 15 years and then something else may happen.
In fact, a much-detailed report is now predicting that the temperature of the sea around Europe and North America will slightly cool off in the next decade and the Pacific will be the same in its temperature. One recent article about the shift in scientific position heralded it's a ``10-year timeout'' for global warming. Well, however, we are warned, however, that after that 10 years, the global warming will start again.
You see, they don't ever have to admit their original theories were wrong. We had one scientist at NOAA who stood up and had the integrity to say, I was wrong. I applaud him for it. These other scientists, we need to take note that they seem to be incapable of suggesting that perhaps the research grants that they took during the Clinton administration had skewed their vision of what the reality was in terms of climate and the world.
To understand all of this nonsense, we need to seriously examine the basic assumptions of this gang of global alarmists who have been pushing this paranoid theory.
They believe excess amounts of man-made CO2 are being deposited into the air and that this is what causes the greenhouse effect that warms the atmosphere. The carbon footprint that we hear about is referring to the amount of CO2 released by any specific activity. The CO2 causes the planet to warm, as we are told, until it reaches that darn tipping point when all hell breaks loose. That's what we're being told. That is the concept that every other extrapolation is based on. But it's wrong. It's dead wrong. It's absolutely wrong. It's based on CO2 and its impact on the temperature of the planet.
Yet what we find more and more evidence of is that the rise in CO2 in the past came after the rise in global temperatures. Not before. The increases that there have been in CO2 on the earth and in the earth's history happened after the earth had warmed, and the scientists are trying to tell us it was the other way around. The reality has been observed in ice cores by prominent scientists, yet this fundamental challenge to the validity of the man-made global warming theory has gone unanswered by those who are screaming that this case is closed and that all discussion is off.
So let's talk about that. Why aren't these scientists like Mr. Hansen and others willing to debate the CO2 issue? Why is it instead that they simply call names of people who are trying to ask questions and are skeptical about their theories? Well, they just keep repeating ``case closed'' or attacking not what the presentation of the ideas being presented, but instead attack, for example, myself in some nonsensical way as if I believe dinosaur farts changed the world's climate. That is about as dishonest a debate as you can have, yet we are told the issue of climate change now, global warming, is so important to the future of the world. Well, okay. Let's talk about the CO2. Let's have a debate on that issue.
To cite one expert's findings, and we will just leave that for the record, Tom Scheffelin of the California Air Resources Board stated on November 5, 2007, that ``CO2 levels track temperature changes between 300 to 1,000 years after the temperature has changed. CO2 has no direct role in global warming; rather, it responds to biological activity which responds to climate changes.''
So what causes this warming in the first place? If it is not the CO2, all of these people were telling us that it is the CO2 that's caused the temperature to change and now we're in for it because the levels of CO2 are going up. Well, what did cause the temperatures to change if it wasn't CO2?
Well, the best explanation I have heard is activity on the sun, and that would explain why we see parallel temperature trends as those trends that are on earth; we see those same trends going on on Mars and Jupiter. Are these people trying to tell us that they've got a problem with some sort of CO2 on Jupiter and Mars as they
have their changes in the climate that sort of parallel what's going on in the earth? Well, Mars and Jupiter have something in common with us. They're part of our planetary system, and if something is happening on the sun, it will affect them as well as us.
So that, too, is an argument, by the way, that's totally being ignored by the alarmists. After all, what new controls or new taxes or new regulations will they be able to foist on us if it's determined that the sun and not our sports cars are causing the problem of a warmer weather, if there is warmer weather.
The fact is that man-made global warming and the community that supports man-made global warming are jumping through hoops, bending over backwards, struggling to find one glint of new information to cover for their arrogant attempt to stampede humankind into Draconian policies.
The government-financed man-made global warming propaganda campaign has been, and continues to be, a cacophony of gibberish presented as scientific explanation. I've already given specifics as to what needs to be discussed, and instead, they ignore any type of specific challenge and go to personal attacks.
And their explanations, for example, are left to people like Al Gore, and, let's face it, Al Gore is having a little trouble right now in telling us why his predictions have been wrong.
The CO2 premise has been based that the whole global warming theory is wrong. Al Gore needs to confront that and argue his case. The methodology, by the way, that has determined ``global warming'' has been wrong. The observations have been wrong, and let me add, the attempt to shut down the debate has been wrong.
Now, I remember Al Gore labeling me as a Stalinist. He used the word ``Stalinist'' to refer to me, because when I chaired the Subcommittee on Research and Science in the House, I insisted that both sides be presented and that expert witnesses be expected to address each other's points and contentions. To him, that's Stalinism, and I would suggest that the propaganda campaign of the man-made global warming alarmists has much more in common with Stalinism than does insisting that both sides of the issue be heard at a congressional hearing. One has to really believe that he or she has a corner on the truth to make such a complaint that Stalinism is having both sides presented and addressing each other's points.
Of course, Al Gore's documentary, ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' as suggested by its own title is to be taken as the truth. Well, I won't go into the numerous debatable points and outright errors of that film, but something far worse is uncovered than just the errors of his film. In the pseudoscience and scientific documentary--yes, there were in that documentary, ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' there are numerous film segments of climate and environmental incidents, sort of like National Geographic footage, to add credibility to the alleged scientific points that supposedly were being documented.
Specifically, the film portrays a dramatic cracking and breaking away of a huge portion of the polar icecap. The scene is awesome and somewhat overwhelming and leaves the audience with the feeling that they've witnessed a massive historic occurrence.
Unfortunately, it's all fake. This is not grand, firsthand photographic evidence. It is not National Geographic footage of a huge breaking away of a portion of the icecap. Instead, what the audience is looking at is a great example of special effects. It's not the icecap. It's Styrofoam that you're seeing. That's right, Styrofoam, Styrofoam special effects trying to fool us into thinking we're seeing something happening in the icecap. By the way, isn't Styrofoam an oil-based product? Isn't there some sort of a carbon footprint there?
Well, Mr. Gore has not commented on this depiction. Maybe it is inconvenient for him to comment because it may hurt his credibility. After all, it is not getting warmer, as he predicted, so maybe he has based his theories on a Styrofoam model that doesn't work.
The first time I met Al Gore was in my first term back in 1989-1990. Al Gore, then a United States Senator, marched into the Science Committee room, followed by a platoon of cameras and reporters. He sat in front of our committee demanding that President Bush--that's George W's dad--declare an ozone emergency. And he waved a report in his hand as evidence that there was an ozone hole opening up over the northeast of the United States.
A few days later, the report touted by Senator Gore was found to have been based on faulty data, data collected by one so-called researcher, flying in a single-engine Piper cub with limited technology and no expertise. The emergency declaration the senator called for would have had severe negative economic consequences on the people who live in the northeast part of the United States.
Now, does anyone detect a pattern here? Such scare tactics, Chicken Little-ism, based on false information, of course, isn't new. We have many past examples of this nonsense being portrayed as science.
In 1957, the FDA recalled 3 million pounds of cranberries. I remember as a young person that my mother took the cranberries off the table for Thanksgiving and Christmas and told me because they cause cancer. Well, a few years later, of course, it was admitted it was a total mistake; sorry, it was a mistake. Of course, a tremendous price was paid by a large number of our farmers who went broke.
Then, of course, there was the scare over cyclamate used in everyday items like soda, jams, ice cream. It was very sweet and extremely low in calories. Cyclamate generated enormous profits because it was a product of research by our industry, but then in the early 1970s, the FDA banned cyclamate as a cancer hazard. Well, come to find out, the rats in their study had been force fed the equivalent of 350 cans of soda a day, and only eight of the 240 rats that they crammed all this soda in got sick. It was a faulty test, and eventually, after years, the truth finally prevailed, and it was officially recognized that cyclamate does not cause cancer. Canada, by the way, never banned cyclamate. Our northern buddies, I guess, couldn't get themselves to force feed those rats.
Well, the FDA did take back its negative finding; however, great damage was done. This episode had serious consequences. It was the cyclamate ban that led to the introduction of high fructose corn syrup, with the obesity and the health problems that have come with high fructose corn syrup. So, yes, another scare tactic, another American industry decimated, another rotten theory with unintended consequences foisted upon us.
The next example of fear mongering with pseudo science came on February 26, 1989. On that evening, February 26, 1989, Americans tuned in to ``60 Minutes'' and heard Ed Bradley say, ``The most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply is a substance sprayed on apples to keep them on the trees . . . '' And he goes on to say basically that the children are being put at risk by eating these apples that have alar on them, and that story snowballed out of control. Meryl Streep testified before Congress with all this basically pseudo-scientific nonsense. Parents ended up tossing apples out the window. Schools removed applesauce from the cafeteria, replacing of course the applesauce with more safe and nutritious substances like ice cream and pudding.
There was only one small problem. Alar, which is what was on the apples, didn't cause cancer, and the study that was released was based on bad science. Twenty-thousand apple growers in the United States, of course, suffered enormous financial harm because of this, and of course, when the public was so frightened, the alarmism was noted that it was a very successful tool and people could be scared into accepting policy if we just scared them. People saw that when they saw what a stampede happened because of this one story on alar.
So then comes Three Mile Island, the Three Mile Island incident, the so-called nuclear disaster which ended any expansion of nuclear energy in America. Three Mile Island is the prime example of how devastating pseudo-science scare tactics can be, even if there is no substance to the hysteria. In this case, our country is now heavily dependent on foreign oil, while France has developed a thriving
nuclear infrastructure. The French have learned how to reprocess uranium. We have learned how to buy more energy from abroad.
Just remember, Three Mile Island is a nuclear plant where an operational mishap, in which no one was hurt or put in danger, was portrayed as a deadly accident putting millions of people and their lives in jeopardy. Well, no one has yet to show me that one person's life was shortened by the Three Mile Island incident.
Coupled with Jane Fonda's movie called ``The China Syndrome,'' which had just been released, the Three Mile Island incident was a major disaster, a major public relations disaster for the nuclear industry. It was used to terrify the American people into rejecting nuclear energy as a means of producing clean, reliable, domestically fueled electric energy.
Ironically, nuclear power is probably the most effective means of producing power with no carbon footprint, no CO2. Yet the radical environmentalists still block any attempt to expand the use of nuclear energy, even as we expand our dependency on foreign oil, on oil that is produced by people who hate us. Again, it was a total con job and has had a horrible impact.
And what about that ozone hole over the Antarctic? We were told it would continue to grow and grow and it would take decades to get it under control. Boyce Rensberger, director of the Knight Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, points to evidence that the ozone concentration is a cyclical event, expanding and contracting the ozone throughout the eons of time. It's just part of a natural cycle according to this scientist from MIT.
So here is a scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology telling us the current ozone depletion is simply part of a recurring cycle, not the result of chlorofluorocarbons, as we were told. In layman terms, he's telling us that the gigantic expense of shifting away from aerosol was a waste for America. We're talking about billions of dollars here. The ozone hole closed on its own. It was just part of a cycle. If it wasn't, it would be much different than it is today.
Then there is acid rain, of course. Who can forget the frightening threats that acid rain posed to us just 20 years ago? Acid rain was supposed to decimate our forests, destroy the fresh water bodies, and erode our buildings and sidewalks. Well, whatever happened to acid rain? Well, that theory, too, proved to be an extreme stretch of the truth.
President Reagan was pummeled without mercy for his unwillingness to take monstrously costly action aimed at thwarting acid rain. He insisted on waiting for an in-depth study to be completed, and he was vilified for his insistence on legitimate scientific verification.
Well, a 10-year study by the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Project was submitted to Congress in 1990. It minimized the human impact of acidity of water in the northwest and the northeast of the United States. The issue then died quickly and quietly, and no one ever apologized to Ronald Reagan. We haven't heard about acid rain. If they were right, we should have been hearing about it all this time.
Instead, of course we've been hearing about something else which is much easier to scare people with, global warming. And of course, the last one before global warming that I'd like to mention is the most pitiful of all. Yes, an alarmist scheme which made the cover of Time magazine 30 years ago.
Just 3 decades ago, scientists and politicians were frantic about global cooling. We were told the Earth was entering a new ice age. Unfortunately for the scare mongers, the temperature did not plummet and the oceans did not freeze. In fact, it was getting a bit warmer, and during the 1980s and 1990s it did get a little bit warmer. There was an up-and-down cycle. It happens in the Earth, has always happened.
Well, some of those people, some of those scientists and others who were talking about global warming, well, they've changed their words, and of course, you guessed it, global cooling became global warming. Almost overnight global cooling was rejected, and then there became global warming, and now, of course, global warming is changing to climate change.
So, the scare tactics are nothing new; it's a tried and true method. They've seen it ever since Alar, how people can be stampeded, and then policies can be foisted off on people. Unfortunately, the long-term consequences will be very damaging, very, very damaging for the next generation, just as the instances that I've just described have been damaging for our country. Here, we don't have nuclear energy to help us through this crisis, and we've been left at the mercy of Arab producers of oil, many of whom don't like us and don't like our way of life.
Of course, our kids are being lied to in a big way to make sure they will be able to be fooled in the future, to prepare them to make the sacrifices that are necessary. Well, I often ask students from my district, from southern California, who come here to visit whether they think that 45 years ago, when I went to high school in southern California, whether or not at that time the air was cleaner or dirtier than it is now. A huge percentage of the students from southern California, young kids who I see from my district, in particular, believe that the air quality 45 years ago in southern California was dramatically better than it is today. When I tell them that what they believe is 100 percent wrong, that the air is dramatically cleaner today in southern California, you can see the frustration in their eyes; they have been lied to in a big way.
The big lie their generation has been fed is that the environment is going the wrong way and that they have to give up their freedom, that we have to give up our national sovereignty, and that they have to give up their expectations of certain things in their life because the future is bleak because everything about the environment--the air, the water, the land--are all getting worse when, in fact, there has been tremendous progress made.
And let me tip my hat to the environmentalists on this, and that is, yes, there has been regulation, that some of the cleaning, perhaps most of the cleaning that we've experienced we've seen as a result of the fact that government and liberal Democrats who push some of these reforms got them through and has helped clean the air, the water and the land. And for anyone not to admit that I think would be disingenuous on our part.
But the fact is that our children are now being told that this man- made global warming is going to devastate the whole planet. They might as well not look forward to anything at all unless they buy into all of this agenda, and all of the controls that are being advocated and the bringing down, basically, of their expectations of their life, no travel as much as you--you don't expect low air fares like your parents had. No. Unfortunately, it doesn't get much worse than that when you're telling young people to be that pessimistic.
Dr. John Christy, a professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, wrote recently, ``I remember as a college student at the first Earth Day being told it was a certainty that by the year 2000 the world would be starving and out of energy.'' Dr. Christy goes on to say, ``Similar pronouncements made today about catastrophes due to human-induced climate change sound all too familiar and are all too exaggerated for me, as someone who actually produces and analyzes climate information.''
We are told that polar bears are dying, but of course most populations of polar bears are thriving. We are told that polar ice caps are melting, but the Antarctic ice is actually growing. Hurricane Katrina was supposed to be only the first of many horrendous hurricanes to hit the United States within a few years, all caused by, of course, the warming of the climate, which is, of course, brought on by the CO2 emissions that we've had from the use of fossil fuels, never mind the fact that a hurricane of equal force to Katrina had actually hit the area 100 years before when there was a lot less CO2 in the air. And now, of course, since Katrina, totally contrary to the predictions, there hasn't been another strong hurricane season since Katrina, which totally is in contrast to the rhetoric that we heard 2 years ago. But of course we're told, never mind, the case is closed, you can't argue about it anymore.
An honest debate is long overdue, yet we see an attempt to shut down the debate. So what are the issues which need to be addressed in an honest debate? I mentioned a few already. First and foremost, my colleague in the other Chamber, Jim Inhofe, has pointed out that man- made global warming theory, especially the part concerning CO2 and the so-called ``tipping point,'' is all based on computer models. And computer models are often changed to fit the theory. So let's take a look at the facts, get off of the computer models, and take a look at the facts. Does increased CO2 come from warming, or is it the other way around? By the way, what I'm told is that the solar activity heats the ocean water somewhat; and cooler ocean water absorbs CO2, warmer ocean water means that there will be more CO2 in the air. And if that's not the case, let's debate it, let's find out.
Let's examine the issue of warming itself. The man-made global warming advocates claim that there is a 1.3 degree rise in global temperature since 1850. Yet it's widely known, and right in the hearings on the Science Committee they bring in their charts. Here's the thing in 1850. And here you see up here it's 1.5 degrees warmer now, 150 years later, than it was in 1850.
Well, it is widely known that 1850 marked the end of a 500-year decline in the Earth's temperatures known as the ``Mini Ice Age.'' So if one uses 1850 as a low point, as a baseline, isn't that totally dishonestly magnifying the importance of a 1.3 degree rise in temperature? Right? We're starting from the lowest base. And, by the way, again, that needs to be addressed. I've asked this question numerous times. Global warming alarmists never will confront any of the basic scientific challenges to what they're saying and instead go to ad homonym attacks. Well, people can mention that they think somebody's looney, that's fine, that's all right, as long as we couple it with here is where we disagree, and let's talk about where we disagree. Instead, we've heard, he's looney, case closed. Don't talk about it, shut up, and accept what we have to say.
So, what about the process that collected and analyzed the data which we now are being told supports and proves the man-made global warming theory? The Select Committee on Economic Affairs under the British Parliament had much to say about the methodology about the much- heralded U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or the IPCC, on which much of the man-made global warming theory has been resting on their supposed findings. And the Parliament Commission in Britain said, ``We have some concerns,'' the parliamentary committee reported, ``about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations.'' Shortly after this criticism, Edward Wegman from George Mason University found several problems with the statistical method and peer review process of the IPCC.
At this time, I will place my remaining remarks in the Record and I would hope that my colleagues or anyone listening who would like to read this would look into the Congressional Record and read the rest of this presentation.
With that said, I appreciate the Chair granting me this hour to talk directly to my colleagues and to the American people, through the Congressional Record.
Then, a February 2008 report by Kesten Green and J. Scott Armstrong for the National Center for Policy Analysis found glaring problems in the IPCC's 2007 report.
At a minimum, the IPCC ignored just under half of widely accepted forecasting principles. At worst, they violated over \3/4\ of those principles. Sterling Burnett of the Washington Times probably sums it up the best: ``Several assessments of the IPCC's work have shown the techniques and methods used to derive its climate predictions are fundamentally flawed.'' How are we supposed to take them seriously in the face of such lunacy? This isn't science. It's comedy.
The National Policy Center was similarly distressed. Its reports on the IPCC found unreliable data and forecasting models, as well as politically motivated forecasters. Peer reviewers of the study were few in number and often had ties to the original authors of the IPCC study. Any academic will tell you that is unacceptable. But nevertheless we are told to sit down and shut up, case closed, game over.
And Al Gore's movie isn't the only example of docudrama presented as gospel truth. As recent as May 5 of this year, the public was treated to yet another example of intentionally distorted visions. I am referring to an NBC program that included a view of the North Pole and the melting of the ice caps. As the reporter speaks, the camera pans over the ice as penguins cling to a small ice patch in the middle of the water. Touches your heart, doesn't it? Well, there is a problem. There are no penguins at the North Pole. Penguins live exclusively in Antarctica, that is the South Pole. But maybe we should give NBC the benefit of the doubt, maybe the penguins moved north. After all, climate change is happening in the South Pole too, except that there the ice is growing, not shrinking. Hmm. Well, that's why we call it ``climate change'' and not ``global warming,'' I suppose. I might add that NBC has removed the scene from its online video feed.
Carbon dioxide is, in fact, like the penguins. It's being falsely pictured. It is being portrayed as a pollutant; in fact, it makes things grow, and it is not toxic to humans. After all, we exhale it with every breath. In the distant past the earth had much more CO2 in the air, perhaps as a result of volcanoes, but at that time we had abundant animal life, dinosaurs and lots of plants for them to eat. CO2 is today pumped into greenhouses to make tomatoes grow bigger and better. Nevertheless, we are now presented with such loony ideas like sequestration or carbon credits that only enrich the alarmists. This is only possible with a public that has been frightened into accepting totally false information about CO2. Let me state that I do support efforts that reduce pollution, particulates that do have a negative impact on the environment and human health. I support technologies that reduce these materials. If we are to have a debate on saving the environment, that is what we should be focusing on.
Mr. Speaker, this old world has had many cycles of warming and cooling, probably the result of solar activity, perhaps in the distant past volcanoes, the ice caps on Mars and Jupiter go back and forth, just as glaciers have gone back and forth. But such a powerful and mysterious force as the weather can be frightening. We need not be frightened, hoodwinked into giving authority to our own government, much less the U.N. or a global power--the power to control our lives in the name of manmade global warming, or climate change, or whatever they want to call it. Let us not let the alarmists take this country down the wrong path. Let's let the children of this country and planet have the freedom and prosperity we enjoyed, and not give it away to hucksters who would frighten us into giving up our birthright in the name of saving the planet. Sounds noble, but it's just a trick, a hoax. The greatest hoax of all.