Madam President, next month, thousands of U.N. delegates from over 190 nations, members of the press, and eco-activists from around the world will descend upon Copenhagen as a part of the U.N. Conference on Global Warming. Yet, even before…
Madam President, next month, thousands of U.N. delegates from over 190 nations, members of the press, and eco-activists from around the world will descend upon Copenhagen as a part of the U.N. Conference on Global Warming. Yet, even before it begins, that U.N. conference is being called a disaster.
Just this morning, the Telegraph--a UK newspaper--noted:
The worst-kept secret in the world is finally out--the
climate change summit in Copenhagen is going to be little
more than a photo opportunity for world leaders.
Not too long ago, however, the Copenhagen meeting was hailed to be the time when an international agreement with binding limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would finally be agreed upon.
The eco-activists believed that with a Democratic President in the United States and a Democratically controlled House and a Democratically controlled Senate, we would finally push through mandatory cap-and-trade legislation, and the United States would finally be ready to succumb to the demands of the U.N. I say demands of the United Nations because there are so many people in this Chamber who think if something isn't multinational, U.N. or something else, it is not good. You have to ask: Whatever happened to sovereignty in this country?
Not too long ago, the Copenhagen meeting was hailed as a time that all this would come to an end and they would be successful and pass in this country the largest tax increase in history. In reality, it will be a disaster. Failure comes at a high cost. Despite the millions of dollars spent by Al Gore, the Hollywood elite, the U.N., climate alarmists, it has failed.
Perhaps the Wall Street Journal said it best in an article entitled ``Copenhagen's Collapse.'' I will read this because I think it is worthwhile:
The Climate Change Sequel is a Bust.
The editorial states:
``Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for
all,'' President-elect Obama said of global warming last
November. ``Delay is no longer an option.'' It turns out that
delay really is an option--the only one that has worldwide
support. Over the weekend, Mr. Obama bowed to reality and
admitted that little of substance will come of the climate
change summit at Copenhagen next month. For the last year,
the President has been promising a binding international
carbon-regulation treaty a la the Kyoto Protocol.
We remember that.
But instead, negotiators from 192 countries now hope to
reach a preliminary agreement that they'll sign such a treaty
when they meet in Mexico City in 2010.
Wait a minute. That is 2010. That is next year. This year, it hasn't even come yet. This is Copenhagen 2009.
I am continuing to read:
The environmental lobby is blaming Copenhagen's preemptive
collapse on the Senate's failure to ram through a cap-and-
trade scheme like the House did in June, arguing that ``the
world'' won't make commitments until the United States does.
But there will always be one excuse or another, given that
developing countries like China and India will never be
masochistic enough to subject their economies to the West's
climate neuroses. Meanwhile, Europe has proved with Kyoto
that the only emissions quotas it will accept are those that
don't actually have to be met.
We say that because many of these Western European countries made commitments for emissions and they have not met them.
During my position as chairman and ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, since 2003, I have been the lead Senator standing and exposing the science, the cost, and the hysteria about global warming alarmism. I will be traveling to Copenhagen leading what has been called the truth squad, to say what I said 6 years ago in Milan, Italy. Let's keep in mind what these meetings are. The U.N.-- that is where this all started, with the IPCC at the U.N.--said that the world is going to come to an end because of CO2 emissions. They started having these meetings, and they have had--I don't know how many. They started in 1999, I think. They had the one in Milan, Italy, in 2003, the only one I went to. They were inviting all the countries to come in and join this club, saying we are going to do away with CO2.
It is interesting that one of the participants I ran into in 2003 was from West Africa--and I remember this well because I knew this guy knew better. I said: What are you here supporting this for? He said: This is the biggest party of the year. We have 190 countries coming in, and it is a big party. It is all you can eat and drink. So anyway, the United States is not going to support a global warming treaty that will significantly damage the American economy, cost American jobs, and impose the largest tax increase in American history. Further, as I stated in 2003, unless developing countries are part of the binding agreement, the United States will not go along, given the unemployment rate of 10 percent--10.2 now--and given all the out-of-control spending in Washington. The last thing we need is another 1,000-page bill that increases costs and ships jobs overseas, all with no impact on climate change.
That was in Milan, Italy. I remember in Milan, Italy, all the telephone poles had my picture on them, ``wanted'' posters, because of something I said, which I will quote in a minute. I said then that the science was not settled, and it was an unpopular view. Since Al Gore's science fiction movie, more and more scientists, reporters, and politicians are questioning global warming alarmism. I am proud to declare 2009 the year of the skeptic, the year in which scientists who question the so-called global warming consensus are being heard.
Rather than continue down a road that will harm the U.S. economy and international community, we should forge a new path forward that builds on international trade, new and innovative technology, jobs, development, and economic growth.
If you have followed the Senate, you will know that the Senate's position on global warming treaties couldn't be more clear. In 1997, let's remember what happened then. President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were attempting to get us to ratify the Kyoto treaty. We passed something in the Chamber called the Byrd-Hagel resolution. It passed 95 to 0. It said this: If you bring back anything from Kyoto or anywhere else for us to ratify, and if that treaty we are supposed to ratify either doesn't include developing countries or is harmful to our economy, then we will not ratify it. I think the Byrd-Hagel resolution still commands strong support in the Senate. Therefore, any treaty President Obama submits must meet this criteria or it will be easily defeated.
Proponents of securing an international treaty are slowly acknowledging that the gulf is widening between the United States and other industrialized nations that are willing to
do what developing countries such as China want them to do. The gulf has always been wide, but it is continuing to get wider. When we talk about China and about the fact that they are talking about restricting CO2 emissions in the United States, some think that surely China will follow our lead. It is interesting that China is cranking out two coal-fired power-generating plants every week.
With certain failure at Copenhagen, it is safe to say cap and trade is dead. Look at the record: the Byrd-Hagel amendment in 1997, the defeat in the Senate of the McCain-Lieberman bill in 2003, and defeat of McCain-Lieberman in 2005, defeat of the Warner-Lieberman bill, and no bill on the Senate floor in 2009.
From my very first speech on the Senate floor as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, on July 28, 2003, I outlined the staggering cost of global warming solutions such as Kyoto. In my speech, I said the most widely--I am quoting now from what I stated in 2003:
The most widely cited and most definitive economic analysis
of Kyoto came from Wharton Econometric Forecasting
Associates.
According to the Wharton School, their economists, Kyoto would cost 2.4 million U.S. jobs, reduce GDP by 3.2 percent, and that would equate to somewhere between a $300 billion and $330 billion tax increase annually--an amount greater than the total expenditure on primary and secondary education.
In terms of a tax, when I looked at that tax--and this was back in 2003 and they talked about a $300 billion tax increase--I wanted to look and see how I could better understand that. I recall, prior to that, the largest tax increase in the last three decades was called the Clinton-Gore tax increase of 1993. That tax increase was a $32 billion tax increase. I thought, wait a minute, we are about to impose upon the American people a tax increase that is 10 times greater than the 1993 Clinton-Gore tax increase. This chart shows what that would be. These are the tax increases. This is the increase we are talking about, the $32 billion tax increase. This is what it would have been had we signed the Kyoto treaty or any of the accords since that time. So we are talking about huge amounts of money. I said that because of Kyoto, American consumers would face the higher food, medical, and housing costs--costs for food, an increase of 11 percent; medicine, an increase of 14 percent; housing, an increase of 7 percent; and at the same time, an average household of 4 would see its real income drop by $2,700 in 2010 and each year thereafter. Under Kyoto, energy and electricity prices would nearly double, and gasoline prices would go up an additional 65 cents a gallon.
Again, we are not talking about Jim Inhofe, a Senator, making these statements. This was actually out of the Wharton School of Economics and their forecast at that time. I went on to note that CBO found that ``cap and tax'' is a regressive tax, arguing that the Congressional Budget Office found that 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 ones. As to the broader macroeconomic effects of carbon cap-and-trade schemes, CBO said:
A cap and trade program for carbon emissions could impose
significant costs on the economy in the form of welfare
losses. Welfare losses are real costs to the economy in that
they would not be recovered elsewhere in the form of higher
income. Those losses would be borne by people in their roles
as shareholders, consumers, and workers.
Some might respond that government can simply redistribute income in the form of welfare programs to mitigate the impacts on the poor, but CBO found otherwise. They said:
The government could use the allowance value to partly
redistribute the costs of a carbon cap-and-trade program, but
it could not recover these costs entirely.
Further:
Available research indicates that providing compensation
could actually raise the cost to the economy of a carbon cap.
That was what we quoted from the CBO in 2003. Yet, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. CBO, EPA, the DOE, CRS, the National Black Chamber of Commerce, NAM--everyone now agrees that cap and trade would be extremely costly and destroy jobs. No matter how hard alarmists try to recast their cause--whether it is green jobs or clean energy jobs or clean energy revolution--and they are starting to reword it from ``global warming'' to ``climate change.'' The general public has realized global warming isn't taking place, and they cannot use that, so they changed that to climate change. Now they cannot use that anymore, and they can't use cap and trade, so they talk about a green jobs program.
Cap and trade is a loser for America. I have also pointed out the inconvenient fact that cap-and-trade solutions are all pain and no climate gain. In the first speech in 2001, I noted that even Al Gore's own scientist admitted Kyoto would do nothing to solve global warming. Let me refresh the memory of the American people. In 2003, Al Gore had hired Dr. Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The challenge he posed to him was, if we, along with all other developed nations, were to sign on to the Kyoto Treaty and live by its emissions restrictions, how much would this reduce the temperature in 50 years?
The answer was it would be 0.07 of 1 degree Celsius by 2050. It would actually be 0.13 degrees Celsius by 2100. These things are not even measurable. We go through 50 years of the highest tax increase in the history of America. What do we get for it? Maybe you will get, according to his own scientist, Dr. Tom Wigley, 0.07 of 1 degree Celsius.
I also mentioned in the 2003 speech everyone's favorite alarmist, James Hansen. I said at that time:
Similarly, Dr. James Hansen of NASA, considered the father
of global warming theory, said the Kyoto Protocol ``will have
little effect'' on global temperature in the 21st century. In
a rather stunning follow-up, Hansen said it would take 30
Kyotos--let me repeat that--30 Kyotos to reduce warming to an
acceptable level. If one Kyoto devastates the American
economy, what would 30 do?
Those following the climate debate closely know James Hansen went on record this summer against the Waxman-Markey-Kerry-Boxer bill. It is not going to pass now. At that time, it looked as if it was going to pass. Even James Hansen, one of the strongest proponents, said:
Cap and trade is the temple of doom. It would lock in
disasters for our children and grandchildren. Why do people
continue to worship a disastrous approach? Its fecklessness
was proven by the Kyoto Protocol.
That is James Hansen on the other side of the issue.
Now we have top Obama officials making the same points. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was before our committee. Keep in mind, she is an Obama appointee. She is now Administrator of the EPA. She said in response to a question I had--I said: Is this chart correct? In other words, if we were to pass this bill and to restrict our emissions of CO2, would it have any effect? She said: No, I agree with that chart. Of course, I am encouraged. She said:
I believe the central parts of the [EPA] chart--
That is this chart--
are that U.S. action alone will not impact world
CO2 levels.
I often said how I appreciate the honesty of Lisa Jackson. It is difficult for her to admit that if we passed a bill, it would not have any effect on reducing worldwide emissions of CO2.
You could carry that argument a little bit further because if we were to ration CO2 in our country, that would cause jobs to leave. We understand that. They would go to countries such as China, India, and Mexico, where they don't have any restrictions at all. So it would have the effect of increasing CO2.
Over the past several years, we have seen a growing number of Democrats--yes, Democrats--agreeing with my position. Today, with a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President, some may be surprised by the number of Democrats who want nothing to do with cap and trade.
Politico--we are all familiar with that publication--reported on Monday that:
Lawmakers from coal and manufacturing-heavy States aren't
happy that more liberal Democrats are using the Copenhagen
negotiations to ratchet up pressure to move the bill forward.
``I'm totally unconcerned about Copenhagen.''
This is a quote by Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller from West Virginia.
He said:
I'm concerned about West Virginia.
I am glad to hear some of my Democratic colleagues making these statements.
They also reported--still quoting from Politico:
Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb said on Monday he would
not back the cap-and-trade legislation sponsored by Sens.
John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, another blow to the troubled
Senate climate change bill. ``In its present form I would not
vote for it,'' he said. ``I have some real questions about
the real complexities on cap and trade.'' Webb is the latest
in a series of Democratic moderates to raise significant
concerns with the climate bill, which has floundered since
passing the House in late June.
That is quite some time ago.
Or consider Democratic Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska. The Hill recently reported on a CNBC interview with Senator Nelson, writing:
``A cap-and-trade bill to address climate change cannot
pass Congress this session,'' said Sen. Ben Nelson, Democrat
from Nebraska. Nelson, a centrist Democrat whose vote is key
to leaders wielding its 60-vote majority in the Senate, said
he and his constituents had not been sold on the cap-and-
trade system proposed in the House and Senate bills to
address global warming. ``No,'' Nelson simply responded when
asked if those cap-and-trade bills can pass through this
Congress during an interview with CNBC. ``I haven't been able
to sell that argument to my farmers, and I don't think
they're going to buy it from anybody else,'' Nelson said. ``I
think at the end of the day, the people who turn the switch
on at home will be disadvantaged.'' The pessimistic
assessment makes Nelson a thorn in the side of his party's
leaders--
Who are trying to push this through from the Democratic Party.
Perhaps the biggest blow to any Senate climate bill came last week from 14 Senate Democrats, primarily from the Midwest, who in a letter challenged the allocation formula of Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey. The letter was signed by Senators Al Franken, Amy Klobuchar, Mark Udall, Michael Bennet, Robert Byrd, Carl Levin, Debbie Stabenow, and Sherrod Brown.
What about the prospects for 2010? As Lisa Lerer of Politico reported last week:
An aggressive White House push on jobs and deficit
reduction in 2010 may be yet another sign that climate-change
legislation will stay on the back burner next year. ``There
is a growing chorus in the party that thinks we should be
doing something more to spur job creation and not necessarily
tackle cap and trade right now,'' said a moderate democratic
Senate aide. White House officials told Politico on Friday
that President Barack Obama plans to curb new domestic
spending beyond jobs programs and focus on cutting the
federal deficit next year. In the Senate, Majority Leader
Harry Reid has hinted that Democrats plan to take up a job-
creation bill, in the wake of the announcement of the 10.2
percent unemployment rate. In the House, some lawmakers are
beginning to push a major highway bill for next year to focus
on job creation. None of this is promising for the major
climate change bill.
That was a quote that came out of Politico.
Also, Darren Samuelsohn with E&E News reported this week that:
Next November's midterm elections loom large, leaving the
climate bill sponsors until about the end of March to notch
the 60 votes necessary to pass their bill off the floor and
into a conference with the House that would best be finished
before the summer. ``Conventional wisdom is that you have
until the spring to get controversial issues moving,'' said
Sen. Ben Cardin, a lead co-author of the climate bill that
the Environment and Public Works Committee passed earlier
this month. ``If not, it's difficult to see getting through
closer to the elections.''
What he is saying there, when you get closer to the elections, then you want to be more consistent with what Americans believe.
Mr. Samuelsohn reported that the Democrats fear a repeat of the disastrous 1992 Btu tax vote. He quotes Al Gore as saying, ``Yes, I think the Btu [post-traumatic stress disorder] is a factor in this debate.''
To refresh your memory, Madam President, the Btu, back in 1992, was a huge tax increase on energy. People realized they would have to pay for it. That passed the House, ironically, with 219 votes, the same narrow margin this cap-and-trade bill passed 15 years later.
Samuelsohn also writes that according to Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, ``the talk on the street'' was that an election year cannot be good for passing the climate bill in the Senate, even though he did not agree with that opinion. ``There's some possibility of people saying that it's too controversial a bill in an election year,'' quoting Rockefeller, ``which is sort of the opposite of how a democracy ought to work.'' I do agree with him on that. ``You go ahead and take your chances on that and get reelected. But people's business should come first.''
By now the message should be clear: It is not just Republicans but Democrats who are blocking passage of cap and trade in the Senate. The sooner we are honest with the international community of the impossibility of the Senate moving forward with cap and trade, the sooner we can begin work on an all-of-the-above energy bill to develop domestic energy resources, create jobs, and provide consumers with affordable, reliable energy.
I don't like the idea that sometimes promoters of cap and trade say this is an energy bill. What you are doing is restricting energy. Right now, we are dependent on coal, oil, gas, and, hopefully in the future, nuclear. Those who are pushing for this green energy, which we all want someday--what do we do 10, 15, 20 years from now? Just 2 weeks ago, they came out with a study that said the United States of America is No. 1 in possession of recoverable natural resources. Yet 83 percent of these natural resources are off limits, primarily due to the moratorium set by Democrats saying: We don't want you to drill offshore or some of these other places. It seems inconceivable to me that we are the only nation in the world that does not develop its own resources.
Anyway, the tipping point from the most memorable tidbit from my 2- hour global warming speech in July of 2003 was my comments about the science behind global warming. Now 6 years later, as I head to the next U.N. global warming conference, I am pleased by the vast and growing number of scientists, politicians, and reporters all over the world who are publicly rejecting climate alarmism, those who want to scare people into some kind of action: Water is going to rise up, the world is coming to an end--all of that. They are rejecting these alarmists now.
When I made those comments on the Senate floor, few people were there to stand with me. Today, I have been vindicated, and I am proud to share the stage with all those who now dare to question Al Gore, Hollywood elites, and the United Nations.
Early in my 2003 speech, 6 years ago, I said:
Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on
fear rather than science. Global warming alarmists 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.
For the next 2 hours, I presented arguments by a number of leading scientists who disputed that picture of the future. I argued that activists attempting to propagate fear would fail to convince the American people. I then concluded my remarks saying:
With all the hysteria, all the fear, all of the phony
science, could it be that man-made global warming is the
greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It
sure sounds like it is.
My remarks were immediately ridiculed by alarmists in the mainstream media. Alarmists then and since have used every name in the book to discredit me. Nevertheless, I continued to make my case in speech after speech on the Senate floor, highlighting arguments by numerous scientists that contradicted the notion that the science behind global warming was ``settled.''
Every time you quote a scientist, they always come back and say: Oh, no, you can't talk about the science; the science is settled.
The first time the McCain-Lieberman bill came to the Senate floor was 2003. McCain-Lieberman was essentially a cap-and-trade bill similar to what we are looking at today. I remember well, Republicans were in the majority. I was chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. I can remember we were given 5 days on the floor to debate this bill, 10 hours a day, roughly 50 hours. I remember going over this and debating this on this very floor of the Senate in 2005. It
was the McCain-Lieberman bill, and only two Senators came down during that week to give me support. Fast forward to 2008. The same bill came up, except this time it was called the Warner-Lieberman bill, another cap-and-trade bill, just like we are talking about today. At that time, it didn't take 5 days to defeat it; it took 2 days, and 23 Senators came down to join me in that effort. What do I credit for the reversal? You might be surprised by my answer. It is none other than the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar. It is Al Gore.
The media blitz of 2006, which included an avalanche of magazine covers, hour-long global warming documentaries, celebrity rock concerts around the world, and, of course, Al Gore's very own science fiction movie, caused an unprecedented response from scientists from around the world.
Later that year, I took to the Senate floor debunking much of Al Gore's movie and the media hype. I said then--and this is, again, 2006:
In May, our Nation was exposed to perhaps one of the
slickest science propaganda films of all time: former Vice
President Al Gore's ``An Inconvenient Truth.'' In addition to
having the backing of Paramount Pictures to market this film,
Gore had the full backing of the media, and leading the
cheerleading charge was none other than the Associated Press.
I noted a report that appeared on June 27, 2006, by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press that boldly declared ``Scientists give two thumbs up to Gore's movie.'' I took issue with the Borenstein article and pointed out--and this is a quote from 3 years ago:
``The article quoted only 5''--listen, Madam President--``only 5 scientists praising Gore's science, despite AP's having contacted 100 scientists.''
They contacted 100 scientists and they could only find 5 scientists who praised it.
The fact that over 80 percent of the scientists contacted
by the AP had not even seen the movie or that many scientists
have harshly criticized the science presented by Gore did not
dissuade the news outlet one bit from its mission to promote
Gore's brand of climate alarmism. I am almost at a loss [I am
quoting from 3 years ago] as to how to begin to address the
series of errors, misleading science and unfounded
speculation that appear in the former Vice President's film.
Here is what Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist from MIT, has
written about ``An Inconvenient Truth.'' He said: ``A general
characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously
ignore the fact that the Earth and its climate are dynamic;
they are always changing even without any external forcing.
To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do
so in order to exploit that fear is much worse.''
That is Richard Lindzen, one of the top scientists at MIT. In that same 2006 speech I then proceeded to give a brief summary of the science that the former Vice President promoted in either an inaccurate or misleading way. Let me read a list of these.
He promoted the now debunked ``hockey stick'' temperature chart in an attempt to prove man's overwhelming impact on the climate. He attempted to minimize the significance of the medieval warm period and the little ice age.
Let's put them together. If you remember the famous hockey stick, that was the one that showed climate, increasing temperature, and then all of a sudden there is a hockey stick. That is when it started going up.
It ignored the fact that in the 14th century and again in the 16th century we had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. In the medieval warm period it was far warmer than it has been since that time.
In that same movie, insisting on a link between increasing hurricane activity and global warming that most scientists at this time do not believe--and it doesn't exist. The science has come out since that time and said very clearly that science is not there. Every year they say this coming year it is going to be greater hurricanes. It doesn't happen. For 5 consecutive years they predicted that and it hasn't happened.
He asserted that today's Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth, while ignoring that the temperatures in the 1930s were warmer than in that time. He claimed the Antarctic was warming and losing ice, but failed to note this is only true of a small region and that the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice during that period. He hyped unfounded fears that Greenland's ice is in danger of disappearing.
If you were to say that maybe there is some truth in the global warming issue, I had occasion, I say to my good friend who is presiding, a few years ago, not too many years ago--my background is aviation. I decided to replicate the flight of Wylie Post going around the world. One of my stops there, where Wylie Post stopped, was in Greenland. Their history books are full of the time things were flourishing in Greenland. The Vikings came in, they were growing things that hadn't been grown. Then when the cycle went through and it started getting colder, they died and disappeared. I think you can argue we are going to have these cycles. God is still up there. We have always had Him; we are going to continue to have Him.
Back to the film. He erroneously claimed the icecap on Mount Kilimanjaro is disappearing--and that is not supported--due to global warming, even while the region cools and researchers blame the ice loss on local land use practices.
He made assertions of massive future sea level rise far afield from any supposed scientific ``consensus'' and not supported in even the most alarmist literature. He incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing. He blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad, despite NASA scientists concluding that local population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits. He inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving.
The population of the polar bear has quadrupled since 1960 and today, of the 13 polar bear populations in Canada, they are all increasing except for one and that is in the western Hudson Bay area where they have hunting regulations and issues they are working on now not related to weather.
He completely failed to inform the viewers that the 48 scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.
You could make a whole speech on each of the assertions made in that science fiction movie called ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' and they have been disproven. At the end of the speech I challenged those in the media to reverse course and report on the objective science of climate change, to stop ignoring legitimate voices in the scientific community, question the so-called consensus, and to stop acting as a vehicle for unsustainable hype.
The reaction by the American public was so overwhelming that my Senate Web site crashed after that. Thousands of people came to my site to read and watch the speech. In fact, I was flooded with e-mails supporting the work.
I also noted in 2006, in that speech, many scientists were just starting to speak out against the so-called consensus on global warming. In April of that year, 60 prominent scientists who questioned the basis for climate alarmism sent a letter--these were Canadian scientists, 60 of them sent a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister and they wrote:
If, back in the mid-1990s we knew what we know today about
climate Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we
would have concluded it was not necessary.
I say that because Canada was one of the countries that did
sign onto the Kyoto treaty. They are saying today, if we had
known then what we know now, we wouldn't have done it.
I discovered how many prominent scientists were disputing the claims of global warming alarmism in 2007 and I released my first report detailing over 400 scientists who did not buy the consensus. If you want to go back to any of these, I have a Web site, inhofe.senate.gov. You can see who they are.
After that report, the list continued to grow and more scientists began publicly challenging global warming fears. In 2008, I updated the report with over 650 scientists and today that stands at well over 700 skeptical scientists. The chorus of skeptical scientific voices continues to grow louder every day as the consensus collapses.
I think this is important. A lot of the scientists were intimidated at that
time with the withdrawal of various grants and other things coming from both the Federal Government or some more liberal groups that are out there. The fact is they had the courage to come forward and say the consensus is not there even though everyone thought it was for so many years. This momentous shift has caused the mainstream media to take notice of the expanding number of scientists serving as ``consensus busters.'' A November 25, 2008 article in Politico noted that a ``growing accumulation'' of science is challenging warming fears, and that the ``science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation.'' That was a year ago.
In Canada's National Post, it noted on October 20 of 2008 that ``the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly.'' The New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin noted on March 6, 2008, ``As we all know, climate science is not a numbers game. There are heaps of signed statements by folks with advanced degrees on all sides of the issue.''
In 2007 a Washington Post staff writer, Juliet Eilperin, conceded the obvious, writing that climate skeptics ``appear to be expanding rather than shrinking.''
We have seen this happening for the last 2 years. Yet it will be 2009 that will be remembered as the year of the skeptic. Until this year, any scientist, reporter, or politician who dared raise even the slightest suspicion about the science behind global warming was dismissed and repeatedly mocked. Who can forget Dr. Heidi Cullen of the Weather Channel. She was on every week. I don't think she is on anymore; I haven't seen her in quite some time. She was the one who said, in 2007, that the American Meteorological Society should revoke its seal of approval for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.
She said:
If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science
of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them the
seal of approval.
This is what she wrote in December 21 in a blog on the Weather Channel:
It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on air and say
that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by
the weather. It's not a political statement . . . it's just
an incorrect statement.
Of course there was Robert Kennedy, Jr., also in 2007, who called anyone who didn't agree with his views on global warming ``traitors.'' He spoke before a liberal group called the Live Earth Concert in July of 2007. He stated, Robert Kennedy, Jr.:
Get rid of these rotten politicians that we have in
Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies for
companies like Exxon and Southern Company. These villainous
companies that consistently put their private financial
interest ahead of the interests of all of humanity. This is
treason and we need to start treating them as traitors.
Al Gore, of course, said anyone who dares question the science should be equated with those who question the Moon landing.
Aside from the distasteful and derogatory ridicule by such alarmists, a major statement by a manmade-to-global-warming believer severely undercut their claims. This year one of the United Nations IPCC--let me make sure people understand this. The IPCC, Intergovernmental--this is a panel put together in the United Nations of people to try to sell the idea that manmade gases--anthropogenic gases, CO2, methane-- cause global warming. One of the U.N. scientists told more than 1,500 scientists gathered at the conference in Geneva, Switzerland: ``People will say this is global warming disappearing. I am not one of the skeptics. However, we have to ask the nasty question ourselves, or other people will do it.''
Remember, this quote comes from Mojib Latif, who Andrew Revkin from the New York Times describes as ``a prize-winning climate and ocean scientist from the Liebniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, in Germany.''
This remarkable admission of the need to ask nasty questions comes nearly 2 years after I first pointed out these very facts on the Senate floor in my October 26 of 2007 speech on the Senate floor. This is what I said at that time. I am quoting now. I always hesitate quoting myself but it is important that we were talking about this 2 years ago. I said:
It's important to point out that the phase of global
warming that started in 1979 has, itself, been halted since
1979. You can almost hear my critics skeptical of that
assertion. Well, it turns out not to be an assertion but an
irrefutable fact, according to the temperature data United
Nations relies on. Paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter, who
has testified before the United States Senate Committee on
Environment and Public Works, noted on June 18 of this year:
``The accepted global average temperature statistics used by
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--that's the
United Nations--showed that no ground-based warming has
occurred since 1998. Oddly, this 8-year-long temperature
stability has occurred despite an increase over the period of
time of 15 parts per million or 4 percent in the atmospheric
CO2. Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based
temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse
influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic
eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a
period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by
55 parts per million, or 17 percent.
To try to say it is tied to CO2 is interesting because immediately following World War II, the largest increase in the emissions of CO2 took place starting about 1946. Yet that didn't precipitate a warming period, it precipitated a cooling period during that time.
The very people who had long called the science settled and those who went so far to say the science behind global warming was unequivocal now admitted that nasty questions must be raised. Those questions are now being raised by the media. On October 8, the BBC, the British Broadcasting Company, stunned the journalism community with an article by their climate correspondent Paul Hudson. The headline asked, ``What happened to global warming?'' Hudson wrote in that article, October 8:
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might
the fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not 2008
or 2007, but [was] in 1998. But it is true. For the last 11
years we have not observed any increase in global
temperatures. And our climate models did not forecast it,
even though manmade carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be
responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
(Mr. CARDIN assumed the chair.)
The article continues to note the lack of global warming recently and mentions the fact that many scientists are predicting a coming global cooling.
Following the BBC, other British news outlets have run similar headlines. The UK Sunday Times wrote ``Why everything you think you know about global warming is wrong.'' This is coming from Great Britain. The Daily Mail, another major publication in Great Britain, had a headline: ``Whatever happened to global warming? How freezing temperatures are starting to shatter climate change theory.'' Australia's Herald Sun has picked up on the trend as well. Columnist Andrew Bolt, noting the turning tide of media around the world, wrote:
This is like the moment in the Emperor's New Clothes, in
which the boy calls out ``but he's naked!"
Let's be clear. Some of the media were already beginning to question the consensus even before that announcement.
Television personalities were coming around as well. In April, Charles Osgood, host of ``CBS News Sunday Morning'' and a noted environmentalist, questioned global warming projections. He asked:
Right now, global warming is a given to so many, it raises
the question: Could another minimum activity period on the
Sun counteract, in any way, the effects of global warming?
Osgood later scolded himself for even questioning global warming before stating:
I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this solar dimming
business, now that the story is out. Remember, you heard it
here first . . .
Lou Dobbs, formerly with CNN, has also joined the chorus questioning the alarmists, consensus. In January, Dobbs compared the belief in manmade global warming to a religion.
He stated:
They bring this thing to a personal belief system. It's
almost a religion, without any question . . .
Dobbs also criticized what he called ``crowding out of facts and objective assessment of those facts . . . there's such selective choices of data as one
discusses and tries to understand the reality of the issues that make up global warming.''
In September, another dramatic announcement came from Houston Chronicle science reporter Eric Berger. He stated:
Earth seems to have at least temporarily stopped warming.
If we can't have confidence in short-term prognosis for
climate change, how can we have confidence in long-term?
The bright light is also fading on the U.N. IPCC. In August, the New York Times ran the headline ``Nobel Halo Fades Fast for Climate Change Panel.'' The article notes:
As the panel gears up for its next climate review, many
specialists in climate science and policy, both inside and
out of the network, are warning that it could quickly lose
relevance unless it adjusts its methods and focus.
Weeks later, on September 23, the New York Times again acknowledged a shift in public moods and scientific evidence when it stated that the U.N. faced an ``intricate challenge: building momentum for an international climate treaty at a time when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.''
Given the media's track record, this is hardly surprising. As I noted in my 2006 speech, the media runs hot and cold in their coverage of climate change. Quoting here, I said at the time:
Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling
and warming scares during four separate and sometimes
overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930s, the
media peddled the coming ice age.
Everyone is going to die. We are going to freeze to death.
From the late 1920's until the 1960's they warned of global
warming. From the 1950's until the 1970's they warned again
of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the
fourth estate's fourth attempt to promote opposing climate
change fears during the last 100 years. Recently, advocates
of alarmism have grown increasingly desperate to try to
convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral
issue of a generation. Last year, the vice president of
London's Royal Society sent a chilling letter to the media
encouraging them to stifle the voices of scientists skeptical
of climate alarmism. During the past year, the American
people have been served up an unprecedented parade of
environmental alarmism by the media and entertainment
industry, which link every possible weather event to global
warming. The year 2006 saw many major organs of the media
dismiss any pretense of balance and objectivity on climate
change coverage and instead crossed squarely into global
warming advocacy.
Maybe one reason the media is starting to come around is that the public is shifting as well. It is easy to sell magazines, books, and movie tickets when you have everyone eating out of your hand believing that a climate catastrophe is right around the corner. Once the audience isn't buying that story anymore, it might be time to start acknowledging the other side.
If we look at Time magazine, I remember back in 1975, Time magazine-- and Newsweek of the same year--said another ice age is coming. There it is. This is 1974. This was in Time magazine. Another ice age is coming. Then you fast forward to about 3 years ago. That same Time magazine had a picture of the last polar bear in the world standing on the last ice cube and saying: Now it is global warming.
This is why the media is coming around. Polls are showing an unprecedented shift in public opinion on the science of climate change as well as cap-and-trade proposals in Congress. Only a few weeks ago, in October, Politico reported:
As the nation struggles to climb out of a recession, 45
percent rated the economy as the most important issue in
deciding their vote if the congressional election were held
today, followed by 21 percent who said government spending,
20 percent who chose health care reform and 9 percent who
said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just 4 percent of the
people said climate change was the top issue.
I can remember when that was 60 percent.
The people have caught on. You are going to see the media, if they want to sell their stuff, come back and change their position. We are seeing that now.
Economic worries also led a majority of Americans to place jump- starting the economy ahead of concerns about the environment. Even as the Obama administration is pushing for climate protection legislation, 62 percent of those polled agreed that ``economic growth should be given priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent.'' The remaining 38 percent believe that ``protection of the environment should be given priority, even at the risk of curbing economic growth.''
Further, earlier this year Gallup released a poll that found that 41 percent of the people believe global warming claims are exaggerated. What about the effect of Al Gore's climate scare campaign? The Gallup poll editor Frank Newport says he sees no evidence that Gore is winning. Newport said:
It's just not caught on, they have failed. Any measure that
we look at shows Al Gore's losing at the moment. The public
is just not that concerned. [ . . . ] Ask people to name the
biggest concerns, and just 1 percent to 2 percent cite the
environment. The environment doesn't show up at all, it's Al
Gore's greatest frustration. We seem less concerned than more
about global warming over the years . . . Despite the movies
and publicity and all that, we're just not seeing it take off
with the American public. And that was occurring even before
the latest economic recession.
Again, further quoting Frank Newport:
As Al Gore I think would say, the greatest challenge facing
humanity . . . has failed to show up in our data.
Polls have also shown that when looking at environmental issues only, climate change continually ranks dead last among concerns. This wasn't true a few years ago. This is what is taking place now. This is after all the media hype, all the hysteria.
The Gallup poll in March found global warming ranked last in the United States among environmental issues. This is just environmental issues. Air and water pollution, toxic waste, animal and plant extinctions, the loss of tropical rain forests all ranked as a greater concern than global warming.
As Gallup stated:
Since more Americans express little to no worry about
global warming than say this about extinction, global warming
is clearly the environmental issue of least concern to them.
These are the environmentalists.
In fact, global warming is the only issue for which more
Americans say they have little to no concern than say they
have a great deal of concern.
The public is also unwilling to accept legislation on climate change that would cost them money. Rasmussen found that 56 percent of Americans said they are not willing to pay any additional taxes or utility costs to fight global warming.
The clear rejection of fear and hysteria is leading many on Capitol Hill to change their tune on climate legislation. Turning away from using scare tactics, the left is now trying to sell cap and trade as clean energy legislation. Don't say climate change, don't say global warming, don't say cap and trade anymore. Say clean energy economy-- that is something that sells. So if you keep renaming the same thing, maybe it will sell.
As the New York and the L.A. Times have recently reported, the White House, concerned by the lack of support for their cap-and-trade initiatives, is using poll-tested talking points to help push one of the President's biggest priorities. The New York Times caught on to these new talking points earlier this year, reporting:
The problem with global warming, some environmentalists
believe, is ``global warming.'' The term turns people off,
fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic
sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to
extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by
ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging
firms in Washington.
The L.A. Times also reported:
Scratch ``cap and trade'' and ``global warming,''
Democratic pollsters tell Obama. They're ineffective . . .
Control the language, politicians know, and you stand a
better chance of controlling the debate. So the Obama
administration, in its push to enact sweeping energy and
healthcare policies, has begun refining the phrases it uses
in an effort to shape public opinion. Words that have been
vetted in focus groups and polls are seeping into the White
House lexicon, while others considered too scary or
confounding are falling away.
Despite his longtime work on cap and trade, Senator John Kerry actually went so far as to say he didn't even know what cap and trade is, saying in September:
I don't know what ``cap and trade'' means. I don't think
the average American does. This is not a cap-and-trade bill,
it's a pollution reduction bill.
While Senator Kerry says he doesn't know what cap and trade is, the American public knows what it is: a massive new energy tax, plain and simple.
It has been kind of interesting to watch this change, watch the phraseology change as time has gone by. But we know this: Nothing has really changed since Kyoto. It is the same thing, cap and trade, the largest tax increase in the history of America.
Let me conclude by saying just how encouraged I am to say that the tide has turned--not is turning, it has turned. The skeptics' challenge has been heard, and I am glad to see that more and more journalists are no longer reporting the hyped fears that many want the American public to believe. Media outlets around the world are more skeptical today of manmade climate fears, and they are also more aware of the enormous cost of climate legislation. More importantly, polls are showing that the people are no longer buying the hype either.
The bottom line is that efforts to pass the largest tax increase in America's history have clearly failed, handing the American people a tremendous victory.
It has been a long time, some 8 years.
I see the Senator from Vermont is very anxious to counter these things I have been saying. That is perfectly all right. That is one thing about this body--you have the opportunity to do that. There is no one I consider a better friend than the person presiding right now, from Maryland. He and I were elected together many years ago to the House of Representatives. We disagree on this issue.
What I am reporting here is science, and the people have come to an agreement. After 8 years, the truth finally does come out.
Winston Churchill said: Truth is incontrovertible. Ignorance may prevent it. Panic may resent it. Malice may destroy it. But there it is.
I yield the floor.