Posted by Matt Dempsey matt_dempsey@epw.senate.gov
On the floor of the United States Senate on August 1, Senator Inhofe welcomed the renewed interest by his colleagues in global warming science. Inhofe noted it had been years since anyone dared talk about global warming on the Senate floor and provided a rebuttal to several claims made by alarmists.
Remarks below are from the Congressional Record
Mr. INHOFE . Mr. President, when we came back to session this week, I was pleased to see a very good friend of mine on the floor, of a completely different philosophy from mine and a different background and a different State, talking about--being somewhat critical of my position on global warming, which everybody knows I have been involved in for some 12 years since the Koyoto treaty, which was never before us.
Nonetheless, I appreciated the fact that we had a chance to resurrect that issue because, to my knowledge, nobody has uttered the term ``global warming'' since 2009. It has been completely refuted in most areas. But I was pleased to hear my good friend from Vermont talking about it because he and I have a very honest relationship with each other but a total disagreement. We are able to go over those things.
Then again today two things happened. First of all, we had the senior Senator from Massachusetts come down to the floor and was somewhat quite critical of me and anyone who is a skeptic. I think it is important to realize that to understand--so you understand, when we are talking, what we are referring to.
Those people who believe the world is coming to an end because of global warming and that is all due to manmade anthropogenic gases, we call those people alarmists. Those people such as myself who have looked at it very carefully and have come to the conclusion that is not happening and the fact or the assertion that global warming is occurring today and it is occurring because of the release of CO2 and anthropogenic gases, methane, and such as that, it is a hoax, which I said way back in 2003. This became quite a charge to a lot of people, a hoax that--the fact that all of this is happening is due to manmade gases. I believe it is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.
As a result of that, a lot of people are trying to do things to this country that are detrimental. By the way, we also had this morning--it was enjoyable. This is the first time since 2009 that the Environment and Public Works Committee has had a hearing on global warming, on the science or lack of science behind global warming.
I was delighted to see all these things resurrected. I know it is not proper to talk about your own books on the floor, and I do not do it, except I have to do it because it was mentioned by some of my adversaries, my book which was called ``The Greatest Hoax.'' Things were taken out of this book so I had to defend them. Let me just mention, if I can in this fairly short period of time that I have, I think it is only 30 minutes, some of the things that were stated, first of all, on the floor by the senior Senator from Massachusetts and then make some comments about the hearing this morning.
In fact, I am glad it is coming to the surface again. First of all, I was referred to as a ``skeptic.'' I mentioned just now that skeptics are those who do not believe what I referred to as the hoax. He referred to us as ``flat earthers.'' I learned a long time ago that if they do not have logic on their side, they do not have the science on their side, they respond with name calling. I have been called a lot of names. Let me just name a few. This comes right out of the book and some of the things that were said this morning. The ``noisiest climate skeptic,'' ``the Senate's resident denier bunny,'' ``traitor,'' ``dumb,'' ``crazy man,'' ``science abuser,'' ``Holocaust denier,'' ``villain of the month,'' ``hate filled,'' ``war mongering,'' ``Neanderthal,'' ``Genghis Khan''. It goes on and on. I will submit this for the Record.
But quite often we hear these things, it is only because there is not logic or science on their side. So they do name calling, which is fine. To me, that gets attention, and it needs to have the attention. The second thing, one of the other things that came out this morning, the statement was made by the senior Senator from Massachusetts, and I am quoting now, I believe: There are 6,000 peer-reviewed studies that say that no one peer-reviewed study that proves it is not happening.
There is not one, not one peer-reviewed study. A peer-reviewed study is a study that is published and then the peers review it. I think that is a process that is necessary. Consequently, that statement was made. That statement just flat is not right. In fact, let me go ahead and talk about some of these studies. If we look at the Harvard-Smithsonian study, that was a study which examined the results of more than 240 peer-reviewed papers published by thousands of researchers over the past four decades.
The study covers a multitude of geophysical and biological climate indicators. They came to the conclusion--this is a Harvard-Smithsonian peer-reviewed study. They came to the conclusion that climate change is not real, that the science is not accurate.
Dr. Fred Seitz. Dr. Fred Seitz is a former president of the National Academy of Science. He said: ``There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will in the foreseeable future cause catastrophic heating of the earth's atmosphere and disruption of the earth's climate.''
I would like to pause at this moment, because I see the majority leader on the floor of the Senate, and inquire if they care to have some leadership time. I would be very glad to yield to them that time. Apparently, that is not the case.
Thirdly, this is something that happened very recently. One of the universities, George Mason University, surveyed 430 weathercasters and found that only 19 percent of the weathercasters felt catastrophic global warming is taking place and is a result of human activity.
That is quite a change from what it used to be. That means 81 percent of those weathercasters that we all see every night are saying that is not true.
Dr. Robert Laughlin, a Nobel Prize-winning Stanford University physicist, said:
Please remain calm. The earth will heal itself. Climate is beyond our power to control. The earth doesn't care about government and legislation. Climate change is a matter of geologic time, something the earth does on its own without asking anyone's permission or explaining itself.
I think the statement is certainly not an accurate statement that was made this morning. By the way, in terms of the climate change, I would like to suggest there is a Web site called Climate Depot by Marc Morano. In this, we can find multitudes of peer-reviewed studies. There is not time to go over them all, but we certainly can find them on that particular Web site.
Another statement made by the senior Senator from Massachusetts this morning was when they were talking about a former climate skeptic, Richard Muller. He changed his mind through extensive research,
implying he at one time was a skeptic and he is now an alarmist. Let me tell you about Richard Muller. In 2008 Richard Muller said that the bottom line is that there is a consensus. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--we will talk about that later. The President needs to know what the IPCC says. Second, they say that most of the warming of the last 50 years is probably due to humans. You need to know that this is from carbon dioxide and that you need to know the understanding of the technology.
Mr. President, I was talking about and responding to the speech made on the floor this morning by the senior Senator from Massachusetts.
I think the main thing I got across at that time was the assertion that was made that there are 6,000 peer-reviewed studies that say not one peer-reviewed study proves that global warming is not happening and that anthropogenic gases would be the cause of it. I know it wasn't the intention of the senior Senator from Massachusetts to say something that was factually wrong, but I did read several peer-reviewed studies and referred to the Web site climatedepot.com, if anyone is interested in that.
Second is the fact that the Senator from Massachusetts--and then again in the hearing this morning, Richard Muller was referred to several times as being a former skeptic who converted over to an alarmist. I suggested--and I read something to show that, in my opinion, he never was a skeptic. I would like to make some comments about Richard Muller.
If you go to my Web site, you will find about 1,000 scientists who have come around and said: No, this assertion that we are having catastrophic global warming due to anthropogenic, manmade gases is not correct. Muller is not on that list. However, when they say that he is the one and made such a big issue, I will quote a couple people about their expressing themselves on the credibility of Richard Muller.
Professor Judith Curry, a climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, stated ``way over-simplistic and not at all convincing, in my opinion.'' She was talking about the comments by Muller. She also said, ``I don't see that their paper adds anything to our understanding of the causes of the recent warming.'' That is on the paper submitted by Richard Muller.
Roger Peilke, Jr., said that the ``bigger issue is how the New York Times let itself be conned into running [Muller's] op-ed.''
Michael Mann is the guy who started this whole thing at the U.N., putting it together. He had the hockey stick thing that has been totally discredited. He said:
It seems, in the end--quite sadly--that this is all really about Richard Muller's self-aggrandizement.
So much for the statements that were made to give credibility to their side by Richard Muller.
I think another thing that was stated this morning was we have evidence of climate change all around--wildfires, drought and vegetation, and all that type. Then they talked about glaciers. Well, let me just share the facts about that, which I think are very significant, as far as the droughts and all that are concerned. Again, this is a statement made by the senior Senator from Massachusetts this morning, talking about all these things that are happening as a result of global warming.
Well, hurricanes, according to NOAA, have been on the decline in the United States since the beginning of records in the 19th century. The worst decade for major--category 3, 4, and 5--hurricanes was in the 1940s.
To quote the Geophysical Research Letters: Since 2006, global tropical cyclone energy has decreased dramatically ..... to the lowest levels since the late 1970s. Global frequency of tropical cyclones has reached a historic low.
So just the opposite.
On tornadoes, NOAA scientists reject a global warming link to tornadoes. To quote them: No scientific consensus or connection between global warming or tornado activity.
Droughts. The Senator talked about droughts this morning. Reading from this article, the headline is ``Scientist disagrees with Obama on cause of Texas drought:'' and to quote Dr. Robert Hoerling, a NOAA research meteorologist, ``This is not a climate change drought.''
They further said severe drought in 1934 covered 80 percent of the country compared to only 25 percent in 2011.
The statements that were made about the Arctic and about Greenland this morning, if you look at a November 2007 peer-reviewed--and I stress peer-reviewed--study, conducted by a team of NASA and university experts, it found cyclical changes in ocean currents impacting the Arctic. The excerpt from this peer-reviewed study by NASA says:
Our study confirms that many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming.
And 2011 sees 9,000 Manhattans of Arctic ice recovery since the low point in 2007.
Let me explain what that means. When we talk about the Manhattan Arctic recovery, they use Manhattan because that is something people can identify with, and then they relate that to the recovery of ice. In this case--this is, again, from NASA. In 2011, there were 9,000 Manhattans of Arctic ice recovery since the low point in 2007. Now, this study was 2011. So that means the low point was actually below that, and it has been decreasing since that time.
Now, that was the Arctic. In the Antarctic there is a 2008 peer-reviewed paper in the American Geophysical Union, and it found a doubling in snow accumulation in the western Antarctic Peninsula since 1850. In a paper published in the October Journal of Climate Examples, the trend of sea ice extends along the east Antarctic coast from 2000 to 2008 and finds a significant increase of 1.43 percent per year.
Let's talk about Greenland. And I will always remember when I had occasion--well, one of the things I have been interested in is aviation. I have been an active pilot for, I guess, 60 years now. The occupier of the chair is fully aware of this because he and I together were able to pass the pilots' bill of rights, so for the first time an accused pilot has access to the judicial system. But as the occupier of the chair is fully aware, I had occasion to fly an airplane around the world one time, emulating the flight of Wiley Post when he went around the world. It is an exciting thing, but it is one of those things where you feel you are glad you did it, but you never want to do it again. It was kind of miserable at times.
Anyway, I remember coming across Greenland, following Wiley Post, and starting in the United States, going up to Canada, then Greenland, to Iceland, back to western Europe, and then across Siberia. But in Greenland they are still talking up there about what it used to be like in Greenland. They had gone through this melting period where everyone up there was growing things. They were ecstatic up there, talking about the great old times. Then, of course, the cold spell came along, and it got much colder and it was much worse.
Now, the IPCC, in 2001, covered this. They said that to melt the Greenland ice sheet would require temperatures to rise by 5 1/2 degrees Celsius and remain for 1,000 years. The ice sheet is growing 2 inches a year. So that is Greenland, and they were just talking about Greenland this morning. In fact, they talked about it during this hearing too.
Let me mention this IPCC and remind everyone of something that people tend to forget. The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It was put together by the United Nations a long time ago. It all started in 1992 down in Rio de Janeiro. They had their big gathering down there to try to encourage everyone to pass the Kyoto Treaty. The treaty was never even submitted by the Clinton-Gore administration, although Gore went to this big meeting in Rio de Janeiro. They had a wonderful time down there. At that time they were all saying the world is coming to an end so we have to pass the Kyoto Treaty to stop all that. Well, that is the IPCC that I have been very critical of because that is the science on which all of these things are based that we are dealing with today.
So much for these things that were stated in terms of the disasters and the droughts and all of these problems. The next thing he talked about--and I have already talked about Greenland--is he talked about it is going to be necessary to have carbon caps. I think we talked about that this morning. Right now, there are those people who are advocating cap and trade--a very complex, difficult thing to explain--which is essentially requiring a cap on carbon emissions and then trading these emissions back and forth. That is something they do not talk about anymore because that has been completely discredited. Now they are talking about a carbon tax, and I think that was mentioned this morning.
Quoting the Senator from Massachusetts this morning once again: The avoidance of responsibility has to stop. We have been waiting for 20 years now while other countries, including China, are stealing our opportunities.
Let's put up that chart. Let's talk a little about China. You know China is the great beneficiary of anything we do here to put caps on carbon because they are the ones that are doing it. So they say China is making great strides in reducing their carbon emissions. Well, look at this. The green line there is China. This is in emissions--billions of tons of emissions. It starts down at 2, a little over 2, which was in 1990, and it was fairly low until 2002.
Look at what has happened. It has doubled in tons of emissions. China has actually doubled in that period of time, from 2002 to 2012--a 10-year period.
At the same time, we have actually reduced our emissions--both the United States and the European Union. To suggest that China is sitting back there waiting for us to provide the leadership for them to destroy their economy is pretty outrageous.
By the way, the other statement that has been made in the past, not just by the Senator to whom I have referred but several others, is that we are not going to be able to solve the problem and to do something about our reliance upon the Middle East just by developing our own resources. That is wrong.
There is a guy named Harold Hamm, who is now the authority, and he has actually had more successful production in tight formations. He happens to be from my State of Oklahoma. I called him up before a speech or a debate I was involved in probably 6 months ago, and I said to Harold Hamm: You know, if we were to open up the United States--now, granted, there has been a surge in the production in this country, in the recovery, but that is all in private lands; none in public lands because we have had a reduction in public lands.
The Obama administration has said over and over and over--and I guess if you say something wrong enough times people will believe it--that even if we open these public lands it would take 10 years before that would arrive at the pumps.
So I asked Harold Hamm, and I said: You are going to have to give me something you can document, but if we were to set up in New Mexico, for example, where you are precluded on public lands from drilling, and you put up your operation, how long would it take you to bring up the oil and actually go through the whole refinery process and get it to the pump to get the supply there so we can bring down the price of oil, of gas, at the pumps? He said: Seventy days. He didn't hesitate.
I said: Seventy days? They said it would take 10 years.
He said: No. He said: It would take 30 days to go down and lift it up--60 days before you hit the surface, and in preparation of sending it to a refinery, then in 10 days you get it to the refinery and to the pumps.
Well, I am just saying there is this whole idea we have to rely on some kind of green energy that has not even been developed yet in terms of technology and ration what we have in this country. I mean, this Obama administration has had a war on fossil fuels since before he was elected President of the United States. He wants to kill fossil fuels. We all know that. And I am not going to quote all the people in his administration who say we are going to have to raise the price at the pumps to be comparable to Central Europe before people will be weaned off of fossil fuel because I think people know that now.
This morning was kind of interesting. We had a hearing this morning, and one of the witnesses was a Dr. Christopher Field. He was a witness for the other side, and he made a lot of statements. It was kind of interesting because there is an article that was sent out, written by Roger Pielke, Jr., who is from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and he was actually on the IPCC at one time. But he is one of the authorities who disagrees with me, and he talked about how wrong Dr. Field was.
Now, this is what Field said, first of all:
As the U.S. copes with the aftermath of last year's record-breaking series of $14 billion climate-related disasters and this year's massive wildfires and storms, it is critical to understand that the link between climate change and the kinds of extremes that lead to disasters is clear.
Well, what did Roger Pielke say this morning? He said:
Field's assertion that the link between climate change and disaster ``is clear,'' which he supported with reference to U.S. ``billion dollar'' economic losses, is in reality scientifically unsupported by the IPCC. Period.
That was the response to the assertion made this morning.
Another assertion made this morning by Field was:
The report identified some areas where droughts have become longer and more intense (including southern Europe and west Africa), but others where droughts have become less frequent, less intent or shorter.
This is what was said in response to that. Again, this is Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr., just today. This is in today's paper he published.
Field conveniently neglected in his testimony to mention that one place where droughts have gotten less frequent, less intense or shorter is ..... the United States. Why did he fail to mention this region, surely of interest to U.S. Senators. .....
Myself included--that were on the panel?
The third thing he mentioned on NOAA's billion-dollar disasters; Field said:
The U.S. experienced 14 billion-dollar disasters in 2011, a record that far surpasses the previous maximum of 9.
Field says nothing about the serious issues with NOAA's tabulation. The billion-dollar disaster memo is a PR train wreck, not peer-reviewed, and is counter to the actual science summarized in the IPCC. Again, this is Dr. Pielke, Jr., who disagrees with me on this, but he said he is tired of people saying things that are not true.
I ask unanimous consent to include his entire statement in the Record because he goes over point after point and discredits everything that was said by this witness--whose name is Christopher Field--this morning.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
Roger Pielke Jr IPCC Lead Author Misleads US Congress
The politicization of climate science is so complete that the lead author of the IPCC's Working Group II on climate impacts feels comfortable presenting testimony to the US Congress that fundamentally misrepresents what the IPCC has concluded. I am referring to testimony given today by Christopher Field, a professor at Stanford, to the US Senate.
This is not a particularly nuanced or complex issue. What Field says the IPCC says is blantantly wrong, often 180 degrees wrong. It is one thing to disagree about scientific questions, but it is altogether different to fundamentally misrepresent an IPCC report to the US Congress. Below are five instances in which Field's testimony today completely and unambiguously misrepresented IPCC findings to the Senate.
1. On the economic costs of disasters:
Field: ``As the US copes with the aftermath of last year's record-breaking series of 14 billion-dollar climate-related disasters and this year's massive wildfires and storms, it is critical to understand that the link between climate change and the kinds of extremes that lead to disasters is clear.''
Field's assertion that the link between climate change and disasters ``is clear,'' which he supported with reference to US ``billion dollar'' economic losses, is in reality scientifically unsupported by the IPCC. Period. There is good reason for this--it is what the science says. Why fail to report to Congress the IPCC's most fundamental finding and indicate something quite the opposite?
2. On US droughts:
Field: ``The report identified some areas where droughts have become longer and more intense (including southern Europe and West Africa), but others where droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter.''
What the IPCC actually said: ..... in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, central North America.....''
Field conveniently neglected in his testimony to mention that one place where droughts have gotten less frequent, less intense or shorter is ..... the United States. Why did he fail to mention this region, surely of interest to US Senators, but did include Europe and West Africa?
3. On NOAA's billion dollar disasters:,
Field: ``The US experienced 14 billion-dollar disasters in 2011, a record that far surpasses the previous maximum of 9.''
What NOAA actually says about its series of ``billion dollar'' disasters: ``Caution should be used in interpreting any trends based on this [data] for a variety of reasons''
Field says nothing about the serious issues with NOAA's tabulation. The billion dollar disaster meme is a PR train wreck, not peer reviewed and is counter to the actual science summarized in the IPCC. So why mention it?
4. On attributing billion dollar disasters to climate change, case of hurricanes and tornadoes:
Field: ``For several of these categories of disasters, the strength of any linkage to climate change, if there is one, is not known. Specifically, the IPCC (IPCC 2012) did not identify a trend or express confidence in projections concerning tornadoes and other small-area events. The evidence on hurricanes is mixed.''
What the IPCC actually said: ``The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados''
Hurricanes are, of course, tropical cyclones. Far from evidence being ``mixed'' the IPCC was unable to attribute any trend in tropical cyclone disasters to climate change (anywhere in the world and globally overall). In fact, there has been no trend in US hurricane frequency or intensity over a century or more, and the US is currently experiencing the longest period with no intense hurricane landfalls ever seen. Field fails to report any this and invents something different. Why present testimony so easily refuted? (He did get tornadoes right!)
5. On attributing billion dollar disasters to climate change, case of floods and droughts:
Field: ``For other categories of climate and weather extremes, the pattern is increasingly clear. Climate change is shifting the risk of hitting an extreme. The IPCC (IPCC 2012) concludes that climate change increases the risk of heat waves (90% or greater probability), heavy precipitation (66% or greater probability), and droughts (medium confidence) for most land areas.''
What the IPCC actually says: ``The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses'' and (from above): ``in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, central North America''
Field fails to explain that no linkage between flood disasters and climate change has been established. Increasing precipitation is not the same thing as increasing streamflow, floods or disasters. In fact, floods may be decreasing worldwide and are not increasing the US. The fact that drought has declined in the US means that there is no trend of rising impacts that can be attributed to climate change. Yet he implies exactly the opposite. Again, why include such obvious misrepresentations when they are so easily refuted?
Field is certainly entitled to his (wrong) opinion on the science of climate change and disasters. However, it utterly irresponsible to fundamentally misrepresent the conclusions of the IPCC before the US Congress. He might have explained why he thought the IPCC was wrong in its conclusions, but it is foolish to pretend that the body said something other than what it actually reported. Just like the inconvenient fact that people are influencing the climate and carbon dioxide is a main culprit, the science says what the science says.
Field can present such nonsense before Congress because the politics of climate change are so poisonous that he will be applauded for his misrepresentations by many, including some scientists. Undoubtedly, I will be attacked for pointing out his obvious misrepresentations. Neither response changes the basic facts here. Such is the sorry state of climate science today.
Mr. INHOFE . It is important to talk about the IPCC because if we stop and think about it, everything that has been happening comes from the science that was investigated and formulated by the IPCC--Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--that is, the United Nations. In my book I talk a little bit about that, but I don't believe it would be appropriate to mention it at this time. But at today's hearing, we talked about the IPCC.
When they were unable, through about five or six different bills, to get cap and trade through--keep in mind, cap and trade through legislation would cost the American people between $300 billion and $400 billion a year. But when that failed, we had something happen in December 2009.
The United Nations has this big party every year, and they invite countries from around the world to testify that global warming is happening and they are going to do something about it. One time in Milan, Italy, I saw one of my friends from West Africa. I said, What in the world are you doing here? You know better than this--in terms of global warming. He said, This is the biggest party of the year. Besides that, if we agree to go along with this, we in West Africa are going to get billions of dollars from the United Nations, from those countries in the developed nations.
Another big party was coming up in Copenhagen in 2009. I think SenatorKerry had gone over; Hillary Clinton had gone over. I don't believe Barack Obama was there. Nancy Pelosi was there and several others were there. They were telling all these countries: Don't you worry about it because we in the United States of America are going to pass cap-and-trade legislation this year. So I said I was going to go over as a one-man truth squad to let them know the truth, and I did. I went over and told the 191 other countries there: We are not going to pass cap and trade. It is dead. It is gone. They can't get one-third of the Senate to support it.
Before I left, one of my favorite liberals, Lisa Jackson--I really like her. She is Obama's appointee and is now the Director of the Environmental Protection Agency. Right before I went to Copenhagen, we had a hearing and she was a witness.
I said: Madam Administrator, I have a feeling that once I leave and go to Copenhagen, you are going to come out with an endangerment finding that will give you justification to start doing what they couldn't do by legislation through regulations. And I could see a smile on her face.
I said: When you do this, it has to be based on science. What science are you going to base this on?
She said: Well, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would be the major thing. And, sure enough, that is exactly what happened.
I could not have planned it, but she made this declaration that we now are going to be able to do through regulation what we couldn't do through legislation because the people of America had spoken through their elected representatives in the House and the Senate and had denied the opportunity to do cap and trade, so they decided to do it on an endangerment finding.
What happened after that is what I call poetic justice. Climategate occurred. I had nothing to do with it when it happened, but all the speeches I had made in the previous 10 years on the floor of this Senate were speeches saying exactly the same thing: that they were cooking the science and what they were saying was not real.
I read several of the editorials that came out after climategate. The New York Times has always been on the other side of this issue. They said:
Given the stakes, the IPCC cannot allow more missteps and, at the very least, must tighten procedures and make its deliberation more transparent. The panel's chairman ..... is under fire for taking consulting fees from business interests. .....
The Washington Post, which has also been on the other side of this issue, said: Recent revelations about flaws in that seminal IPCC report, ranging from typos in key dates to sloppy sourcing, are undermining confidence not only in the panel's work but also in projections about climate change.
Newsweek: Some of the IPCC's most-quoted data and recommendations were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures, newspaper articles. .....
Christopher Booker of the UK Telegraph said of climategate, `` ..... the worst scientific scandal of our generation.''
Clive Crook of the Financial Times said: ``The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.''
A prominent physicist from the IPCC said: ``Climategate was a fraud on the scale I have never seen.''
Another UN Scientist, bails:
UN IPCC Coordinating author Dr. Philip Lloyd calls out IPCC `fraud'--the result is not scientific.
Newsweek: Once celebrated climate researchers feeling like used car salesmen. Some of IPCC's most-quoted data and recommendations were taken straight out of unchecked activist brochures.
Clive Cook of the Atlantic Magazine, speaking of the IPCC, responds: I had hoped, not very confidently, that the various Climategate inquiries would be severe. This would have been a first step towards restoring confidence in the scientific consensus.
So everyone is in agreement that this is what climategate was all about. And why I am spending so much time on this is because this is the science of all of these things that started since Kyoto.
By the way, the Senator , this morning on the floor, commented about the Kyoto Treaty. Let's keep in mind, the Kyoto Treaty was back during the Clinton-Gore administration. They were strongly in support of it. Vice President Gore went down to the summit they were having in Rio de Janeiro and signed the treaty, but they never submitted it to the Senate.
To become a part of a treaty, it has to be ratified by the United States. It never was, and people need to understand that there is a reason it never was submitted.
I would suggest a couple of other things in the remainder of the time that I have that I think are significant and worthy of bringing up. One would be the one-weather event. The thing that we are hearing more about than anything else is that it has been a very hot summer. On Monday, my wife called me up and said: In Tulsa it is 109 degrees today.
I was joking around with my good friend from Vermont--we disagree with each other, but he is a good friend. Sure, it is hot. But it is so important that people understand, weather is not climate.
Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at University of Colorado, said: Over the long term, there is no evidence that disasters are getting worse because of climate change.
Judith Curry, chair of the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has said:
I have been completely unconvinced by any of the arguments ..... that attribute a single extreme weather event, a cluster of extreme weather events, or statistics of extreme weather events to anthropogenic forcing.
Myles Allen at the University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Planetary Physics Department:
When Al Gore said ..... that scientists now have clear proof that climate change is directly responsible for the extreme and devastating floods, storms and droughts ..... my heart sank.
I consider Rachel Maddow of MSNBC to be one of the outstanding liberals, and she is one of my four favorite liberals. I have been on her program, and I have enjoyed it. Bill Nye, the Science Guy, agrees that some of these weather events have nothing to do with global warming.
The other thing I made a note of that came up this morning was that they said there is no evidence on cooling. I think it is important to talk about that a little bit because a prominent Russian scientist said:
We should fear a deep temperature drop--not catastrophic global. ..... Warming had a natural origin ..... CO2 is not guilty.
U.N. Fears (More) Global Cooling Cometh! An IPCC scientist warns the U.N.:
We may be about to enter one or even two decades during which temps cool.
I ask unanimous consent all of these be placed in the Record showing that a single weather event has nothing to do with climate.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
Global Cooling Predictions
3. Paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter, James Cook University in Austraila, who has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on EPW, noted on June 18, 2007, ``The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this 8-year-long temperature stability as occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4%) in atmospheric CO2.
(ANDREW REVKIN)
4. Just months before Copenhagen, on September 23, 2009, the New York Times acknowledged, ``The world leaders who met at the United Nations to discuss climate change ..... are faced with 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.''
Mr. INHOFE . I do think it is important to bring this up because this is happening right now, after 3 years, and not one mention of global warming, and all of a sudden it is global warming.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to extend my time by 5 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Begich). Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. INHOFE . This morning I showed a picture of an igloo. I have 20 kids and grandkids. My daughter Molly and her husband have four children. One of those is adopted from Africa, a little girl. She was brought over here when she was a little baby. She is now 12 years old, reading at a college level. She is an outstanding little girl. I sponsor the African dinner every February, and she, for the last 3 years, has been kind of a keynote speaker, and everybody loves her.
They were up here 2 years ago, and they couldn't leave because all the airports were closed because of the ice storm. What do you do with a family of six when they are stuck someplace? They built an igloo. That was fun--a real igloo that will sleep four people. This became quite an issue, and we had articles from France and Great Britain and all criticizing my family. In fact, my cute little family was declared by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC to be the worst family in America because of this.
The point they were trying to make is, no one ever asserted that because it was the coldest winter in several decades up here that somehow that refuted global warming. I said: No, that isn't true. Now those same people are saying that it is.
So you can fool the American people part of the time and you can talk about all the hysteria and all the things that are taking place, but the people of America have caught on.
In March 2010, in a Gallup poll, Americans ranked global warming dead last, No. 8 out of eight environmental issues. They had a vote, and this was dead last.
A March Rasmussen poll: 72 percent of American voters don't believe global warming is a serious problem.
An alarmist, Robert Socolow, laments: We are losing the argument with the general public big time ..... I think the climate change activists--myself included--have lost the American middle.
So as much money as they have spent and the efforts they have made, and moveon.org and George Soros and Michael Moore and the United Nations and the Gore people and the elitists out in California in Hollywood, they have lost this battle. Now they are trying to resurrect it. They would love nothing more than to pass this $300 billion tax increase. It is not going to happen.
But I am glad that we are talking about it again, and I applaud my friend. SenatorSanders from Vermont is a real sincere activist on the other side. We agree on hardly anything--except infrastructure, I would say--and yet we respect each other. That is what this body is all about. We should have people who are on both sides of all these controversial issues talking about it. There has been a silence for 3 years. Now we are talking about it again.
So welcome back to the discussion of global warming. I look forward to future discussions about this.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
