Epa Data Doesn't Show Increasing Temperatures

Floor Speech

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Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, importantly, where we get our data from is extremely useful and key to making wise decisions around here.

Since about half the focus of the speeches at this place and at every committee and at every agency of the Federal Government seems to be on what they call climate change, it is good to know where we are getting our data. It tends to follow what percent of the atmosphere is CO2 and what the temperatures are.

Well, here is an interesting little piece from the EPA on their data and on the climate stations they have. They have all sorts of weather monitoring devices across the country, a little over 1,060, I believe it is. In some cases, the way they are set and where they are placed is a whole conversation unto itself.

The old rules require that they be placed in areas that are not skewing the temperature one way or another, but sometimes, you will find them on rooftops next to air-conditioning units, parking lots, areas that are going to be more prone toward heat sinks and to keeping temperatures higher.

Nonetheless, a recent set of data that EPA themselves has allowed to get out is that, since 1948, only 19 percent of those weather stations have shown a mild increase in temperature. That means 81 percent did not show an increase in temperature as per their own data.

Over 800 of those stations, I think 863, reported either a decrease or no change in the number of hot days.

Interesting, isn't it? You would think that we are melting down. We hear all this talking--even the committee I was just in--oh, sea level rise. Well, you look at pictures, and the sea level hasn't risen; certainly not to the extent that we are being threatened in the way they are not asking us but forcing us to change our lives.

It is one thing if you want to buy an electric vehicle because that might work for you in your commute. Hey, great. When you see my own State of California forcing these mandates by 2035, or whatever round year number they make up, as to when we have to get to what they call net zero on CO2, it is really going to negatively affect a lot of people's lives, not just automobiles, which might be easier, but trucks that haul things.

For example, a typical truck, the total vehicle weight is 80,000 pounds, which the tare weight, or the empty weight of the empty truck, is 25,000 pounds. You have got about 55,000 pounds worth of capacity. If you convert that truck to an electric vehicle, it will take 16,000 pounds of additional weight of batteries to make it have any kind of range. The payload has just decreased by about 16,000 pounds or so on a truck.

Let's get back to the core numbers. What we are seeing is their own climate stations, their own weather stations, 81 percent of them, have shown as level or a decrease in temperature since 1948. Only a handful have seen an increase. Even then we have got to see how skewed those are with where they are placed, in parking lots or areas that are heat sinks.

Let's look at the CO2 numbers since that is supposed to be the killer that so many folks are whining about around here. Carbon dioxide is only 0.04 percent of our atmosphere. Four one-hundredths of 1 percent are what they are making us change our lives for. It is also putting America at a huge disadvantage economically, by exporting our jobs, exporting our extraction of natural resources to places like China or other areas around the world that have the ability to do the mining that is needed to produce copper or, heaven forbid, all the lithium and the cobalt and other things it is going to take to battery and electrify everything.

Instead, let's not have mandates to take away our cars, our trucks, and our trains. I even see silly pieces on the internet about one of the major cargo carriers saying we need to look forward to electrifying aircraft. The aircraft won't have any weight capacity to haul anything if you load it down with batteries. Battery technology needs to make leaps and bounds. We don't have it yet. Yes, we should keep researching that, but, by golly, why do we have to hamstring ourselves right now?

The internal combustion engines we have now burn cleaner and better than ever. If we are allowed to continue to refine them, they will be even better, just through attrition, over time. By replacing trucks and replacing vehicles with the newer, cleaner-burning ones, we are making giant strides. We have already made giant strides from the bad old days in the 1960s in the LA Basin and stuff with cleaner-burning vehicles.

Let's make progress on things that are within our range. Yes, we can look into hydrogen and see if that can power vehicles, but this battery-powered everything is really a farce at the end of it. It has to be heavily subsidized to get people to buy the cars. We are seeing the range. We are seeing the stories in the wintertime, et cetera. Let's take a smarter look at what the heck we are doing instead of just forcing it.

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