Climate Change

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here now for the 88th time to urge this body to wake up to the looming threat of climate change.

In the last few weeks, my Republican colleagues have talked about climate change here on the floor more than at any other time since I began giving these weekly speeches. We had heard next to nothing from Republicans about climate change since the 2010 Citizens United decision. That decision let loose the fossil fuel industry to cast an ever darker shadow of intimidation across this town. So this minor outbreak of dialogue, although minor, has been significant.

All but one of my Republican colleagues is now on the record saying they agree that climate change is real, and 15 voted that it is caused at least in some part by humans. That is some progress. Yet some still persist in their denial. Our scientists now tell us that warming of the climate system is ``unequivocal.'' Yet we equivocate. Scientists are a careful bunch. When they say something is unequivocal, we ought to take note.

The senior Senator from Oklahoma, our chairman of the Environmental and Public Works Committee, however, maintains that human-caused climate change is a hoax. He thinks it is arrogant to say that humans could cause the climate to change. What is really arrogant is thinking we can ignore the laws of nature, the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, the laws of biology. Whose laws do we think those are? Those laws were given to us by our Creator. They came with this world. They are immutable.

These laws of nature dictate that carbon dioxide is the byproduct of our burning of fossil fuels. These laws of nature, fresh from the hands of our Creator, explain why carbon traps heat in our atmosphere--something we have known since Abraham Lincoln was riding around this town in his top hat.

Here in the Senate, we have no human power to amend or repeal those laws--and here in the Senate, we shouldn't cherry-pick from the scientific record. That is not fair play. Here on the floor, the EPW chairman paraphrased a 2013 paper from the journal Nature, saying:

..... there is considerable uncertainty as to whether [increases in extreme climate variability] is occurring.

The author of the paper, Dr. Chris Huntingford of the UK's National Environmental Research Council, took exception to his paper being mischaracterized. He said this:

Our Nature paper strictly analyzes only year-to-year variability (fluctuations) in temperature. ..... We do not at any point offer evidence against a general on-going background and upwards warming trend. Detection and attribution statistical studies show that the observed average increasing temperatures are almost certainly a consequence of the burning of fossil fuels.

In that same floor speech, my colleague from Oklahoma suggested we could relax about climate change because the Munich Reinsurance Company said weather-related disaster losses have declined as a proportion of GDP worldwide. He neglected to mention testimony before our EPW Committee last July by Munich Re's head of risk accumulation in the United States, Carl Hedde, to wit:

Due to our history of insuring natural catastrophe, Munich Re was one of the first companies in the industry to recognize the impact that weather-related events and a changing climate could have on its business model and customers. As a nation, we need to take steps to reduce the societal impact of weather events as we see greater variability and volatility in our climate.

The senior Senator from Oklahoma has even resurrected the ghost of Climategate, that faux scandal whipped up a few years ago by the polluters and their allies to suggest climate scientists were colluding to exaggerate global warming data.

Turned out it was the cooked-up, phony scandal that was exaggerated and not the data. So-called ClimateGate should actually be accurately called ClimateGate-Gate. Yet years later this zombie falsehood still staggers about the floor of the Senate attempting to cast doubt on human-caused climate change. The polluters have relentlessly made it their business to misconstrue the findings of scientific works and to cling to discredited accusations.

We would do well to listen to the overwhelming majority of practicing, publishing climate scientists who agree our carbon pollution is altering the climate. Scientists who conduct experiments, who examine data, who arrive at conclusions, who submit their work through peer review, and who make their data accessible for due diligence by other researchers. It is the best science out there.

But I am afraid those scientists don't have the ear of the senior Senator from Oklahoma. He showed us whom he listens to. He brought a chart to the floor showing several dozen ``recognized'' scientists--as he called them--who don't buy the climate consensus. That chart was produced by an outfit called the Heartland Institute. You may remember them for associating climate scientists with the Unabomber--a classy group.

Their scientists, so-called, included bloggers, columnists, staff of conservative think tanks, a member of the European Parliament, and many scientists who have been funded by the fossil fuel industry.

I will side with the scientists affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science over a bunch of carefully selected bloggers. I will trust NASA and NOAA over scientists who shill for the fossil fuel industry. The Heartland Institute is not alone. It is part of a sophisticated network of climate denial propped up by the carbon-polluting fossil fuel industry. It is a front group fueled by the special interests and their dubious experts.

Interestingly, if we go to Oklahoma State University, we will find one of the experts on this. Dr. Riley Dunlap at Oklahoma State could tell his Senator all about it. Professor Dunlap is one of the preeminent researchers into the deliberate and coordinated effort by corporate interests to spread denial propaganda and distort public opinion on climate change--what he calls the ``organized climate-denial machine.'' Dunlap and a colleague found that nearly 90 percent of climate denial books coming out of publishing houses between 1982 and 2010--guess what--had ties to conservative fossil fuel-funded think tanks such as the Heartland Institute. The whole thing is a rigged game and a phony, and there is a very good professor at Oklahoma State University who keeps track of it.

I also have a fact sheet from the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, its statement on climate change and its implications for Oklahoma. Here is what it says in plain language: The Earth's climate has warmed during the last 100 years. The Earth's climate will continue to warm for the foreseeable future, and much of the global temperature increases over the last 50 years can be attributed to human activities, particularly increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That is actually a noncontroversial statement among regular scientists.

This is no radical with some political agenda. This is a fact sheet from a State scientific agency. It happens to be Oklahoma's. Here is what the agency expects this means for Oklahoma: earlier maturation of winter wheat and orchard crops, leaving them more vulnerable to late freeze events; drought frequency increases, especially during the summer; drier and warmer conditions increasing the risk of wildfires; rain-free periods lengthening with individual rainfall events becoming more intense, with more runoff and flash flooding occurring.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The National Climate Assessment estimates that by the end of the century the temperatures in the Southern Great Plains will increase up to 9 degrees. Mark Shafer is a researcher at the Oklahoma Climatological Survey who contributed to the National Climate Assessment. He told the Oklahoman newspaper that in a few decades Oklahoma could see 100-plus temperatures every summer. By century's end, daily temperatures could top 100 degrees for the entire summer. As the climate warms, droughts will probably get worse, both more severe and more frequent.

Nine Oklahoma professors from Oral Roberts University, Southern Nazarene University, and the University of Tulsa were among 200 evangelical scientists and academics to sign a 2013 letter to Congress imploring us to address climate change.

All of God's Creation ..... is groaning under the weight of our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels. ..... The threat to future generations and global prosperity means we can no longer afford complacency and endless debate. We as a society risk being counted among ``those who destroy the earth.''

Those who know the Bible will know that reference to ``those who destroy the earth'' comes from Revelations. I will quote from Revelations: ``And Thy wrath is come, and the time ..... that thou ..... shouldst destroy them which destroy the earth.''

The letter warns that the way we live harms our neighbors, threatening to create more empty wells, devastated cropland, loss of villages, environmental refugees, and disease.

I ask unanimous consent to have that letter from the 200 evangelical scientists printed in the Record.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Finally, Mr. President, at the University of Oklahoma Berrien Moore III is dean of the College of Atmosphere and Geographic Sciences. He is also Director of the National Weather Center. Dean Moore of the University of Oklahoma was a lead author on an intergovernmental panel on climate change report, which the Senator from Oklahoma is so fond of disparaging. Dr. Moore's work helped the IPCC earn the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. He has won research accolades from NOAA and from NASA. In 2009 Dr. Moore testified before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Here is what he had to say about climate change:

On the increasing strength of Earth science, we now can state that global warming is ``unequivocal,''--

There is that word again--

but this simply sets the challenge. We need now--

This is 5 years ago, by the way--

to develop the capability to monitor and thereby manage greenhouse gas emissions through this century and beyond. ..... The challenge is growing and will not go away.

The effects of climate change are all too real in Oklahoma, in Rhode Island, and across the Nation. If you don't believe me, go to Oklahoma State and the University of Oklahoma and talk to the scientists I just mentioned. The outlook for us if we fail to act is increasingly dark.

But look again at Oklahoma. The Sooner State is the fourth largest producer of wind power in the country. Wind turbines there make progress toward energy independence and they give Oklahoma farmers steady income as a hedge against droughts and extreme weather. So people farm and they get paid for having a wind turbine located on your farm. It is a win-win. Gary McManus, the Oklahoma State climatologist, has given a number of presentations on climate change and its likely effects on his home State. He often prefaces those talks with this admonition:

This is the science. It is up to you to decide what you do with it. You can either ignore it or you can use it.

In my view, there will be a high price in harm and in infamy to this democracy if we continue to ignore it. So I say let's use it, but first we will have to wake up.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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