Regarding the Lieberman-Warner
Debate, Rep. Rohrabacher: “Do you really think the world is filled
with morons?”
Since 06-07-08
House of Representatives - May 14, 2008
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Space). Under the Speaker’s announced
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I preface my remarks with a personal
statement that, while I am opposed to the advocates of man-made global
warming theories, I am committed to a clean and healthy environment, to
purifying our air, our water, and our soil; all of this for the sake of
the people of this planet, including my three children, Anika, Tristan
and Christian. I do this not because of some paranoid theory that humans
are changing the climate of the world, but instead, I am very concerned
about the health of the people of the world and, thus, committed to
clean air, clean soil, and clean water.
Thus, we have, today, to take a look at the issues of global warming and
pollution that confront our society because there are enormous
implications to this whole discussion of what has been called “man-made
global warming.”
Only 18 months ago the refrain “Case closed: Global warming is real,”
was repeated as if the mantra from some religious zealots. It was
pounded into the public consciousness over the airwaves, in print, and
even at congressional hearings, “Case closed.” Well, this was obviously
a brazen attempt to end open discussion and to silence differing views
by dismissing the need for seriously contrary arguments and seriously
listening to both sides of an argument. And rather than hearing both
sides of the argument, this was an attempt to dismiss arguments even
though the person making the arguments might have a very impressive
credential or might be a very educated scientist or someone else who
should be listened to.
And yes, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of prominent scientists and
meteorologists, the heads of science departments at major universities,
and others, who are highly critical of the man-made global warming
theory. There is Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. He has been adamant in his opposition, as has a Bjarne
Andresen of the University of Copenhagen, Adreas Prokoph, a professor of
earth sciences at the University of Ottawa, Dr. William Gray, a famous
hurricane expert and former President of the American Meteorological
Association, and Dr. Kevin Trenberth, the head of the Climate Analysis
Section at the National Center of Atmospheric Research. All of these are
respected scholars, all skeptical of the unwarranted alarmism that we
are being pressured to accept.
But their views and those of so many more prominent scholars and
scientists don’t matter. The debate is over. Al Gore has his Nobel
Prize, and the film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” its Academy Award. So shut
up and get your mind in lockstep with the politically correct prevailing
wisdom, or at least what the media tells us is the prevailing wisdom.
And no questions, please, the case is closed. We heard that dozens and
dozens of times.
So what is this theory that now is so accepted that no more debate is
needed or even tolerated? The man-made global warming theory may be
presented as scientific truism, but it is not. It is a disturbing theory
that the Earth began a warming cycle 150 years ago that differed greatly
from all the other warming and cooling cycles in the Earth’s past. This
warming cycle of 150 years ago, we keep being told, is tied directly to
mankind’s use of fossil fuels, basically oil and coal, which, of course,
oil and coal and these fuels, these so-called fossil fuels, have powered
our industries and made modern civilization possible.
Fossil fuels, we are told, puts an ever-increasing so-called level of
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and the most prevalent of these
gases, of course, being carbon dioxide, CO2. This increase in CO2 causes
the warming that we are supposedly experiencing today. This man-made
warming cycle, according to the theory, is rapidly approaching a tipping
point when the world’s temperatures will abruptly jump and accelerate
with dire and perhaps apocalyptic consequences for the entire planet.
For skeptics of this hypothesis, the consequence of accepting this
theory, the consequences are far more dire than any of the consequences
we’re supposed to be suffering out of a predicted rise in temperature.
And by the way, that rise in temperature, of course, isn’t really
happening, which we will discuss a little bit later.
If one accepts this as fact rather than theory, this idea that man-made
global warming is overwhelming our planet, then one would be expected to
also accept controls, regulations, taxation, international planning and
enforcement, mandated lifestyle changes, lowering expectations, limiting
consumer choice, as well as
personal and family sacrifices that are all going to be necessary for us
to save the planet from–well, from us.
It really takes a lot to frighten people into accepting such personally
restrictive mandates that would result from implementing a global
warming-based agenda. People’s lives will change if we decide to
implement a global warming-based agenda. Yes, people’s lives will
change, but not for the better if we have to end, for example, discount
airline tickets and cheap travel.
Most people who listen to the global warming advocates don’t understand
that the global warming advocates believe that jet planes are some of
the worst CO2 polluters, and thus they have to be restricted, according
to the theory. So how many people really do want to end the cheap
airline tickets that can be had over the Internet?
Obviously one of the goals will be to severely restrict the use of
private automobiles. Sure. Now, we know that. The fact that the
automobile has been targeted for the last 20 years certainly suggests
that automobiles are on the hit list. But don’t worry, we may have to
give up our automobiles, but the rich and the government officials will
still have their private jets, their Suburbans, and even their
limousines. But the rest of us, of course, will be relegated to public
transportation. And we will have very limited travel rights unless we
can, of course, afford the higher and higher prices.
Global warming predictions appear designed to strike fear into the heart
of those malcontents who just won’t willingly accept the mandates in
their lifestyle changes that are needed in order to save the planet.
These people, of course, won’t accept things like higher food prices,
which will come with an implementation of global warming mandates. And
of course they certainly won’t accept less meat in their diet. That’s
right, part of the manmade global warming theory and how we’re going to
solve this is to wean mankind away from meat.
A 2006 report entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow” to the United Nations
mentions livestock emissions and grazing, and it places the blame for
global warming squarely on the hind parts of cows. Livestock, the report
claims, accounts for 18 percent of the gases that supposedly cause the
global warming of our climate. Cows are greenhouse-emitting machines.
Fuel for fertilizer and meat production and transportation, as well as
clearing the fields for grazing, produce 9 percent of the global CO2
emissions, according to the report. And also, cows produce ammonia,
causing acid rain, of course.
Now, if that’s not bad enough, all of these numbers are projected in
this report to double by the year 2050. Well, not only are we then going
to have to cut personal transportation, which will keep us at home, but
when we stay at home, we can’t even have a bbq. And heck, they won’t
even let us have a hamburger.
I would like to point out that before the introduction of cattle,
millions upon millions of buffalo dominated the Great Plains of
Ten years ago, for example, the alarmists predicted that by now we would
be clearly plagued by surging temperatures. In testimony before Congress
20 years ago, now, says James Hansen, a man who has repeatedly
challenged people who simply want to make sure that his views are
balanced off at NASA, but NASA’s James Hansen 20 years ago predicted CO2
would shoot up and global temperatures would shoot up by more than
one-third of a degree Celsius during the 1990s.
So a rise in temperature was predicted, and it would lead to what?
Rising sea levels. In the end, we’ll have rising sea levels, perhaps
even cities under water, droughts and famines, and of course an increase
in tropical diseases. Yes, tropical diseases. Sometimes it’s difficult
for me to hear it when certain environmentalists use that as an example,
considering the fact that tropical diseases, namely malaria, has killed
millions of children in the Third World because the environmentalists
have been successful in banning DDT. But that’s another issue.
But the point is there are serious consequences, perhaps unintended
consequences to following nonsensical extremism in the arena of the
environment.
So were the predictions of global heating correct? Forget “case closed.”
The question needs to be answered. Were all of these predictions
correct? Mr. Hansen said it would rise by a third of a degree just a
little over a decade ago. And the answer is that the predictions of a
decade ago have turned out to be dramatically wrong. Temperatures during
that decade rose only one-third of the jump predicted by Hansen, a
modest 0.11, one-third of what he had predicted.
Furthermore, numerous and powerful hurricanes that were forecast by the
National Hurricane Center, for example, at NOAA and others, well, by now
we haven’t seen such a trend, and by now we were led to believe there
would be a drought and a melting of the ice caps would be clearly upon
us. My beautiful
In a September, 2005, article from Discovery Magazine, Dr. William Gray,
now an emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State
University and a former president of the American Meteorological
Association, was asked if funding problems that he was experiencing and
has been experiencing could be traced to his skepticism of man-made
global warming. His response: “I had NOAA money for 30 years, and then
when the
In fact, Al Gore’s first act as Vice President was to insist that
William Harper be fired as the Chief Scientist at the Department of
Energy. Now, why was that? Well, that’s because William Harper had
uttered words indicating that he was open minded to the issue of global
warming. So off with his head. They didn’t want someone who was open
minded. They wanted someone who was going to provide grants based on
people who would verify this man-made global warming theory. Now, that
was 1993 when Mr. Harper was relieved, the first year of the
Clinton-Gore administration. So for over a decade, all we got was a
drumbeat of one-sided research, setting the stage for the false claim
that there is a scientific consensus about whether or not man-made
global warming is real.
Unfortunately, for all those scientists who went along with the scheme,
now, over a decade later, there is a big problem. Contrary to what all
those scientists living on their Federal research grants predicted, the
world hasn’t been getting warmer. In fact, for the last 7 years, there
has been no warming at all, which has been verified even by, for
example, Michel Jarraud of the World Meteorological Organization. He’s
their Secretary General. He reluctantly admitted that global
temperatures have not risen since 1998, according to a BBC article.
Global snowfall is at record levels and there are fewer, not more,
hurricanes.
Furthermore, there is some melting in the
After hearing about the extinction of the polar bear, which has been
drummed into our heads, we now hear that–and by the way, just today the
polar bear was put on an endangered species list. But are the polar
bears really disappearing? We now hear from Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the
Department of the Environment under the Canadian territory of Nunavut
and other experts, I might add, who suggest, yes, all but one or two
species of the polar bears are flourishing. Yes, of the twenty-odd
species, there are perhaps one or two that are suffering and not doing
well, but all the rest of the species of polar bear are expanding. In
fact, we don’t have a situation with fewer polar bears; we’ve got more
polar bears. Yet our government is putting the polar bear on an
endangered species list, saying that if the ice cap melts, the polar
bears will all be going away because their habitat has been destroyed.
Unfortunately, the debate on this case is not closed. So explaining
emerging obvious differences between the reality and the theory needs to
be addressed by the people who have been advocating global warming. The
case is not closed. The gnomes of climate theory now have to come up
with explanations for us of why it was predicted that the weather would
be this way at this time and it is not. Why is it that basically we’ve
had stable weather, if not a little cooler weather, for the last 8
years?
The first attempt to basically cover their tracks about this noticeable
dichotomy in what they predicted and what was happening happened a few
years ago, and it went very slowly but very cleverly. The words “climate
change” have now replaced the words “global warming.” Get that? Every
time you hear it now, half the time they are going to be using the words
“climate change” where those very same people were so adamant about
“global warming” only 4 or 5 years ago. So no matter what happens now,
now that they’ve changed it to “climate change” rather than global
warming, whatever happens to the weather pattern, whether it’s hotter or
cooler, it can be presented as further verification of human-caused
change. If you just had “human-caused warming,” it would have to be at
least warming for them to actually have any verification of what they
were trying to say. But right now by using “climate change,” they can
bolster their right to be taken seriously upon recommending policies,
even though no matter what direction the climate goes, it is justified
by how they are labeling themselves.
I’m sorry, fellows.
Do you really think the world is filled with morons?
When it comes to bait and
switch, used car salesmen are paragons of virtue compared to this global
warming crowd.
Excuse me. It’s not the “global warming” crowd now; it’s the “climate
change” crowd. Of course, they don’t want any of us to own automobiles;
so
what the heck. They can act like used car salesmen because there will be
more jobs for them as being advocates in the climate change arena.
We just need to ask ourselves, if a salesman gives a strong pitch and
claims something that is later found to be wrong, totally wrong, when
does one stop trusting that salesman? Then if he starts playing word
games, changing the actual words that he’s using about the same product
rather than just admitting an error, isn’t it reasonable to stop
trusting him?
Yes, Al Gore and company, we have noticed that you are now saying
“climate change” rather than “global warming.” I know that people tried
to slip it in, but we have noticed, and there is something behind this
that the American people should take note of. Why has that changed?
Well, that’s because the world has not been getting warmer in these last
7 years, as they predicted it would be.
So instead of word games, what these advocates need to explain is what
is happening in the real world today and why it doesn’t match what they
said was going to happen based on their “case closed, man-made global
warming is real.” They must realize that someone is bound to notice that
last winter was unusually cold and that chilly weather seems to be the
trend. It actually snowed in
So now we see a beehive of activity going on. Those federally funded
scientists are trying to save some modicum of credibility by adjusting
their computers and coming up with some explanations that keep man-made
global warming as a theory but explains away the current dichotomy
between what they said would happen and what is actually happening. Of
course, computer models were used to justify their hysteria and their
hysteric warming predictions to begin with. So now the computer’s
information input is readjusted and we can see all these things coming
out of it.
Well, there’s a lot of questions that need to be answered and a lot of
things that were told to us that obviously are not true and are not
consistent with what’s been going on and what we see happening around us
today.
And why is this of such concern to us? Why are we concerned that global
warming as a theory has been presented and that it’s false, and why
should we be so concerned that it’s being accepted? What could be the
negative results of just accepting it from some people who might be very
sincere, very sincere and concerned about the planet?
Well, what happens in such cases as this is that we have situations that
occur and people then actually come to the point where they are focused
on aspects of what’s going on in the world that will not make it better
but instead have terrible consequences in and of themselves.
For example, a deadly cyclone just brought death and destruction to
What should Al Gore’s reaction have been? Well, what it should have been
was “The Burmese regime is despicable. The Burmese people are suffering.
They are dying by the hundreds of thousands. It is despicable for this
dictatorship not to permit our aid in.” But instead that was ignored,
and what Al Gore did focus on “This is a chance for me to explain global
warming,” as the quote I just gave suggested.
Well, the Burmese cyclone hit
So what the heck is Mr. Gore talking about? What is all this mumbo
jumbo? Again, he is warning about global warming because he is grasping
at an attempt to try to verify in some way his predictions that have
been all wrong for the last 5 years.
Dr. William Gray, for example, as I mentioned, the former chairman of
the American Meteorological Association, a pre-eminent hurricane expert,
has noted “there is no reliable data available to indicate increased
hurricane frequency or intensity in any of the globe’s seven tropical
cyclone basins.” So hurricanes and cyclones are not a product of global
warming. Dr. Gray, I think, has more credentials than Mr. Gore. But most
convincingly, the most convincing part of this is that no matter what Al
Gore says about the warming of this water, that is not what we are
hearing from other sources.
I will now submit for the Record indications that actually the water
temperature is not warming and is expected to cool, especially in the
northern areas of the world.
So what is really important here is that we take a look and we see that
the world is not warming and that those people who have been advocating
this are grasping to try to find a way out of the fact that they are
telling us that we need to adopt the policies that they want for our
country, yet their predictions on the weather were wrong.
What is happening is, and the articles that I will submit for the Record
show, is that some of the organizations that were predicting that we
would be in global warming now are telling us that, yes, there will be
global warming. We are not giving it up. But it is going to be 10 to 15
years from now and not in the last 10 years, as was predicted.
In fact, as I said, we actually have this article that suggests that the
sea around Europe and
To understand all of this nonsense, you have to go back and look at the
basic assumptions that are being used by global warming alarmists. They
believe that excessive amounts of manmade CO2 are being deposited into
the air which causes a greenhouse effect that warms the atmosphere. They
call this the “carbon footprint.” That is what we are led to look for.
We don’t want to look in
The global warming analysts want us to judge everything by its carbon
footprint. What that means is how much CO2 is being released because of
that activity, because they believe it is CO2 that causes the planet to
warm.
This concept, just like these other extrapolations that we get from
computers, is wrong. It is dead wrong. A rise in CO2 comes after global
temperature increases, not before. This has been observed in ice cores
by prominent scientists, yet ignored by those screaming their warnings
at us. That’s right. Ice cores indicate that there have been periods,
many periods, of warming and cooling in the history of the world. But
the warming that has happened preceded the increase in the level of CO2
in the world. That is why we have warming. That is why we can’t say that
if we control CO2 that it is going to prevent the climate from warming.
Obviously, if the CO2 increase comes as a result of the warming, by
changing that, the warming is still going to be with us. Well, that is
getting things to the core. And I don’t mean a pun by that in terms of
the ice core, but the fact is that this evidence is confirmed by ice
cores.
So take note that the very argument upon which global warming is built
has been proven to be false and that manmade global warming advocates
will not address that issue. I have been in hearing after hearing. I
have been involved with debates on this thing. When you tell them “no,”
and you name several scientists, and I will be happy to do that for the
Record, who are indicating that the CO2 increases come after the warming
of the planet, well, that issue just isn’t addressed.
After all, the case is closed. We don’t need to discuss any of those
type of details. To cite one example of experts’ findings on this, by
the way, is Tom Scheffelin of the
The fact is that the global warming community is jumping through hoops
and bending over backwards struggling to find one little glint of new
information to cover their arrogant attempt to stampede humankind into
draconian policies and to cut off the debate and dismiss the debate
without addressing the issues. The government-financed propaganda
campaign to convince us that manmade global warming has been and
continues to be a major threat, this propaganda is a cacophony of
gibberish presented as a scientific explanation.
Go back and look at what Mr. Gore’s words were about that cyclone. That
same sort of putting together of pseudoscience wording in order to
impress people is seen time and again. There are facts now evident, of
course, that this can’t be ignored. And Mr. Gore’s mumbo jumbo
notwithstanding, the predictions have been wrong. And the CO2 premise is
wrong. The methodology that has been used has been wrong. The
observations have been wrong. And the attempt to shut up those people
who disagree has been wrong.
I remember Al Gore labeling me a Stalinist because when I chaired the
subcommittee on Research and Science Education, I insisted that both
sides be presented. There was a study on research and the environment, a
subcommittee of the Science Committee. And I insisted when I was
chairman of the committee that expert witnesses on both sides be present
at hearings and that they address each other’s contentions. Well, to
him, that is Stalinism. Well, I would suggest that the propaganda
campaign of the manmade global warming alarmists has far more in common
with Stalinism than does insisting that both sides of an argument be
heard.
One has to really believe that he or she has a corner on the truth to
make such a complaint as the one that he was making against me. He must
feel really safe in saying that he knows the truth and that is in order
to justify not having both sides of an argument presented at a hearing.
Of course, Mr. Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth” by its own
title suggests that it should be taken as the truth. And I won’t go into
the numerous debatable points and outright errors that are presented in
the film. Something far worse has recently emerged concerning the
fundamental veracity and truthfulness of Vice President Gore’s film.
In the film, there are numerous film segments of climate and
environmental incidents to add credibility to the alleged scientific
points that were being documented in the film. However, what we see is
not necessarily what we are getting. The audience is being given
questionable information and questionable views because what they are
seeing is not necessarily a documentary view but, instead it is a
special effects creation in an attempt to convince the viewers that they
are watching an actual occurrence of something.
Specifically, let me note that the film portrays a huge cracking and
breaking away of a large portion of the polar ice cap. I have not seen
the film, but I am told the scene is awesome and somewhat overwhelming,
leaving the audience feeling that they are witnessing a massive
occurrence, and this massive occurrence, of course, Mr. Gore
conveniently ties to human activity, the human activity he wants to
regulate and of course the human activity that he will profit from if we
have this carbon credit scheme instituted by the various governments of
the world.
Unfortunately, that view of the breakaway of the ice there in the
And the real sin of all of this was not only the sin of presenting
Styrofoam and trying to trick people into thinking they are watching
something real, the ice breaking away, but that we haven’t heard about
it. I have only seen this in one or two publications. We haven’t heard
about it.
If such a trick and attempt to deceive was done by a conservative, I
could tell you that that conservative would be tarred and feathered in
the media. In fact, if there is anything wrong, I am sure that one or
two points that I have in this speech are debatable, and I am sure that
those will be looked at with a microscope. And if I am wrong, even a
little bit, they will try to use that to just say “don’t listen to
anything he says.” But Mr. Gore can present the breaking away of
Styrofoam and present it to us as if it is really happening. And he
doesn’t even apologize or comment on it when it is found out. Al Gore
has no comment on this deception.
Maybe it is inconvenient for him to comment because, yes, it might hurt
his credibility. And after all, the world is getting warmer in these
last 7 years, which is just the opposite of what he predicted. And of
course, maybe his predictions were based on a Styrofoam computer model.
But we will go into that later.
Well, the first time I met President Gore was during my first term in
Congress back in 1989 and 1990. Al Gore then was a United States
Senator. And he marched into the Science Committee room followed by a
platoon of cameras and reporters. He sat in front of the Science
Committee, and he demanded that President Bush, that is George W.’s
father, declare an ozone emergency. And he waved in his hand a report of
evidence that an ozone hole was opening up over the
A few days later, the report touted by the Senator was found to have
been based on faulty data, data collected by one so-called researcher
flying a single-engine Piper Cub with limited technology and not much
expertise. Senator Gore was demanding emergency shutdowns of factories
and manufacturing plants in the Northeast. It would have had dire
consequences for the American economy and for those people who worked in
those plants. But they be damned, because we are out to save the planet.
Now does anyone here see any type of a pattern here, the ozone hole that
wasn’t there and then we are going to have this drastic action in order
to save the planet? The scare tactics, the Chicken Little-ism and all
the rest of these types of things that are trying to create hysteria,
this isn’t a new tactic.
Let’s look at some of the past examples of the nonsense being portrayed
as science.
Cranberries, yes, cranberries, shield your children from Ocean Spray.
That’s right, the cranberry industry suffered a loss of nearly $20
million back in 1957 when it was determined that perhaps cranberries,
there was something wrong with the cranberries. In fact, later on it was
admitted to be just a mistake.
But the cranberry industry went to hell for 2 or 3 years. But if you are
not growing cranberries, what do you care about cranberry farmers? No,
you care about people. Many peoples’ lives were destroyed because over a
2- or 3-year period, cranberries were basically labeled as something
that they should not have been labeled, and it was a catastrophe for
them, just like perhaps those people that worked in factories that would
have been closed up had we taken that ozone scare seriously.
Then there was the scare over cyclamate. Cyclamate was used in everyday
items like soda, jams, ice cream. It was a sweetening element, it’s very
low in calories, that industry, it was a very fine product and generated
an enormous profit. In the early 1970s, the FDA banned cyclamates. I
remember very well.
People spent billions of dollars building this industry. It was a great
industry, but it was labeled as a cancer hazard after someone, some kind
of a researcher, force-fed rats the equivalent of 350 cans of soda a
day. By giving these rats the equivalent of 350 soda cans a day, 8 out
of 240 got sick.
Well, even that was a faulty test, and eventually the truth prevailed
and cyclamates were labeled okay, they were given an okay. That was
after about 10 years. Canada, by the way, never banned cyclamates, but
in order to protect us and save us, and it was a terrible situation,
yes, the cyclamate industry never recovered.
The damage, however, was done. This episode has had serious
consequences, because when the cyclamates were banned, that led to the
introduction of what, high fructose corn syrup, so, yes, and with all of
the obesity and problems that come with high fructose corn syrup. That
first got its hold in the food business at a time when cyclamates were
thought to be the answer, but they were banned.
So we have had examples of this over and over again, another American
industry that was decimated by a rotten theory that had hazardous
consequences for implementing.
The next example of fear mongering, of pseudoscience, happened in 1989.
February 26, 1989, that evening thousands of Americans tuned into “60
Minutes” and heard Ed Bradley say the most potent cancer-causing agent
in our food supply is a substance sprayed on apples to keep them on the
trees longer and make them look better. That’s the conclusion of a
number of scientific experts. And who is at risk? Children who may
someday develop cancer.
That one story, by the way, snowballed into a media blitz, a feeding
frenzy, Meryl Streep testified before Congress, spouting off, again,
pseudoscientific nonsense. Parents tossed apples out the window, schools
removed applesauce from the cafeteria and, of course, replaced that with
much safer nutritious substances like ice cream and pudding.
Of course, there was only one problem, the Alar didn’t cause cancer, the
apples definitely didn’t and even the Alar didn’t. The study was based
on bad science, and 20,000 apple growers in the
Okay, so by now such alarmism has become a political tool that scares
people to try to get them to do things. That’s what we are facing with
global warming, excuse me, climate change.
The
The Jane Fonda movie, “The China Syndrome,” coupled with a mishap at a
nuclear power plant, that was, I might add, a mishap that no one
suffered any health consequences, no one died, no one was hurt. Yet it
was presented to the public as this catastrophe, and that led to a
shutdown of the efforts of building any new nuclear power plants.
Ironically, of course, nuclear power is the most effective means of
producing power with no carbon footprint. Again, it was a total con job
on the nuclear energy industry.
What about the ozone hole over the Antarctic? We are told that it would
grow and grow for decades, and it was totally out of control.
Well, Boyce Rensberger, Director of the Knight Fellowship of
Massachusetts Institute of Technology says that ozone depletion is a
cyclical event, expanding and contracting throughout the eons of
history. Here is a scientist from MIT telling us that the current ozone
depression has been simply part of a reoccurring cycle, not as a result
of the use of chlorofluorocarbons, meaning your aerosol cans.
So, what we have got is a situation where at a gigantic shift of
expense, of shifting away from aerosol, we have basically accomplished
nothing because the ozone hole opens and closes on its own. I might add,
we know now, of course, there have been many cycles of warming and
cooling, and is this a natural thing? Well, if you consider the sun
being natural, yes.
Instead of saying that CO2 that’s coming out of the use of fossil fuels
is causing our climate to change now, as compared to all the other times
it changed in the past, maybe these people should look at the sun, and
maybe there are natural cycles where you have sunspots and it causes
warming and cooling on the Earth.
Could that be an explanation? Well, let’s think about it. Otherwise, how
do we explain the fact that on Jupiter and Mars we have cooling and
warming cycles that seem to be matching some of the cycles here on
Earth. Well, maybe there are some SUVs up there on Mars.
Well, the last example, one of the last examples, of course, that I have
in my memory of people trying to be frightened into supporting policy
with this kind of alarmism has been acid rain. The acid rain was
supposed to decimate our forests, destroy our fresh water bodies and
roads, our buildings and sidewalks, and, what happened? That was just an
onslaught that was going on, I worked for Ronald Reagan at the time, he
was just beaten without mercy for his unwillingness to take costly
action aimed at thwarting acid rain. He insisted on waiting for an
in-depth study to be completed.
While he waited, of course, he was vilified as if he doesn’t care about
the environment, he doesn’t really care about whether or not our
environment is being destroyed by acid rain which is being caused by us.
Well, a 10-year study was going on, Reagan knew about it. He waited, as
he well should have, and there was a study by the Nation Acid
Precipitation Assessment Project and was submitted to Congress in the
1990s. It minimized the human impact on the acidity on the water and
especially the rain in
After all of the intense attacks on Ronald Reagan, once that report was
in, it just sort of went away. Well, one reason it went away, maybe
there was another alarmist scheme to go to.
Yes, there was, one was emerging about this time, and it was on the
cover of Time Magazine 30 years ago.
This was probably the most pitiful of all of these alarmist attempts. It
was, three decades ago, the scientists were warning us about global
cooling. We were told early that we were on the edge of another ice age.
Well, unfortunately, that one went away very quickly because the
temperatures immediately didn’t do what they said it was going to do,
and the temperatures actually did not go down dramatically or freeze. It
did get a little bit warmer during those days. It was one of those
warming cycles, it went up for a few years and it went down.
It was getting warmer, so even as those predictions of frozen gloom and
doom, they just changed the words, those same people were making the
predictions of frozen gloom and doom now were sort of talking about
global warming gloom and doom. You guessed it, so global cooling became
global warming almost overnight. Now, after global warming, climate
change comes almost overnight.
So the scare tactics are nothing new. It is tied to a tried-and-true
method of how to try to manipulate people to accept things they wouldn’t
otherwise accept. Unfortunately, there are long-term negative
consequences that will be very clear to our future generations. Of
course, they are being lied to all the time.
I often asked students from my district, who are here visiting in
This generation has every reason to be optimistic about the future, and
they are being lied to, being told that they are poisoned, and things
are getting worse and worse. In fact, man-made global warming is going
to devastate the whole planet any way. No, these kids now, when I tell
them that, no, when I went to high school, the air pollution in southern
California was much worse than it is today, they are incredulous.
What is all this lying about? Why are all these children being lied to?
Why are we all being lied to?
I remember as a college student, the first Earth Day–I am quoting
someone here–“I remember as a college student at the first Earth Day
being told that it was a certainty that by the year 2000, the world
would be starving and out of energy,” writes Dr. John Christy, a
professor of atmospheric science at University of Alabama.
Dr. Christy goes on to say “Similar pronouncements today about
catastrophes due to human-induced climate change sound all too familiar
and all too exaggerated to me as someone who actually produces and
analyzes climate information.”
So, we are told that polar bears are dying, but they aren’t. As we have
known that we have all of these other predictions, we are told that the
polar ice caps are melting, but now we know that the polar ice caps are
melting yes, only in the Arctic, but in the Antarctic, ice is actually
growing.
Hurricane Katrina, we were told would only be the first of many
horrendous hurricanes to hit the United States in the next few years
but, of course, no hurricane equal or close to has been on the horizon.
In fact, a hurricane that was just as strong as Katrina hit the
I will submit an advertisement, the Hill newspaper from the
Environmental Defense Action Fund, and it says “What’s next? The
Bond-Voinovich Cigarettes Aren’t Addictive Act?” What they are saying,
it’s a cute way of saying, anybody who questions global warning, it is
the equivalent of saying that cigarettes aren’t addictive. Well, that’s
a great way to dismiss someone’s arguments without addressing them. It
says here, “Some senators,” this is in the add, “are asking you to
ignore. . . an international scientific consensus.”
Well, let’s put it this way, we hear that, there is a consensus over and
over again. There is no consensus. The world is not getting warmer, and
I would submit a list of 400 members of the scientific community who do
not agree with a man-made global warming theory and, I might add, I
quoted numerous very prestigious members of the scientific community
already in this speech. So what we have is alarmism at its worst, and
the consequences will be very, very severe if we let these people get
away with this.
Now, what we have done is we have, again, permitted people to make their
case without having to defend their case. This is never more evident
than in the dealings with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
which is the United Nations panel.
I will submit several statements that indicate that the IPCC was wrong
in its approach, in its entire methodology in trying to determine
whether or not global warming, whether there is global warming and
whether or not it is caused by man-made activity.
So with this said, we need to look and say, What is the negative impact
of all of this lack of truthful information? What could possibly happen?
If someone says well, aren’t we all against pollution? So what if
someone is making a claim that global warming exists and it is caused by
humankind and in reality it is just the pollution that we are both
trying to get it at. Well, that just doesn’t work.
The fact is if we accept this theory of man-made global warming, we will
be focusing our activities on trying to eliminate CO2 rather than
eliminate toxic substances from our air. If I am concerned about my
children, my three triplets, Christian, Anika and Tristan, I am
concerned about their health, that is something that I think I share
with every parent. Their health is not in any way threatened by CO2. CO2
is nontoxic. It is threatened by NOX and other toxin materials that come
out of engines in cars and other sources. So if we only focus on CO2, we
will end up focusing on the wrong target.
What we need to do is make sure that we develop clean energy sources,
not because of global warming but because of the health of our children.
And also, we need to be independent of foreign sources. The fact is that
foreign sources of oil, because we are not developing our own oil
resources as a result of the dynamics created by the global warming
juggernaut that we have been experiencing, the fact is that we have not
drilled for our own oil. We have not focused on real alternatives to
energy like nuclear energy. The fact is that we need to make sure right
now that we do our very best not to be captured by this, what I consider
to be one of the greatest hoaxes that I have seen in my lifetime, but
instead focus our efforts on accomplishing something that is real and
positive for the people of the world and the people of the United States
of America. We should be drilling for oil so that the terrorists
overseas are denied the revenue when we are forced to buy oil from
countries that are allied with these terrorists.
We need to make sure that we develop better engines, and make sure that
those engines are not putting pollutants into the air and forget about
the CO2, go to the pollutants.
Mr. Speaker, I thank you and I will submit these articles for the Record.