The Reality of 'Global Warming' [Free Republic]

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Mr. Speaker, I will be discussing global warming tonight, especially considering that President Bush has come under severe attack for his refusal to bow before the pressure of a very well-organized effort that they are trying to pressure him to accept the idea that the world is in peril because it is becoming more and more warm because of industrialization. It is vital that the public understand that what is going on in this attack against President Bush is about a political agenda; that global warming is not a scientific imperative. It is a politically-driven theory.

Those espousing global warming are building on public fear and apprehension. Young people in particular are being lied to about the environment and about global warming. Global warming, of course, is one of the worst falsehoods that they talk about. When I meet with student groups, it is clear they are being told false things about a lot of areas of the environment.

In fact, I meet every student group from my district that comes to Washington, D.C. I always ask them the same question: How many of them believe that the air today in Southern California is cleaner or worse than it was when I went to high school in Southern California 35 years ago? Consistently, 95 percent of these students who live in Southern California who are coming to my office say they believe that the air quality today is so much worse than it was when I went to high school and how lucky I was to live in an era, in the early 1960s, when we had such clean air in Southern California.

This, of course, is 180 degrees wrong. These young people have been systematically lied to about their environment. They are being told they are being poisoned by the air. But, in fact, the air quality in Southern California is better than it has ever been in my lifetime. They cannot believe it when they hear it.

They also cannot believe that the quality of the Potomac River, the water quality around us, is better, even the quality of the soil. Even the number of trees and forests that we have have increased. They have been lied to time and again about the environment, and again the global warming theory is the worst of all.

These lies are being used to justify to Americans of all ages, to justify a centralization of power in Washington, D.C. and a centralization of power in global government through the United Nations and other institutions that are run by unelected and unaccountable authorities.

Let us get into what global warming is all about. Global warming is a theory that carbon fuel, coal, oil, gas, et cetera, that this carbon-based fuel is putting CO2 into the atmosphere, and CO2 is causing the temperature to rise, which will cause a drastic change in the weather, the ice flows, animal life, plant life on our planet.

First and foremost, let us recognize this: All of the recent scientific reports agree that there may, or may not, be a minor change in the planet's average temperature over this last 100 years. There is no conclusive proof that man is the cause of that perhaps minor change.

That is not what we are being told. The American public is being told all of these scientific reports are claiming that global warming is absolutely a fact and there is no arguing with it. One reads those reports and they will find that there are weasel words and there are all sorts of caveats in these reports that suggest the scientific community cannot say this.

Climate science seems to be a very recent entry into the pantheon of scientific study. Prior to 1980, there was only a handful of climatologists. Now they seem to be everywhere. Try to find a researcher on global warming who is not in some way tied to some sort of research contract by the Federal Government. Now, could it be that the reason for the increase in the numbers of global warming advocates has something to do with the access to government funding for research?

Eight years ago, when President Clinton took over the executive branch, he saw to it that there would be no one getting scientific research grants from our government unless they furthered the global warming theory.

We were tipped off to this when the lead scientist, and I would say the Director of Energy Research for the Department of Energy, Mr. Will Happer, was precipitously fired from his position because he did not agree with the global warming theory and did not believe that it had been proven. He wrote a little article about it, and Vice President Gore came down on him like an iron fist and he was out of that job.

Dr. Happer, I might add, is now a professor of physics at Princeton University. But his removal as the director of research at the Department of Energy sent a message, clearly heard throughout the scientific community, you do not agree with global warming; you are not going to get the contract. This has gone on for 8 years.

There does not appear to be much information on global climate change prior to the mid-1980s. What we have been able to find out, prior to that time period, is that generally people in those times, the scientists, were arguing that we were on the edge of a new ice age. It was not global warming. Then it was global cooling.

In fact, in the span of 20 years, climate models have gone from predicting our eminent demise by freezing to death in a new ice age, to being baked in an oven to death in a global furnace. Interestingly enough, some of the leading proponents of global warming used to be the same advocates for global cooling.

Now, historically speaking we know that the globe and its climate have different ebbs and flows, and there have been ice ages in the past and there have been tropical ages in the past, without interference from man. That is even before man came on the scene.

In the last 1,000 years, for example, we have witnessed, even since man has been on the scene, in this last 1,000 years, we have witnessed a huge temperature swing over much of the world. Early in the last millennium, Lief Erickson established a colony on Greenland, and that colony on Greenland was free of snow for over half a year every year. In less than 100 years, 100 years later, that colony had to be abandoned because the climate had grown so much colder and the snow so much thicker that a new ice age appeared and apparently was on the way, a mini-ice age, not making Greenland hospitable to human habitation anymore.

I wonder in the current climate of scientific investigation what would have been predicted had scientists been available then to chart the course of what direction the world was going. We probably would have been told then that the Earth was on its way to an environment in which only the Eskimos would survive, and all of this was due to, who can tell? Certainly humankind had very little influence on the weather and temperatures then. No one could argue that.

Of course, that trend and lower temperatures reversed itself. Yes, it was getting cooler; but it then reversed itself, because at some point the Earth naturally has a way to adapt to cooler or warmer temperatures.

This historical recollection gives us a reason for concern about some of the trend lines. You take a trend line going in one direction and launch it way out into the future to see that that may not be accurate. It may not be accurate because the world can adapt.

If, in fact we have a minuscule trend towards warming, it could be that we are in fact emerging. Right now, instead of having the trend line being ominous, all it could mean is a trend line of minuscule warming, 1 degree in 100 years. It could mean that we are just emerging from a cooling period, from a period that is a little bit cooler.

Now, none of us should forget our lessons that we learned in sixth grade about those huge glaciers. Remember that? The huge glaciers once covered all of North America. In fact, it happened three or four times. The glaciers would come down, go back, and most of North America and Europe were covered. In fact, the Great Lakes were, if I remember what I was taught, were gouged out by these glaciers; and when the glaciers receded, these lakes were filled with water.

Well, when the glaciers moved forward, it represented a major change in the global climate towards global cooling. When the glaciers retreated, and we are now in a time period when the glaciers are retreating, that must mean that the Earth is getting a little bit warmer. Well, to use that as some sort of scientific basis to say that humankind is creating a warming trend on our planet that threatens and puts our planet in peril is nonsense. The one thing that those glaciers going back and forth did not indicate was that human beings had anything to do with the global weather change that was taking place. Nor did human beings have anything to do with the fact that all the dinosaurs were killed off by this global change in weather.

It seems to me that to understand climate change, we need hundreds of thousands of years' worth of observation and far more types of data than are currently available. Instead of serious scientific investigation and debate, most of those currently clamoring about climate change are looking at unbelievably shallow evidence and rushing to the conclusion that human beings are the cause of this change. But human beings were not around when these other traumatic changes happened in weather and temperature, which occurred in our distant past.

Recently, we have been treated to yet another spectacle of media climate-change hype. As I say, our President is under attack. Our new President, George W. Bush, made it clear that the United States will not be bound by the so-called Kyoto Protocol.

The liberal media and academic establishment went berserk. Just think of it, the President of the United States is calling into question the validity of man's impact on the global climate. Again, elitists have arrogantly labeled an American President as some kind of a moron. Well, they did the same thing to Ronald Reagan when he tried to end the Cold War, and they were dramatically wrong then too.

George W. Bush is intelligent, and he has common sense. A few days ago the American people were presented something to make them believe that George W. Bush was not so intelligent. They were presented with a National Academy of Science report on climate change.

Now, if you read your newspaper about a week ago or saw the network news coverage, you would think that the President had been dressed down by the scientific community and that, once again, the experts had solidly, solidly, rallied behind the contention that global warming is here and it is a result of human action and that that determination is irrefutable. Well, that is what you would believe by the news reports.

Dan Rather, let us take a look at Dan Rather's report in particular. Dan Rather on CBS news was perhaps the worst in terms of his bias and inaccuracy of the presentation of that report. His lead to the story stated uncategorically that the report had proved global warming was here and that humans were the cause. How many listeners noted that after 3 minutes of Dan Rather's report, that at the end of that report, Dan Rather's own correspondent stated that the National Academy had not stated that humans were the cause of the temperature increase, and that temperature increase was 1 degree over 100 years?

Now, how many people noticed that? You had Dan Rather leading into his report that the report stated unequivocally that there had been the global warming and that humans were the cause. Yet at the end of the report, his own reporter put a little tag on that that they could not absolutely say that it was caused by human actions and human activity.

The National Academy of Science report is filled with weasel words and caveats. That was true of many of the other scientific investigations. Almost every one of the scientific investigations, the findings about global warming were not conclusive enough to make any solid statement other than words to the effect that further research is necessary.

Just like Dan Rather, it totally misportrayed what that report was all about. Over and over and over again, the American people have heard about reports that global warming is absolutely here, and it has been misportrayed to them. That is not what those reports have said. Sometimes reports have said that, and you go back to who did the reports, just a very small group of radicals who are not respected by the scientific community in those reports. Yet we hear about the reports all the time, and we see these same misquoted reports as being used to justify dramatic headlines and very frightening reports over the broadcast news media.

For the record, I will submitting two documents highlighting some of the caveats and some of the weasel words, you might say, in the NRC report that indicates that the NRC is not making that conclusive and unequivocal decision that global warming is here and that humans caused that, which is what we heard on CBS news and read in the newspapers throughout this country and were used to beat our President up. Falsehoods. That is what was used to beat our President up. I will submit this for the record.

By the way, the report states that the temperature on Earth, again, let me state this, may or may not be, may or may not be, 1 degree warmer than it was 100 years ago. One degree change over 100 years. Think about that. A 1-degree change? These experts cannot predict the weather one day in advance. How can they predict and calculate and analyze the weather back 100 years ago, when they did not have any of the scientific equipment that was available to them, that is available to them today? How can anyone give credibility and be given credibility claiming a minuscule temperature change that supposedly has taken place across the face of this enormous planet?

Remember, 100 years ago they did not have any satellites; they did not even have telephone communications in most of the world. But across the face of this planet, that it was cooler then by a whole 1 degree? Can anyone listen to that with a straight face? Give me a break. Give the American people a break.

Well, one remembers just a few years ago President Clinton was so committed to proving this theory that he invited hundreds of climatologists who agreed with global warming to the White House. These were people who he thought were sympathetic to the global warming theories. During that time in the White House, I understand a major storm broke out in Washington and was just drenching the entire area; and well, what happened is that of all those hundreds of climatologists that came to the White House to reconfirm global warming, only three of them thought ahead enough to bring umbrellas.

So, what does that tell you? These are the people who are going to decide who can guide us down the path of accepting global warming, which then would lead us to dramatic changes in our lives because we would be giving power and centralization of authority away from what we have it today.

What is essential to the global warming theory, of course, is not just that the temperature is on the rise, but that human beings, especially western civilization, and particularly those of us who live in America, we are at fault; the Americans, the people who live in western civilization and human beings in general, we are the ones at fault for global warming.

Okay, so let us concede before we get into that that the Earth may or may not be 1 degree hotter than it was 100 years ago. That, however, is not necessarily a catastrophe. If the Earth is 1 degree warmer now than it was 100 years ago, that may be a good thing. It may be baloney; it may be a good thing. I do not know. It may be a good thing, especially if that 1 degree warmer is a nighttime temperature in the northern hemisphere in the fall or winter. That would be a very wonderful thing, to have it a little bit warmer during that time.

In fact, some of the people claiming to believe in the global warming theory are in fact saying that is how our temperature increases, it is 1 degree in the northern hemisphere, and I do not think that that is such a big calamity.

Furthermore, let us say that the worst calamity comes true, which is we are being told perhaps over the next 100 years we could face a 5-degree rise in temperature. That is their wildest scenario. Well, that may or may not be a bad thing.

I certainly do not believe that this is happening, but let us just suggest it is not bad enough for us to give away our freedom and lower the standard of living of our people and do many of the other dramatic things that global warming theorists are trying to push off on us.

People in the northern hemisphere, like us Americans, well, you know, we might not be so bad off. Maybe there will be a longer growing period in Canada and places like that. However, do not get your shorts on yet or sell your winter boots. There probably is no global warming.

Having said what I just said, the Earth tends to adjust itself naturally, and even if there is global warming, the Earth may just well adjust for it. It may be some water vapor that is warmed off the ocean, and that tends to cool off the Earth. The scaremongers do not want to tell us that the Earth has an ability to adjust if things get a little warmer; that it is affected by different things and then it gets a little cooler.

What instead the scaremongers want to do is make sure that we believe their global baloney. That is what I consider it, global baloney.

There are a number of reasonable scientific explanations for a situation that would have us a few degrees hotter or a few degrees cooler. It is not that humankind is living too well.

The Earth's orbit is elliptical, and there are times when we are closer and sometimes when we are further from the sun. That small difference of several thousand miles equates to a tremendous difference in the amount of energy that reaches the Earth. So where is the data in terms of the analysis of this in relationship to global warming? Where is that analysis?

The ancient Mayans and Aztecs observed a 208-year solar cycle where solar activities increase for 104 years, followed by 104 years of declining activity. We have all seen these solar storms. Modern science has confirmed their observations. We are now at a halfway point between the cycles of solar activity. Can we expect, and we maybe can expect, 50 more years of solar activity being on the increase, which would mean a moderate warming trend. That is before the temperatures begin to fall. A one-degree increase in the global temperature, even if that is there, might be explained by these solar storms.

We know the ancient Mayans and Aztec observations about this solar phenomenon have been confirmed. But have the global warming alarmists brought this into their calculations?

How about water? Water comprises three-quarters of the world. Given the sheer volume of water on this planet, it surely has a tremendous impact on the temperature of the air. However, there are no accurate global ocean temperature readings that go back more than 10 years, and those that do are primarily based on satellite observations of surface temperatures. Those readings do not include deep water. In fact, we have absolutely zero understanding of deep water temperatures, and almost no understanding of deep water ocean currents. How can we possibly ignore that data when trying to calculate something as overwhelming as global warming?

Global warming studies did not take into consideration the ocean temperature, and sometimes when they did it did not give them the right facts, so they just went on to something else.

It also did not take into consideration the clouds. Much less the oceans, it does not take into consideration the clouds, which are even more important to determining the Earth's temperature. Clouds, of course, have everything to do with cooling things off.

Dr. Richard Lindzen of MIT has proven that as temperatures rise, more clouds are formed. This is part of the natural way the Earth reacts. If there is a little more warming, there would be more clouds, and it would cool the Earth off. More clouds in turn reflect more heat back into space, and thus it cools the Earth.

It is cooler when there are clouds out. If Members do not believe it, I ask them to stand outside on a hot summer day and see what happens when a cloud passes overhead.

Let me tell Members an interesting thing that happened to me. I have been in Congress now 13 years, but a few years ago, a Federal administrator of an agency came into my office. He made me promise not to disclose what my source was. He then went on to tell me that all the global warming studies were flawed because they never took into account how cloud cover affected the temperature readings that they were recording.

How do we determine whether or not it was a cloudy day when the temperature readings were taken in various parts of the world 100 years ago? Give us a break. They cannot even tell us how those temperatures were taken, who was taking the temperatures. Were they people who were trained? Were the instruments calibrated? Much less they cannot tell us was it a cloudy day that time they took the temperature.

Global temperature records either do not exist or are absolutely flawed, and they are flawed to such a degree for 100 years ago that they might as well be useless in trying to calculate something like global warming. Actually, most of the records do not go back any further than 50 years in our urban areas, which of course the urban areas tend to be much warmer than rural areas because they have all that concrete and cement.

There are few records that extend beyond 100 years, and there is no way of determining those records. Even the 50-year records are in question, because most of them are in the cities and not spread throughout the planet. And these people who are telling us about global warming, we are going to say they have a scientific basis for what they are talking about?

Although we talk about global temperatures rising, that in itself may mean little because the temperature is not the only measure of heat. Humidity is an important measure in terms that are just as important as heat. Southern California is a lot easier to live in at 100 degrees than if we are down in New Orleans in that humid weather.

So even when our local weatherman gives the heat index based on temperature, he also gives us one that is based on temperature and humidity. These things are not being calculated by people talking about global warming.

Finally, let us talk about climate models touted by global warming advocates. They do not take into account the Earth's orbital change, as we have said. They do not take into account solar activity cycles. They do not take into account the temperature of the oceans. They do not take into account the cloud covers. They do not take into account the accuracy of long-term temperature readings, as I just said, for 100 years and 50 years back. They do not take into account humidity.

What they do take into account is a theoretical calculation of manmade CO2 content, and lots of hypothetical data about other manmade pollutants. But most of the sources of CO2, and that is what they are claiming is causing this global warming, that humans are putting CO2 into the atmosphere, well, most of the sources for CO2 and the other so-called greenhouse gases are naturally-occurring and not manmade.

Let us make sure everybody understands that. Global warming is a problem, but mankind is actually one of the smaller contributors of CO2. It is overwhelmingly true that the CO2 being put into our atmosphere comes from natural sources. The contributions made by human beings to these gases that are turned loose in our atmosphere are less than 10 percent of the total.

Volcanic activity, for example, can add more to the atmosphere in a few weeks than all the internal combustion engines on this planet over the last decade. Termites and other insects, for example, are such a large source of CO2, and it is a larger source of CO2 than all of the industrial plants in the civilized world. Rotting wood is another offender that dwarfs any human contribution to this so-called threat.

I do not hear many calls coming from the people talking about global warming to bulldoze the rain forests. If they really believe in global warming, the rain forests, the rotting wood and the insects in those rain forests are the worst contributors. They are the most evil forces in this planet in putting global warming out, so we would want to bulldoze the rain forests. We would also want to clearcut old growth trees and plant new young trees, because the new young trees take the CO2 out of the atmosphere and replace it with oxygen.

Mr. Speaker, we do not hear many people who are global warming activists calling for the bulldozing of our rain forests. We do not hear many of them calling for the cutting down, the clearcutting, of old growth trees, or advocating nuclear energy, which is a tremendous source of energy which puts no CO2 into the atmosphere.

What is most frightening about the public acceptance of the global warming theory is that the solutions are not to clearcut old growth, they are not to tear down these rain forests. Instead, the solutions we are being offered to global warming are policies that would dramatically reduce the standard of living of hundreds of millions of people, especially the people of the United States.

President Bush was 100 percent right in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and demanding further scientific research for any drastic government policies to be put into place.

The most frightening element of the global warming debate is that intelligent people, backed up by so-called experts, are advocating that we Americans give up our way of life, our standard of living, and yes, our freedom. Global warming advocates would have us give authority to unelected international officials. No one who has ever been elected will ever be the one who will be calling the shots if we give up all of our authority and the power to run our lives and our economies to people in the United Nations or other worldwide authorities that are run by unelected environmental bureaucrats.

These bureaucrats, government officials, will have power over our lives if these global warming fanatics get their way. That is the purpose of the global warming steamroller that is coming down the political road. They are trying to force us to give up our freedoms in the name of some threat that does not exist.

Americans, of course, are the bad guys. We are being portrayed as the bad guys to the whole world. Thank goodness we have a President that is standing up for us, because here in the United States even poor people have a decent standard of living. If the Kyoto Protocol was implemented and is implemented, within a generation we would be living as Chinese peasants, knee deep in sewage and fighting for grains of rice in order to fend off imminent starvation.

What is not mentioned by these global warming advocates is mentioned here, that Americans have maintained a higher standard of living in the world for the last century than any other country in the world. That is what they are trying to bring down. That is the enemy, our high standard of living.

They have based their analysis on global warming based on units of wealth, and when they do, if they base it on units of wealth, the United States is one of the smallest polluters, because in terms of the amount of wealth we are producing for our people to enjoy a good life, we actually produce so much wealth and little pollution per amount of wealth. But the Kyoto Protocol is based on CO2 emissions per capita, not on given units of wealth.

This approach by its very nature is aimed at dooming America's high standard of living by mandating that we give up this high standard of living in order to eliminate the CO2s that are going into the air, when in fact we live in a country that has done more to improve the environment and to bring in cleaner sources of energy than any country of the world, especially third-world countries like China.

By the way, the Kyoto Protocol exempts China and other so-called developing countries from the severe regulatory restraints that will be necessary to sustain and to fulfill the Kyoto Protocol. What we will have is manufacturing companies closing up in droves in the United States to move to the Third World. What it means is our children and our grandchildren will suffer tremendously. They will have a lower standard of living. We will have a world market dominated, of course, by WTO, World Trade Organization regulators who come from third-world countries who do not have free elections, who probably are going to be bribed by countries like China.

So we are going to give up our sovereignty, we are going to give up our authority, to run our lives as is envisioned by the Kyoto Protocol and the WTO and the rest of these folks? We are going to do that?

What will that mean? That will mean the American middle class will be crushed. The working poor in America will see their standard of living go down dramatically. As Ross Perot said, that giant sucking sound is our money, our jobs, and our future going right down the drain.

But that is what global warming is all about. They have not proven it. It has not been proven to us that global warming even exists, much less that mankind has caused it. But they have got to keep us believing that that is what these scientific reports claim so we will go along with this plan to give up our rights and our freedom and to lower the standard of living of the American people.

The Kyoto treaty never went to the Senate because President Clinton knew he could not even get one vote for this monstrously misguided proposal, but thank goodness, President Bush is standing up for us and against that steamroller.

Al Gore, of course, was one of the world's strongest advocates for the Kyoto Protocol and of global warming restrictions being placed on the American people.

Now, this is not the first time the American people, that people have tried to frighten us into accepting some kind of cockamamie idea. I remember when I was a kid, I went to Thanksgiving one day, and what do you know, my mom did not have any cranberries on the table.

She did not have any cranberries on the table. I said, mom, you know, this is Thanksgiving, where is the cranberries? Cranberries cause cancer. And so for 2 years at Thanksgiving, my family, and I might add hundreds of millions of other families, did not have cranberries for Thanksgiving.

Then you know what? We found out that it was all just like global warming, it was all baloney. Those cranberries did not cause cancer at all. But what do those scaremongers manage to do? It lowered this festival. It lowered the festivities and the joyous occasion of having Thanksgiving by taking away cranberries. And, yeah, guess what? It put hundreds of cranberry farmers out of business, drove them out of business. People lost their family farms and their lives were destroyed for many, many years ahead. Oh, sorry, we were wrong.

I also remember Dr. Meryl Streep, remember when she came here to Congress to testify that alar in apples was the threat to people's health. And for one year, the apple industry in our country and other countries was destroyed.

Hundreds of families who owned those apple orchards were put out of work. Their families gone forever. Their family fortune gone forever. They could not make their payments because for a full year the American people were frightened about that and, of course, what did we find out, no, alar does not cause cancer, sorry.

I even remember as a young man when I was told that cyclamates cause cancer. The American soda pop industry had invested hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a new sweetener cyclamates in order to make sure that, number one, we would be able to use it and it would be used in drinks, and we did not have to depend on sugar, it was healthier for you, et cetera, et cetera. But all of a sudden some people began claiming that it was causing cancer. Cyclamates cause cancer.

Well, guess what? Canada never took cyclamates out of their soda pop, and then after about 10 years or 12 years of having the cyclamates forced out at a cost of again hundreds of millions of dollars that just evaporated from our economy, what happened is the Food and Drug Administration quietly moved forward and said, oh, by the way we were mistaken, cyclamates do not cause cancer after all.

This is the type of nonsense our young people are being fed in their schools every day. They are being told that their environment is getting worse and worse and worse, and they might as well give up because they can give up their freedoms, trust in the government, trust in international organizations, trust in people who have all this hoopla on about global warming, and about how the environment is getting worse. They are being lied to in the very same way.

Our young people today, and let me tell my colleagues one other incident that happened to me as a young person. Most people know that I am one of the few surfers in Congress. And, in fact, I am a scuba diver. I am a surfer, and I am an ocean person.

I was scuba diving just a few months ago, and I will tell you that 3 days ago I was in the ocean surfing off of my district off of Huntington Beach. It was in the Bolsa Chica area and I was surfing there for 2 hours. It was a great day of surfing.

When I was a young reporter and that is how I got into this world of politics, I was assigned to cover Jacques Cousteau, who happened to be one of my heroes. I mean I was a scuba diver and I loved the ocean and I went to UCLA, and there he was speaking at UCLA.

Jacques Cousteau was speaking to these college students, and he was very pessimistic and I said, gee, I just do not feel right about being so pessimistic about things in the ocean.

So when I came up to him afterwards to do a short radio interview, some other students stood around and listened and I said, Mr. Cousteau, is not there some possibility that perhaps the oceans will be used as a source of food for us in the future beyond just catching fish, like aquaculture and growing oysters and clams and things and lobsters, and is that not a possibility? And he just came right up to my face and he said, Did you not hear me? Within 10 years, the oceans will be black goo, totally dead, destroyed. The oceans will be lifeless. Did not you hear me?

Of course, I never will forget that, because this guy got right in my face and he was screaming in my face and he put on a pretty good show for those kids. And it

has been about 30 years since that happened, maybe 25, maybe 25 years since that happened. And guess what? Jacques Cousteau is dead, but the oceans are alive.

I was out surfing a few days ago and I could not help but notice the porpoises swimming by, and when they swim up to you, you can rub the bottom of your surf board and they will come up to you. And it is a wonderful, wonderful experience. The birds were flying and diving into the ocean nearby catching little fish.

I was in the water for 2 hours, and I was not covered with black goo. Now, that person, Jacques Cousteau, was a fine man. He obviously is a hero to many people like he was to me.

Why did he feel he had to lie to such a degree? Was it that he did not know that he was lying, that he did not know that the oceans were not going to be black goo within 20 years or 10 years is what he said. No. Jacques Cousteau was part of a movement, part of a movement that feels they have a right to lie and they have a right to frighten people, because they have a higher calling; their higher calling is to save the environment.

They do not have a right to lie, and they should be honest about it. And there are environmental challenges and the environmental challenges we face can be corrected and could be met with better technology, better machines, better equipment, better energy sources, but, instead, what we have had is people lying to us in order for us to give away our freedom, to agree to things like the Kyoto Protocol, which would have extracted from people of the United States their right to make their own economic decisions.

It would have left us vulnerable to a major assault on the economic well-being of our middle class and our poorer people. Yeah, $5 a gallon of gasoline would not much hurt millionaires or people with limousines. It would hurt some of the people who do not have limousines, but it would be a catastrophe to the lower, middle-class and to the working people of our country.

The Kyoto Protocol, the environmental restrictions that we have heard from many, many corners quite often are not based on truth, and tonight that is what this speech is all about. This speech is nothing more than saying that we, as a Congress, and as a people and the American people should demand, whether we are talking about the environment, whether we are talking about other potential threats to our national security or our economics, that all we demand is let us talk about it frankly and honestly, and that the environmental movement has not done that.

I am out surfing, like I say, a few days ago. There are offshore wells off of my district, and for 25 years, we have had offshore oil drilling in my district. Not once has there been a major spill from those wells. But there has been a tanker, an oil tanker, that split apart and we had a major oil spill in our area. But yet for years, I have been fighting with environmentalists trying to get them to admit that if we do not have offshore oil wells, which are relatively safe, that means we are going to have to get our oil from tankers which are a hundred times more likely to have a spill.

Yet, these environmental activists continue to try to negate every attempt to exploit our offshore natural resources.

In California today, we have an electric shortage, a horrible electric shortage. It is going to cause a major decline in the standard of living of many of our citizens. It is going to put a lot of our citizens in jeopardy. Our economy in jeopardy. It has already eaten billions of dollars that should have been going into education, our health care, or other places. Instead, what we have is a shortage of energy in our State, even though we have lots of energy, we have not been permitted to utilize it.

Offshore in Santa Barbara there is enough natural gas to provide the energy we need to produce all the electricity we would need to make up for our shortage of electric in California. We could make up for that shortage for 2 decades, but, yet, those people in Santa Barbara who own the offshore oil wells that are already there have not been permitted even to slant drill from existing platforms to tap in to the natural gas that is a huge natural gas deposit right off of Santa Barbara.

This is the kind of nonsense. This is the type of antitruth that brings down economies, but it exemplifies many of the arguments that have been presented to us about global warming and other so-called environmental challenges.

Again, I do not want to end this tonight suggesting that there are no environmental challenges, because there are, and there are ways that we can do it and we can solve these problems and we can make America cleaner.

Today's young people have cleaner water, because today when you look down at the Potomac River, when I was a kid, you could not put your finger in that water. It is clean today, people are fishing out there.

We have soil. We have ways to clean the soil in my own district. I helped a company develop a system and got them permission and I think it ended up about a $300,000 contract to take soil that had been made toxic because it used to be an old oil sludge pit, 10 acres of this land that was unusable to the citizens of our community, and I got this business going.

We went down there, and this new technology, within a 60-day time period, was able to make that soil totally clean and those 10 acres of California real estate perfectly clean and available if they wanted to for houses, instead they are going to use it as a park.

They did not have that technology available 10 years and 20 years ago. This is the best time for young people to be alive. They have more chance of cleaning up the environment as long as we let people do it at a profit. That man who built that machine did not want to do it just because he had a social conscience.

He did it because he wanted his company to make a profit, and the people that will finance it will be financing him, cleaning the soil because they want that land to be used by families for homes, for their children and they will make a profit in building those homes for those families.

This is a wonderful time to be alive. This is not a time for the American people to be frightened by scaremongers and people who are not telling the truth about global warming and other environmental challenges into giving up our freedom and to doing things that will result in a lower standard of living for our people.

Again, every time we do, every time we give into this type of nonsense, it is the people at the bottom rung who are hurt the most. It is the people at the bottom rung. So as we are finding out in California, we need to base our decisions on honesty.

If offshore oil drilling and gas drilling is going to help our State have the energy it needs, we need to move forward with that.

Let me say, I have a new bill that I am proposing and I will be dropping within 2 weeks, a new piece of legislation that will see to it that all new oil and gas reserves, offshore oil and gas reserves that are brought online by offshore oil and gas development, that one half of all the tax revenue from all of this new oil and gas reserves and deposits that are being brought online, half of the tax revenue will be put into a trust fund that will be used just for coastal purposes, for water quality and other coastal projects.

Ten percent of that new revenue will go directly to the counties inland from that development. That way we can develop energy and that way we can have cleaner water.

All up and down California and all throughout our country, people do not know how they are going to take care of urban runoff. Perhaps my legislation will help provide the resources for that.

But let us be realistic. Let us not fight offshore oil drilling because they say, out of some hysterical nonsense, that it is a threat to the ocean, because it is not. I have gone SCUBA diving off the offshore oil wells in my district, and that is where all the fish congregate. Believe me, if there was some problem, those fish would go elsewhere. Their natural instincts would tell them to go.

So we have a chance. But what has been happening is we have been prevented from that because, in the back of the mind of these environmental activists, they want the earth to be free from dependence on carbon-based energy, on CO2. That is all based on what? That there is a global warming taking place that is in some way going to jeopardize and put in peril the earth.

It is time to quit talking nonsense. Let us talk the truth. I am open-minded. The people here are open-minded. Let us try to find a way to meet the environmental challenges with better technology and in a way that will preserve the freedom of the people of the United States, which is the most important component to developing a better world.

REMINDER TO ALL: The libs at the Foreign Policy Association are asking if we should support the KYoto Protocol. NO! Right now, though, 51% say yes in their online poll. VOTE NO NOW! http://www.fpa.org --KEEP ON FREEPIN'!

There's a simple way to get facts about global warming. Just get one particular WMO station, and get the monthly averages for say 1931-1960, 1961-1975, 1976-1990, 1991-2000.
Simple isn't it ? Just start looking in Yahoo & Co.. By the time you will start suspecting why you can't find anything, it's probably a good idea to understand the mainpulation techniques used in the "politics of global warming"

Thanks for posting this speech, it is so full of commonsense. I am so tired of the scaremongers in this nation.

BTW, he was a friend of mine at Cherry Point, NC where our Dads were Marines in the early '60's.

One thing I wish he had brought up is that CO2 is plant food. An increase in CO2 is a boon to the environment and would increase plant growth, wildlife, and food crops. Greenhouse growers often install CO2 generators to increase the rate of plant growth.

I'm afraid conservatives have lost the debate on the environment. We have to somehow wrench the extremists away from this issue and discredit them.

One really does not get a clue as to the play of the debate in the scientific community from reading this strawman creating and slaying piece, and what we know, and don't know, and what the degree and quality of the evidence is, and the basis for disagreements. We also get no sense of percentage odds, and the basis for such odds, where undertainty does obtain.

Rohrbacher doesn't get into the issue of one much the earth has warmed in the past 30 years, or has not warmed, and what future extrapolations are based on. He does not discuss what the evidence is, and what it suggests, about what the impact of global warming might be. Instead, the congressman says hey, man contributes only 10% of CO2, so what is the big deal? He makes it sound like pro global warming scientists are all just tendentious nutjobs. If only it were that easy.

This just begs for a response, but if Rohrabacher has not convinced you then what chance do I have, global warming is a myth, like thousands of other myths, hatched out in the minds of the great mythmakers of society.

To put it in perspective, one has to keep in mind just Who it is in charge of climate, The One who designed our home, earth. Were global warming to be something other than a myth, then He would be guilty of bad design, and since He is the Father of all design, I hardly think the accusation is going to stick.

What pray tell is puny man going to do about it if global warming were to come to pass? And here is another one to ponder while you are pondering. The end of this earth will be a pretty hot time according to scripture. We ought to be going back in time to Constitutional living, but going back to the stone age for fear of global warming, utter stupidity.

Since there appears to be widespread ignorance amongst liberals that, in fact, their 'scientific consensus' on Global Warming is in fact, a figment of broadcast media propaganda. Here are some facts from NASA which refutes the whole ball of wax:

Accurate "Thermometers" in Space

The State of Climate Measurement Science

Just how accurate are space-based measurements of the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere? In a recent edition of Nature, scientists Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and Dr. Roy Spencer of NASA/Marshall describe in detail just how reliable these measurements are.

The question is very important, as these temperature measurements from satellites in space are one of our most important windows into measuring and understanding the phenomenon of Global Warming.

Over the past century, global measurements of the temperature at the Earth's surface have indicated a warming trend of between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees C. But many - especially the early - computer-based global climate models (GCM's) predict that the rate should be even higher if it is due to the man-made "Greenhouse Effect". Furthermore, these computer models also predict that the Earth's lower atmosphere should behave in lock-step with the surface, but with temperature increases that are even more pronounced. (Get the latest on the Earth's Temperature from Space by clicking on the diagram!!)

Unlike the surface-based temperatures, global temperature measurements of the Earth's lower atmosphere obtained from satellites reveal no definitive warming trend over the past two decades. The slight trend that is in the data actually appears to be downward. The largest fluctuations in the satellite temperature data are not from any man-made activity, but from natural phenomena such as large volcanic eruptions from Mt. Pinatubo, and from El Niño. So the programs which model global warming in a computer say the temperature of the Earth's lower atmosphere should be going up markedly, but actual measurements of the temperature of the lower atmosphere reveal no such pronounced activity.

In theory, one could argue that the computer models are accurate, and that the real measurements have some problem. However this is not the case. An incredible amount of work has been done to make sure that the satellite data are the best quality possible. Recent claims to the contrary by Hurrell and Trenberth have been shown to be false for a number of reasons, and are laid to rest in the September 25th edition of Nature (page 342). The temperature measurements from space are verified by two direct and independent methods. The first involves actual in-situ measurements of the lower atmosphere made by balloon-borne observations around the world. The second uses intercalibration and comparison among identical experiments on different orbiting platforms. The result is that the satellite temperature measurements are accurate to within three one-hundredths of a degree Centigrade (0.03 C) when compared to ground-launched balloons taking measurements of the same region of the atmosphere at the same time.

The atmosphere is extremely complex in its behavior. Because of this, finding the correct explanation for the behavior we observe is complex as well. Virtually all scientists will agree that a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere should have some effect on the temperature of the Earth. But it is much less certain how or if we will recognize the effects of this increase. There are several reasons:

A computer model is only as reliable as the physics that are built into the program. The physics that are currently in these computer programs are still insufficient to have much confidence in the predicted magnitude of global warming, because we currently don't understand the detailed physical processes of clouds that will determine the extent and nature of water vapor's feedback into the Earth's temperature.

And the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agrees:

``Feedback from the redistribution of water vapour remains a substantial uncertainty in climate models...Much of the current debate has been addressing feedback from the tropical upper troposphere, where the feedback appears likely to be positive. However, this is not yet convincingly established; much further evaluation of climate models with regard to observed processes is needed."

- Climate Change 1995, IPCC Second Assessment

Images of the Earth, such as this one in the infrared, tell us much about the distribution of water vapor. Areas within the Earth's atmosphere that are extremely dry, especially in the tropics, can act as large "chimneys" that allow energy to freely radiate into space, enhancing the cooling of the Earth. The effects of the tropical dry troposphere are poorly understood, and currently are not well-incorporated into computer models of global warming.

More Complex Than We Had Thought

Improving our understanding of the potential magnitude and extent of any man-made global warming will require a significant amount of critical scientific investigation, both in space and on Earth, using both observational and computational analysis techniques. It is clear that if we've learned anything in the past two decades, it's that the response and dynamics of the Earth as a complex, interconnected machine are far more detailed, intricate, and complicated than we first envisioned. Through NASA's Earth Observing System, researchers will continue to improve our ability to monitor the Earth system so that we may understand the subtleties of variations in the global atmosphere. NASA's continued direct observations of the Earth will help enable us to sort out the complicated issues of climate variability and change that affect the planet.

Try taking a look at the Liberals OWN source, who they desperately pretend DOES NOT EXIST:

Dr. Bert Bolin, Chairman on UN's Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change: No Global Warming"

SEPP: IPCC Chairman Says Current Weather Extremes Not Linked to any Global Warming; Claims by Gore, Environmental Activists Cause for Mistrust, Says Bolin

FAIRFAX, Va., June 23, 2000 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Bert Bolin, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has publicly refuted claims by the Clinton Administration and many environmental activist groups that any floods, droughts, hurricanes, or other extreme weather patterns are the result of rising global temperatures. ``There has been no effect on countries from any current change,'' said Bolin, adding that efforts by activists to establish such a link ``is why I do not trust the Greens.''

Bolin, chairman of the IPCC for eight years and a respected Swedish meteorologist, raised this point on June 2 in Stockholm, Sweden, during the first of two debates on the global warming issue with University of Virginia atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer, former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service. Speaking before an audience of scientists, journalists, and industry representatives, Bolin remained adamant that there has been some human influence on climate, but conceded that ``man-made increases in temperature arc so small as to be barely detectable.''

Bolin took issue with the statement by Tim Wirth, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, that global warming science was ``settled.'' ``Tim Wirth may have said that,'' said Bolin, ``but I've talked with him and I know he really doesn't mean it.'' (Bolin is apparently also at odds with a group of scientist/activist, who stated in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, June 19, that ``scientific questions surrounding global warming have largely been resolved and that the government must take quick action, including reducing fossil fuel emissions.'')

For his part, Fred Singer made it clear that the science certainly was not settled, and expressed surprise that those at the highest levels of the IPCC seemed unaware or unable to respond to many of the latest findings. During an hour-long presentation, illustrated with numerous graphs showing recent observations, Singer demonstrated the following points:

Bolin, who appeared flustered, focused almost entirely on the three-dimensional computer modeling, saying only that the climate and CO2 records over thousands of years were ``irrelevant'' and that ``the only thing that's important is the next 100 years.'' He did promise, however, that the IPCC would examine the impact of commercial airline traffic in its next climate change report, and he acknowledged that a greater reliance on nuclear power was an option -- though with political considerations -- if nations desired to reduce C02 emissions. ``We do not deny the obvious facts about energy,'' he said.

In the question-and-answer period that followed, the discussion appeared to go decidedly against Dr. Bolin's IPCC position. Said one scientist, Dr. Wibjorn Karlen: ``What has happened in the last 100 years is in no way different from what has happened before. I cannot be convinced that man is so important as to effect the climate.'' In wrapping up the session, moderator Dr. Marian Radetzki noted: ``There seems to be agreement among our academic colleagues that there is so much disagreement that much more research is needed.''

Singer's Stockholm debates with Bert Bolin came just four days after a similar public confrontation with IPCC-affiliated scientist Dr. Eero Holopainen in Helsinki, Finland. Dr. Holopainen, who has a local reputation for terrorizing industrialists on the global warming issue, was expected to provide some fireworks. The face-off, before an audience of scientists and government officials, was something much less.

Dr. Holopainen, who'd had two weeks to prepare a rebuttal, stepped up to the lectern, put two transparencies on the projector and then took them off with no clear explanation, and then went through a lengthy recitation of his professional credentials, especially his IPCC credentials. Little ``rebuttal'' was given beyond that. At one point during the question-and-answer period, Holopainen held the latest IPCC Climate Change Report aloft and said simply, ``How can you question this bible?''

At every stop during Dr. Fred Singer's five-city speaking tour, he stressed that although the IPCC Climate Change Report is generally a good compilation of what was known about climate up to that point, the so-called Policymakers Summary invariably tends to overstate and to leave out the caveats.

In Helsinki, Singer received surprising support on this from Robert Reinstein, former chief State Department negotiator on the climate treaty during the Bush administration. Attending the presentation with the current chief negotiator for Finland, Reinstein stood and confirmed to the audience that the wording of the summary did not simply reflect the views of the scientists involved but was negotiated at length by international delegations. "Because of this,'' he said, ``the summary must be considered purely a political document, not a scientific one.''

As Singer noted later, however, it is the Policymakers Summary not the scientific research, that underpins ongoing efforts to impose energy taxes and mandatory limits on fossil fuel emissions.

Dr. Singer's debates in Stockholm and Helskinki came at the end of a highly successful speaking tour that also took him to London, Munich, and Copenhagen. President of The Science & Environmental Policy Project, a research group he founded in 1992 to foster environmental policies based on sound science, Singer is now accepting invitations for another round of environmental seminars and debates when he returns to Europe in the fall. He has already received an invitation to speak to the German Society of Environmental Geologists and a tentative invitation to address the Danish Society of Environmental and Energy Journalists.

Contact: Candace Crandall of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, at 703-503-5064, or
e-mail: crandall sepp.org

I would not concede defeat simply because of the monolithic drumbeat from the U.S. broadcast media...since the TRUE SCIENTISTS DO FEEL DIFFERENTLY, AND POINT OUT THE Ulterior-motive BIAS OF THE 'Pro Global Warming' Theorists Another interesting report from John McCarthy, Atmospheric Phsyics, at Stanford, attached below.

Avoiding Global Warming

On this point it is necessary to be blunt. The strongest advocates of reducing CO₂ think we use too much energy quite apart from questions of supply and possible side-effects. Therefore, they look for reasons to solve the global warming problem by reducing civilization. Not all think that way, but such ideas are providing a lot of the force behind the campaign, e.g. as proposed in Vice-President Gore's book, Earth in Balance.

Train was EPA Administrator at the time, and after that became head of the World Wildlife Fund.

Nevertheless, it still may turn out that CO₂ emissions are giving rise to substantial global warming and that is harmful. In that case, what can be done?

What will surely work is to cut down forests, not burn the wood and replant the forests with fast growing trees.

Sounds like tree farming to me. The wood is used for building materials, and of course paper. So there's your solution to global warming. Print everything, large fonts, single sided. Kill a tree for the environment. Ironic isn't it. :)

Thanks guys for providing some beef. To the extent I am the causa belli, I congratulate myself. Jwal's "torie cattle pie" link has one guy constantly repeating that the models show "only" a 1.4 celsius increase, at the low end of the range. I don't know if one should worry about that or not. Actually, I would enjoy temps rising a bit in my neighborhood, because it gets a bit chilly at BBQ time. But I don't want to be too self centered about all of this.

Now all we need is some material from the other side, since obviously neither jwal or I (I don't know about Mr. Ross, he might be a heavy duty climatologist for all I know, rather than a dirt bag lawyer or businessman that apparently makes something that he sells) really understand the science, and we in our state of inadequacy can only try to read tea leaves, and use are highly honed BS meters. But that might not be enough.

Yup, Dana does a nice job of skewering the left-wing-driven pseudo-science of Global Warming. An interesting point he makes is that not only is the data explicitly used for supporting the global warming thesis really bad data, those in the agencies that monitor this data feel they have to STAY ANONYMOUS due to the PC-Gestapo...i.e.,:

...a Federal administrator of an agency came into my office. He made me promise not to disclose what my source was. He then went on to tell me that all the global warming studies were flawed because they never took into account how cloud cover affected the temperature readings that they were recording.

Along these lines it should be pointed out that all of the original temperature-monitoring stations set up about a hundred years ago which were set in the rural areas, many are now surrounded by metroplitan development, and affected by the known heat-retaining effect of urban zones. Hence, this does not give a true picture of the actual ATMOSPHERIC response GLOBALLY. These are purely localized readings which do not portray accurately what the global effects of any of the variables are.

Perhaps some of us should send this thread to FOX News' Bill O'Reilly. Hardly a week goes by without that uninformed, self-righteous fool spewing his nonsense about how "real" global warming is. His act is getting old.

My favorite O'Reillyism, however, is this: "If I were in change, the Feds would win the War on Drugs within a couple of weeks." His naivete knows no bounds.

all hat, and no cattle

All anecdote, no model.

A 99% accurate climate model program that would take fewer bytes than this speech could be written for a modern PC.

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Hope you don't mind these links to other 'environmental' radicals

The Heart of Amazonia
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: November 29, 2001
Author: Marc Morano
Timber Industry Warns of 'Eco-Dictatorship'
Source: CNSNews.com; Published: November 27, 2001
Author: Marc Morano
Collectivist Greens Must Use Coercion Enforced By The Central State
Source: Author: Vin Suprynowicz
Don't forget to attack domestic terrorism, too
Source: The Oregonian; Published: 11/19/01
Author: Nick Nichols
Environmental Terrorists Also Oppose Civilization
Source: Banner of Liberty; Published: November 13, 2001
Author: Mary Mostert
The Something Undermining Our Nation
Source: WorldNetDaily; Published: March 19, 1999
Author: Holly Swanson
The Las

Accurate "Thermometers" in Space

The State of Climate Measurement Science

Dr. Bert Bolin, Chairman on UN's Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change: No Global Warming"

Avoiding Global Warming

Research is needed