[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 188 (Thursday, December 8, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H8309-H8314]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE SPECTER OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is
recognized for 30 minutes.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Before I go into my prepared remarks, I would like to point out that
I personally have opposed all of the bailouts and the hundreds of
billions of dollars that the Obama administration has channeled to
different financial wheeler-dealers and cronies, like Goldman Sachs and
the others that have received so much money as directed to them from
this administration, just to put it on the record.
Many of these so-called corporations that my colleague just pointed
out, if
[[Page H8310]]
we take a look, when we say if we're going to increase taxes on them,
these corporations' biggest stockholders happen to be pension funds.
What we're really talking about by trying to say we're going to just
tax these big corporations, what we're really doing is taxing the
pension funds and are taxing the entities that provide the money for
the pension funds for the rest of the citizens of this country. But
that is another issue that I will discuss some other day.
Today, Mr. Speaker, as a strong advocate of human progress through
advancing mankind's understanding of science and engineering, I rise to
discuss the blatant abuse and misuse of science. A few nights ago, I
watched a video of President Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address.
Unfortunately, his much-heralded warnings about the military industrial
complex, which were right on target, I might add, that warning has
unfortunately obscured another warning in that farewell address that is
just as significant.
{time} 1630
Eisenhower pointed to the danger ``of domination of the Nation's
scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of
money is ever present--and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding
scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must
also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could
itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.''
In my lifetime, there has been no greater example of this threat,
which Eisenhower warned us about, than the insidious coalition of
research science and political largesse--a coalition that has conducted
an unrelenting crusade to convince the American people that their
health and their safety and--yes--their very survival on this planet is
at risk due to manmade global warming. The purpose of this greatest-of-
all propaganda campaigns is to enlist public support for, if not just
the acquiescence to, a dramatic mandated change in our society and a
mandated change to our way of life. This campaign has such momentum and
power that it is now a tangible threat to our freedom and to our
prosperity as a people.
Ironically, as the crusade against manmade global warming grows in
power, more evidence surfaces every day that the scientific theory on
which the alarmists have based their crusade is totally bogus. The
general public and decisionmakers for decades have been inundated with
phony science, altered numbers, and outright fraud. This is the
ultimate power grab in the name of saving the world; and like all
fanatics, disagreement is not allowed in such endeavors.
Prominent scientists who have been skeptical of the claims of manmade
global warming have themselves been cut from research grants and have
been obstructed when trying to publish peer-reviewed dissenting
opinions. How the mainstream media or publications like the National
Journal, for example, have ignored the systematic oppression that I
speak about is beyond me.
If you've heard the words ``case closed,'' it doesn't take a genius
to figure out that the purpose of such a proclamation is to limit and
repress debate. Well, the case isn't closed, so let's start with some
facts about manmade global warming and the theory of manmade global
warming.
First and foremost, the Earth has experienced cooling and warming
climate cycles for millions of years, which a significant number of
prominent scientists believe is tied to solar activity--just like
similar temperature trends have been identified on Mars and other
bodies in the solar system--and that is the Sun.
So how about those icecaps on Mars that seem to expand and recede,
mirroring our own polar icecaps? Doesn't that point to the Sun rather
than to human activity? After all, there are very few, if any, human
beings around on Mars, and certainly millions of years ago, when we had
other cycles in the world, there weren't very many human beings, if
any, around. So where do the climate cycles come from? What causes
climate cycles?
Right off the bat, let's acknowledge that manmade global warming
advocates, who I suggest are alarmists, do not believe the Sun has no
impact on climate cycles. They just believe that the Sun has a minimal
impact as compared to the increasing level of CO2 in the
atmosphere. Basically, they believe that the Sun does have some impact
but nothing compared to the increase in CO2 in the
atmosphere. Today, they believe this increase in CO2 in the
atmosphere has become very frightening because mankind is using fossil
fuels, which they believe is causing this dramatic increase in
CO2.
Similarly, skeptics like me believe the solar activity of the Sun is
the major factor in creating the Earth's climate cycles, including the
one that we're currently in. We also believe that manmade
CO2 buildup may have a minor impact. The debate isn't all
Sun or all manmade CO2. It's over which of these factors is
a major determinant or even the significant determinant.
At this point, one other fact needs to be understood. Many
intelligent people believe that CO2--carbon dioxide--
represents 10, 20, even 30 percent of the atmosphere. If anyone is
reading this or is listening to this, answer this question:
What do you think the percentage is after all we've heard, time and
time again, of how CO2 is changing the climate of our
planet?
As I say, most people think it's 10, 20, even 30 percent of the
atmosphere. In reality, CO2 is less--less--than one half of
one-tenth of 1 percent of the atmosphere, and humankind's contribution
to that one half of one-tenth of 1 percent is a small fraction of that.
So to say that what we're talking about is minuscule, no, that's not
smart enough. What it really is is microscopic.
Frankly, I believe that CO2 is so irrelevant that it
should not be the focus of air standards and regulations. After all, it
is not harmful to human beings unless, of course, you stick it into
your automobile in the garage and shut the door for hours and hours at
a time. The CO2 that's in the atmosphere is not harmful.
Other gases, like NOX, which are damaging to human health,
should be a much higher priority than CO2. NOX is
harmful to people's health. It's global pollution, not global warming,
that we should be concerned about.
Not making this distinction has cost us billions, maybe more. The
temperature of this planet isn't manmade, and we can't do anything
about it. Our energy challenges and the air quality that we have are
man-influenced, if not manmade. We can do something about these
maladies.
But the alarmists are not interested in solving those problems. They
are part of a coalition that wants to change our way of life, which
requires us to acquiesce--or, better yet, to frighten us into
submission. Make no mistake: The manmade global warming theory is being
pushed by people who believe in global government. They have been
looking for an excuse for an incredible freedom-busting centralization
of power for a long time, and they've found it in the specter of
manmade global warming.
For the past 30 years, the alarmists have been spouting ``Chicken
Little'' climate science. This campaign was turbocharged in the 1990s
when the Clinton administration made it part of its agenda, thanks to
Vice President Al Gore. One of the first actions that the
administration took was to fire the top scientist at the Department of
Education, Dr. William Happer, a professional who, at the time, dared
to be open-minded about the global warming theory. Al Gore decided Dr.
Happer just didn't fit in, and out he went. From there, the pattern
became all too clear. In order to receive even one iota of Federal
research funds, a scientist had to toe the line on manmade global
warming.
There is a biblical quote: ``The truth shall set you free.'' Well,
this is a battle for the truth, and we are up against a political
machine that has been yelling, ``Case closed,'' and restricting Federal
research grants only to those who agree with them.
That we have politicos who believe in centralizing power and are
willing to use their own power certainly should surprise no one, but
that a scientific-technological elite, the very group that President
Eisenhower warned us against 50 years ago, has allied itself with such
a political power play is totally contrary to what science and
scientists are supposed to be all about.
Because of the retaliation of those alarmists in charge of bestowing
the
[[Page H8311]]
Federal research grants, opposition to this power grab has taken time
to coalesce; but the opposition to the manmade global warming theory is
now evident and won't be ignored.
There have been major conferences here in Washington and at other
locations around the Nation, with hundreds of prominent members of the
scientific community. Individuals, many of whom are renowned
scientists, Ph.D.'s and heads of major university science departments,
including a few Nobel Prize winners, have all stepped up and spoken
out.
{time} 1640
Even with little news coverage, this group, who are accurately
referred to as skeptics, are gaining ever more recognition and ever
more influence. They face a daunting challenge, however, and they, as I
say, have to fight for any attention, even though they have just as
good credentials as those people who are advocating on the other side.
For a list of some of these credentialed and very well-respected
skeptics, one can visit my Web site. I'm Congressman Dana Rohrabacher
from California.
So what is this apocalyptic manmade global warming theory that the
globalists and radical environmentalists would have us believe? It is
that our planet is dramatically heating up because we human beings,
especially Americans, put large amounts of CO2 into the
atmosphere as a result of using oil, gas, and coal as fuel.
The CO2 has an impact in that it entraps a certain amount
of heat in the atmosphere, thus dangerously warming the planet. We have
been warned about huge changes in our environment, including a 10-
degree jump in the overall temperature, and thus a serious rise in the
level of the oceans of the world.
Vice President Gore, in his movie, ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' showed
what seemed to be a video of melting and breaking icecaps.
Inconveniently, somebody squealed, the video was actually a special
effect. It was Styrofoam made to look like melting and breaking
icecaps. But that's no problem. People still listen to Al Gore.
Over and over again, the alarmists have said that the Earth is
dramatically heating up. Look closely at the data that they're talking
about. Look closely at the date that was picked by these people as a
baseline for comparing temperatures. It is 1850. And what is 1850? It's
the end of a 500-year decline in the Earth's temperature. The Little
Ice Age was ending in the 1850s. Skeptics say that a 1- or 2-degree
increase in the planet's temperature is irrelevant if the basis of
comparison is a 500-year low in the Earth's temperature. To skeptics,
currently we are just in another natural climate cycle. That's what we
as skeptics believe. This is another natural climate cycle, and it's
been going on, as was the 500-year decline in the Earth's temperatures.
If it's going up a little bit now, that is a natural climate cycle.
To alarmists, however, the sky is falling. A couple of degrees warmer
and the sky is heating, or it's falling, that is, or heating, and all
of this is caused by mankind pumping CO2 into the air.
This theory of manmade CO2 causing global warming emerged
when scientists mistakenly believed that the data they were studying
from ice cores indicated that a warming of our planet was happening
after a major increase in CO2.
However, later, it was found that the ice cores were misread.
Nicholas Caillon pointed out in Science magazine in 2003 that the
CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacierization warming by
800 to 200 years, give or take 200 years. So the heating came first,
and then the CO2 increased, not the other way around.
Yes, when Earth heats up, there is more CO2. But we've
been told the opposite over and over again, and we were told it was the
CO2 that was making the Earth heat up, and they were telling
us that the Earth will keep heating up until it reaches a tipping
point, and then there will be a huge jump in the temperature. The
temperature will shoot up once it reaches this tipping point. And we
could expect, this is what we were told over and over again by the
scientists predicting over and over again that we could expect this
warming to go on and on until we quit using CO2 and quit
using these CO2-emitting fossil fuels as a major source of
our energy.
The future they described was hot and bleak, but their frightening
illusion began to disintegrate when, about 9 years ago, even as more
CO2 was being pumped into the air and has continued to be
pumped into the air, the Earth quit warming and, in fact, it may be now
in a cooling cycle. That's right. The NOAA National Climate Data Center
shows that ground surface temperatures have flattened, and there hasn't
been any net warming since 1998, and the RSS microwave sounding units--
that's MSU--operating on NOAA satellites show a net cooling since 1998.
It's totally the opposite of every prediction of the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that's the IPCC, and their
faulty computer models, as well as the army of global warming
scientists who have been warning us about higher and higher
temperatures of what we could expect.
Well, miraculously, the frantic claims and predictions of manmade
global warming have now been replaced with an all-new encompassing
warning. So if it gets colder, or it gets warmer, the alarmists will
have their way because that's being caused by too much CO2.
Well, what is being caused? Well, whatever it is, it's being caused
by it. And so they changed the words from global warming to climate
change and have replaced, as I say, global warming with their climate
change.
Well, I guess they think that we would just forget about the
predictions and their predictions over and over again being 100 percent
wrong. Even the much-touted melting of the icecaps has now reversed
itself in the last few years. According to the most recent data from
the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, not all the
icecaps are melting now. There's melting, and there is also refreezing
going on.
So the polar icecaps aren't going away and, yes, the polar bears are
not becoming extinct. They were put on the extinct list even though
they weren't extinct. In fact, there are some number of polar bear
families that are growing dramatically in the last few years, even as
we were warned that polar bears were becoming extinct.
Warming has ended, but the power grab continues. What we are now
finding out is exactly how ruthless and, yes, deceitful that power grab
has been. One example of blackballing is of prominent scientists like
Dr. William Gray, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado
State University and the head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at
CSU's Department of Atmospheric Science. Gray had the courage and
honesty to point out that there have not, in recent years, been more or
stronger hurricanes and other such storms than in the past. No more
research grants for him, no attention in the media, either.
Zealots can usually find high-sounding excuses for their
transgressions against other professionals like Dr. Gray. Professional
figures in white coats with authoritative tones of voices and lots of
credentials repeatedly dismiss criticism by claiming that their so-
called scientific findings had been peer reviewed, verified by other
scientists. It sounds so much beyond reproach. They gave each other
prizes as they selectively handed out research grants.
To those who disagreed, like Dr. Gray, no matter how prominent, they
were treated like nonentities, like they didn't exist, or were
personally disparaged with labels like ``denier.'' Well, you know,
Holocaust denier, that's what you do. Now, how much uglier does it get?
How much against the standard of professional science can you be than
to try to paint someone like that because he disagrees with you?
{time} 1650
Well, these unprofessional tactics won't work forever, and it's
becoming ever clearer that the man-made global warming steamroller is
beginning to fall apart. We now know that the scientists clamoring for
subservient acceptance to their theory of man-made global warming were
themselves making a sham out of the scientific methodology. We now know
what they were doing. I'm speaking, of course, of Climategate, the
publication of over 1,000 emails and 3,000 other unofficially
[[Page H8312]]
obtained documents from one of the world's foremost global warming
research institutes, the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia
University in the United Kingdom. And we have all heard of those
quotes. Here's a few of them:
``We can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it's a
travesty that we can't.''
How about another quote: ``I've just completed Mike's nature trick .
. . to hide the decline.''
Here's another quote: ``We'll keep them''--meaning the skeptics of
their science. ``We'll keep them out somehow--even if we have to
redefine what peer-review literature is.''
How about this for another quote: ``If they ever hear there is a
Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the
file rather than send it to anyone.''
Deleting files? Trying to prevent peer review? What kind of
scientists were these? Well, arrogant and politically motivated
scientists, that's who.
The unauthorized release of those internal memos exposed the
shenanigans of the man-made global warming alarmists and the crime
being committed against science and the public. Even though handpicked
panels of their peers held the a kangaroo court--yeah, their own peers
judged them, that's right--and that kangaroo court loudly proclaimed
there had no wrongdoing by these people, well, public confidence was
justifiably shaken in the global warming science advocates.
Now, just as that scandal was about to be forgotten, we have an even
larger database being exposed showing even more clearly how this elite
operates, and it ain't pretty.
Here are some of the quotes from the newly released database:
Unfortunately, there is no way to fix the IPCC, and there never was.
The reason is that its information over 20 years ago was to support
political and energy policy goals, not to search for scientific truth.
Here's another quote: If you disagree with their interpretation of
climate change, you were left out of the IPCC process. They ignore or
fight against any evidence which does not support their policy-driven
mission, even to the point of pressuring scientific journals not to
publish papers which might hurt the IPCC's effort.
Here's another one regarding the IPCC: I also think the science is
being manipulated to put a political spin on it.
Here's another one: It's very likely that the mean temperature has
shown much larger past variability than caught by previous
reconstructions. We cannot, from these reconstructions, conclude that
the previous 50-year period has been unique in the context of the last
500 to 1,000 years.
What's that mean? That means the current cycle we're in has nothing
to do with the burning of fossil fuel by human beings.
I would like to insert an article from James Taylor of Forbes
magazine who said Climategate 2: ``These scientists view global warming
as a political `cause' rather than a balanced scientific inquiry.''
Climategate 2.0: New E-Mails Rock The Global Warming Debate
(By James Taylor)
A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the
assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis
were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a
new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day
after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.
Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails:
(1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate
are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate
underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view
global warming as a political ``cause'' rather than a
balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists
frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak
and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.
Regarding scientific transparency, a defining
characteristic of science is the open sharing of scientific
data, theories and procedures so that independent parties,
and especially skeptics of a particular theory or hypothesis,
can replicate and validate asserted experiments or
observations. Emails between Climategate scientists, however,
show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate
underlying evidence and procedures.
``I've been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom
of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those
working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of
the process,'' writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with
the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), in a newly released email.
``Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of
the research grants we get--and has to be well hidden,''
Jones writes in another newly released email. ``I've
discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in
the past and they are happy about not releasing the original
station data.''
The original Climategate emails contained similar evidence
of destroying information and data that the public would
naturally assume would be available according to freedom of
information principles. ``Mike, can you delete any emails you
may have had with Keith [Briffa] re AR4 [UN Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment]?'' Jones wrote to
Penn State University scientist Michael Mann in an email
released in Climategate 1.0. ``Keith will do likewise. . . .
We will be getting Caspar [Ammann] to do likewise. I see that
CA [the Climate Audit Web site] claim they discovered the
1945 problem in the Nature paper!!''
The new emails also reveal the scientists' attempts to
politicize the debate and advance predetermined outcomes.
``The trick may be to decide on the main message and use
that to guid[e] what's included and what is left out'' of
IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead
author for the IPCC's most recent climate assessment.
``I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate
professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don't know what she
thinks she's doing, but its not helping the cause,'' wrote
Mann in another newly released email.
``I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding
an investigative journalist to investigate and expose''
skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another
newly released email.
These new emails add weight to Climategate 1.0 emails
revealing efforts to politicize the scientific debate. For
example, Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University
Corporation for Atmospheric Research, authored a Climategate
1.0 email asserting that his fellow Climategate scientists
``must get rid of'' the editor for a peer-reviewed science
journal because he published some papers contradicting
assertions of a global warming crisis.
More than revealing misconduct and improper motives, the
newly released emails additionally reveal frank admissions of
the scientific shortcomings of global warming assertions.
``Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout
the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study
and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just
downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty
and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss
these further if necessary,'' writes Peter Thorne of the UK
Met Office.
``I also think the science is being manipulated to put a
political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too
clever in the long run,'' Thorne adds.
``Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive . . . there
have been a number of dishonest presentations of model
results by individual authors and by IPCC,'' Wigley
acknowledges.
More damaging emails will likely be uncovered during the
next few days as observers pour through the 5,000 emails.
What is already clear, however, is the need for more
objective research and ethical conduct by the scientists at
the heart of the IPCC and the global warming discussion.
Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of all of this, amid all of the
consternation about their malpractices to which we have now been
exposed: The global warming elite just keeps a straight face. They keep
up their PowerPoint presentations, distorted graphs and all, and
continue projections of man-made global doom and gloom. They try to
ignore the uproar and change the subject, but these recent revelations
seriously call into question the basic science of man-made global
warming fanatics.
In the meantime, a report was recently issued by world-respected
scientists at CERN in Switzerland. The CERN study demonstrated it is
cosmic rays from the sun that determine global cloud cover, and the
clouds have dramatically more to do with temperature than the minuscule
amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The Cloud Project at a highly respected CERN laboratory published a
paper in the journal Nature this past August based on this research
which shows that the sun's activity is influencing cloud formation and
may account for most of the recorded temperature changes in the last
century.
I would like to submit an editorial about this project from The Wall
Street Journal by Anne Jolis for the Record.
The Other Climate Theory
Al Gore won't hear it, but heavenly bodies might be driving
long-term weather trends.
(By Anne Jolis)
In April 1990, Al Gore published an open letter in the New
York Times ``To Skeptics on Global Warming'' in which he
compared them to medieval flat-Earthers. He soon became vice
president and his conviction that
[[Page H8313]]
climate change was dominated by man-made emissions went
mainstream. Western governments embarked on a new era of
anti-emission regulation and poured billions into research
that might justify it. As far as the average Western
politician was concerned, the debate was over.
But a few physicists weren't worrying about Al Gore in the
1990s. They were theorizing about another possible factor in
climate change: charged subatomic particles from outer space,
or ``cosmic rays,'' whose atmospheric levels appear to rise
and fall with the weakness or strength of solar winds that
deflect them from the earth. These shifts might significantly
impact the type and quantity of clouds covering the earth,
providing a clue to one of the least-understood but most
important questions about climate. Heavenly bodies might be
driving long-term weather trends.
The theory has now moved from the corners of climate
skepticism to the center of the physical-science universe:
the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as
CERN. At the Franco-Swiss home of the world's most powerful
particle accelerator, scientists have been shooting simulated
cosmic rays into a cloud chamber to isolate and measure their
contribution to cloud formation. CERN's researchers reported
last month that in the conditions they've observed so far,
these rays appear to be enhancing the formation rates of pre-
cloud seeds by up to a factor of 10. Current climate models
do not consider any impact of cosmic rays on clouds.
Scientists have been speculating on the relationship among
cosmic rays, solar activity and clouds since at least the
1970s. But the notion didn't get a workout until 1995, when
Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark came across a 1991 paper by
Eigil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen, who had charted a
close relationship between solar variations and changes in
the earth's surface temperature since 1860.
``I had this idea that the real link could be between cloud
cover and cosmic rays, and I wanted to try to figure out if
it was a good idea or a bad idea,'' Mr. Svensmark told me
from Copenhagen, where he leads sun-climate research at the
Danish National Space Institute.
He wasn't the first scientist to have the idea, but he was
the first to try to demonstrate it. He got in touch with Mr.
Friis-Christensen, and they used satellite data to show a
close correlation among solar activity, cloud cover and
cosmic-ray levels since 1979.
They announced their findings, and the possible climatic
implications, at a 1996 space conference in Birmingham,
England. Then, as Mr. Svensmark recalls, ``everything went
completely crazy. . . . It turned out it was very, very
sensitive to say these things already at that time.'' He
returned to Copenhagen to find his local daily leading with a
quote from the then-chair of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC): ``I find the move from this pair
scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible.''
Mr. Svensmark had been, at the very least, politically
naive. ``Before 1995 I was doing things related to quantum
fluctuations. Nobody was interested, it was just me sitting
in my office. It was really an eye-opener, that baptism into
climate science.'' He says his work was ``very much ignored''
by the climate-science establishment--but not by CERN
physicist Jasper Kirkby, who is leading today's ongoing
cloud-chamber experiment.
On the phone from Geneva, Mr. Kirkby says that Mr.
Svensmark's hypothesis ``started me thinking: There's good
evidence that pre-industrial climate has frequently varied on
100-year timescales, and what's been found is that often
these variations correlate with changes in solar activity,
solar wind. You see correlations in the atmosphere between
cosmic rays and clouds--that's what Svensmark reported. But
these correlations don't prove cause and effect, and it's
very difficult to isolate what's due to cosmic rays and
what's due to other things.''
In 1997 he decided that ``the best way to settle it would
be to use the CERN particle beam as an artificial source of
cosmic rays and reconstruct an artificial atmosphere in the
lab.'' He predicted to reporters at the time that, based on
Mr. Svensmark's paper, the theory would ``probably be able to
account for somewhere between a half and the whole'' of 20th-
century warming. He gathered a team of scientists, including
Mr. Svensmark, and proposed the groundbreaking experiment to
his bosses at CERN.
Then he waited. It took six years for CERN to greenlight
and fund the experiment. Mr. Kirkby cites financial pressures
for the delay and says that ``it wasn't political.''
Mr. Svensmark declines entirely to guess why CERN took so
long, noting only that ``more generally in the climate
community that is so sensitive, sometimes science goes into
the background.''
By 2002, a handful of other scientists had started to
explore the correlation, and Mr. Svensmark decided that ``if
I was going to be proved wrong, it would be nice if I did it
myself.'' He decided to go ahead in Denmark and construct his
own cloud chamber. ``In 2006 we had our first results: We had
demonstrated the mechanism'' of cosmic rays enhancing cloud
formation. The IPCC's 2007 report all but dismissed the
theory.
Mr. Kirkby's CERN experiment was finally approved in 2006
and has been under way since 2009. So far, it has not proved
Mr. Svensmark wrong. ``The result simply leaves open the
possibility that cosmic rays could influence the climate,''
stresses Mr. Kirkby, quick to tamp down any interpretation
that would make for a good headline.
This seems wise: In July, CERN Director General Rolf-Dieter
Heuer told Die Welt that he was asking his researchers to
make the forthcoming cloud-chamber results ``clear, however,
not to interpret them. This would go immediately into the
highly political arena of the climate-change debate.''
But while the cosmic-ray theory has been ridiculed from the
start by those who subscribe to the anthropogenic-warming
theory, both Mr. Kirkby and Mr. Svensmark hold that human
activity is contributing to climate change. All they question
is its importance relative to other, natural factors.
Through several more years of ``careful, quantitative
measurement'' at CERN, Mr. Kirkby predicts he and his team
will ``definitively answer the question of whether or not
cosmic rays have a climatically significant effect on
clouds.'' His old ally Mr. Svensmark feels he's already
answered that question, and he guesses that CERN's initial
results ``could have been achieved eight to 10 years ago, if
the project had been approved and financed.''
The biggest milestone in last month's publication may be
not the content but the source, which will be a lot harder to
ignore than Mr. Svensmark and his small Danish institute.
Any regrets, now that CERN's particle accelerator is
spinning without him? ``No. It's been both a blessing and the
opposite,'' says Mr. Svensmark. ``I had this field more or
less to myself for years--that would never have happened in
other areas of science, such as particle physics. But this
has been something that most climate scientists would not be
associated with. I remember another researcher saying to me
years ago that the only thing he could say about cosmic rays
and climate was that it was a really bad career move.''
On that point, Mr. Kirkby--whose organization is controlled
by not one but 20 governments--really does not want to
discuss politics at all: ``I'm an experimental particle
physicist, okay? That somehow nature may have decided to
connect the high-energy physics of the cosmos with the
earth's atmosphere--that's what nature may have done, not
what I've done.''
Last month's findings don't herald the end of a debate, but
the resumption of one. That is, if the politicians purporting
to legislate based on science will allow it.
In this piece, she says: charged subatomic particles from outer
space, or cosmic rays, might significantly impact the type and quality
of clouds covering the Earth, providing a clue to one of the least
understood but most important questions about climate. Heavenly bodies
might be driving long-term weather trends.
And while scientists have discovered the sun's relationship to cloud
cover, even more recently there's been a study directly undermining the
theory that CO2 levels are a major determinant of the
Earth's temperature.
A recent editorial from Investor's Business Daily on the topic of
this new study about temperature sensitivity to carbon dioxide
undermines the case-closed arguments of the scientific elite.
From the editorial: The left's proposed solutions to the world's ills
are based on the idea that carbon dioxide is a climate-heating poison
that must be scrubbed from the global economy at all costs. Yet another
study shows this to be foolishness.
And I submit that for the Record at this point as well.
[From the Investor's Business Daily Editorial, Nov. 25, 2011]
Global Warming Models Called Into Question By New Study
Climate: The left's proposed solutions for the world's ills
are based on the idea that carbon dioxide is a climate-
heating poison that must be scrubbed from the global economy
at all cost. Yet another study shows this is foolish.
The study in the journal Science found that global
temperatures appear to be far less sensitive to the amount of
CO2 in the atmosphere than originally estimated.
This sounds prosaic, but it's a bombshell--another in a
long line of revelations showing the scientific fraud at the
heart of the anti-global warming movement.
The study's findings are simple and devastating. ``This
implies that the effect of CO2 on climate is less than
previously thought,'' said Oregon State University's Andreas
Schmittner, the study's main author.
Even with a doubling of CO2 from levels that existed before
the Industrial Revolution, the study found a likely increase
in Earth's temperature only from about 3.1 degrees Fahrenheit
to 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
That compares with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change's 2007 report, which predicted an increase of
3.6 degrees to 8.6 degrees.
Coupled with the fact the average global temperature hasn't
increased at all over the past decade--even though under all
of the global warming models now in use, this is
[[Page H8314]]
impossible--warmist ideology is crumbling. There is no
climate armageddon on the horizon.
But don't expect global warm-mongers to admit this. As
we've discovered from a new trove of emails sent by leading
European climate-change scientists, there has been a vast,
global green conspiracy to silence scientific opposition to
the idea--even to the point of falsifying data and ruining
others' careers.
Subscribe to the IBD Editorials Podcast--The left's entire
prescription for solving the world's ills--ranging from
population control to strict regulation of businesses to
shrinking CO2 output--are premised on the notion that carbon-
dioxide is a poison.
Happily, the left's pernicious, economy-destroying and
false global warming ideology is collapsing under a growing
body of evidence that the CO2 scare is a fraud.
Who says we have nothing to be thankful for?
And despite the weaknesses of the linkage between CO2 and
temperature, the alarmists continue with their tactics. We just heard a
report published in Nature Climate Change in the last few days that
CO2 emissions in 2010 went up by 5.9 percent, which
scientists claimed was the highest total annual growth ever recorded--
except they didn't record any CO2 emissions. They estimated
that based on energy use. They didn't take into account new
technologies that make gas and oil and coal cleaner and greener. The
scientists didn't care about how cleanly coal and oil might be being
burned; they just estimated--or guesstimated--CO2 emissions
based on the total amount of coal and oil used. And the media, like
their lapdogs, faithfully reported that this sounds like a calamity
when you have so much more CO2 coming in, even though they
never measured any CO2 emissions. None of it was actually
recorded.
The truth is CO2 is not a pollutant. Anybody perpetuating
that myth that CO2 is dangerous, a dangerous pollutant, is
contributing to the health-destructive impact of real pollution by
diverting resources and attention away from these very real challenges.
We have wasted $25 billion or more on this foolishness. That is money
that could have been used to develop new energy technologies, for
example, that could have moved us off of our dependence on foreign oil.
Some examples of these technologies are the small modular nuclear
reactors which could offer us safety and no pollution, no leftover
waste, but we didn't have the money for that. How about space-based
solar power, which could collect solar energy from the sun out in outer
space and transmit it to the Earth?
Developing these new technologies will take hundreds of millions of
dollars for these new reactors, billions of dollars for a space-based
solar. Instead, we've squandered our billions of dollars and our
limited science money and technology dollars on trying to prove that
man-made global warming is something that we have to worry about and
spread the fear.
We have not pursued these or other technologies which could have
fundamentally benefited everyone on the Earth because we have been
wasting our time and our resources. We have been trying to figure out
how to bury carbon in the ground and other such things.
Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm here to explain that this is utter nonsense
and to warn of the danger that lurks behind this high-sounding cause.
Don't miss the significance, by the way, of the Durban conference in
South Africa that is gathering now to determine how best to control our
lives.
{time} 1700
As happened in Kyoto and Copenhagen in the past, they now are meeting
in Durban to try to find ways of issuing mandates to the people of the
world in the name of stopping global warming.
Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to the people of the United States they
pay close attention to this. Eisenhower isn't here to protect us
anymore. The fact is our freedom is at stake. The globalists would like
to control the people of the United States. It's up to us to defend our
freedom. The patriots will win if we stand together.
I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________