Congressional Memo
More Talking Than Listening in the Senate Debate About Climate Change
WASHINGTON — About a day into the debate over legislation to combat global warming but before Republicans brought the discourse to a stop on Wednesday by insisting that the clerk read every word of the 492-page bill, Senator James M. Inhofe decided to get a few things off his chest.
Mr. Inhofe, who believes that fears of catastrophic climate change are hugely overblown, has insisted that there is no need to get into a scientific argument because there are enough other reasons to oppose the Senate bill, which would cap the production of heat-trapping gases and force polluters to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide.
Still, for a guy who said he did not want to talk about science, Mr. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, was the only senator to utter the phrase “anthropogenic gases.” He also wanted to talk about the recent cold winter in his home state and mention a few small points of disagreement with Al Gore and Mr. Gore’s co-recipients of the Nobel Prize, the roughly 2,000 scientists who are part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sponsored by the United Nations.
“We in the state of Oklahoma have had the worst cold spell during this last winter than we have in 30 years,” Mr. Inhofe said. “I find this to be true all over the country. You just can’t have it both ways.” (Most scientists say year-to-year weather changes are irrelevant to the clear, long-term warming trend.)
“One of the good things about this discussion and this debate is we are not going to be discussing the science,” Mr. Inhofe continued. Then, he unleashed an attack on the United Nations climate panel.
“We talked about 2,000 scientists,” he said. “We have a list of 30,000 scientists who said, ‘Yes, there can be a relationship between CO2 and a warming condition but it’s not major.’ ”
Next, he turned to Mr. Gore, the former vice president. “Al Gore has done his movie. Almost everything in his movie, in fact, everything has been refuted. Interestingly enough, the I.P.C.C. — on sea levels and other scare tactics used in that science fiction movie — it really has been totally refuted and refuted many times.”
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, wanted to challenge Mr. Inhofe. “Will the senator yield?” Mr. Kerry asked.
“No I will not,” Mr. Inhofe replied.
Moments later, Mr. Kerry tried again. “Will the senator yield for a question?”
“No. I will not. Not now,” Mr. Inhofe declared, shifting his speech into the need for expanding nuclear power.
After being rebuffed a fourth time, Mr. Kerry was exasperated. “With all due respect,” he said, “we are here to have a debate. It is hard to have a debate when you are talking all by yourself.”
Even for the Senate, where members are well-known to prefer talking to listening, the amount of unilateral jabbering on the climate bill has been remarkable, with lawmakers both for and against it arguing repeatedly over how much time was allotted for them to speak.
It was also hard to keep track of who was on which side. The bill’s main sponsors are Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.
Typically, the floor debate is divided evenly between the two parties, but there has been constant confusion about whose time was being used.
At one point Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, was struggling to get his turn. “It’s my understanding that I have 15 minutes at 12:15 which I have been waiting for all morning,” he said.
A short argument followed — involving Mr. Specter, Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, Mrs. Boxer and Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee — over who should speak and for how long. As they bickered, Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, who was serving as the president pro tempore, made an announcement: “The time of the senator from Tennessee, three and a half minutes, has expired.”
Mr. Domenici was perplexed. “How did his time expire?” he asked.
“Through this conversation,” Mr. Tester explained.
To help give everybody time on center-stage, the senators on Tuesday proposed delaying the weekly party lunches by 10 minutes. The majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said that was all right, but he also urged senators to be back in time for their official portrait.
“I hope people can come,” Mr. Reid said. “I know comparing it to global warming, it is not a very important issue. Staff has worked some six weeks to set up this place to take the picture at 2:15.”
The Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has expressed glee that the Democrats chose to bring up the climate bill. Mr. McConnell, like many of the bill’s critics, said it would raise oil prices at a time when Americans were already furious at the high cost of gasoline.
And though it was Mr. McConnell who insisted that the entire bill be read aloud (as punishment, he said, for Mr. Reid’s breaking a deal on judicial nominees) the Republican leader also said he hoped for a lengthy, perhaps weeks-long, debate on the climate change measure to highlight its flaws.
In response to the required read-aloud, which ended before 10 p.m., Mr. Reid requested a late-night quorum call, summoning senators back to the Capitol as Washington was being hit by scattered thunderstorms.
Mrs. Boxer, the main Democratic proponent of the bill, accused the Republicans of stalling and refusing to address global warming in part to support big oil companies. She repeatedly invoked support from religious leaders and scientists.
“Here, as shown in this picture, is a beautiful creature, the polar bear,” she said in a speech on the Senate floor. “And people say, ‘Oh, is this all about saving the polar bear?’ It’s about saving us. It’s about saving our future. It’s about saving the life on planet Earth. And, yes, it is about saving God’s creatures.”
Republicans, however, accused Democrats of putting on political theater at a time when they know the bill has no chance of being approved let alone signed into law by President Bush.
“This bill is going down in flames, as it should,” Mr. Corker “And we’ll have a real debate about this next year.”
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Back the truck up Angry Chinese Driver! I’m simply challenging your assertion that global warming causes “extreme temperatures”. If you study previous periods of warming in Earth’s history, you’ll see that it does *not* cause extreme temperatures, rather it causes warm climate zones to spread from the equator towards the poles. Actual climate at the equator doesn’t change that much.
Also, I don’t know where your comment about snow came from. It’s true that parts of Europe had a warm winter, but here in Chicago it was bitterly cold, and we had snowfall of which I haven’t seen since I was a child. Also our spring was very cold. This has been the experience throughout the United States.
Also, your comment about “big government” needed to clean up the mess – it’s likely that high oil prices are reducing consumption faster than any government program could. I take public transportation and ride my bicycle to a lot of places because of this – the free market at work.
Angry Chinese, your apparent anger which is misplaced is addling your brain (or what little of it there is). Calm down, and at least try to think about what you are saying. You are all over the place. The earth did warm somewhat during the 20th century, coming out of the Little Ice Age as it was, and now appears to be cooling. C02’s effect on warming is small, and decreases as C02 levels increase. Man’s contribution of C02 is also small, meaning his contribution to warming is negligible. Yes, we do need to be concerned about energy use and actual pollution (not C02). Taxing C02 is not how to go about that, however, makes no sense, and will only hurt the already-hurting economy.
Angry Chinese Driver, why do you continue to burn electricity while typing on your computer, and contributing to global warming? If you feel so strongly, why are you living in a carbon neutral conclave of like minded individuals? That is what Al Gore does. He lives in a mud hut growing his own vegetables. He doesn’t have the SUVs or mansions that you mention. Neither does he have a private jet which he uses instead of regular flights.
If the Messiah of AGW doesn’t actually believe in it (which he obviously doesn’t when you look at his lifestyle), then why should anyone else?
Why is it that so few AGWers are actually willing to put their money where their mouths are? Far too many AGWers think unplugging their DVD player at night will ‘save the planet’. They are unwilling to actually give up electricity, and store-bought food, and their cars. They consider getting a car that does 30MPG as ‘green’, unwilling to do the ‘proper’ thing and give up their car altogether.
It is the same situation with funding. The AGWers are the first ones to scream “Ignore that report, it was funded by Big Oil” yet forget to mention the $billions supplied by governments to support AGW research.
If scientists were injecting poison into children while claiming “Injecting poison into children is bad,” there would be an outcry. Yet the AGWers continue to expel huge amounts of CO2 and take the moral high ground for having a car that does an extra 2MPG or reusing the same bag at the supermarket.
Don’t encourage them folks; next, these dopey environmentalists will figure a way to control the Sun through taxation.
“It’s about saving us. It’s about saving our future. It’s about saving the life on planet Earth. And, yes, it is about saving God’s creatures.” And here all this time I mistakenly thought Boxer was pro-choice.
“Actually…the poles are melting pretty fast.”
How do things look down in Antarctica? Let’s see:http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
About 1million km^2 above last year, and last year was a record HIGH ice extent. So, plan on shattering that record this August.
“This is not about restricting the rights of people do freely as they wish in the name of “climate change;””
Then why did you mention SUVs and McMansions?
In closing: you need a little more “science” and a little less “fiction” in your diet.
ACD,
The current sea ice anomally is about 0.
sea ice extent
How does this translate into “melting pretty fast”?
Is it really worth taking the time to respond to this?
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com
Hold on just a moment guys. Don’t dismiss Angry Chinese Driver’s original comment with these crass one-liners without actually giving thought to the sitaution. Allow me to extrapolate a moment and provide you with a framework which verifies ACD’s comment.
Some of the most important patterns that determine regional effects of our climate – such as the ENSO, and the hypothetical PDO – can often account for interesting weather patterns. El Ninos, for example, tend to cause summer temperatures in the Southern US to deviate lower than normal – an effect not disputed among atmospheric scientists. The jury is out on whether or not these climate oscillations will be affected by climate change (that research is forthcoming and is likely one of the major forefronts of climate research once the synthesis of bio-chemical reactions into the climate models is finished by the next IPCC rendition).
It’s odd that we’re focusing on cold temperatures here, but not on what could be driving those cold temperatues. Has anyone taken a look at the 500 and 300 mb plots today? See that big freaking trof in the Jet Stream dipping up through the Plains from down by the Mexican border? We’re well aware that the JS tends to even out over the summer months due to the loss of the Alaskan High to help build big waves in the atmosphere, so I’m surprised how few people are keying in on the unusual behavior of the atmosphere this past season. The temperature isn’t the only thing that’s been a bit odd. There is no way for me to posit a relationship between these unusual waves and the cold temperatures that we’ve been having, but it kind of makes you wonder…
Anyways, there is a more important point here. We’re all aware that the climate doesn’t following some straight, monotonic path along its evolving course; it bobs up and down, sometimes quite significantly. Because of this, it’s misleading to simply analyze climate trends in term of some sort of linear or fixed regresstion – the noise in the climate signal is important also. Not held by all but certainly by many, the recognized trend is that the general regression of the climate signal has been a positive one – it has been warming.
However, this doesn’t mean anything more than that generally speaking, the bobs in the climate signal tend to go up more than they go down. It does not mean that the bob can’t plummet at some point (although many of you have accurately noted in past comments here that if the bob drops considerably then it must bounce up considerably as well or else is could be indicative of the overall trend changing).
So, in summary, it’s not correct to say that just because it might be cold right now (but from the past couple weeks sitting here in Kentucky that certainly doesn’t seem to be the case). It’s also a bit misleading to suggest that AGW theory predicts the temperature to drop considerably at some point . However, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen and it certainly doesn’t mean that the theory doesn’t have a way for accounting for these anomalies. The climate has a natural variance, and that means that even if it gets really hot, there’s always the chance that it could get really cold again (on the short term – do not read anything more into this statement).
I’d be careful how much weight you pin on the argument that it may have been cold this year, because you’re playing a crapshoot. It’s very possible that temperatures could skyrocket at the end of the summer, and then this argument will look very foolish.
Angry Chinese Drive says:
Actually…the poles are melting pretty fast.
I suggest you spend some time looking at satelite pictures of the poles. Especially notice that Antarctica sea ice is at record levels for this time of the year.
Angry Chinese driver. Please educate yourself. Most Americans do not drive SUV’s nor live in McMansions. You only undermine an already weak argument when you downshift into cliche-think. As for your assertion that the pole are melting pretty fast, look into the archives for this very site, and, again, educate yourself. Last week, for example, one could read an amusing piece about concerned ecotourists aboard an icebreaker. They had paid serious money to visit the allegedly vanishing Arctic icepack. They got stuck in that vanishing icepack. That icepack ain’t vanishing. I laughed, just like I laughed when I read your hyperventilating screed. We have real problems on this planet, and facing them shall require real thought and real sacrifice. Continual whooping and hollering about a phantom menace such as AGW does nothing to help solve real problems. But by all means, carry on if it makes you feel better. I am not a scientist, and I suck at math. There are, however, many folks who post here that are scientists and are good at math. I shall leave the technical refutation of your case (I suppose one must call it something, although “case” seems generous; perhaps “bleat” is more fitting) to those who are qualified. Time for me to get some popcorn and enjoy the show.
500 page bill, and you are conserned that it was read out loud. I think every person in the country should be forced to read the garbage that congress creates.
Maybe we should get a bill passed that mandates all bills should be 10 pages or less, and yes on 8.5×11 paper!1!!! Double spaced!!!!! 12 point font!!!! 1 inch margins!!!!!
Oh, yes, no bribes, in the forms of earmarks, also! None.
This bill was conceived in the alternate reality world, where humans are the center of the universe, and our actions control the stars and the seas. The actual reality is much more boring.
We have advanced past the stage of sacrificing a virgin, or burning a witch, but not by much. The fear of the unknown phantom menace, is still very much alive in our culture. The more we isolate ourselves from the raw violence of nature, the more we think we are in control of the very planet, we inhabit. Like bacteria in a petri dish, claiming the power to cover or uncover the dish, or move it from shade to light, to maintain the “correct” temperature.
Scientists are not immune to the lure of grandiose dreams of world manipulation. In some ways, we are more prone to it. We celebrate the great discoveries of the past, and each man yearns to join that elite club, of great minds. A lifetime toiling, over the stuff no one else seems to understand, or care about, is a lonely existance. Compare that to the celebrity status, of proclaiming an understanding of future events, of great calamity.
This bill needs to go back from whence it came, and we need to come to terms with, the reality we have been given. Sometimes boring is a good thing, but it rarely sells advertising space, or gets published in Science.
AGD, you must have a heck of a time getting out of bed in the morning, what with your worrying about might-happens. If you could stop your quaking long enough to actually search for answers and to question what you are being fed, you might be better off.
Are the poles melting? Well the Arctic is. Antarctic, yes and no — averages out to no.
Has all of this happened before. Yes, it has. Try looking at what happened in the early thirties.
My suggestion: try looking around instead of falling for hype (like that “game” proffered by the Australian network).
Every hear the story about Don Quixote and windmills?
The first step in NOT doing something that will help is to ascertain if we ARE doing something that DOESN’T help. Just saying “it seems reasonable” isn’t enough — particularly if the NOT doing leads to world economic disaster and particularly if the NOT doing something leads to reversing progress and going back to a time when lots of people needlessly die.
Technology is how we made the progress that allows the current standard of living. I certainly don’t want to take 20 steps backward if those steps are as useful as tilting with a windmill.
I assume you actually DO get out of bed in the morning and go about your daily activities despite all the things that can go wrong. Everybody makes cost/benefit trade offs in everything they do.
But what do you do when the penalties for action or inaction are equal? In my opinion, it’s far safer to do nothing until it becomes clear that one direction is better than the other.
What exactly is wrong with warming anyway? I mean other than the inconvenience of rain on Christmas Day or hot-as-hell summers. You don’t like increasing world-wide growing seasons, perhaps? If AGW is real and is helping to stave off a return to ice ages, isn’t that a good thing?
Thank you, counters, for your “extrapolation”. Your AGW religion has you convinced that man is responsible for warming, and that the current cooling is temporary, and due to “natural causes”, a phrase which AGWers have only recently begun using. What you don’t seem to realize, though, is that both warming AND cooling are due to natural causes, and that man’s effect on climate due to emissions of C02 are very small, and indeed just a part of the noise in the climate. It is in fact the sun that drives our climate.
RE: Angry Chinese Driver (23:40:02) :
“Umm…global warming is not simply “heating of the Earth”, it induces extreme changes in temperature, and yes that includes extreme cold (hence, the first winter spell in ages).”
Then by that logic, the recent 30 year warming trend between the mid 70’s and peaking in 1998, is just a manifestation of the impending ice age.
I.E. if Global Warming causes Global Cooling, then conversely Global Cooling could cause Global Warming.
But then a question, as we are seeing a major Global Cooling the last year, and you contend that is proof of Global Warming, how will we ever know when Global Warming is fixed?
Man IS responsible for some warming (and some cooling too no doubt). The question is how much and for which reasons? If the answer to the first question is ‘not much” (as I believe it is) then this becomes an ‘isn’t that interesting’ type of academic exercise. If the answer is ‘enough to adversely affect our health’ then the next part of the question becomes more important. Then you have to determine how we are affecting the climate and which activities (CO2, methane, land use, etc) has the most affect and what affect any effort to mitigate these on our part has on the climate.
earth’s climate is a complex, chaotic system and I find it very hard to accept that only one factor, CO2 level, can have such a gargantuan effect so as to override all the others.
Wow, looks like you guys have done the job posting for me.
Anyway, I love your site, I blogged about your weather station project a while back. That was one of the major things that converted me from AGWer to full blown climate skeptic.
Mrs. Boxer supports big oil.
Big Saudi oil, Big Iranian oil, Big Russian oil, Big Venezuelan oil….
counters:
Yes, it could very well bob back up again. This May was the coldest since 1997. Look what happened in 1998.
But we aren’t talking about a one-year trend. We are talking about a ten-year downward trend with May being the lowest yet. And we are also talking about global trends — no just the northern hemisphere.
The Real Point, of course, is that that the downward trend occurs despite rising CO2 which is counter to the claim “More CO2 –> Higher Temperatures”, which is the last part of the AGW theory. So, the only testable part of the AGW theory seems to have been disproven, no?
I wonder, since the ideal global climate apparently occurred at some point before the Industrial Revolution, what did humans do to cause the other climate shifts? The Little Ice Age I’m sure we could blame on the expansion of European civilizations or something. What about the Saber-tooth tiger-Wooly Mammoth-haven’t seen Canada for 100,000 years-Ice Age? We must have done something to mess up the planet’s equilibrium back then. Or, maybe the globe is supposed to be covered in massive ice sheets. In which case, all those little cave-fires our ancestors were lighting to keep from freezing to death are the real cause of global warming. History shows that even sunny Cali doesn’t have an “ideal” climate. Angry Chinese Driver, can you spell out how the world should be for us all? Is Greenland supposed to be frozen? Is the Sahara supposed to be a desert? As long as you are deciding what we all get to drive, and what kind of house we can live in, why don’t you dictate who gets to eat and who gets to starve?
So Big Government, not that I approve, is now stepping in and cleaning up your crap before you harm yourself (and your future generations) too much. And most of you still haven’t learned.
What is “Quotes from the movie ‘i Robot’, Alex?”
I love my snow, and year after year of rain on Christmas has gotten me pretty fed up.
Give us a few more years, and you won’t have to worry about it anymore. Our ultimate goal is to drown Santa Claus in his sleep and destroy Christmas once and for all.
Maybe the Earth is warming up by itself, but it doesn’t take a scientist or a thousand to figure out that WE are not doing anything to NOT speed it up.
I have no idea what you just said.
When California and Hawaii become nothing more than modern-day Atlantis
As long as the Chargers win the Super Bowl before California sinks into the ocean, I’m fine with it.
Gotta get back to my McMansion now. Whatever that is….
Here in Britain AGW is now called climate change, global warming is going out of fashion in the media. I’ve just been looking at the BBC web site AGW is pretty much the only show in town.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/portal/climate_change/default.stm
In our media and in our politics AGW climate change is considered a scientific fact. The governments chief scientist Prof John Beddington apparently believes in it (probably wouldn’t have got the job if he was a sceptic).
If the Gore minimum does reveal itself Britains politicians are going to have to excise their brains to think of new ways to extract the contents of our wallets.
Angry Chinese Driver
Until you can prove carbon dioxide has a net harmful affect (tough to do because it doesn’t) on the environment you sound like a religious cultist.
“Actually…the poles are melting pretty fast” No we can’t have any sueful discussion when you are willing to be this wildly incorrect. The poles are not melting. The Antarctic is definitely not warming and Arctic warming is mild at most and in fact probably non existent compared to 70 years ago, or 1000 years ago. Although if CO2 is causing warming it is true the poles, particularly the Antarctic should show it first and strongest. (oops, that’s called falsification of the hypothesis)
Or are you complaining because temperatures are warmer than 15,000 years ago?
I have a brother who was doing permafrost studies in the arctic… No warming, so they went back to computer models to show it, that actual field work stuff was just no good, heck they could lose their funding.
If you’re that upset about it, show us all the way, stop driving yourself, stop wasting electricity on frivolous things like computers and to prove your dedication and belief you could even stop producing CO2 yourself, maybe convince a few hundred of your friends to join you like Jim Jones did. (Or was that too naughty)
We could sure use some warming; Get yourself a globe and you’ll understand why. The world as a whole and the biosphere and agriculture in particular would greatly benefit from any warming CO2 is likely to produce. Negative effects are pretty much the realm of myth.