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POPULATION GROWTH AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Mr. COBURN. Okay, thank you. And I want to ask each of you if you would comment on this. If we had zero population growth in the world, what would be the effect of global warming? If we had no increasing demand, if we had zero population growth, what would be the effect-how would all these charts change in terms of the human component of consumption of energy? Dr. Watson, please start, if you would.

Mr. WATSON. Yes, significantly lower insofar as the things that the the factors that drive those curves are what is going to happen to greenhouse gases is driven by population growth, economic growth, the cost of energy, the availability of new technologies. If population worldwide were to zero out, I don't have a number but it would be significantly less, maybe half the effect that one would project. But, that's a guess on my part because I haven't seen the calculations. But, certainly, a significant effect. There would still be an increase in greenhouse gases as the world gets richer, especially as developing countries, ones who have effectively more energy service of poverty alleviation.

Mr. COBURN. Dr. Michaels?

Mr. MICHAELS. You just said that there were three factors involved in the emissions levels; population growth, economic growth and technology. The United States has very, very low population compared to many nations on the planet and not very much growth. I suspect what's happening ís-what's more going on is that the world is adopting technologies that they envy and that, even at constant population level, the emissions level will probably increase some until what is inevitable happens.

TECHNOLOGY

Mr. MICHAELS. You know, we're sitting here talking about this and there are probably about 10,000 tinkerers somewhere in the world playing around with fuel cells and other technologies, and I don't mean solar energy and windmills, with all due respect to our friends, that are much less emissive or emit much less carbon dioxide. The way to solve this problem is to not take money from the people's pocket and say, well, we don't want you to buy fossil fuel, but to let them keep the money so that they can invest it in these developing technologies. You know, 100 years ago, I wish I had invested in Ford but nobody knew about it, 100 years ago. That's how different the world was 100 years ago. And, yet, we're sitting here trying to plan the world 100 years from now. The only thing that's going to make that world run is the investment that people are going to place on the future and I say, let's not tax them, let's give them the ability to invest in these technologies.

Mr. SMITH. Čan I just follow up on that? There's a-what you're hearing and you heard it very well from Professor Watson that the explanation of the world's environmental problems to the Malthusian mindset is a very pat answer; population times affluence times technology and the solution tends to be population controls, affluence controls, or technology controls which we've always paraphrased as death, poverty and ignorance. There's a real challenge there when you realize that you see the forces of growth as forces of threat. And Katy McGinty, if she were here, if she were to re

peat what she said as to why the United States failed to meet it's global-it's emissions targets of 1992, was that we had too much economic growth and our price levels were too low, i.e., consumption was too high. To say consumption is something to be suppressed and then to say there's a no pain, all gain energy suppression diet I think is misleading, distorting and obscene.

Mr. MICHAELS. It's also illogical.

Mr. CHUPKA. I would like to actually follow up on this colloquy. First of all, you may find that there's a certain amount of agreement here about the role of technology. Technology is central to the President's plan. We believe that a significant source of new technology, and certainly this Committee is aware of it, comes from federal R&D expenditures, as well as the private sector, as well as tinkerers in people's garages and yes, we actually are very hopeful and optimistic about technology_becoming the primary driver of solving this problem over time. That is what we are trying to induce. I'm not going to comment on the relative merits of Malthusian theory or anything like that. The bottom line here is we are trying to make the economic system of this country a little more climate-friendly, a little more sustainable, and we're trying to bring the globe along with us.

Mr. COBURN. I understand.

INVESTMENTS IN TECHNOLOGY

Mr. WATSON. And it's well demonstrated, unfortunately, that while we've all been debating climate change, both in the United States and abroad, we've actually underinvested and significantly reduced our investment both in the public and in the private sector in the energy R&D, both in energy efficiency and renewables. There's a significant downward trend and if we do want to turn this around, there's going to have to be an increasing investment, both in the public and private sector, for energy R&D and starting to look at some of the perverse subsidies that, basically, favor fossil fuels over renewable energies and other sources of energy.

FITTING SCIENCE TO POLICY

Mr. COBURN. Thank you. And I have this one final question for Dr. Michaels. You know, one of the things I have found, being a member of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee in Commerce as well as on this Subcommittee in Science, is I have this real worry that we have not only politicized so many of the issues in our country that we're now politicizing our science. And I want to ask you just straight out, and Dr. Watson, I want you to give an answer to this as well because I think it's critical to our future as a Nation and as a society. Are we setting up science to give up the answer we want? Or are we setting up science to give us the truth? You know, I must tell you, I am sick and tired of hearing politicized science and then going and reading the studies myself and finding something completely different in the paper that was referenced. And to me, we lose all-you all lose all credibility when, in fact, you put forth data that the science doesn't show anything. And I am trained as a scientist, I did go through that training and it breaks my heart for us as a Nation that we now will politicize something because we believe in it when, in fact, the science may

not show it. And I don't know what the answer is here, I'm not trying to take a side, but I am so worried that we are becoming so polarized on both ends of this issue that both sides will, in fact, try to distort the science, maybe not overtly, but through inadmission and inadvertently to make a point. That does our country no good. It hurts us. We spend money wrongly and for the wrong purposes. PUBLIC CHOICE THEORY

Mr. MICHAELS. Nobody-this is a problem. You have just stumbled upon it. I hope Fred Smith will talk about this because he knows more about than I do. You have just stumbled upon the concept of public choice theory which says that individuals, even in the public sphere, operate as individuals, not necessarily as communitarians and it's a very, very difficult problem. Imagine if you were in charge of the funding for NASA and the National Science Foundation and a couple other scientific organizations and you sat there and held a hearing

Mr. COBURN. That's a long stretch, given my history.

Mr. MICHAELS. Understood, understood. But, imagine if you were sitting up there and you had a panel of, let's say, NASA administrators, etc., and you looked at them and you said, Mr. Administrator, I have read that global warming is a very important problem. Could your agency use another $1.5 billion to do research on this? What do you think the administrator is going to say? No, it's not a problem? And then he has the wherewithal to disperse through whatever he administrates to the middle managers. You think the middle managers are going to say, Mr. Administrator, it's not really that much of a problem, no big deal? And then that gets disbursed to the investigating scientists who, of course, are going to tell their middle managers who report to senior management, ah, you guys are nuts, it's not much of a problem after all. That's public choice theory in action, unfortunately and we could talk even further about Bob Watson's IPCC, a noble attempt, I think, a very noble attempt, Bob, but one sociology of science dooms to an ordained conclusion.

Mr. WATSON. As you might guess, I, once again disagree with Pat. I actually believe there's enough checks and balances in the system between public-supported research and private-supported research to actually come up with a fair and honest answer. I actually believe it's very healthy to have skeptics such as Pat, that Lindzen (Professor Richard Lindzen, MIT) and others critically looking at the models and to challenge what, in my opinion, is the mainstream view of the majority of scientists. If you don't believe that the science is being done well, then you have to look at it yourselves, as Members of Congress, you have to challenge whether the science managers-International Science Foundation, NASA, NOA, etc. are doing a good job. I believe the peer-review system does, indeed, have enough checks and balances in that the system is a very open and honest one. Actually, most scientists would prefer they could disprove global warming. None of us want to live in a global-warming world.

Chairman CALVERT. Thank you. Ms. Rivers?

Ms. RIVERS. Thank you very much. First, I would ask that two pieces of information be included on the record. The first is a letter

from Shelley N. Fiddler, Chief of Staff, speaking to the issue of why Kathleen McGinty was not here was today and the fact that we have retreated from usual protocols that we have used in this Committee in terms of the treatment of her and I would hope that would be there.

Second, I would also find it useful, Representative Coburn, if you would name the Nobel Laureates in Climatology who are opposed

to

Mr. COBURN. I will be happy to submit that for the record. [The information referred to follows:]

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In a recent article in Forbes magazine, "The Report that Nobody Reads," (a copy of which is included for the record), Dr. Peter P. Rogers, a Harvard environmental scientist, was paraphrased thusly by the author: "Of the three climatologists who have won Nobel prizes, two are not champions of global warming, he says." When contacted by Subcommittee staff, Dr. Rogers identified the Nobel prize winners as Mario Molina of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sherwood Rowlands of the U. of California, and Paul Cruetzen of the Max Planck Institute. Of these three, only Paul Cruetzen is a strong advocate of the idea that human-induced global warming has arrived.

Sincerely

Tom

Tom A. Coburn, M.D.
Member of Congress

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