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trying our best to get Texans to give up their cars and get onto a rapid transit. That is very difficult. If you know anything about a Texan, you know they don't like for anybody to tell them anything in terms of how to change one's lifestyle. But what is your prediction of how we will ultimately win the battle of education and cooperation? Can we offer any help to stubbornness? Anybody who wants to?

Mr. PRINN. I'm primarily a scientist but, and your question is more on the policy end of things, but we do have a very interdisciplinary program at MIT so I talk to economists and technologists. So, it's with that limited authority that I give the following answer. First, I believe that in the last 10 years or, I think, the decade from 1985 to 1994 that U.S. investment R&D dropped from about 5-a little over $5 billion to $3.3 billion and I presume, in fact, it's continued to go downwards rather than up. Clearly, that seems to be in the wrong direction, given the importance of this issue.

Ms. JOHNSON. They always say, be careful what you ask for, you just might get it.

[Laughter.]

Ms. JOHNSON. I know that research from-is a major concern in findings and extra expenditure for research is probably going to be one of the answers. But, are you interfacing with any other-well, you did indicate that you were interfacing with MIT and some of the technology families. Where do we go from here? Do we continue just to study and are we at an impasse simply because we don't have as much money as we should have for our researching?

Mr. PATRINOS. With respect to the technologies, Ms. Johnson, the-my colleagues from the Department of Energy will be here on Thursday and I'm sure they will describe some of the initiatives that they are proposing to deal with the development of technologies for the climate changes. I can't help but use the opportunity myself to make the plug for some technology that I find extremely important for both adaptation and mitigation, and that's biotechnology, an emerging science that has tremendous potential for the improvement of the quality of life and for mitigation of many environmental problems, including the ones associated with climate change.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you very much.

NUCLEAR POWER

Chairman CALVERT. Thank you, Ms. Johnson. I have a quick question. I'm going to ask Mr. Coburn to ask a question and Mr. Doyle, if we have enough time here.

Real quickly, if we talk about technology or new energy, if, in fact, we're going to impact this global warming, one thing that was mentioned was some of the renewables, hydrogen and other types of technologies, that we're working on. And as you know and as we know, to our frustration, we're not there yet. We fund a lot of money into various research. The only technology that we know of and, of course, Europe has been significantly ahead of us on, is the use of nuclear power. Certainly, nuclear power doesn't have the effects of the CO2 emissions and, certainly, Europe has been able to reach their targets because of their use of nuclear which is, in fact,

extremely controversial in this country. So, I just bring that up is that today, I suspect, is the only type of energy that we can use in great amounts to meet particular targets with the off-the-shelf technology is nuclear power.

And with that, I-Mr. Coburn, would you like to ask a quick question? I know Mr. Doyle wanted to ask a quick question before

we

VARIATIONS IN GLOBAL WARMING PREDICTIONS

Mr. COBURN. I would like Dr. Prinn's piece to be put back up on the display because I think it really tells us a whole lot, if you would, about where the science is in this. And I don't doubt what we're being told, I just don't think we have the information with which the assumptions have been made and I think when we take all the models that are out there and we see an 800 percent difference in the models in terms of what the results are going to be, anywhere else in science we'd have great discomfort with that.

Mr. ROBOCK. I think this is, actually, the same model but different assumptions about human behavior that gives a different climate, is that right? Maybe

Mr. COBURN. Well, okay, then let's go use the one that shows from one-and-a-half to three degrees. That's a 200 percent

Mr. PRINN. Let me explain what the range here is due 'to. About two-thirds of that range is due to uncertainty in the climate model and we make various assumptions within the climate model to do with clouds, the ocean and so on and aerosols. That's two-thirds of that range. One-third of that range-the other one-third is due to the differences in the economic projections for the various economic regions of the world and how much greenhouse gases they will emit, taking into account differing assumptions about technology development, differing assumptions about population, labor productivity, and so on.

Mr. COBURN. Okay, so let's pull-let's pull out the economic portion of that, one-third of it. So now we have 500 percent in terms of change. I would still submit to you that from a scientific perspective what it says is we don't know near enough to be able to make any vast conclusive decisions that are going to have major impact and I guess the question I want to ask is what do we need to do? I'm not doubting that what you say may be true. I'm not doubting that. What I'm saying is, as somebody that has been a student of the scientific model, what do we need to do to know more? That's the question. What do we need to do? What tools do you need to find out what the answer is?

Mr. ROBOCK. I-the science, I mean, science needs more money for research. We need-that's an easy question, too. I mean, I struggle to spend a lot of my time writing proposals to get money to do my research, to support students, to train students, to buy computers. If I had less time writing proposals and more time doing the science, I'd be more productive, if it was easier to have more money that was devoted to this important problem.

Mr. COBURN. Dr. Spencer.

Mr. SPENCER. What we're going to hopefully attack the problem is run a model in a very different mode than the general circulation models. The general circulation models parameterize, rather than

have the explicit physics in them, for certain processes, like cloud formation. They don't actually grow clouds, generally speaking. What we're doing is we're taking a cloud resolving model which is at very high resolution that actually grows clouds within it and running it in a climate mode and test it's sensitivity to increasing CO2. So, we're hopeful in the next year or so that we'll have some better estimates of global warming projections-projections based on those runs.

COMPUTING POWER

Mr. ROBOCK. That's very important to do but computers, nowadays, can't have such detailed models on a whole global basis. Mr. SPENCER. Yes, that's why they can't

Mr. COBURN. So, one of your needs is to really have the bucks to put into the supercomputer models, to be able to really run these, to encompass everything.

Mr. ROBOCK. Right.

Mr. COBURN. What you're saying is, we don't have those computers available to you to supercompute this.

Mr. SPENCER. That's right. We have more knowledge of physics than can be put into the GCMs right now because the computers just aren't fast enough.

Mr. COBURN. And, is that a lack of availability of computers in general or a lack of availability for you all for the computering power?

Mr. ROBOCK. The computers exist today. If you bought a lot of them, you could do a lot more. But, indeed, if we had faster computers, that would help to. But even giving current technology

Chairman CALVERT. Mr. Coburn. If we could let Mr. Doyle finish up, and then we can head onto the Floor.

Mr. COBURN. Okay, that's fine.

Chairman CALVERT. Mr. Doyle, do you have any closing questions and we'll wrap up.

Mr. COBURN. I want to have lunch with you. I want to find out more from you.

[Laughter.]

Chairman CALVERT. You have a free lunch, right up here. [Laughter.]

CAPTURING CO2

Mr. DOYLE. I would tell Dr. Coburn we have a supercomputer at Carnegie Mellon sitting idle right now but maybe we could loan it to some of the panelists. It's fascinating hearing the testimony. Apparently, we have people on one side that say this science is sound and we need to ring alarm bells, and people on the other side saying as the science gets better, there's less of a worry with regards to global warming. I think clearly, as policymakers, it's becoming clear to us that what we probably don't need is to bind us to any regulations or new taxes at this point but to invest some resources of the Federal Government into more research and development. And I would just note for the record, too, Mr. Chairman, that whether we like it or not that, you know, we're not going to solve this problem by-strictly with wind and solar power. We're going to have to look at nuclear and we're going to have to find ways to

because fossil fuels are going to be the predominant way that this world is going to meet its energy needs-to find different ways to do CO2-to capture it and sequester it and that we've really just started to scratch the surface on how to do that and that's where we should be focusing our efforts and our money.

Chairman CALVERT. I thank the gentleman and I thank this panel. It's been a very interesting hearing today and we look forward to more interesting testimony on Thursday. This hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:45 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the Chair.]

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