Senator VOINOVICH. OK, thank you, Senator.

The witnesses would agree that human beings have contributed to warming the atmosphere? Both of you agree to that, that there is a thing called global warming that is occurring and that we contribute to it in some fashion? Do both witnesses agree to that? Dr. TRENBERTH. I would agree.

Dr. LINDZEN. Sure, as long as you put no numbers on it.

Senator VOINOVICH. OK, all right. I am going to get into a practical situation. If we assume that wind, solar, hydro, and some of these other things that are being talked about cannot currently or in the near future respond to the energy demands of the United States of America, and we take into consideration that we are seeing some astronomic increases in energy costs going on throughout our country-particularly in my own State, the heating bills of people there and the businesses have been just extreme, particularly for businesses.

I believe, for example, that the heating energy cost thing is really contributing substantially to the recession that we are in today in this country. We have to look at more nuclear, and let's say, contrary to what Senator Reid said, moving away from fossils, that we have to take advantage of the 250 years of coal fossil fuel we have available today in this country. There are some who argue that we should have mandatory caps on the amount of CO2 emissions.

The question is, if we do go forward and we burn coal, and we use the best clean coal technology that is available, what do you think about the issue of having some type of mandatory cap on CO2 connected with that? Now the President has basically said he is not for that, CO2 should not be part of that consideration. The issue is, should we mandate a cap on it at a national level or should we rather say that there is no question that there is a problem that man is contributing and that fossil fuel probably is one of the contributors to it, and that we ought to be doing everything to encourage people to reduce CO2, including sequestration, and so forth, but not make it mandatory, in light of the fact the cost involved in that kind of thing would be very expensive, and therefore, drive up the cost of energy in this country? Do you understand the question?

Dr. TRENBERTH. I think perhaps I can comment somewhat sensibly on it at least. One of the problems with the cap is, how do you trace who exceeded their allotment? This is part of the problem actually also with Kyoto. What would the penalty actually be? I think there are a lot of problems with a cap, and that probably isn't the way you would want to go about doing things.

The whole timeline is a considerable issue. This is true also with Kyoto. On the one hand, there is a need for binding targets, but the timelines that are needed have to take into account the changes in technology that are needed. So if you are dealing with the motorcar, a 10-year timeline is a reasonable timeline. If you are dealing with a coal-fired power station, then the lifetime of the power station is 35 or 40 years, and what you want to do is to make sure that, when that power station has reached its fruitful life, that maybe new technology is used to replace it, if you don't want to write that thing off and have a big economic cost as a result. So the way in which you go about doing these things and multiple timelines seem to me to be a useful thing to do.

Another part of this with regard to caps and related things is that this is a global problem—and this is one of the things we have just been highlighting with Kyoto-is that there are not targets for a number of developing countries. I think that is, indeed, a problem. On the other hand-well, I won't comment further on Kyoto. I think that Kyoto is a useful basis for moving ahead perhaps, but it does require then international negotiations also in order to really deal with this problem, but leadership by the United States in showing how we might go about it could be a big step forward. Senator VOINOVICH. Dr. Lindzen?

Dr. LINDZEN. Yes, I said to Senator Reid, the we don't pretend expertise on energy policy, but there is one mathematical statement one can make. If one needs to optimize a policy for economical, efficient, and pollution-free energy reduction, one does not generally aid the optimization by putting additional constraints on it. We have to decide our own priorities, and if this is not per se a priority, the others will not be helped by it. You can do a better job without it.

Senator VOINOVICH. Any of the other Senators here want to ask questions of the witnesses?

[No response.]

I want to thank you very much. This has been very helpful to me, and I think I am less confused than I was before.

Dr. Trenberth?

Dr. TRENBERTH. You were citing some magazines before, and I just thought I might add one to your collection. The latest issue of Environment magazine, the May issue, the cover story is on human influence on climate, and, in fact, the cover story is by myself. It is actually a summary and a commentary on the latest IPCC report.

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you very much. I will get it.

I really appreciate the two of you being here today.

Our next panel and I appreciate their patience here this morning is Dr. John R. Christy, Dr. Jae Edmonds, Dr. Rattan Lal, Mr. James E. Rogers, and Dr. Marilyn A. Brown.

I think the witnesses are all familiar with the procedure here. They had a chance to watch it.

Our first witness will be Dr. John R. Christy. Dr. Christy is an Associate Professor, Department of Atmospheric Science, the University of Alabama at Huntsville. Dr. Christy, thank you for being here.

STATEMENT OF JOHN R. CHRISTY, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA IN

HUNTSVILLE

Dr. CHRISTY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members. Actually, I was promoted 3 or 4 years ago to professor. I am also Alabama State Climatologist and recently served as one of the lead authors of the IPCC. I am glad to be back in front of this committee to testify about climate change again.

I will refer to the figures that are in the back of your written testimony I have submitted.

I want to say first that carbon dioxide, the agent thought to exert the largest part of human-related climate change, is literally the

lifeblood of the planet. The green world you see around you would not be here without it. Carbon dioxide means life, and at several times its current value promoted the development of the plant world we now depend on and enjoy. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.

Now will CO2 affect the climate significantly? The models suggest the answer is yes, though I have serious doubts. A common feature of climate model projections with CO2 increases

Senator VOINOVICH. Dr. Christy, I wear hearing aids, and you are speaking very fast, and I am having a hard time understanding. Could you slow down a little bit? I know you want to get what you can in in the 5-minutes, but if you could slow down

Dr. CHRISTY. Excuse me. A common feature of climate model projections with CO2 increases is a rise in the global temperature of the atmospheric layer from the surface to 30,000 feet. This temperature rise itself is projected to be significant at surface, with similar or increasing magnitude as one rises through this layer we call the troposphere.

Over the past 22 years, calculations of surface temperature, indeed, show a rise between 0.5 and 0.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This is about half the total rise in the last 100 years. In the troposphere, however, there are estimates which include the satellite data that Dr. Roy Spencer of NASA and I produced, which show there is only a slight warming, 0 to 0.15 degrees Fahrenheit, as shown in figure 1. New evidence, shown in figures 2 and 3, corroborate that many different systems show the same thing: the bulk of the atmosphere has not warmed in the past 22 years.

Now since my last appearance before this committee there has been 1 year above the 20-year average and two below it. Rather than seeing a rise in global temperature that increases with altitude, as climate models project, we see that in the real world since 1979 the warming decreases substantially with altitude.

Am I coming across?

Senator VOINOVICH. Yes, thank you.

Dr. CHRISTY. So the reality of the past 22 years may only indicate that the climate experiences large, natural variations in the vertical temperature structure which climate models have yet to reproduce. However, this means that any attention drawn to the surface temperature rise over the past 20-plus years as evidence of climate change must also acknowledge the fact that the bulk of the atmosphere that was projected to warm has not.

One modeler told me recently that the surface versus troposphere difference was the largest problem they faced. Well, this is a curious phenomenon, but we don't live 30,000 feet in the atmosphere and we don't live in a global average. We live in specific places on the earth.

Making projections for local regional places is virtually impossible. I will show an example from Alabama, figure 4. You will see several climate model runs of temperature showing Alabama's temperature from 1860 to the present and then beyond to 2100. It is clear that the model runs did not do especially well over the time period of observations, and none predicted the cooling that we have actually experienced in the State of Alabama. If in trying to repro

duce the past we see such errors, we can only expect to see similar errors in the predictions.

I want the committee to be very, very skeptical of media reports in which weather extremes are used as proof of human-induced climate change. Weather extremes occur somewhere all the time. For example, the U.S. temperature for last November/December combined was estimated to be the coldest since records began in 1895. That does not prove that the United States or the globe is cooling or that climate is changing unnaturally. What it demonstrates is that extremes occur all the time.

Other climate data gives similar nonalarmist results, and therefore, are overlooked by the media. As we showed in the IPCC, hurricanes have not increased; thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes have not increased. Droughts and wet spells, as shown in figure 5, in the United States have not increased or decreased.

I will skip that piece right there; I see the yellow light. I am decidedly an optimist about this situation. Our country is often criticized for producing 25 percent of the world's anthropogenic CO2. However, we are rarely recognized and applauded for producing with that CO2 25 percent of what the world really wants and needs: its food, technology, medical advances, defense, and so on. As figure 7 shows, we in the United States will continue to produce more and more of the world wants with increasing energy efficiency.

In summary, I would say, as someone who actually produces and analyzes climate information, that I find pronouncements today about climate change catastrophes due to increased greenhouse gases to be very overly alarmist. Thank you.

Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Dr. Christy.

Dr. Edmonds, who is from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Dr. Edmonds.

STATEMENT OF JAE EDMONDS, PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY, BATTELLE MEMORIAL INSTITUTE Dr. EDMONDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for the opportunity to testify here this morning on energy and climate. My presence here today is possible because the U.S. Department of Energy has provided me and my team at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory long-term research supports, and without that support, much of the knowledge base on which I draw today would not exist. That having been said, I come here today to speak as a researcher, and the views I express are mine alone.

I will focus my remarks on two matters: first, the timing of the global response decline or change needed to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and, two, the need to expedite the development of technologies to achieve this goal at reasonable cost. My remarks are grounded in a small number of important observations.

The United States is a party to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has as its objective the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. This is not the same as stabilizing emissions. Be

cause emissions accumulate in the atmosphere, the concentration of carbon dioxide will continue to rise indefinitely even if emissions are held at current levels or slightly reduced. Limiting the concentration of CO2, the most important greenhouse gas, means that the global energy system must be transformed by the end of the 21st century. Given the long life of energy infrastructure, preparations for that transformation must start today.

In 1996, Drs. Wigley, Richels and I published an economics-based analysis of carbon emissions time paths that would stabilize CO2 concentrations. This work indicates that an energy transition must begin in the very near future.

For example, for a global concentration of 550 parts per million, global CO2 emissions must begin to break from present trends within the next 10 to 15 years. Given that it takes decades to go from energy research to the practical application of the research within some commercial energy technology, and then perhaps another three to four decades before that technology is widely deployed throughout the global energy market, we will likely have to make this deflection from present trends with technologies that are already developed.

To reduce global emissions even further would require a fundamental transformation in the way we use energy, and that will only be possible if we have an energy technology revolution. That will only come about if we increase our investments in energy

R&D.

The global energy system, and not just the United States energy system, must undergo a transition from a one in which emissions continue to grow throughout the century into one in which emissions keep and then begin to decline. Coupled with significant global population and economic growth, this transition represents a daunting task, even if the concentration as high as 750 parts per million is eventually determined to meet the goal of the Framework Convention.

A credible commitment to limit cumulative emissions is also needed to move new energy technologies off the shelf and into widespread adoption in the marketplace. The cost of stabilizing the concentration of greenhouse gases will depend on many factors, including the desired concentration, economic and population growth, and the portfolio of energy technologies that might be made available. Not surprisingly, if the costs are lower, the better and more cost-effective the portfolio of energy technologies that can be developed.

The Global Energy Technology Strategy Program to address climate change is an international public/private sector collaboration advised by an eminent steering group. Analysis conducted during the first phase of that program supports the need for a diverse technology portfolio. No single technology controls the cost of stabilizing CO2 concentrations under all circumstances. The portfolio of energy technologies that is employed varies across space and time. Regional differences inevitably lead to different technology mixes in different nations, while changes in technology options over time inevitably lead to different technology mixes across time.

Recent trends in public and private spending on energy research and development in the world and in the United States suggests