fuel cells and how you allocate these resources in a way that makes the most sense overall. There is no question that we have a real challenge on our hands.

I want to thank the panelists. I thought that you have different points of view, but I think there is a coming together that it is time in this country that we look at our energy needs, our environmental needs, and try to the best of our ability harmonize those so that we come up with some national energy policy that makes sense and takes into consideration the fact that the consumers are also in the room, and for the past number of years they haven't been there. They are real concerned about what we are doing in this area.

I am sure that we will be calling upon some of you to help us grapple with this problem. I believe that if we put each other's shoes on, we can come up with something that is going to really be meaningful for our country. I really believe if we don't come up with this energy policy that is sensible, we are in deep trouble in terms of our competitive position in the world marketplace, and we should be leaders.

Maybe we ought to go back and try to rewrite Kyoto and come back and say this thing started out maybe pie in the sky and wasn't realistic. Let's get real and come back with some stuff that we are willing to do and you are going to have to be willing to do it. It may not be as ambitious as what some would like it to be, but it does move us along in a way that makes sense.

Thank you very much for coming today.

[Whereupon, at 12:28 p.m., the committee was adjourned, to reconvene at the call of the chair.]

[Additional statements submitted for the record follow:]

STATEMENT OF HON. HARRY REID, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEVADA I'm glad we're having this hearing, Mr. Chairman. I hope it leads to action soon. For every year that goes by without Congress or the President making a serious effort to reduce greenhouse gases, the odds increase that my grandchildren are going to inherit a warmer and more chaotic world.

A recent study by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calculates that there is a one in four chance that the world will warm between 5 and 7 degrees Fahrenheit in the next 100 years. I don't like those odds at all. Not when we're talking about the future. I hope we're going to spend more time on this complicated subject than the committee has to date. The committee hasn't looked at this matter directly for over 2 years.

Our committee has a responsibility and the jurisdiction to develop legislation that reduces manmade emissions that cause or have the potential to cause harm to the environment and public health. It is far past time for this committee to do its duty and produce some proposals.

I hope we can work together to develop bipartisan legislation to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. I understand that my colleagues have been put in a difficult position by the President's decision to reverse his campaign promise on reductions of carbon dioxide from power plants.

But, it's time for leadership and progress. I would like this committee to be the laboratory of new bipartisan initiatives for cutting greenhouse gases. We will just have to hope that the Administration is equally interested in such progress.

There has been a lot of talk about voluntary versus mandatory requirements to reduce these gases. My colleagues know that the nation has a Senate-ratified commitment to reduce emissions to 1990 levels. That was to have been accomplished through voluntary measures. Unfortunately, we have failed miserably using voluntary means. We're now about 13 percent above our target.

So, what we need is a comprehensive approach that achieves real net reductions by a time certain. I don't know of any other way to get the ball rolling.

Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions must come down. The Senate has already made that policy decision. Scientists at the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) and elsewhere can help us how to determine which policy options are most useful and when they should be implemented. But, it's time for opponents of that decision to work with us on real world reduction strategies.

It's now our job to figure out how to accomplish that goal in the most effective and expeditious way. I'm glad we have some witnesses here on the second panel to tell us about policies we might adopt to move in the right direction.

Unfortunately, from what little I've heard about the Administration's energy policy plan, it doesn't sound as if it moves in the right direction for climate purposes or for protecting the environment.

We need a plan that reduces harmful emissions, not increases them. Press accounts describing the Administration plan say it would simply result in burning more fossil fuels. That's short-sighted and irresponsible. It has little or no chance of getting wide, bipartisan support.

Emphasizing increased and inefficient fossil fuel use-when we know that carbon concentrations in the atmosphere are higher than they've been in 400,000 years— is a little bit like handing the Emperor Nero a fiddle to play while Rome burns.

A strong and supportable energy plan would first emphasize renewable energy, energy efficiency and conservation. Then, once all the economically viable energy is wrung out of those resources, we can turn to cleaner and safer uses of coal and other traditional fuels.

As my colleagues may have heard me say before, Nevada has a wealth of clean and climate-friendly renewable resources, particularly geothermal, wind and solar. We are more than willing to share our abundance with the nation. But, I can't support a plan that relegates these sources to obscurity. It wouldn't make economic or environmental sense for my State.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to be constructive and I want results. But, I'm not interested in amending the Clean Air Act or any other environmental statutes as part of an energy plan that doesn't make tangible cuts in greenhouse gases.

If left unchecked, many believe the growth in these emissions could have potentially serious effects. Rising global temperatures are expected to raise sea level, change precipitation and other local climate conditions. Changes in regional climates could alter forests, crop yields and water supplies. Such shifting climate patterns and more frequent violent weather, such as floods and droughts, could mean more trouble for Montana's and the nation's farming and ranching families and communities.

I believe that we need to take action to address the consequences of climate change. Kyoto was an important first step. Although most agree that it would have been impossible for the United States and other developed nations to meet the emissions targets contained in the Kyoto Protocol, I don't think that abandoning the entire Protocol was the best approach. We can still work toward implementing some of the market-based mechanisms that were adopted in principle and Kyoto. We can still work to engage the entire world in trying to reach a workable solution. In reality, we have to engage the entire world, including developing nations.

The simple fact is, developing countries, such as China, India and Brazil, emit about 40 percent of the world's greenhouse gases. We can't reach a solution by addressing only 60 percent of the problem. Unless all countries participate, we risk giving our competitors an unfair advantage. The participation of developing countries is absolutely necessary.

Whether we like it or not, the world still looks to the United States to take the lead on this and many other important global issues. We can continue to advance the science of climate change and to pioneer research and development into advanced technologies that improve the efficiency of our power plants, automobiles and other greenhouse gas emitting facilities, technologies that we can export to the rest of the world. The worst thing we could do is abandon the issue entirely.

I look forward to hearing the expert testimony of today's witnesses. I and my colleagues certainly appreciate your insight and knowledge on this issue.

STATEMENT OF HON. JON S. CORZINE, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to commend you for holding this hearing on what I believe to be the most important environmental issue that we face-climate change. Mr. Chairman, this issue is enormously complex in every aspect. Scientifically. Economically. Politically.

But complexity is no excuse for inattention or inaction. Because the health and viability of the global ecosystems upon which we all depend are at stake.

I won't dwell here on the range and scope of potential climate change impacts, which are well documented elsewhere. Suffice it to say that no other issue that will come before this committee demands more serious attention. So I look forward to today's testimony on science and mitigation options, and I hope that this hearing is the beginning of a sustained effort. Because the time to act is now.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released its Third Assessment Report, and the science is increasingly clear and alarming. We know that human activities, primarily fossil fuel combustion, have raised the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide to the highest levels in the last 420,000 years. We know that the planet is warming, and that the balance of the scientific evidence suggests that most of the recent warming can be attributed to increased atmospheric greenhouse gas levels. We know that without concerted action by the U.S. and other countries, greenhouse gases will continue to increase. Finally, we know that climate models have improved, and that these models predict warming under all scenarios that have been considered. Even the smallest warming predicted by current models-2.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century-would represent the greatest rate of increase in global mean surface temperature in the last 10,000 years.

Mr. Chairman, when I consider these findings, I conclude that we need to begin now to mitigate climate change. We can and should improve the science of climate change. But a call for more research should not obscure or minimize what we already know.

Mr. Chairman, the Senate—and the Environment Committee in particular—needs to provide leadership on this issue. President Bush has pulled back from the Kyoto protocol, leaving a policy vacuum in his wake. He has pledged to craft an alternative to Kyoto, but in the meantime, he will soon issue an energy policy proposal that, by all reports, will not address climate change in a meaningful way. If this is trueand I sincerely hope that it is not-then we can only conclude that President Bush is not serious about addressing climate change.

So the task of dealing with climate change would appear to fall to us. Mr. Chairman, current and future generations are depending on us. To give you one example, the people of New Jersey are depending on me to protect their treasured Atlantic Ocean beaches. Like all coastal areas, these beaches are threatened by projected changes in sea levels due to climate change. I am concerned about this impact. I am concerned about climate change impacts across New Jersey, the country and the globe.

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses. I hope that they can help us to identify sensible mitigation policy options that the committee can continue to work on. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD S. LINDZEN, ALFRED P. SLOAN PROFESSOR OF
METEOROLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

I wish to thank Senator Voinovich, Senator Smith and the Environment and Public Works Committee for the opportunity to clarify the nature of consensus and skepticism in the Climate Debate. I have been involved in climate and climate related research for over 30 years during which time I have held professorships at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. I am a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the author or coauthor of over 200 papers and books. I have also been a participant in the proceedings of the IPCC (the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). The questions I wish to address are the following: What can we agree on and what are the implications of this agreement? What are the critical areas of disagreement? What is the origin of popular perceptions? I hope it will become clear that the designation, "skeptic," simply confuses an issue where popular perceptions are based in significant measure on misuse of language as well as misunderstanding of science. Indeed, the identification of some scientists as "skeptics" permits others to appear "mainstream" while denying views held by the so-called “skeptics” even when these views represent the predominant views of the field.

Climate change is a complex issue where simplification tends to lead to confusion, and where understanding requires thought and effort. Judging from treatments of this issue in the press, the public has difficulty dealing with numerical magnitudes and focuses instead on signs (increasing v. decreasing); science places crucial emphasis on both signs and magnitudes. To quote the great 19th Century English scientist, Lord Kelvin, "When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind."

As it turns out, much of what informed scientists agree upon is barely quantitative at all:

that global mean temperature has probably increased over the past century, that CO2 in the atmosphere has increased over the same period,

that the added CO2 is more likely to have caused global mean temperature to increase rather than decrease, and

that man, like the butterfly, has some impact on climate.

Such statements have little relevance to policy, unless quantification shows significance.

The media and advocacy groups have, however, taken this agreement to mean that the same scientists must also agree that global warming "will lead to rising sea waters, droughts and agriculture disasters in the future if unchecked" (CNN). According to Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters, "Science clearly shows that we are experiencing devastating impacts because of carbon dioxide pollution." (Carbon dioxide, as a "pollutant" is rather singular in that it is a natural product of respiration, non-toxic, and essential for life.) The accompanying cartoon suggests implications for severe weather, the ecosystem, and presumably plague, floods and droughts (as well as the profound politicization of the issue). Scientists who do not agree with the catastrophe scenarios are assumed to disagree with the basic statements. This is not only untrue, but absurdly stupid.

Indeed, the whole issue of consensus and skeptics is a bit of a red herring. If, as the news media regularly report, global warming is the increase in temperature caused by man's emissions of CO2 that will give rise to rising sea levels, floods, droughts, weather extremes of all sorts, plagues, species elimination, and so on, then it is safe to say that global warming consists in so many aspects, that widespread agreement on all of them would be suspect ab initio. If it truly existed, it would be evidence of a thoroughly debased field. In truth, neither the full text of the IPCC documents nor even the summaries claim any such agreement. Those who