advocacy tool for political agendas by making the following statement on page 10 of that report:

"Research on how to do more effective, credible, and helpful scientific assessment is badly needed. Of particular importance will be the development of assessment processes, that link knowledge producers and users in a dialog that builds a mutual understanding of what is needed, what can credibly be said, and how it can be said in a way that maintains both scientific credibility, and political legitimacy."

The National Academy proposes solid recommendations for implementing an effective research agenda, and I strongly endorse them.

Mr. Chairman, the National Academy is putting together and inviting all of us to a high-level, half-day forum at the Academy's headquarters that I would encourage all of us to attend. I have encouraged Paul O'Neill of the Treasury to be an attendee. He is an outspoken person on this issue. Clearly, we need to consult with our scientists, but in the process, I do believe we need to build computer models that we can rely on, and not rely on international models that do not have the sensitivity to a variety of the concerns, but most importantly, to the quality of the science involved.

Well, you have urged us to be brief, and I will conclude. There are important issues to be dealt with here, Mr. Chairman Thorough vetting by this Committee and others is critical, but I do believe we have come a long way, but I do not believe that the science today or the modeling available that brings that science together will lead us to a basis for sound policymaking. I think it is our responsibility to bring all of those tools together.

In visiting with Dr. Kennel the other day, he made it clear our science is good. The problem is, Mr. Chairman, is that the science is over here, and the modeling capability is over there, and we have not put those two together yet. We have all of those resources in our government. We have the supercomputers at the Department of Energy, and we have the brain trust that has been assembled by the National Research Council through the National Academy of Science. I think it is our responsibility to not only drive the process that helps put the proper models together and brings the resources of our federal government together that will allow us, this Committee and other committees, the kind of sound decisionmaking based on good science that the policy for this country demands.

Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Craig.
Senator Hagel.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHUCK HAGEL, U.S. SENATOR
FROM NEBRASKA

Senator HAGEL. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I, like our colleague, Senator Craig, am grateful for an opportunity to come before your Committee this morning and discuss an issue that I have been deeply involved in over the last several years. I have come across few issues, Mr. Chairman, more complex than climate change. What exactly is happening? What is the science? Are the actions of humans having a real impact on climate change? What is the future?

Most importantly, I think we asked ourselves, what do we do? None of these questions have simple answers We do know there has been climate change since the beginning of time. In fact, very radical climate change, long before the industrial revolution or the internal combustion engine.

Climate change, Mr. Chairman, is not new. In addressing this complicated issue, I start with this premise. Debate over climate change is not a question of who is for or against the environment. We all support protecting our involvement. I have yet to meet a Senator or any public official who wants to leave dirty air, dirty water, or a degraded environment as the legacy for his or her children. There may be one, Mr. Chairman. I have not met him or her. Over the last 3 months, three scientific working groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, have released thousands of pages of their work for the IPCC's assessment. The summaries of those reports are written not by the scientists, Mr. Chairman, but by U.N. environmental activists. There is a reason the organization is called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The summaries are political documents drafted by government representatives after intense negotiating sessions. In some cases, the very people sent to represent their countries in writing the IPCC summaries are later working to negotiate the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol, so you have the same people defining the problems who are also trying to create a solution.

The working group reports vary widely in their scientific conclusions and predictions for global warming during the next century, but the summaries tend to take very alarmist viewpoints which are then used to justify the draconian measures of the Kyoto Protocol. The IPCC summaries are not science, they are summaries. Furthermore, the predictions made by the IPCC are based on computer models, which have already been shown to be inadequate, and vary widely in their interpretations.

Just as you have noted, Mr. Chairman, as has Senator Craig, the National Research Council recently issued a report called the Science of Research nd Global Change, in that they discussed the abilities of current climate models and here is what they said,

"The United States today does not have computational and modeling capability needed to serve society's information needs for reliable environmental predictions and projections."

This is what the Clinton administration's Environmental Protection Agency has to say about computer climate models:

"Virtually all published estimates of how climate change could change in the U.S. are the result of computer models. These complicated models are still not accurate enough to provide a reliable forecast on how climate may change, and several models often yield very contradictory results."

This is from President Clinton's EPA.

We know that the earth's climate has, for thousands of years, gone through cycles of warming and cooling. Ice core samples from Greenland more than 2 miles deep, dating back more than 100,000 years, have shown dramatic fluctuations in the earth's temperature. Since the end of the Ice Age, the last Ice Age 11,000 years ago, when the earth was 12.6 degrees Fahrenheit colder than today, there have been several warming and cooling periods.

Over the last 100 years, surface temperatures have increased by approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit. However, most of that increase in surface temperature occurred before 1940, yet 80 percent of the manmade carbon dioxide was emitted after 1940. Furthermore, while temperatures on the earth's surface have risen slightly over the last two decades, satellite temperatures, which are far more accurate, have shown no warming over the last 20 years.

In fact, from 1979 to 1997, satellite temperatures showed a slight cooling trend of .04 degrees Fahrenheit. Even the scientists most associated with global warming, who we will hear from this morning, Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, issued a new analysis last year which said the emphasis on carbon dioxide emissions may be misplaced. He will obviously speak for himself, Mr. Chairman.

In 1988, Dr. Hansen testified before a Senate committee that human activities were causing global warming. In his report las August, he found that mandate emissions of carbon dioxide have already been falling. They shrank in 1998 and 1999.

In his report, he stated that other greenhouse gases such as methane, black soot, CFC's, and the compounds that create smog maybe causing more damage than carbon dioxide, and efforts to affect climate change should focus on these other gases because the technology already exists to capture many of them. The prospects for having a modest climate impact instead of disastrous one are quite good, I think, said Dr. Hansen, who was quoted as saying this in the New York Times on August 19, 2000.

Other preeminent climatologists and meteorologists have conducted studies which have offered credible alternatives for the causes of our warming trend. Dr. Sally Belinius, the director of science programs at Harvard's Center for Astrophysics has been able to closely correlate changes in the Sun's brightness with temperature changes on earth. Unlike climate models, her studies have been able to explain why most of the earth's warming in the last 100 years occurred before the significant growth in manmade greenhouse gas emissions. According to her work, solar activity may be the most direct factor in global warming.

Mr. Chairman, we know that we are far from understanding the dynamics of our climate and what stimulates the changes it undergoes. Increasing research and intensifying our scientific effort will help lead us to clear answers to the questions, what is going on, and what is causing it.

In the last Congress, Senators Murkowski, Craig, and I introduced legislation that would dramatically increase funding for research. I would like to thank you, Mr. Chairman and your fellow Commerce Committee members, Senators Dorgan, Brownback, Burns, Smith, others for cosponsoring that legislation. We will be updating and reintroducing this legislation in the next few weeks. In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, what do we do about climate change? Nothing? No, I do not believe so. None of us have advocated that. That would be irresponsible. However, it would have been equally irresponsible to submit this nation to a treaty that would have had a disastrous effect on our economy without having any real impact on global emissions of greenhouse gases.

President Bush's Interagency Task Force, reviewing climate change, has been listening to and learning from some of the world's foremost meteorologists, climatologists, and scientists in informal meetings. In fact, I believe some of the scientists we hear from this morning have been in those briefings. He has said that the administration will soon offer a relevant, science-based, realistic alternative to the Kyoto treaty. That is the responsible thing to do.

The United States is still a party to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Rio treaty, which was signed by the United States and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1992. We should go back to the framework of that treaty before the Berlin mandate of 1994 that excluded developing countries from participation and laid the groundwork for future international efforts. If we are creative, and our partners will work with us in good faith, we can negotiate arrangements that are responsible, proactive, and realistic.

The United States will need to demonstrate a commitment to act domestically before it will be able to build international support for action absent the Kyoto Protocol. It is in our best interests to create a domestic agenda that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions without the heavy hand of government mandates. A forward-looking domestic policy will demonstrate our commitment, enhance what we genuinely know about climate change, what we do not know about climate change, create m ore efficient energy sources, and have the additional effect of reducing pollutants.

Mr. Chairman, climate change is a serous issue that deserves serious consideration and, as I stated earlier, our colleagues, Senators Murkowski, Craig, and I, along with others, will soon introduce legislation to improve the scientific knowledge base and lay out positive steps that we can take now to address that change.

I again add my thanks, congratulations to you, your active participation, this Committee's oversight, to this effort. It will take all of us understanding more and more of not just the sound science dynamic of this, but what do we do about it, and how do we apply the resources that we have in this country and in the world to address this issue.

Mr. Chairman, thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you both, Senator Craig and Senator HAGEL. We appreciate your input, and we look forward to working with you as we address, as you noted, this issue of deep, growing and serious concern on the part of all Americans. Thank you very much for being here today.

Senator Stevens would like to make a comment or remarks before he has to go to another hearing.

STATEMENT OF HON TED STEVENS, U.S. SENATOR

FROM ALASKA

Senator STEVENS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I, too, congratulate you for these hearings.

I have just returned from the Arctic and our people in Alaska, along the Arctic Coast, are very worried about the change that they are observing now, and I intend to take a group of Senators and staff to Alaska over the Memorial Day recess to have hearings in Fairbanks with the International Arctic Research Commission on

the question. I wanted to call that to your attention, and those who are here. I hope many Senators will join us.

We have faced the problem of moving Native villages that have been located along the Arctic and West Coast of Alaska for centuries because they are slowly but surely being inundated by sea water. That is true of Point Barrow. I talked to some of my friends who have been out on the ice this year and they tell me that the ice thickness is probably 8 inches thinner this year than it was last year, and that we probably are going to have to move a substantial portion of Point Barrow.

The difficulty is, is that this is a creeping disaster. It is not a disaster-we are not even sure that it is covered by the existing disaster law, but very clearly what I want the Members of the Senate to see along with me and others, and listen to, some of the international people who have been working with the International Arctic Research Commission to try and define what we can expect with regard to the changes in the Arctic.

As you know, the Northwest Passage will be open for the third year in a row. We have observed open needs at the North Pole itself in the Arctic, and I think it is a very serious thing, particularly for my state and the people who live along the coastline of my state. I would be glad to invite any member of the committee who wants to join us.

We intend to stop two or three places and see, actually see the onslaught of the ocean on these people who live along the shore in our state, and then we will listen to some of the people from throughout the Northern Hemisphere and Japan and Canada and the United States, and try to tell us their predictions of what we can expect.

We hope we will get some idea of the timing of the impact on the Arctic, but I do thank you for the time right now, and I would urge any member of this Committee who wants to join us to let us know, because we will be leaving for that period.

There will be hearings in Fairbanks for 2 days right after Memorial Day and before that we will go up and look at the Arctic in two or three places to see what is happening there. Thank you very much for the time.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you, Senator Stevens, for what you had to say. It argues for taking more action than increasing our modeling capabilities. I thank you, Senator Stevens. I know you have to go.

Our next panel is-would they please come forward?-Dr. Venkatachala Ramaswamy, senior scientist, Geophysical Fluids Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, henceforward known as NOAA, Dr. James McCarthy, director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, Dr. Jayant Sathaye, senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Dr. James Hansen, chief of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, and Dr. Richard Lindzen, who is professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Dr. Ramaswamy.