Page images
PDF
EPUB

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. DANIEL K. AKAKA, U.S. SENATOR FROM HAWAII

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The scientific evidence presented at last Wednesday's hearing offers a classic example of a story with good news and bad news.

The bad news is that global warming is virtually certain to occur. There is broad agreement in the scientific community with the IPCC and National Academy of Sciences predictions on global climate change and the associated impacts.

The good news is that we can prevent a bad situation from getting worse. Actions we undertake today to curb our emissions of greenhouse gases will be an insurance policy against the damaging effects of global warming many decades from now.

Unfortunately, the United States is not doing enough to turn the good news into reality. At last week's negotiating session in New York, the United States had an opportunity to demonstrate its leadership on global warming. Among the world's major industrialized nations, only the United States has failed to commit itself to stabilizing emissions of carbon dioxide at 1990 levels by the year 2000.

The U.N. negotiating session was a defining moment in world affairs. What we needed was a clear commitment from the administration to implement a strategy to protect the global environment.

Unfortunately, all the administration negotiators would agree to was "voluntary" goals. If the United States cannot agree to anything more than voluntary goals, no one should expect anything more than voluntary results. Instead of hemming and hawing, the United States ought to be taking a leadership role in reducing the world output of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Statement of Senator Frank H. Murkowski
before the

Energy and Natural Resources Committee
United States Senate

Tuesday, May 12, 1992

Mr. Chairman, we are caught in the quagmire of a catch-22. We cannot confront poverty and population increases without economic growth. However, the engine of economic growth -- industrial production -- could be the cause of pollution and greenhouse gasses that may threaten our planet's future.

There are two sides of this emotional debate:

On one side, we have a group of aggressive, emotional global

environmentalists who contend that nothing less than a fundamental restructuring of our economic system, a global redistribution of wealth, a revolution in regulatory policies, lifestyles and the like, can save us from devastating global climate change.

On the other side, many economists contend that tried-and-true market forces, combined with new technological innovations, will curtail pollution and allow continued economic growth.

I'll confess that I don't know the scope and extent of global change. But I strongly believe that this is an area where science must guide the policymakers.

We may be momentarily swayed by the emotional arguments of the interest groups on either side of this debate, but in the final analysis we need the hard, scientific findings of leading scientists -- who are willing to place their reputations on the line by subjecting their findings to the scrutiny of their peers -- before we can transform national and international policy.

Last week, we had a distinguished panel of scientists before this Committee. I believe it's fair to say that there was not a scientific consensus. The fact is, there remains a great deal we don't know about our planet and its climate system. This is not a new problem. Back in 1981, I sponsored my first bill, with the assistance and cosponsorship of the late Senator Henry Jackson, then a beloved and respected member of this Committee. The Act we wrote, known as the Arctic Research in Policy Act, contained one of the first statements of national policy related to global change. The Act recognized that Arctic conditions “directly affect global weather patterns and must be understood...” and that "industrial pollution not originating in the Arctic collects in the polar air mass (with the] potential to disrupt global weather patterns."

Even though Congress recognized this more than a decade ago, we have yet to develop a comprehensive climate model that satisfactorily illustrates how the Earth's climate system works both today and in the past. We have not yet determined the magnitude of observable climate change attributable to industrial production.

The President has proposed an impressive Global Change Research Program. His FY 1993 budget request contains $1.4 billion -- up 24% from the FY 1992 level. I believe the President can be commended for his leadership in this area. However, I do have a few observations about the President's program.

Having looked over some of the climate models and data, it strikes me that we probably aren't doing enough global change research in the Arctic. I have some charts, Mr. Chairman, that I would ask be included in the record. They show various warming trends and climate models. As even the non-scientists among us can clearly see, the most dramatic climate change may occurring in the Arctic. Indeed, the Arctic is where you can best observe and study climate change.

That's why I find it somewhat perplexing that only 2% or so of the Climate Change research funds in NASA and NOAA are being spent in the Arctic. While I would hope that we are allowing the scientists -- not the politicians -- do the prioritization and design of research in the climate change program, as a layman I simply can't reconcile the charts I've entered into the record with the research spending I've observed.

But high priority global change science in the Arctic is indeed underway. One example is an extremely important ice coring project in Greenland by scientists from the University of Alaska. These scientists are drilling to the base of the Greenland ice sheet, more than 3000 meters deep. Once completed, we will have a highresolution historical record of temperature, precipitation, atmospheric chemistry and other climatic information dating back 200,000 years -- the past two ice ages!

In addition to this kind of "open" science, there is a potential to declassify and release information from intelligence and military assets that may provide scientists with new information related to global change. As Vice Chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, I am working with Director Gates, Senator Nunn, Senator Gore and others to accomplish this task, and to give the scientists all the tools they need to answer the questions we as policymakers are asking them.

I thank the Chairman for holding this hearing, and I look forward to the testimony of our distinguished witnesses.

###

58-759 - 92 - 6

[graphic][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][subsumed][ocr errors][ocr errors][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][ocr errors][subsumed][merged small][subsumed][graphic][ocr errors][ocr errors]
[graphic]

Figure 2. As in Figure 1, but for the seasonal temperatures. Seasons are defined as winter (December-February), spring

[ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »