protect themselves, they will be less vulnerable to any kind of rise in the sea level. I might also want to say something as an economist about energy efficiency. Energy efficiency, of course, is a good thing, but it is not the end of everything. For example, again, a homey example, I read recently of a Geo Metro car. It got 55 miles to the gallon. It is a real efficient car. I was scared, petrified when I was on a freeway. There is nothing between you and anything else. It is a small, lightweight thing that if you run into anything, even with all the seat belts and air bags, you are probably dead meat. So there are other things besides energy efficiency, like safety, like convenience, and consumers and business people take these into account in imposing them and adopting a strategy. Now, we do have problems in some former communist countries where they had priced energy so low that it was totally wastefully used. They should be raising their energy to world market prices. That would make their economies more efficient and reduce consumption. Mr. EHLERS. We have to bring this to a close. Let me just observe, economists generally go wrong on energy efficiency because they try to fit it into econometric models, which really are not appropriate for energy usage. We don't have time to get into that here. But I would also comment that if everyone drove Geo Metros, there would be no problem. Mr. MOORE. Oh, yes, there would. You run into a telephone pole, a truck, run off the road. Mr. ÉHLERS. No. Absolutely not. That is not. I am sorry. I see all the scientists agreeing with me. By simple laws of physics, the only thing you have to worry about is running into a truck. Mr. MOORE. There will be trucks on the road. Mr. EHLERS. Pardon me? Mr. MOORE. There are going to be buses on the road. You run into a truck or a bus. Mr. EHLERS. That's right. Trucks and buses, you worry about. You do not worry about telephone poles or concrete abutments. Mr. ROHRABACHER. I think the Chair should interrupt this academic squabble. [Laughter.] Mr. EHLERS. Don't interrupt me when I am right. Mr. ROHRABACHER. Obviously, we have two different disciplines. at play here. Mr. Olver, would you like to proceed for 5 minutes? I am sorry. My appetite got so whetted or my interests so piqued this morning, but then other things got into the equation along the way. I have to say I am always stunned by the gentlemen and gentleman from Michigan and the equanimity that he brings to these kinds of discussions, and I am very grateful always for what he raises, and I will return to a couple of things that he has said along the way. From my point of view, I try to take the long view on things like this, and global warming, it seems to me, and the environmental is about as critical an issue, and there are probably some more things that go with it. The ozone layer stuff certainly is a part of the overall environmental issue. But I must say that it seems to me a very simple way of describing what I have heard this morning from the two panels, and it is exceptionally simple compared with the complexity of this, is the elephant that is being described by a group of different people who have blindfolds on them. Sometimes I am not sure whether it is just blindfolds or the people doing the description are blind, whether they are back there or up here in the process, and it is probably some combination of both. I would say that, as a comment to Mr. Moore, Dr. Moore, that, yes, there may be some climate improvement, but on the other hand we also know of many cases where the climate has changed dramatically in the adverse way. Many of the deserts that we have now were fine growing areas at one other time. So there are usually some, whether they are equivalent things happening in the other direction and the business about I really wonder about the suggestion that merely industrializing Bangladesh will do anything much about what effect the sea rise would have on Bangladesh. They are perhaps the most outrider kind of view of where poverty is at the moment and also where the impact of sea rise might occur. You wanted to say something? Mr. MOORE. Well, just on the desert portion, the Sahara Desert, during the warm period that I described earlier in my testimony, 3,000, 6,000, 7,000 years ago was actually a period where cave drawings from that period of time showing hippopotamuses, canoes, and other animals that you don't find in that desert area now was obviously much wetter during that warm period than it is today. One would expect that. Actually, a warm period will move the rain, the monsoon rain further north, and so both Saudi Arabia and that area and Sahara was much wetter during that warm period. Mr. OLVER. I don't doubt it at all. I wanted to comment to Dr. Corell about the modeling. It seems just in the last month or so we have had a rather dramatic new situation in regard to space data coming from space analysis having to do with plate tectonics and where the plate boundaries are and so on, because what had been quite coarse kinds of data taken of the ocean bed now we have kind of continuous data and some extremely much finer sort of data was now available on just the issue of what were the depths of the ocean. That is a much simpler single dimensional kind of an issue compared with the whole issue of climate. I mean, I can imagine we will even improve greatly in that area in that single dimension whereas when we are talking about climate, I think the record is all there. And modeling, if one is doing proper modeling, is probably modeling that if we had that record of all the way from longterm fossils to tree rings and sediments and a whole variety of other things, we probably could go back and read with much greater accuracy than now we think about is what happened climatically in various places going back some period of time. So good modeling, while good modeling with great luck with data and great advance with data might be able to get us to the point where we could know really what the combination of long-term natural effects and short-term natural effects were as climate has evolved over time. Now, what we are dealing with largely in global warming is the issue of whether or not this species has had an effect over and above whatever one could find in reality which is going backward versus what we would like to be able to predict from those models going forward if we knew what all the things ought to be considered. And we are always finding new and making new corrections in items that ought to be considered in our models, which we had some argument about. But consider we will always have arguments about what is considered and whether the correction is complete or correct or needs another perturbation along the way to deal with it properly. But I think that our modeling surely will improve greatly over time. Now, I would like to address those more or less comments and some people may want to comment back or whatever at you chance. But I wanted to go over to Dr. Nierenberg. It is perhaps a little bit presumptuous of me after the bouquets that have been sent you by the gentlemen and gentleman from Michigan here earlier. You are a physicist, I have now discovered, not an oceanographer. Mr. NIERENBERG. Oh, I am both. Mr.OLVER. You started as a physicist. Mr. NIERENBERG. Yes, sir. Mr. OLVER. And you are now retired? Is that so? Mr. NIERENBERG. Oh, I am retired now, yes. Mr. OLVER. Yes. Mr. NIERENBERG. But we do have a subject called physical oceanography. Mr.OLVER. That's fine. In your testimony, that was the one thing in this in and out that I did manage to read with some degree of care, in your testimony, these two documents that you base it, are these your documents? Mr. NIERENBERG. Yes, sir. Mr. OLVER. These are your writings. These are not your research papers but they are rather what might be called review papers? Mr. NIERENBERG. Exactly. That is precisely right. Mr. OLVER. The literature at the particular time. But these are much more recent than your chairmanship of the national science committee? Mr. NIERENBERG. These are within the last couple of years. Mr. OLVER. Yes. Now, the point which Mr. Ehlers addressed I would like to address again. I think it is rather critical and rather important to this whole discussion, and I would like to understand a little bit more clearly how you move from a position of feeling that there is urgency to one of feeling much greater equanimity is this process. Mr. NIERENBERG. Well, you could call it a mistake on my part of 12 years ago or whatever. Mr. OLVER. After 12 years you see things Mr. NIERENBERG. What happened was when we did our competition for the academy, it came out in 1993, of course we had to cover a huge literature. There were papers in the literature that had specific curves showing utilization of fossil fuel, you know, over_tine and how it would behave in the atmosphere after it was all exhausted. It was precisely that. I took those curves as published, you see, and they did show a thousand-year decay period. Mr. OLVER. Okay. Now, you mentioned, though, a particular model that particularly struck you now. Mr. NIERENBERG. Oh, yes. Mr. OLVER. For instance, Dr. Watson, this model that Dr. Nierenberg points out, is that one that you have now examined and had an opportunity to look at to judge or assess the implications of that model, the model from 1991, the German model, '90, 91, whatever it was, the Hamburg model? Mr. WATSON. I haven't personally examined it in detail, but it has been examined in detail by people associated with the IPCC. What Dr. Nierenberg says about how the lifetime is not a thousand years is absolutely correct. It is not only Dr. Nierenberg's model, it is Dr. Mahlman's model, the GFDL, and many others. The first half-life, you've got CO2 in the atmosphere, the first half-life is probably 30 to 50 years. The next half will come out in maybe 100 to 150 years and the third in maybe in 500 years. So, indeed, it is not a thousand years. Mr. OLVER. It is not a normal radioactive decay half-life, it's a different kind of a half-life process? Mr. WATSON. Exactly. Mr. OLVER. One of diffusion and slow reaching of an equilibrium state. Mr. WATSON. Exactly. Mr. OLVER. It takes a very long time for any particular input of CO2. Mr. WATSON. Correct. It's got multiple half-lives, and a number that Bill would suggest, 100 to 150 years, most would say that's a reasonable way to look at it. I come to a very, very different policy conclusion, though, than Bill, unfortunately, and that is 100 and 150 years is still a very long time for policy formulation. Just think of the stratospheric ozone issue. The average lifetime of those fluorocarbons is also 50 to 100 years. Even though we have banned them 100 percent, midlatitude ozone depletion and the Antarctic ozone hole will be here for at least into the middle of the next century. Therefore, if we were to allow carbon dioxide to build up to a level where we find there was adverse environmental damage, human health, loss of forest, sea level rise, any of these, and then we wanted to reverse that damage, we still are within hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years, even if you accept Bill's numbers. So it's not a quick policy fix basically. Mr. OLVER. Dr. Nierenberg, is the model one which is a way of interpreting data? I have a copy of one of the papers here that would be "Progress and Problems" paper, in which my impression, my impression of the references that you use is not the German reference but a different reference. Mr. NIERENBERG. Yes, there are two of them, sir. Mr. OLVER. I see. Mr. NIERENBERG. In fact, just rereading it, I am a little embarrassed. It turns out that the reference I specifically give in Tells is very detailed. Let me explain the difference. The German reference, you see, is that to an ocean model. And the reason I chose it was that it was the first one to come up with this effect. It is true that the other models now give more or less the same answers. But the German model wasn't specifically done for that purpose. Mr. NIERENBERG. No. No. I didn't talk to the authors. Mr. NIERENBERG. I have listened to papers by Professor Hasselman of the first. In fact, that is what got me my start. Mr. OLVER. See, I am not sure but what we are talking, the thing that is bothering me, maybe you already-maybe it comes in, maybe you agree in large measure with what Watson has just finished saying about how much the half-lives occur and how there is a much longer half-life for another, because my impression at least of a quick reading, I must say, of the paper that you cite, is that they do, in fact, say that a fair amount of it goes away quite quickly and then there is still quite a lot that stays a very long period of time. Mr. NIERENBERG. No, it's not quite a lot. It, you know, Mr. Chair man Mr.OLVER. If it's half-life, half-life, then we know that Mr. NIERENBERG. No, no, but there are coefficients in front. Mr.OLVER. [continuing] -it would be one-eighth that is sitting there over a long period of time. Mr. NIERENBERG. No, there are coefficients in front, and it is not a lot that is left over. Let me make one little correction. There is still another one. There is about a two-year half-life right in the very beginning that we ignore entirely. See, the first thing that happens is we put the CO2 in the atmosphere and within a very short time half of it goes into the upper ocean. But that half-life, we just don't even discuss. Mr. OLVER. Yes. Well, that is really not worth discussing. Correct? Mr. NIERENBERG. That's right. Then we have, you see Mr. NIERENBERG. Then we have a series of other seats with coefficients. I tried to say it here, but of course it's abbreviated, that depending on how long you put in your CO2 and what the shape is of how you put in the CO2, so is your response, you see. I just |