The CHAIRMAN. As a scientist, I think you would be put in charge of making recommendations. I do not know who else we could refer to.

Dr. LIVERMAN. And what, you would like me to make recommendations on our report focuses on research, not on policy, so I am happy to speak about some of the research recommendations I would make. As a citizen, I might have opinions about policy.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Solow, is it true that a significant percentage of the ocean reefs are dying, coral reefs are dying?

Dr. SOLOW. It is certainly true that a significant percentage of coral reefs are, the condition of them is deteriorating and some parts of them are dying, that is true.

The CHAIRMAN. And do you attribute this to any, do you have any way of accounting for this?

Dr. SOLOW. Yes. I think it is generally believed that there are multiple sources for that. One of them is warming of the sea surface temperatures of the surface of the ocean, but there are pollution issues that are also associated with the degradation of reefs, and you might well expect there to be an interaction between those and other stresses on coral reef systems.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it upsetting to you that this is happening?
Dr. SOLOW. Yes, sure.

The CHAIRMAN. Obviously you have been in this business for a long time. Have you ever seen anything like this before?

Dr. SOLOW. There are certainly periods, historical periods where coral reefs have undergone changes, bleaching, things like that. There are coral reefs now in very deep water that at one time were in shallow water and were alive and thriving. And so, there are changes in coral reef ecosystems and in the geology of coral reefs, but I guess the best available signs would suggest that what we are seeing is unprecedented.

The CHAIRMAN. And we proceed in this panel, particularly on an issue like this, that there is no such thing as a dumb question.

This is the beginning of the food chain, right, in the oceans, the reefs?

Dr. SOLOW. Well, that is not a dumb question, sir, but I do not think that it is correct. I think that there are some parts of the ocean where there are coral reef systems and other parts of the ocean where there are not. And the parts that have more temperate climates, say where I live in Massachusetts, coral reef ecosystems are not very important to the food chain in the ocean. In other places, the coral reef systems are very important.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Alley, the Administration's budget request for the U.S. Global Climate Research Program is about $1.6 billion, which is a decrease of $143 million. The Climate Change Research Initiative is $182 million, an increase of $142 million. Do these request levels support the resources required to perform the research as required by this strategic plan?

Dr. ALLEY. It depends on how rapidly you would like an answer, or reduced uncertainty. Very clearly in a time or reduced resources, one must prioritize and one must reduce research. So to the extent that you would like to learn a lot in a hurry, reduced resources would not get you there as efficiently as more resources would. The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Janetos.

Dr. JANETOS. During the period that we reviewed the draft plan, the fiscal 2004 budget request had not yet been released. It obviously has been now. I think our committee's concern has been that the scope of the draft plan is significantly expanded over the scope of the program, the global change research program, its immediate predecessor. And we had felt that some of the new elements, such as the emphasis on decision support, are extraordinarily important. Our main concern is that with this increased scope, if that is not matched by resources, then the challenge is how will responsible managers, in fact, respond, what will they choose to do and what will they choose not to do.

And this is really the genesis of our concern with the lack of a clear set of priorities. Until there is a systematic approach at actually elaborating and setting out the scientific priorities, it is understandable both in the government and amongst the community of researchers who will actually do the science, it is difficult to know how the program will respond. And this is one of the weaknesses that we hope will be corrected when we see the next draft of the strategy.

The CHAIRMAN. Review also found that the current plan's description of decision support as a two- to 4-year activity, gives the false impression that decision support is needed only in the near term. What do we need, what mechanisms for long-term decision support are required? What environmental factors should be considered in the long-term research? Whoever feels most

Dr. LIVERMAN. I will start on that. Decision support is certainly needed in the long term, precisely because of some of the uncertainties and the possibilities for abrupt climate change that Dr. Alley's report looked at. So it seems to the committee that yes, we need to invest in decision support in the long term, and research on decision support, but this is something that needs to be a longterm and very integrated part of any long-term research plan that deals with climate and global change.

One other element of decision support is that certainly some of the research areas are not likely to produce results in the short term, but we already have evidence that work on decision support, providing climate information to stakeholders can be useful even now if we focus on things like climate forecasting, the use of historical climate information, and in a sense this is stakeholders' experience in using climate information to make decisions while we are waiting for some of the improvements in other areas of science.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Solow, do you believe that the ice packs at the poles are melting?

Dr. SOLOW. I think there is excellent evidence that glaciers at high latitudes are melting, and I think

The CHAIRMAN. I think that a visit to Glacier National Park would authenticate that, I do not think you need to be a scientist to know that.

of.

Dr. SOLOW. We can be certain of that, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank God. This is the first thing we are certain

[Laughter.]

Dr. SOLOW. If you do not mind, I was going to say that the answer to that question, while I agree that there is scientific uncer

tainty, I would be willing to bet that human activities have changed the climate and that these activities will continue to change the climate.

To get back to your question, there is also evidence of some melting at, in polar ice, Greenland, but some of those ice caps have extremely long memories and they are still responding to changes that occurred in the distant time past, so that is a question about which there is much uncertainty, whether we are seeing the effects of global warming, say, on melting of Antarctic ice, for example.

The CHAIRMAN. If this melting continues, does that have a fairly significant effect on places like Bangladesh, the Maldives, and these islands and shores and coastlines that have very little elevation?

Dr. SOLOW. Yes, sir, that is true, if the ice continues to melt and the water in the ocean expands as a result of warming, that sea level will rise and there are places in the world like Bangladesh and some low-lying island Nations where a relatively small amount of sea level rise could pose a problem.

The melting of the ice also in the North Atlantic has a connection to the kind of abrupt climate change that Dr. Alley has been talking about, so that is also an important consideration.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Liverman, in the Southwest as you well know, there is severe drought conditions. Do you view this as part of a cycle that goes on in the Southwest or do you think it has more implications than that?

Dr. LIVERMAN. Well, there have certainly been periods in the history of the Southwest where we have experienced droughts of the magnitude that we are experiencing at the moment. But that is not to say that the drought that we are experiencing is inconsistent with some of the projections about what global warming might do in the Southwest. To actually separate out whether this drought is different from other droughts is a very important area of research, but we have had more severe droughts in the long-term record in the Southwest.

However, we have got more people, we have a larger economy in the Southwest today, so the question about conditions in the Southwest and how we respond to it, I think is a very important area of research and decisionmaking, and some of the research that is laid out in the strategic plan will help us make decisions about those sorts of droughts and future climate change in very useful

ways.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you reached any tentative conclusions?

Dr. LIVERMAN. About whether this drought is related to global warming? I personally have not, but we have some major research activities that would be trying to answer that question. The CHAIRMAN. Senator Nelson.

STATEMENT OF HON. BILL NELSON,

U.S. SENATOR FROM FLORIDA

Senator NELSON. Mr. Chairman, I am your soul mate when it comes to this subject, as I have been your soul mate on a number of other issues.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you. Sometimes it is a bit lonely.

Senator NELSON. It is a privilege to be on the right side of an issue, as a matter of fact. Most of the folks in Florida understand this issue. I am not sure that they intellectualize it but when you talk to them about it they have an appreciation because of the sensitive situation that if we have global warming, the seas will rise, and our population along the coast will be in jeopardy.

We also are a peninsula that I call paradise, that happens to stick down into what is known as hurricane highway. And I will never forget in the mid-1990's seeing that satellite photo of four hurricanes like they were lined up on final approach off the coast of Africa coming west, just lined up one right after another. And global warming will cause greater intensity of storms, the greater disadvantage of pestilence, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why we get into these disagreements about what we should do.

In a former role I was the elected insurance commissioner of Florida and I tried to get insurance companies to understand what this was going to do to their bottom line, and it was me talking to that piece of granite over there.

So we have got quite an educational process to do, Mr. Chairman, and I am going to be right with you helping.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you. And I thank the witnesses for being here today. Thank you for your very important contribution, and as Senator Nelson just said, we need to try to arrive at some consensus on this issue, and perhaps your recommendations for the strategic plan will be helpful in focusing their attention in arriving at conclusions and recommendations as rapidly as possible. Do you have any additional comments, Dr. Alley?

Dr. ALLEY. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Graedel?

Dr. GRAEDEL. No, sir, thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Janetos?

Dr. JANETOS. No, sir, thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Liverman?

Dr. LIVERMAN. No, thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. Solow?

Dr. SOLOW. No, thank you, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you all, and again I want to thank you for your significant contributions to this effort. I think it is very serious, and we rely upon you for your guidance in this very difficult challenge that we face.

Thank you. This hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 10:12 a.m, the hearing was adjourned.]

APPENDIX

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, U.S. SENATOR FROM MAINE

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I commend you for continuing to hold hearings on climate change. I recall that your awareness of this issue as Chairman goes back to the 106th Congress when you called for hearings, realizing that global warming would be an issue that would be with us for many Congresses to come.

There is now a large amount of peer-reviewed scientific literature documenting that the burning of fossil fuels, and the subsequent release of carbon dioxide, is impacting the environment—and may literally be changing the climate through severe weather events, such as droughts, record rainfalls, and ice storms. How much of this pressing problem we put on the shoulders of future generations is clearly up to us. How we respond to these changes, how we mitigate and how we adapt to these changes are of utmost importance to our moral obligation as to how we leave the planet for the coming generations.

I congratulate NOAA's Dr. Mahoney on accepting the challenge from the President to manage the Administration's newly created Climate Change Science Program to educate, and to develop goals and strategies to address the uncertainties of climate change science. In a short timeframe, The Climate Change Research Program Office, directed by Richard Moss, has produced the draft Strategic Plan for the Climate Change Science Program and also put together a three day national workshop here in Washington last December that was attended by over 1,300 scientists, economists, and stakeholders from at least 47 states and 35 foreign countries to get the public's input and recommendations.

Before us today we have expert scientists from the National Academies who were asked to review the draft Strategic Plan and make recommendations for the final Plan due out this spring. Mr. Chairman, I would like to welcome Dr. Richard Alley of Penn State University, the lead author of the National Resources Council publication, “Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises."

Abrupt climate change has become a particular interest of mine, especially through office discussions with Dr. George Denton of the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute, who was recently installed as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. The Institute is carrying out research on ice cores from Greenland, for instance, that are helping them unravel the Earth's past secrets on abrupt climate change.

The NRC Report points out that a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the climate does not respond to change gradually, but in sudden jumps. During the last major change in climate—as the earth was coming out of the last ice age 12,000 years ago—temperatures warmed about 15 degrees Celsius in one decade, even though the increased energy from the sun occurred more gradually than the current increase in trapped energy from greenhouse gases.

I am concerned that if such a shift were to happen today, it would have immense societal consequences. According to the NRC publication, such abrupt changes "are not only possible but likely in the future." The publication urged that a new research program be initiated to identify the likelihood and potential impact of a sudden change in climate in response to global warming. According to the NRC publication, "At present, there is no plan for improving our understanding of the issue, no research priorities have been identified, and no policy-making body is addressing the many concerns raised by the potential for abrupt climate change.

Mr. Chairman, as Winston Churchill once said, "The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see." It is for this reason that I have made a request to the FY 2004 appropriators to establish a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Joint Institute at the University of Maine to carry out research in abrupt climate change in collaboration with other universities renowned for their contributions to the understanding of abrupt climate change, such as Dr. Alley's Penn State, and at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.