Thank you Mr. Chairman for holding this hearing on the implications of the Kyoto agreement. I am pleased that President Clinton's budget request has allocated significant monies of the $6.3 billion dollars to the Climate Change Technology Initiative and the Global Change Research Program. Both of these initiatives address the global climate problem and offer expedient solutions to the problem. I agree with the use of these funds to be targeted towards Research and Development practices. Research and development is a necessity for the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The monies spent to develop more fuel-efficient automobiles and trucks, energy saving technologies for commercial building and homes, energy efficient industrial processes and renewable energy sources will prove to benefit the environment in many great ways. Research and development should be a top priority and federal agencies need financial support to continue their research agendas. Although DOE and NSF show moderate Program, NASA's portion is proposed to decline by several percent. I have been reassured by the Administration that NASA has identified efficiencies and cost cutting measures that allow this decline without loss of scientific content. The U.S. is taking actions at the federal and private levels to insure that we are addressing the global climate problem. However, I am concerned with the research and development activities of developing countries. The global climate problem cannot be solved with only a few participants addressing this problem. I would like to urge other countries to allocate substantial funds for research and development activities as related to the deployment of energy efficiency. Thank you. Chairman SENSENBRENNER. And the Chair will notice at our next Full Committee meeting the approval of the changes in Ranking Members. Without objection, all members' opening statements will be placed in the record at this time. Without objection, the Committee or the Chair-is authorized to declare recesses of the Committee during roll call. And the Committee stands recessed for 10 minutes for this roll call, and asks the members to be back promptly. [Brief recess.] Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The Committee will be in order. The Chair will swear in the witnesses. Will each of you please rise. Raise your right hand please. Do you, and each of you, solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give before this Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth so help you God. Dr. GIBBONS. I do. Dr. MONIZ. I do. Chairman SENSENBRENNER. The reporter will note that all four witnesses answered in the affirmative. Today's witnesses will be the Honorable John H. Gibbons, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy; the Honorable Ernest J. Moniz, Under Secretary of Energy; the Honorable David M. Gardiner, Assistant Administrator for Policy, Planning, and Evaluation of the EPA; and Gary Bachula, Acting Under Secretary for Technology at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Without objection, all of your written statements will be inserted in the record in your testimony. The Chair would request that each of you summarize your statements in about 5 minutes or so, so that we will have plenty of time for Committee members to answer and ask questions. The first witness will be The Honorable John Gibbons. Jack, you may proceed as you would like. TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JOHN H. GIBBONS, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, AND DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY, EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON, DC Dr. GIBBONS. Thank you, and good morning, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and the Committee for inviting us to testify. I will focus on the U.S. Global Change Research Program, its current program and the project, and its relationship to the Kyoto Protocol. As you know the USGCRP began under President Bush in 1989, and it is designed to provide us with the scientific information that we need to make better decisions about climate change to understand it and, therefore, have a firmer basis, a more thoughtful basis, for making policy decisions. So, I'd like to describe briefly what we're doing, and some things that we have learned. And I would address these issues, of course, in much more detail in my written testimony which I have provided for the record. I also have included in that provision for the record our 1999 in this program and a copy of a publication from my office entitled, "Climate Change: the State of Knowledge." Finally, Mr. Chairman, although I don't have it with me today, we will be delivering to the Committee within about 2 weeks our 1997 annual report on USGCRP called "Our Changing Planet." I do want to stress the fact that the climate change research program is distributed across 11 agencies of government. It totals about $1.86 billion a year and it is integrated at both the program and budget level. It's a good example of where we are able to get the best of the resources of the relevant agencies and pool it together into a single integrated program. Now, I also want to emphasize that the USGCRP planning for this year was not directly related or driven by the Kyoto negotiations. This program is shaped by the developing scientific questions and the longer-term consideration by the scientific community of the scientific information that is seen as most relevant to understanding climate change and, therefore, most relevant to the needs of U.S. policymakers. I feel climate change is the preeminent environmental challenge that faces us as we move into the next century. This research program and its companion programs in other nations are providing us with a wealth of compelling scientific evidence of past history of climate change and also of human-induced climate change that has been occurring in recent decades. I'm not alone in the opinion that there is strong scientific evidence of human-induced climate change. The vast majority of the world's scientists who study this issue do agree. There's no question, for example, that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have risen dramatically-by about 30 percent over the last century-as a direct result of human activities. The concentration is now about 365 parts per million CO2, and this is higher than any level seen in the measured records from ice cores that date back 160,000 years. This is clearly shown on figure 2 of my detailed written testimony for you. Now, I know there are a lot of arguments about this business, but as Senator Moynihan once said, "We can each have our own opinions, but we cannot each have our own facts." And I'm speaking about facts in this case, about this fundamental rise of concentration of carbon dioxide. Now, if we continue business as usual, and I sure hope we don't, we will pass through a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 in the next half century, and by 2100, we would reach over 700 parts per million of carbon dioxide-well on the way toward treiling, or beyond, in terms of that concentration. At that kind of concentration, the atmospheric concentration would be higher than anything the earth has experienced in 50 million years. The associated rate of temperature change would exceed anything seen since the dawn of civilization 10,000 years ago. Over this intervening 10,000 years, human settlements and ecological systems have optimized themselves in a period of remarkably constant climate, and they've optimized themselves to that particular climate. That worries me; that we may be departing radically from something that both humans and plant and animal The physics and chemistry underlying climate change have become much more compelling over the past few years. And they've led to the prestigious IPCC to include that, "The balance of evidence suggests a discernable human influence." That is, we're seeing the fingerprint of human activities emerging from the inherently noisy climate system. The consequences of climate change, Mr. Chairman, will not be confined to the physical climate; the socio-economic and ecological systems are also very much at risk, with the rate of climate change perhaps as important, if not even more important, than the overall magnitude of climate change. Let me repeat that: the rate of change of these concentrations may be more important than the absolute concentration itself. Finally, we can't, and for this reason, we can't ignore the possibility of abrupt change. We may not experience simply a slow changing climate from increased greenhouse gasses, rather, the Earth may also experience an abrupt and drastic change in climate if, for example, the North Atlantic current or the ocean conveyer belt-were to stop abruptly, which in fact, has happened in past Earth history-long before we began to affect climate ourselves. Such a dramatic threshold, or instability-metastability or trigger-could cause massive world-wide disruption of food production. Now, we need to continue a vigorous effort in climate change science to both help us understand what has been going on and what is happening, but also to give us a sense of how we can confront sensibly and thoughtfully the challenge in front of us. Along these lines, I'm pleased to say that the Administration is continuing its very strong support for the climate change research program with a budget request of about $1.86 billion for Fiscal Year 1999, which is essentially a level budget projection from last year. We've made some changes inside that budget that we can speak about, but it's basically a level and sustained research budg et. The research questions we must now address have to focus increasingly, we feel, on the impacts that climate change will cause and how society can cope with such changes and advert untoward impacts. The USGCRP, then, is focusing increasingly on these emerging questions of impacts and adaptation, as well as thoughtful action that can be taken over time. We're moving from global review to increased emphasis on regional detail as our understanding improves. And we're moving from a physical and chemical approach to understanding these dynamics, to one that places increasing emphasis on biological systems. And I think that's an important move as the science develops. We also Chairman SENSENBRENNER. Dr. Gibbons, could you wrap it up. You're at about 8, 9 minutes now, and we do want to have some time for the other witnesses and the members of the Committee who are here in greater number than anticipated. Dr. GIBBONS. Mr. Chairman, I'm delighted to see the turn-out. And time goes fast when you're having fun. So, let me finish up quickly. We are moving to our first national assessment of the con |