variability that you cannot quantify, the quest that Dr. Michaels is talking about, of trying to figure all this out and match the socalled fingerprint match of-are these changes consistent with greenhouse warming?-is an extraordinarily difficult scientific diagnostic problem.

And I think Dr. Michaels and I would both agree on that.

Dr. MICHAELS. Yes. The problem is that you do not see the match where the aerosols are not.

At 4:00 o'clock today, I am going to be giving a seminar down in Charlottesville on this, and I would like you to come. I will give you a ride.

Ms. RIVERS. I would love to come, but I do not think they are going to let me leave here.

Dr. MICHAELS. Too bad.

Ms. RIVERS. No matter how much I would like to.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I wonder if this hearing will be over by then. [Laughter.]

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I appreciate that, Ms. Rivers.

Now we have been joined by the distinguished former chairman of the full Committee, who has my admiration, as Chairman of this Subcommittee, the way he handled the full Committee and has treated everyone as fairly over the years as anyone possibly could in this body. And so I would like to give him the opportunity now to ask any questions and make any statement that he would like to make.

Mr. BROWN. Your generous comments leads me to pass, Mr. Chairman, so that we can not be here at 4:00 o'clock, and go on to the next panel. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Congressman Brown follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE E. BROWN, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

I believe this hearing will serve to point out the error in judgment made by this Committee in passing authorization bills earlier this year containing disproportionate, damaging cuts to global change research programs. Cuts to these programs will perpetuate limitations in our understanding of the earth's climate system. In the absence of real information people will be encouraged to substitute hand-waving and conjecture for substantive scientific inquiry into the phenomena that shape earth's climate. Cutting these programs will not stop carbon dioxide from increasing in the atmosphere or terminate interest in speculating on its effects.

It appears to me the budgets for climate research and climate change impact research have been systematically targeted for deep cuts by this Committee. The budgets for global climate change research at EPA, NASA, NOAA, and DOE have been cut by over one quarter from the FY 95 funding levels. Budgets for research and development of technologies that would assist our nation in conserving energy and expanding our energy options have been cut by almost half from their FY 95 levels. This is short-sighted and foolish.

I believe we are all reluctant to advocate for radical changes that would alter our economy and our way of life without reliable information that such changes are indeed necessary. However, hesitation to embark on a difficult policy path is not a rational explanation for scaling back the global climate change research programs on the scale recommended by this Committee. I cannot understand anyone embracing ignorance in the face of a potential problem of this magnitude. I cannot understand why we should not pursue research which will provide explanations about how this planet functions. If climate change is real, then we will need to understand how it will affect us and what our options will be for adapting to any negative consequences or exploiting positive ones. If climate change is NOT real, then the research being done by these agencies will confirm that for us. Although there are scientists who question the severity of climate change impacts and the reliability of

global climate models, it does not appear that any are advocating an end to the research programs.

If climate is going to change in a way that will alter the future habitability of parts of this country of affect our food supply, we would be better off to find out sooner rather than later. If there are cost-effective steps that we can take now which provide benefits to our society in terms of energy efficiency, pollution reduction, and job creation then we should take them.

I am confident that the witnesses here today will all agree on the need for a better understanding of our climate system even if they disagree on the precise nature of climate change, the magnitude of its impacts, or on recommendation of policy options that we should pursue.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We have now-is it Mr. Doyle or Mr. Minge? Mr. Minge.

Mr. MINGE. I just have a couple of quicker questions.

I noted with some interest that the NOAA budget had provided for a high performance computing system to improve global modeling.

How important is that to try and acquire the additional information that is needed to answer some of the uncertainties that have been discussed, and I direct this to you, Dr. Mahlman. Dr. MAHLMAN. I appreciate the opportunity.

I am a direct beneficiary and recipient of some of that High Performance Computing & Communications funds. We procured a new supercomputer system in August of this year, in response to that initiative that was funded for NOAA. It was competitively bid and competitively procured.

And what that additional increment of commitment on part of the HPCC program, plus the funds we already had for supercomputing, has allowed us over the next three years to increase our computer power by a factor of 17 because of the fierce competitive bidding that that process allowed.

We are now attacking aspects of climate problems, particularly with respect to local dynamics of clouds, that would have been inconceivable without that. And I am personally grateful to Congress and to the system that allowed this very, very difficult process to proceed.

Mr. MINGE. Is your purchase of that computer now at risk because of diminished funding, or will you be able to follow through and complete the purchase of that unit?

Dr. MAHLMAN. The commitment has been made, the first payment has been made, and if the House and Senate marks for HPCC for NOAA are sustained, then there will be no problem. Mr. MINGE. Okay. And the appropriations level is adequate? Dr. MAHLMAN. Yes, indeed.

Mr. MINGE. All right.

If this modeling can in fact be done, to try to improve our understanding of global climate and changes, how long do you think it will take before we have sorted out some of the differences that have been discussed here, such as the aerosol effect and so on that lead to some of the uncertainties?

Dr. MAHLMAN. I think that the harsh truth is is that aspects of the cloud and aerosol problem are very intellectually stubborn problems. Okay?

It would be dishonest for me to say that, "Give us this amount of money or give us ten times as much computing power, and we will solve this two years from now."

I do not think it is going to be that simple because some of the fundamental measurements have not even been made yet.

It does allow me to make a point that, it is not just computer power, it is the symbiosis among computing power, human intellectual brain power, and very hypothesis testing measurements that allow progress to happen. And computer modeling becomes a way to test hypotheses because they make predictions that can be evaluated and critiqued.

Mr. MINGE. Dr. Michaels, I would like to ask you if you feel that the consumption of fossil fuels is irrelevant to questions of global warming.

Dr. MICHAELS. No. Absolutely not.

Mr. MINGE. So we are presented here, as I understand it, with a situation where there are models that indicate a certain level of global warming and I think that all three members of the panel have agreed that there is some level.

And a question of what we should do as a country and what we should do in combining with other countries to address potential adverse effects.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Would the gentleman yield for just a moment?

I think also another question along that line is whether or not the global warming is a product of man-made activity.

Mr. MINGE. Well, I will let you come back with whatever misgivings you have about this.

But the question is whether we should attempt to address the situation by changing our consumption of fossil fuels and other lifestyle factors.

And I would like to ask you, Dr. Mahlman, to take off your scientific hat, if you are comfortable doing that, and as a person who has devoted many years to this study, share with us any recommendations that you would make as a private citizen so that we have a little bit better understanding of public policy directions that you would recommend.

And I say this in all sincerity because here you are, employed by the United States of America to do this. You are not being paid by any environmental group, you are not being paid by any industrial group, and we rely upon you to be fairly objective about it.

And we do not want to wait until every last uncertainty is eliminated before we act. We have to make some decisions when there are still some uncertainty in the situation.

So with those comments, I would appreciate your response.

Dr. MAHLMAN. I have said in these halls before that I have noticed that it is a lot easier to criticize your congressman than to be a congressman. And this is a good example of why.

I personally believe that I have given you a no ideological spin on the ball assessment of where the science is on this. And what I see, as a citizen, that this is an extraordinarily nasty place to be in if you are a policymaker. Because if you look at the problem and you try to do something about it now, I think objectively you can say that the cost of doing something about it that makes a big dent in the problem is extraordinarily high.

The cost of not doing something about it is probably also extraordinarily high. And so I do not think there is a safe landing spot.

I do not think that any specific recommendations I would make that do, as you do, take cognizance of all of the competing factors gives you a simple, easy thing to deal with.

As I said in my testimony-and you were not here at that timeis that I do not think that no matter what we say or do in the next five years, the problem's going to either be solved, or it is not going to go away. And so I will duck the question in that sense.

Although I do believe that it is my responsibility, as a scientist who is employed by the government, to be absolutely non-ideological, that we can speak to the questions that you have to address. But the answers to those questions are fundamentally, as so often what you do, values debates and values issues, not science issues. Mr. MINGE. Has the state of the art in science advanced beyond the leech stage in medical technology that we had maybe a century or two ago?

Where do we stand in terms of the assistance that we can expect from the scientific community in answering some of these questions?

Dr. MAHLMAN. I would argue that the state of scientific understanding on this problem is demonstrably superior to the state of intellectual understanding on almost anything you vote on that you argue a lot about. Okay?

[Laughter.]

Dr. MAHLMAN. Respecting the degree of difficulty, and I have made the statement that if, for example, that we were to become infinitely wise, and Patrick Michaels and I could agree on all the points and we know how the climate system works and how it is going to change, we could lay that information out on the table for you, and you would still have a miserable problem as to how to deal with it as a society and as a planet.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I think that we should-Mr. Doyle is next up, and

Mr. MINGE. Thank you.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you, Mr. Minge.

Mr. DOYLE. First of all, thanks for recognizing me, and I apologize for missing the testimony of the panelists.

Those of us who are lay people I can tell you are fascinated by this whole discussion. And I do not know if it has been addressed already, and if it has, I will just shut up and we can move on to the next speaker, but just as a lay person, we read a lot about global warming.

Is there a consensus in the scientific community that we are going to have this global warming on the order of one to four degrees? That that is actually something that is going to happen? Or is there a wide disparity in views?

Is there any consensus on this, and has that been touched on earlier?

Dr. MAHLMAN. I would argue that there is a substantial consensus, and that Dr. Michaels will contest that-that is true.

Dr. MICHAELS. No, I did not. He said one to four degrees. I think that the databased, and now the model/databased arguments, that are coming out in the literature put you in the one to one-and-ahalf degree range for effective CO2 doubling after all is said and done.

You know, the problem is that the bottom number that you are talking about there over a hundred years is not something you are going to want to spend a lot of money doing anything about, especially if it really translates mainly into shorter winters and longer growing seasons and is in the winter. Characteristics that, by the way, we seem to see emerging from the data.

The higher numbers is a big problem. And one of these days, I think we are actually evolving towards a solution.

But something in the previous question to you, Jerry, I have to touch back on, to show how difficult this problem is.

We have measurements, accurate measurements of temperature in the atmosphere that are done by weather balloons twice a day. People really like these records because these are calibrated instruments. They go back into roughly the 1950s or so. The record by Oort I think goes back into 1962.

And if you look at that record, you see a warming in it. And everybody goes, "Wow, global warming by the best record we can find."

Then if you look at the record carefully, you see the following: There is no net change in temperature from 1977 through 1994; and there is no net change in temperature from when the record begins Oort's record in 1965 to 1976. So that says that all that warming occurred statistically in one year.

Now the question I have is, are we ever going to have a climate model that is going to be so good that it could pick something like that out?

Mr. GUERRERO. If I could provide our observations?

One of the things we looked at, when we looked at the uncertainty range associated with the model predictions, is what kind of models are there out there.

And one point that I think is worthwhile keeping in mind, Dr. Michaels pointed to today in his slides, a particular model and the variance between what that model predicted and the actual temperatures that were registered.

That is a model among any number of models. And the important thing to keep in mind in this process is there is a vehicle for looking at the different types of models. Some of them are better than others. And that process is the IPCC process that involves thousands of scientists reviewing and peer reviewing the literature and trying to achieve consensus.

Now it does not mean you are going to get total agreement. It does not mean you will not have scientists who feel strongly on one side or the other of this picture.

But what it does mean is that after having gone through a process of thousands of individuals looking at the records and the model results, that they did reach some level of agreement.

Mr. DOYLE. Yes. And I guess when we get through this whole issue of cost/benefit analysis and, like Dr. Michaels said, if it is one degree, it is one thing; if it is four degrees, it means quite something else. And when we talk about risk assessment and cost benefit analysis here in this Committee, and then look at these models where you see ranges going from 1.8 to 6.3 in one model, or 2.7 to 8.1, it becomes a very confusing dilemma for those of us who are trying to decide, you know, do we have a situation here that we