need to be paying serious attention to and doing something now, or is this something that is in the range of one degree over a hundred some years, and it is not prudent to spend money.

So

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Could I ask a question that fits into the point that you are making, because you were not here the entire time. Is there a consensus that as we get better information because of better technology that is available to us, is this the consensus that actually that the degree of global warming has come down? And I believe there is an EPA report that just suggested that? Or am I incorrect in that?

Dr. MAHLMAN. I think Dr. Michaels and I would have a different perspective about that.

I think that the prediction of what will happen to the climate has gone down because of our increased understanding of offset due to sulfate aerosols. Okay? And that is not necessarily a statement about what the model said or did not say. What it is saying is there was an effect that was not calculated in the models that looked only at carbon dioxide.

So that is my answer.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Now, in 1991, let me ask, and my staff is suggesting now that you ranged your estimates in 1991 that global warming would be between two degrees and eight degrees, and today you are testifying that global warming will be between two degrees and six degrees, is that correct?

Dr. MAHLMAN. No. I had smaller numbers than that. Because in 1991, I was answering a different question. Okay? In 1991, I was answering the question that was asked, is, "What is the equilibrium changed to a double carbon dioxide expressed in degrees Fahrenheit?"

Today we are asking a different question. What do we expect roughly in the middle of the next century at the time of approximate onset of the equivalent of doubling carbon dioxide if the sulfate part does not change?

It is hard to answer you because

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I do have a copy of your testimony and it does say that for the middle of the next century, global mean surface warming is estimated to be in the range of two to eight degrees, and that is, I am not sure if that is inconsistent with what you are saying.

Dr. MAHLMAN. That is pretty consistent with what I said, yes. Mr. ROHRABACHER. Okay. Well, I am sure somebody else understands

Dr. MAHLMAN. You have got to remember that is in Fahrenheit, not centigrade.

Dr. MICHAELS. Mr. Chairman, what Dr. Mahlman is saying is, he said there has been a decrease in the forecasts because of sulfate being applied to the model.

And what I have been publishing in literature is that the sulfate explanation, which results in a reduced warming, is not sufficient explanation for the lack of warming. That there are other things going on here.

That is where, I do not know, do you think it is just sulfates? Is that the only thing that is caused the disparity in the GFDL model?

Dr. MAHLMAN. Well, if you wish to talk about the GFDL model, I certainly can speak to that.

You compared apples to oranges in your time series in that you looked at a GFDL model which is looking at the transient effect of an increased one percent per year of carbon dioxide increase, and you compared it to the last 15 years which has an offset of sulfate aerosol, and also has an offset due to stratospheric ozone reductions that led to cooling in the upper troposphere, and so I do not think that that was a fair comparison at all.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. We already touched upon that. Maybe we can have Mr. Cramer who

Mr. DOYLE. That clears everything up for me. Thank you. [Laughter.]

Mr. ROHRABACHER. If Mr. Cramer would like to follow through on this part of the discussion, we would be pleased to have him do so, if he would like.

Mr. CRAMER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

What an interesting time.

I just came in, and I certainly do not want to confuse anyone, so I will pass for now.

[Laughter.]

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Olver is hiding back there, and he has never passed up an opportunity to confuse us.

[Laughter.]

Mr. ŎLVER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I usually start at these things confused and end up even more confused.

But in any case, I also just came in. I came in at the point of hearing Dr. Mahlman's comment and I think that while it may be true that in most areas of science, the degree of understanding is better than what we seem to be arguing about here in most areas of social policy or the application of science to social policy.

I get the impression that the science is, at least among those who are practitioners in this area, are nearly as, the range of opinions is nearly as wide as it is in our arguments about the use of it here. So I was struck very curious about the comments by Dr. Michaels and I wish you would go through this again.

Please tell me again what it was that you compared two long ranges of years in which nothing had happened, though the sum total appears to show a substantial change that would lead one to believe that all that change had occurred in one year.

Dr. MICHAELS. Right.

Mr. OLVER. That is a paraphrasing of what I understood while I was half listening while trying to read some of the testimony, and I do not understand how that can happen.

Dr. MICHAELS. Okay, I will show you.

Mr. OLVER. And maybe in the result of it, you will need to show me exactly where

Dr. MICHAELS. I have a slide in there that will show it and it will show it much-the picture says ten thousand of my poorly chosen words.

Can I show it?

Mr. OLVER. I would be perfectly happy to have you show it, although it may be that

Dr. MICHAELS. I just have to find it first.

Mr. OLVER. I hope that will not confuse others.

[Pause.]

Dr. MICHAELS. Here it is. This is set up for my seminar this afternoon, and that is why I have got all these silly slides. Okay. The top graph is the upper atmospheric temperature from the what we call 850 millibar to 300 millibar level. It is the level that the satellite corresponds to at 95 percent accuracy.

This is the global record. And you can see the warming in it. This is published by Oort et al.

Mr.OLVER. It is a weather satellite at what altitude?

Dr. MICHAELS. It corresponds to the satellite records that are taken out in space. These are weather balloon records from 5,000 to 30,000 feet, if you will, in the atmosphere. They are thought to be highly accurate.

And the top graph is the total record which begins in 1964. The middle graph is that same record.

Mr.OLVER. Are those yearly mean dates?

Dr. MICHAELS. Yearly averages, correct.

The middle graph is that same record from 1964 through 1976, and you can see there is no trend in it.

The bottom graph is that same record from 1977 to 1994. Which leads one to the conclusion that the entire warming in this record occurred in a jump that was almost 20 years ago.

I just bring this up to show you the complexity of the problems that Dr. Mahlman is dealing with. Because I have yet to see any model that would project that this type of thing would happen, and yet this is what has been going on with our climate.

That is fine. You can turn the lights on now.

Mr. OLVER. Now, let me

Okay. It is fairly difficult for everyone to see and read that, but the period of time in the first group of yours was a period when very little, at that point, very little intervention on the part of public bodies had occurred, I take it, in the, in other words there was a laissez-faire approach toward the growth of CO2. I take it that is what we are really trying to measure in the air, isn't it?

Dr. MICHAELS. We are just looking at a temperature and see how much it changed over time.

Mr. OLVER. Oh, it is just a temperature.

Well, okay. I can see now how reading the data that you have just shown on those graphs does lead to the point that you made. And I suspect that there is a balancing argument on the part, I suspect that a lot of different people in the scientific field of global warming would have a variety of explanations as to what it is that is going on there. And I guess since my time will have run out already, I suspect here, while I am musing about this

Mr. ROHRABACHER. You are free to ask another question.

Mr. OLVER. [continuing] I would just invite perhaps Dr. Mahlman to comment as to what you see in those data, and maybe others, because I would like to understand at least this one point before I leave here today.

Dr. MAHLMAN. Well, you perhaps did not ask the right person because I personally do not understand the logic behind Professor Michaels' arguments here.

I see the time series at the top. I see an increase. I see the sharp rebound of the cooling due to Mt. Pinatubo is not on his time series, and quite frankly I do not get his point.

Dr. MICHAELS. Mt. Pinatubo occurred in 1991. We are looking at 1977 through 1994, and there is no trend in the data.

Mr.OLVER. Well, what do you think did happen in that period? Dr. MICHAELS. Why is it flat? Why is there no trend? Good question. I think when we understand that, we are going to understand this issue.

Mr. OLVER. But if there is no trend, and what you have done, what has happened here, and I think it is an interesting look at the data, if the data are correct means for the whole year. Are these whole year means?

Dr. MICHAELS. Correct.

Mr.OLVER. For the temperature data?

Dr. MICHAELS. Yes.

Mr. OLVER. And so indeed, if you were to use any group of three or five of these points, and average those out, you would get a series of lines, and if you averaged the whole thing out, you have what is described as the grand trend line in this process.

And while I have not looked at these means, I do not know whether there is anybody that disagrees with the fundamental data there, whether there is a disagreement about that, but if you do that, if there is no disagreement there, then, yes, it looks as if you have got the possibility, if you take a particular group of years before and after the year 1976, that there are two possible straightline, virtually unchanged things.

But then how do you explain the difference?
Dr. MICHAELS. That is the point.

Mr. OLVER. What is your explanation for it?

Dr. MICHAELS. Nobody has an explanation for this. That is precisely my point. Nobody could explain why the mean upper air temperature would take this sharp jump 20 years ago. That is 20 years ago this happened. And that that is the only jump that explains the trend in the entire record.

Mr. OLVER. If you took three or four of your groups within this 20-year period, you might have a series of trend lines that went at quite sharp angles.

Dr. MICHAELS. Yes, but your sample design then is so small, you have destroyed a degree of freedom in the intercept and one in the slope. You just cannot do that.

Mr. OLVER. But you have concluded that you can cut it in half, certainly, but you cannot cut it in thirds?

Dr. MICHAELS. Its number of degrees of freedom of 18 is much more statistically robust than 2.

Mr. OLVER. I did not suggest 2. I suggested 3, or 4, or 5; but even if you cut it in 3 you would get a very different sort of a

Dr. MICHAELS. Yes, you would. But the point in the argument is-and this is, by the way, not really too much of a matter of contention in the scientific literature; it was in Science Magazine; it

has been all over the place-but there was something that happened around 1976, some type of pattern change.

This is demonstrable of that. Nobody knows what it was. Nobody knows why it happened, and nobody knows what it can be related to. But unless we understand things like that which are responsible for the full power of the trend in that data, we do not really understand very much about this entire climate problem.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Olver, thank you very much. I think that-well, actually I would like to summarize a little bit first here.

I personally-well, there were some things stated earlier on about what this subcommittee has been doing and some of the policy decisions that have been made.

And just to let you know, funding for NOAA and their satellite program was increased by this subcommittee in this current budget debate. And so we have not decreased the amount of satellites from this Committee, especially NOAA.

And also, Mr. Michaels' poignant comment about reading fine print is really true with many of the charges about whether or not scientific research has been cut. There are many things that have been classified by scientific research, for example, in the Solar Energy Program, where no research was cut but promotional activities were cut that sometimes are labeled by others, for whatever motive, as being cuts in scientific research.

One of the reasons that I personally am skeptical as the Chairman of the Subcommittee and as a Member of Congress and as a former journalist, is I remember very well being beaten up in 1980 by a group of people who held up a report, like the one you held up, that was called the "Global 2000 Report."

And I don't know if anybody in this room remembers the Global 2000 Report. But the Global 2000 Report told us that by now, all of our natural resources would be depleted. I mean, it was justan absolutely apocalyptic disaster is at hand, and any day now the gasoline prices are going to be up to ten dollars a gallon, and all the other natural resources will be depleted.

And that report in which some, you know, very respectable scientific minds were involved, was absolutely wrong. And had we based our policies on that, we would be worse off today because of it.

And so when we're talking about issues that deal with important global and environmental predictions, we've got to make sure that we're basing it on not just someone who's maybe perhaps more upset than we deserve to be upset.

I'd like to ask the panel one last group of questions, and this is concerning this. And we'll try to be done in the next five minutes, if we can. And I know Dr. Michaels has to leave.

And it goes to the heart of the issue as to what we should do. Because I understand that the IPCC has been very careful not to use the word "predictions" for the climate models. Instead, they use the word "projections."

Now this means something to you folks, because projections are based on unvalidated assumptions.

Now is this true?

Dr. MAHLMAN. Yes. I think that that is an appropriate distinction in this case because the climate model projections that we've