I look forward to hearing these experts. And I am not going to take any more time, except to tell you that I have some real doubts about the overall thrust, the overall cost.

And when we talk about restructuring or redirecting, why, there might come a time when we think about retiring the thrust because I just don't think that we are able to do it. I don't think we can go it alone and I don't think we can go it without China, Russia, Mexico, India, and you name all the others. I think you would be foolish to.

And I think it was a waste of time to send all those people to Tokyo. I think 1,200 people went over there at the end of the day when the House and Senate had both indicated that they were not supportive. Until we get to be supportive in a joint thrust, and we are in a good time to cure items like that, because of the surplus we have and if the Chairman, in his leadership, leads us in that direction, I would say to him, it is a good time because we do have money to do some of the things that, perhaps, we ought to do. And I am still-obvious that I have an open mind. At this time, would yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Johnson.

Ms. JOHNSON. Thank you, very much, Mr. Hall. And thank you for the opportunity to speak today on global climate change, an issue I take very seriously. You can hear it in my voice this morning. Last November, I attended the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, COP-6 at the Hague in the Netherlands. There were many technical issues discussed there, including credits for carbon sinks, how to deal with countries that do not meet emission reduction goals, how developing countries obtain the financial resources necessary to deal with the adverse effects of climate change.

The last point was very important to me. While the focus of today's hearing is on the science of climate change, we must remember the human dimension of climate change, those who stand to gain and lose the most from changes in global weather patterns. Just recently, I heard a researcher talk about even the spread of the viruses, Ebola virus, HIV, whatever, is very affected by the climate. And while it is going to be very, very expensive, and we must use common sense, we have no choice but to attempt to do something to move in that direction. We got our message very loudly and clearly at this convention. Thank you very much and I will put the rest of my statement in the record.

Mr. HALL. I thank you very much. And if we have about a minute left, Mr. Chairman

Chairman BOEHLERT. A minute and 8 seconds. Thank you.

Mr. HALL. to yield it to the gentlelady from California, Ms. Woolsey.

SEY.

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you very much, Mr. Hall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Two weeks ago, this Committee had a hearing on energy and the Panel briefly touched on climate change when they spoke about the effects and implications of our Nation's reliance on fossil fuels. I was particularly encouraged by the remarks on this subject because they were nonpartisan. They were scientists. They were witnesses basing their comments on scientific understanding. I commend the Chairman for holding the hearing because we all need to learn about the science behind climate change.

And at the heart of the change, science has a well-established theory, the greenhouse effect, that states that carbon dioxide emissions, a heat-trapping gas that is produced by the burning of fossil fuels, significantly contributes to the global warming trend. We have to hear more about you-from you about that because we must develop clean fuel technologies. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HALL. Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time. I wanted enough time to let Mr. Udall from Colorado introduce Mr. Albritton, but I know you will do a good job of that.

Chairman BOEHLERT. Okay. Fine. Thank you very much. And let me stress that we are going to keep to the 5-minute time limit, and we would greatly appreciate the witnesses who are testifying doing the same thing. Try to summarize your statement. Let me stress at the outset that we are not here to debate Kyoto. We are not here to debate policy. We are here to look at science and the gaps in the science space to help us all better understand this issue. With that, let me also say that the record will remain open for any other Members who wish to have a statement in the record.

Our first and only Panel for today consists of Dr. Daniel Albritton, Director, the Aeronomy Lab, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration; Dr. Berrien Moore, Director, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, University of New Hampshire; and Dr. Charles Kennel, Chairman, Committee on Global Change Research, National Research Council. Gentlemen, thank you all for serving as valued resources for this Committee, and we look forward to your testimony. Dr. Albritton.

STATEMENT OF DR. DANIEL L. ALBRITTON, DIRECTOR, AERONOMY LAB, NATIONAL OCEANOGRAPHIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

Dr. ALBRITTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a real pleasure to be before your Committee. It is a real pleasure to be before your Committee to summarize what we do know and what we don't know about an issue as complex as climate change and its relation to humankind. I will be pulling the summary points from the recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And in order to meet your 5-minute time limit, I have prepared a few talking points on overheads, and I believe copies of those overheads are at each of the members' desks.1

Before I note what I think are the three major new findings over the last 5 years of research, let me state a few points about the science of the greenhouse effect that fall into a phrase, I think, a local phrase, science holds these self-evident, and that is, with very, very high certainty, science can make two statements. Number one, there is a natural greenhouse effect. It is a built-in part of the job description of the planet and it has always been there. The greenhouse effect keeps our planet warmer than it would be otherwise. It operates from trace gases like water, CO2, and methane, which have been part of the atmosphere as long as there has been an atmosphere.

1 See attached "Verbal Remarks of Daniel Albritton, Director, Aeronomy Laboratory" (in Appendix 1).

So why is the term greenhouse effect often cited as an issue? And that is the second point. It is also very, very clear from impeccable measurements that the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is increasing and that the causes of those increases are largely human activities. CO2 has increased about 30 percent over the industrial era. Methane, a second greenhouse gas, has doubled over that time period. We know from basic physics that those gases are trapping more and more heat as their abundances increase.

The key question is not whether there is a greenhouse effect. It is not whether we are altering the greenhouse effect. The key question in the issue of global warming is, indeed, what are the consequences of our changing it?

And today, I wanted to bring to you three new findings from the scientific community. These are embodied in the recent report, of which you have a copy of the summary, of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Several hundred of the worldwide scientists and program managers took 3 years to prepare this updated statement. There had been such a statement in 1995. There had been a second such statement in-in 1990, a second in 1995. And so this is the third statement of understanding of the climate system.

On the three points that I will report, I have tried to arrange them into a point that we have the highest confidence in and then going to points that we have less confidence and that we wish we knew more about. So let me comment on the very first finding of the new report. It is on the second page and the second overhead of this summary.

Point number one, there is a collective growing picture of observations of a warming world over the past century. And, as you note on the handout and on my overheads, I have tried to sketch some indicator visually of the confidence that the science community has in this statement. But more importantly, beneath the statement, are a graph and a few extra supporting points that show why we have that confidence.

Global temperatures undoubtedly have increased about 4 to 8 degrees centigrade. That is about 7 to 1 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. And the reason that can be stated with certainty is two-fold. This figure shows a new data set gained over the last 5 years of surface temperatures in the northern hemisphere for the past 1,000 years. The earlier data are from ice cores and tree rings and other historical measurements. And that departure from the average is shown in blue. On the right-hand side of that plot are the measurements made in the last 150 years with actual thermometers taking the temperature of the earth.

Two points-you can see that those two methods, the indirect from corals and tree rings, and the direct from thermometers, overlap for the 100-year period where the two data sets exist. Second point, these direct observations show that the last 150 years have been remarkably different than the previous 850 years.

There are other things that indicate the world is warmer. Glaciers are retreating. The only exceptions are near sea level, where rainfall has increased. The amount of snow cover each year, while it varies, on the long term, is decreasing, and average sea level has

increased about 1/10 to 2/10 of a meter reflecting the fact that water expands when it is warmer.

So here are a whole host of direct observations that are consistent with the world getting warmer. The question is, of course, is this a natural variation, or is this something that involves greenhouse gases?

And that brings me to the second point from the world scientific community. And that point is this. There are new and stronger evidence that most of that observed warming over the past 50 years is due to human activities. And the evidence for that, stated with a little less confidence than the direct observations-the evidence are in those two plots. This is a 150-year temperature record shown in red, and the gray band is what climate models get trying to simulate that temperature record.

The left-hand figure is what climate models will yield if that change were due only to natural variation. The right-hand figure is the simulation that would occur if greenhouse gases are included. And, as you can see, the fit of the last 100 years, with the natural and the climate greenhouse gas inclusion, matches the observed record much better. That has been aided by 5 years of data and it has that 1,000-year temperature record for context.

The last question relates to the final point. What could these observations and what could these this understanding portend for the future? And this is a more difficult thing to state. And that is to forecast is much more difficult than to observe. But here is the voice of this world scientific community. A continued growth in greenhouse gases is projected to lead to very significant increases in global temperatures and global sea level. That statement is based on a set of plausible future scenarios of economics, technology, population growth, taking the high and the low ends of all of those ranges.

And, as you can see, the extremes of that uncertainty, range as high as 5 degrees Celsius increase in 100 years, down to 1 degrees Celsius increase by 100 years. If that were to occur anywhere in that range, that would be larger than any of the natural variations over the last 10,000 years.

There are things that are tough to predict and to forecast. State of the science is unfortunately lacking to predict tomorrow's climate, next year's climate, the climate in a particular state, but it can say certain things, that land areas, like our own, will warm faster than the global average or oceans. And, secondly, and most importantly, that weather is apt to be much more variable in a warmer world. And that is, more frequent extremes, more variable, more part of the planet that looks more tropical, as we know it.

Finally, let me close, Mr. Chairman, having given three new updated science statements, but I want to underscore one science point that has persisted through decades of understanding of the greenhouse effect. And this is my last point on my last sheet. Everything that we know points to the fact that if a greenhouse warming occurs, it would be very, very slow to reverse. And that arises for two reasons-the lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere outlives us. And that is, several hundred years after we place CO2 in the atmosphere, 25 percent of it would still be there, still trapping heat and adding to the warming. Secondly, the oceans are big and

sluggish. They will be slow to warm up. They would be very slow to warm off-to cool down.

So I have commented on observations. I have commented on updated diagnostics. I have commented on new projections. The assessment done by the scientists in the IPCC is to provide an improved statement that would be a scientific input to this complex social, economic, technical equity issue that we know as global change. If I have glossed over any points in trying to meet the time schedule, please do and I would be happy to entertain questions. Please ask them. Thank you very much for your interest in the update.

Chairman BOEHLERT. We are going to pause.

STATEMENT OF DR. BERRIEN MOORE, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF EARTH, OCEANS, AND SPACE, UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

Dr. MOORE. Is this better? I am going to take as given that the increases of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose today, and will continue to pose in the future, serious scientific and policy issues. Given that, I then ask what are the key scientific challenges before us? What steps do we need to take with respect to our scientific agenda?

First, I think we must arrest the decline of the observational network throughout the world. This decline is acute in regions like Africa, Russia, and parts of South America, but it is not restricted to those regions.

Second, we must sustain and expand the observational foundation for climate studies. We must seek to obtain climate-relevant data. This means long-term commitments to observations. For instance, the monitoring of carbon dioxide, both in situ and, perhaps, from space, the in situ monitoring of the world's oceans.

Third, we must understand mechanisms and factors that lead to changes in the radiative forcing of the atmosphere. We must be able to turn emissions into concentrations in a more accurate fashion. This ties back to observations. What are the observations that we need to better tie emissions to concentrations?

Fourth, we must understand and characterize better the unresolved physical and biological and chemical processes. For instance, the role of clouds. This has been challenging to us for a decade and longer. It remains challenging. What will the role of clouds be in a future earth? Arctic Sea Ice we see a thinning of the summertime Arctic Sea Ice. Can we explain that phenomena? Is it part of natural variability or is it a part of an anthropogenically changed climate? What is the macrocirculation of the ocean and how might it change?

Fifth, we must address more completely long-term climate variability. We are attempting to see a signal and the noise is climate variability. And, therefore, we must understand climate variability better. But there is also a benefit. By simply understanding the variability of climate, we will be better posed to address not only climate change, but the natural challenges that climate faces us with.

Sixth, we must explore in our calculations directly the probabilistic nature of climate. Climate system is complex. It is some