What would be the impact on your program of the proposed provision that would not allow NASA to obligate any funds to procure Mission to Planet Earth systems unless NASA thereby certifies that no private-sector entity could provide suitable data in a timely manner?

Dr. KENNEL. This has the possibility of being quite a complexifying step.

Mr. ROEMER. Could you elucidate on what complexifying means? [Laughter.]

Dr. KENNEL. It would make our life more complicated. We're trying to do faster, better, cheaper. And one of the aspects of it is to make fast decisions.

We're trying every second year to implement and complete review and insight, try to gain full insight of what the capabilities are of the commercial community. Every second year, Congress will have full insight into that. And we think if we had to go through a contentious process in which all sorts of folks came into the arena and made claims that they could make individual-it would make the whole decision process very complicated and we're afraid that it would defeat our overall goal of trying to be more agile.

Mr. ROEMER. So some of the success that Dr. Goldin talks about in terms of, Administrator Goldin talks about in terms of faster, cheaper, better, in terms of some of the successes that we've seen in recent, in this past year, with Galileo and other programs, would that jeopardize any of those other programs, as well as what you might do in these areas?

Dr. KENNEL. Well, I think if a technique like this were proposed in broader areas, it would presumably have the same effect.

Let me just say that Mr. Goldin, I think, is very fond, probably has mentioned to you, the faster, better, cheaper includes the Congress.

If we're going to make agile decisions, we need your help. And we're willing to work with you in ways that we can make those decisions, and this may be one, this may be a way of certifying commercial presence that is not necessary.

We think we could probably earn your confidence.

Mr. ROEMER. I understand cheaper and better for Congress. What does faster mean for Congress?

[Laughter.]

Dr. KENNEL. That's your part. We'll try to do our part of the job here.

Mr. ROEMER. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WALKER. Ms. Cubin?

Ms. CUBIN. I have no questions at this time, Mr. Chairman. Chairman WALKER. Thank you. Mr. Weldon, any questions? Mr. WELDON. [Florida] I thank the Chairman. I have a question for-I got here a little late-Dr. Kennel.

NASA has informed Congress that it wants to start the Earth Systems Science Pathfinder program of small satellites to introduce some flexibility and ability to address our science requirements on the basis of changing science.

Why wasn't EŎS initially designed with this flexibility in mind? If the EOS baseline program is supposed to acquire the needed

data in NASA's 24 data sets, then what added value does Pathfinder bring to Mission to Planet Earth?

Dr. KENNEL. I think one point I would make is that EOS is a program of significant duration. It's a significant commitment. And it has strong standards of continuity, calibration, coverage and timeliness.

And so, to commit to an EOS-level scientific investigation is in itself a significant thing.

Now, I reach the conclusion that at any budget level, the Mission to Planet Earth Program had to be in the posture of encouraging new scientific ideas. It is not right for a program to be so postured that however cogent the plans in 1992 had been, it's not right for those plans to constrain the development of science, including the opportunities to fly in space, in the year 2005.

And so we designed the Earth System Science Pathfinder program with a minimum amount of funding in the early years simply to encourage the development of new science that we are not doing well now.

We do not plan to continue these observations for 15 years. We might do it for two years, try it out. If it's pretty good, then they can argue to try to get into a flexible and evolving EOS later.

But I think it's wrong-at any level of the budget, you do need to provide opportunity for new ideas and the evolution of growth, new people, young people, expand the community.

And we're giving them a very challenging job because we're asking them to try to do all of this, their whole project in less than $120 million for everything.

Mr. WELDON. [Florida] I thank the Chairman.

Chairman WALKER. Mr. Tiahrt?

Mr. TIAHRT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I've been reading through some of the literature and Dr. Ledebuhr, I believe in some of the information that I looked at, in '91, you talked about proposing the use of miniature spacecraft technology that was developed during the cold war to try to reduce some of the cost of the observation.

Has this been taken into consideration in your latest proposal here? Are you trying to capture what's already out there in the commercial environment?

It seems like you're developing at a great deal of expense a hardware that could possibly be redundant in what's available out there.

Could you respond to that?

Dr. LEDEBUHR. Basically, that proposal was submitted in '91, as an approach to the single satellite EOS concept at the time. We proposed, by going to a small constellation of small satellites with miniaturized instruments, that you could effectively get the same science yield, basically faster, cheaper, better.

That approach was basically not pursued. We instead built the support of the Clementine mission, which sort of demonstrated that a small sat with a payload of a half dozen instruments could effectively map an entire planetary body, multiple spectral bands and do it for under $100 million very quickly, in two years, in a twoyear program effort.

We felt that the kind of technologies that the cold war had been pushing toward, allowed-was forcing us, to miniaturize hardware. Prior science payloads had large platforms to put their instruments on and there had not been the pressure, the technological pressure, to miniaturize things.

We felt that you could use that commercial drive in miniaturizing and upping performance to take advantage of that. Basically, what you saw from Dr. Christensen's high-resolution imaging systems, which are a fairly small satellite with advanced sensors.

I believe that it's possible to-we looked at the sensor designs of EOS in '91 and it showed how we felt, to our satisfaction, they could be miniaturized and put on small sats.

So we felt that that would actually not, would cost less and we felt, with the Clementine example, that it actually can be done.

Mr. TIAHRT. So are you saying that you're trying to incorporate this miniaturization in with the new configurations that you're proposing?

Dr. LEDEBUHR. Basically, we're off on the Clementine II, looking at building impactor probes to target an asteroid for high-impact experiments and mission sensors using this.

But we are not really pursuing or supporting in any way currently the Mission to Planet Earth program.

Mr. TIAHRT. For the type of data that you're trying to acquire, is there commercially available hardware in space now or hardware that could be modified?

One of the pushes we have in trying to control costs is going to what we call off-the-shelf hardware. I'm sure you're familiar with the term.

Is there that type of hardware out there that could be slightly modified at a lesser expense than what we're pursuing under your current proposal?

Dr. LEDEBUHR. I believe there is. I believe that many of the satellite bus technologies that are currently available, that are going into the commercial imaging ventures can be directly applied for the technology used for the spacecraft platforms.

In the sensors, there's many subsystem technologies that are compatible. All that's necessary is a focused effort where the goal is to minimize mass and at the same time maintain quality in the instrument design, maintain a calibratable instrument, and that's all do-able within the current state-of-the-art and I believe it can be done fairly quickly.

And our contention was that if we had started in '91, we could actually right now have ten satellites in orbit beginning to take this global data to build up the trends so that we don't have to wait another half-decade before we find out whether there are global warming effects.

Mr. TIAHRT. I guess you're with DOE. Is NASA following up on this type of approach?

Dr. Kennel?

Dr. KENNEL. Can I comment on that? I wasn't around in 1991, but I think that NASA's issues at that time were the doubts about the readiness of the technology to commit to making these measurements, were concerns about the calibration and there were is

sues of whether or not we could get calibrated measurements through formation flying.

Having said that, let me just say that the presentation of the Brilliant Eyes, the demonstration of Clementine and various other discussions like that have had their effect on NASA.

And we are now planning, particularly in this second round-I think we share Dr. Mika's point of view that the present instruments that we are building, for example, are state-of-the-art and the best that industry can do, given the scientific requirements that we have.

But at the same time, we are going to invest in the development of the new and re-engineered instruments that are indeed smaller so that we can try to go in part towards the Brilliant Eye conception of multi-constellations of the spacecraft.

We are also, the program willing, in 1998, we are planning to try some formation flying exercises. We're going to fly Landsat and AM-1 in formation. It may even be able to pull Lewis & Clark in there. And if we have a Landsat demonstrator for a new instrument in that time period, we will definitely fly in formation.

So these ideas have had their impact on us.
Chairman WALKER. Thank you. Mr. Olver?

Mr. OLVER. Am I last, Mr. Chairman?

Chairman WALKER. Well, we're ready to dismiss this panel after the gentleman has asked his questions.

Mr. VOLKMER. I have some questions, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WALKER. Mr. Volkmer?

Mr. VOLKMER. I'd just like to announce that I will have some questions that I want to address to Dr. Frieman and to Dr. Ledebuhr. And then as a result of those answers, I'll probably address some questions to Mr. Mika and Dr. Kennel.

So it may take a while to do that, but we'll do it that way. Chairman WALKER. Gentlemen, thank you for your testimony. Let me invite the second panel, please, to join us at the table.

I would say to our panel as they gather at the table that I am going to use the Chairman's prerogative to be very firm on time constraints this time, and would ask you to do not only a Reader's Digest version, but specifically make that Reader's Digest version five minutes.

You will get a gavel from me after a five-minute presentation. So please summarize and then we will try to expand on your various point of views as we get to the questioning period with the members.

I'm going to begin today's panel with Dr. Watson. Welcome.

STATEMENT OF DR. ROBERT T. WATSON, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR ENVIRONMENT, OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY, WASHINGTON, DC.

Dr. WATSON. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, I greatly appreciate being given the opportunity to discuss the issue of global climate change with you today.

The Administration, like most of the scientific community, believes that this is an extremely important environmental issue of profound importance to this and future generations.

My testimony is based on the latest scientific findings of the IPCC assessment, which was prepared and peer-reviewed by over a thousand scientists from developed and developing countries.

The IPCC conclusions represent the central view in the climate debate, a natural, not a forged consensus of the scientific community.

Many of the arguments you will hear today were taken into consideration by the IPCC.

While a number of key scientific uncertainties remain, hence the need for further research and monitoring, the majority of scientific experts believe that human activities have already affected the Earth's climate and that further human-induced climate change is inevitable.

The question is not whether climate will change in response_to human activities, but, rather, where, when, and by how much. It's also clear that changes in temperature and precipitation will, in many regions of the world, adversely affect human health, ecological systems, and socio-economic sectors, including agriculture, forestry, water resources, and human settlement, thus affecting the economy and quality of life for this and future generations.

To limit the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to any level below three times pre-industrial would eventually require emissions to be well below today's level.

The good news is, however, that significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are technically feasible, due to an extensive array of technology and policy measures in the energy supply, energy demand, and land management sectors at little or no cost to society.

These reductions should not require the early retirement of capital stock, but should be taken in step with the normal timing of investments to replace infrastructure and equipment as it wears out or becomes obsolete.

Such measures will, however, require concerted R&D and demonstration programs to ensure these technologies penetrate the market place.

While fully recognizing that uncertainties exist, the IPCC concluded that human activities are increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and in some regions of aerosols. The Earth's surface temperature is increased by about half a degree Centigrade over the last century, the sea level has increased 10 to 25 centimeters, and glaciers are retreating world-wide.

Models that take into account the observed increases in greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols simulate the observed change in both surface temperature and its vertical distribution quite well.

Hence, IPCC concluded that the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on the Earth's climate.

Without policies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions globally, the Earth's temperature is projected to increase by between one and 3-1/2 degrees Centigrade by 2100, a rate faster than anything observed during the last 10,000 years.