ured temperatures in the same zone that the satellites sense, and it is really quite remarkable to see the agreement between the two. Those two records actually show declines in temperature over the course of the decade that was supposed to have warmed .45 degrees.

Ten years ago I was asked to testify in front of the House and I made the observation that the current models which were extant, like this, predicted that the temperature of the planet should have warmed about 1.5 degrees over the course of the 20th century, and the observed warming, as Bob Watson said, was 0.5 degrees Celsius. So that, the error that these models have been making, has been remarkably consistent through the course of the 1990's, the 1980's, and the 1900's.

That led to what is generally thought to be sort of the paradigm of moderate climate change, which is very simply stated. If the models are consistently making an error producing about one-third as much warming as there has been, and these models have since been modified, and we will touch on that in the Q and A, I am sure then the upcoming warming should be about one-third of what they are predicting; and that would work out to be 1 to 1.5 degrees of Celsius.

Well, some remarkable things have happened in the last 6 months that give us reason to believe that we now understand why there was such a discrepancy between what was being forecast and what was being observed, and I would like to talk about those three important things that have appeared in the scientific lit

erature.

Most important is the fact that the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere is not going in at the rate that was assumed by most of the models. Most models assumed a 1 percent increase in carbon dioxide per year. The increase has been far below that.

Second, methane in the atmosphere is the second most important of the greenhouse gases, the gases that have the potential, actually the reality of warming the lower layers of the planet. According to Dlugokencky, I believe that is the correct pronouncement, in Nature magazine, the rate of methane increase began to decline in 1981, 17 years ago, and is now coming into equilibrium with the other chemical reactants related to the atmosphere, so that very little increase in methane is projected now over the course of the next century.

Third, and perhaps most astounding, is a report by Myhre, et al. that shows that we overestimated the direct warming effect of carbon dioxide itself by 15 percent.

When you take all these factors into account and look at the past history of this issue, a very interesting picture emerges. In the first IPCC report in 1990, a median warming of 3.2 degrees was predicted by the IPCC in that first assessment. In 1992, in their report which was prepared specifically for the Framework Convention Meeting in Rio, the warming dropped to 2.6 degrees, this mainly because of the of the Montreal Montreal Protocol which reduced chlorofluorocarbons. In 1995, it dropped 2.0 degrees, their most likely value, given the executive summary of the 1995 report.

Now, if we allow for an additional four-tenths of a degree drop because CO2 is not going in as fast as it was assumed to, and rec

ognize that methane is supposed to be responsible for about 15 percent of the warming of the 21st century, if methane does not increase you have to drop the forecast by .15 times 2 degrees, or .3 degrees, and recognize that the carbon dioxide radiative effect directly was overestimated by 15 percent, that drops it by another three-tenths of a degree.

We just got to one degree. This is the value that has generally been given, based upon the data, and it leads one to ask the question, how much trouble might we have saved if we had listened to the data rather than the computer?

Chairman TALENT. Put that back just a second if you would, doctor. I think, if I understand this correctly, I want to make clear to the Members, the first three bars on that graph are what the IPCC has projected. But that last one, I do not want Members to think that that 1.0 is an IPCC projection at this point; that is, as I understand it, your judgment of what they should do in light of the changes that you have been talking about. I just want to make sure that Members understand that it is not what the IPCC has done to this point. That is correct, right?

Mr. MICHAELS. Yes. I believe that the median value that they will project in the future will have to be lower than their current median value. Whether it will come all the way down to 1.0 degrees, I do not know the answer to that. I suspect it will not.

Chairman TALENT. We have the IPCC here, in a manner of speaking.

Mr. MICHAELS. He cannot speak for everybody. There are very large and vociferous arguments that take place, and Bob will be happy to enlighten us about those, I am sure.

Well, anyway, the question then becomes, what has happened over the course of the last 100 years? It is rather misleading to go around saying that the hot temperatures of the summer are a result of global warming. By the way, the summer in the United States this year is not all that out of line.

What global warming does, when you change the greenhouse effect, is it primarily warms the driest air masses on the planet. That is the physics of the greenhouse effect. This is the temperature change that you see since World War II.

I do not understand what Dr. Watson said, that there are some scientists here who do not believe human beings are changing the climate. I do not think there is anybody at the table who does not think that this change is awfully suspicious. What you see, though, is the warming is almost all in the winter. This is the winter on the planet. I also flipped the equator here, so it is winter down here.

The major warming is here in Siberia, from about -40 in the coldest air masses to about -38 in northwestern North America. If you take these winter warmings out of this picture, this map becomes very, very un-pink, with a mean temperature somewhere around there.

Now, let's take a look at the change in the summer temperature, where the air masses are moister, except for around the Sahara Desert, and therefore the greenhouse effect from carbon dioxide does not influence the temperature as much. This was published in the Journal of Climate Research about 2 months ago, by the way.

This is the change in the summer temperature, and this map is decidedly less bright red than the temperature change map for the winter.

Well, another thing that we heard earlier today was that variability, extreme events, are increasing. It is easy to do that. You can take one variable out of the plethora, the universe of weather variables, and find increases in it. You can take, on the other hand, say, regional temperature around the globe and look at the change between seasons and between years, which will be a true measure as to is the weather becoming more extreme or is it not.

This is from the last issue of the journal Climate Research, and what you see is a statistically significant decline in variability. This should surprise no one, given the fact that it is the coldest temperatures of the winter that are showing the warming, because winter is a much more variable time than the rest of the year, so if you warm up the winter what you do is reduce the variability. I would like to finish with a little bit of discussion about the Kyoto Protocol. That is why we are here. The first question I would like to ask is this: If the United Nations had said in 1990 that the net warming of the 21st century would be between 1 and 12 degrees Celsius, would we have the Framework Convention on Climate Change?

That is an important question I cannot answer. But I think I can answer, I think negatively, the following question: We would not have the Kyoto Protocol to that Convention, but given the fact that we do have the Kyoto Protocol, let's ask what it will do to the climate.

We will ask Tom Wigley from the United States National Center for Atmospheric Research, a senior scientist, who just published a paper which assumes that every nation on the planet does what it was supposed to according to the Kyoto Protocol. The temperature change that results from every nation agreeing to do what it does is 0.07 degrees Celsius. That is right, a number so small it could not be detected by any system that we have, but a cost that would be enormous. This is all cost and no benefit.

If we assume that the warming will be less, 1 to 1.5 degrees, which I think is warranted by the data and now by the physical science that underlays the data, you get a change of temperature of .04 degrees, four-hundredths of a degree of temperature saved by the year 2050 according to the Kyoto Protocol. Those are numbers coming out of the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

In conclusion, I think we again have to ask the question: Given these numbers, what should we do? how much should we spend? Is the Kyoto Protocol worth the cost?

Thank you very much.

[Mr. Michaels' statement may be found in the appendix.]

Mr. BARTLETT. [Presiding.] Thank you very much for your testimony. Our Chairman has had to leave for a vote on a markup in another Committee.

Our next witness is Dr. Fred Singer, President of Science and Environmental Policy Project, Fairfax, Virginia.

STATEMENT OF S. FRED SINGER, PRESIDENT, THE SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY PROJECT

Mr. SINGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee.

I have a very simple message, which is that climate science does not support the Kyoto Protocol and the emission controls on carbon dioxide. As will become evident from my testimony, the climate is not currently warming. The climate models used to predict the future warming have not been validated by actual observations.

Second, the UN-sponsored scientific report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that you heard about, the IPCC, has been altered to convey the misleading impression to the public that there is a discernible human influence on climate which will lead to catastrophic warming.

Finally, as I will show, the Climate Treaty itself does not have a defined goal. It does not provide any guidance of what level of greenhouse gases to aim for. So the decisions of the Kyoto Protocol to cut emissions by 5.2 percent are arbitrary, purely political, and not in any way science-based. There is no scientific backup for these numbers.

My scientific background is described in the written testimony. I will not go over it here, except to mention that I published a book last year which reviews carefully the published literature in the field, the work done by many scientists, most of them IPCC scientists, the same scientists who also worked on the IPCC report. But my conclusion, after reviewing their work, does not agree with the summary of the IPCC report. I come to a different conclusion. I can encapsulate my points here in five ways. Let me do point first.

The history of the Earth shows many natural climate fluctuations. We have accurate data going back for 200,000 years that does not support any of the claims that warmer temperatures would be catastrophic. We have studies from tree rings, ice cores, and ocean sediment cores. All indicate that the climate was much warmer than today 1,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago and 6,000 years ago; that these temperature changes were as large or as rapid as those being forecast by climate models; that they have already occurred and there were no detrimental effects that we know of.

Humanity and civilizations survived all of these natural global warmings of the past with far fewer resources than we have today, and they thrived during the warm periods. We know that from recorded human history. Life was better a thousand years ago during the Medieval Climate Optimum than it was during the Middle Ice Age 200 years ago.

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question?

Mr. BARTLETT. Excuse me, Dr. Singer. There is a question. Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Dr. Singer, you just mentioned that the climate was much warmer 1,000 years ago, 3,000, 6,000 years ago. What was the population at that time?

Mr. SINGER. Much smaller than it is today. Much less. Much poorer.

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. But much smaller.

Mr. SINGER. Smaller and poorer, yes.

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Mr. SINGER. However, there were large concentrations of people in cities at the time, as there are today. But, overall, the population level was much less.

My second point: The theoretic models that are used to predict a future warming that you have heard about, these models have not been validated by actual atmospheric data. They need to be validated so that we can believe in them. The present models cannot handle clouds very well. I have slides I can show that different models handle clouds in different ways with different outcomes.

Other important climate factors are also not well-described by these models. The reason is that the atmosphere is very complicated and the models are still very crude.

Now, the actual data we have, the surface data that you have seen, that Pat Michaels projected, that shows light warming, are actually contaminated by local urban effects. Furthermore, the surface data cover only a very small fraction of the globe.

The only good data we have covering the whole globe that are accurate are satellite data, because satellites go around the whole globe daily and take accurate measurements; and these satellite data have not shown a warming trend since records were kept since 20 years ago.

My third point deals with the impacts. We have solid evidence, and agriculturalists all agree, that the ongoing increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide speeds up the growth of plants. It is good for agriculture. The empirical evidence indicates that a modest climate warming, from whatever cause, would actually lower sea level, not raise it. This is an important point and contradicts the stories that you have been hearing about. The evidence is here. I will be happy to show it in detail if I am asked about this.

What one should fear most about climate change, in my view, is a return of the next Ice Age. That is inevitable. It is bound to come. We do not quite know when. It is now overdue, because we have been in a warm period between Ice Ages for over 10,000 years and these warm periods usually do not last more than 10,000 years.

Fourth: This is an important legal point. The Climate Treaty, in Article II, clearly states the goal of the treaty. The goal of the treaty is not to lower emissions of greenhouse gases. The goal of the treaty, to quote, is to "achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.'

No one knows what this means. Nobody knows what constitutes a dangerous concentration of greenhouse gases that would cause problems for the climate system. There is no scientific basis for defining such a confrontation. We do not even know whether more or less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would produce a dangerous concentration.

We do know that if we wish to stabilize carbon dioxide at the present levels, according to the IPCC data, we would have to reduce emissions by 60 to 80 percent worldwide. We would have to cut energy use worldwide by 60 to 80 percent to stabilize carbon dioxide at the present level.