Paris Climate Change Conference

Floor Speech

Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, policymakers from all over the world will be meeting in Paris this week and next to address the issue of climate change. With much fanfare, they will purport to reach an agreement that will prevent the Earth's ``average global air temperature'' from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. This 2-degree limit will supposedly mean success for the conference in Paris and success in the battle against global warming, thus preventing catastrophic events from occurring.

So I come to the floor to call attention to several news articles pointing out problems with this approach, with this 2-degree Celsius approach. The first is a front-page story from yesterday's Wall Street Journal. I hold it in my hand. It is titled ``Climate Experts Question Temperature Benchmark.'' This is not an opinion piece, it is a news article. The article points out that the 2-degree target is both arbitrary and based on questionable research.

The article quotes Mark Maslin, professor of climatology at the University College London, saying:

It emerged from a political agenda, not a scientific analysis. It's not a sensible, rational target.

The article goes on to say that despite assumptions by policymakers, the 2-degree target does not express ``a solid scientific view.'' Indeed, no report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change even mentions the 2-degree limit.

Economics Professor William Nordhaus appears to have been the first to use the 2-degree figure. The article notes that his work ``argued that a rise of two or more degrees would put the earth's climate outside the observable range of temperature over the last several hundred thousand years.'' I ask my colleagues how did they measure air temperature 100,000 years ago, 200,000 years ago, as Professor Nordhaus appears to have been concerned about. I would also point out to my colleagues that being outside the observable range is far different than being catastrophic. It is not the same thing, but from that has evolved the 2-degree model.

This is not the first time the model has been criticized. In October of last year, David Victor and Charles Kennel wrote about it in the journal Nature. Victor is a professor of international relations at the University of California San Diego and Kennel is a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA.

Yesterday I got this article from the journal Nature and read it myself. In their piece, Professors Victor and Kennel wrote:

Politically and scientifically, the 2 degree Celsius goal is wrong-headed. ..... It has allowed some governments to pretend that they are taking serious action to mitigate global warming, when in reality they have achieved almost nothing.

This is one of the things I worry about. This is one of the things I fear from the Paris conference. The United States will agree to do a lot, costing job growth here, and other countries will do almost nothing, as the professors say.

Victor and Kennel say that the 2009 and 2010 U.S. conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun officially adopted this approach. They then conclude: ``There was little scientific basis for the 2 degrees Celsius figure that was adopted.''

Additionally, in an op-ed last month for the Wall Street Journal, environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg cites his own peer-reviewed study to show how the most high-flown promises in Paris will fail to make any substantial impact on climate change.

Even if every country fulfills every promise made in Paris over the next decade and a half, according to Dr. Lomborg, the growth of global temperatures would be reduced by less than .05 degrees Celsius, or five-hundredths of a degree Celsius--by the end of the century, the year 2100. So is it 2 degrees or is it less than five-hundredths of a degree? And is 2 degrees sensible and rational? Not according to Professors Maslin, Victor, Kennel, and certainly not according to Dr. Lomborg.

One more quote from Professors Victor and Kennel. They point out one of the major problems in the 2-degree Celsius approach: ``Failure to set scientifically meaningful goals makes it hard for scientists and politicians to explain how big investments in climate production will deliver tangible results.''

Yes, what are the tangible results? What can we expect in tangible results from the agreements that will certainly come out of Paris? We will be $3 billion poorer, that is for certain, because the President has pledged $3 billion from taxpayers for the Green Climate Fund. I would point out that $3 billion could be used for Alzheimer's research or malaria or malnutrition or any number of the other problems the people of the world see as more important than climate change.

Tangible results coming out of Paris: Electricity bills will be higher. Lower income Americans will be colder in their own homes, our economy will have suffered, and job growth will have been slowed, perhaps by as much as $154 billion a year. That figure comes from Stanford University analysts who say that if we adopt the Obama administration's proposal of cutting domestic carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 28 percent, GDP will be reduced by $154 billion per year.

If we spend all of this money, trim our GDP by $154 billion a year, and actually achieve this impractical 2 degrees Celsius, where will humankind be then? How much will the sea level not rise? No one can say. How much thicker will the icecap be in the Arctic or Antarctic? No one knows. How many coral reefs will be preserved? No one will even venture a guess. All of this to be done, all of this money to be spent, and experts cannot say how much it will help, if at all.

Dr. Lomborg writes that the Paris agreements are ``likely to see countries that have flourished with capitalism willingly compromising their future prosperity in the name of climate change.'' Negotiators in Paris should weigh the real-world costs against the negligible environmental impact when discussing emissions reductions.

Finally, the Obama administration's international promises should come back to the Senate for advice and consent of Congress. Under the Constitution, the approval by two-thirds in the Senate is needed to enter into a legally binding treaty. I join many of my colleagues in urging the President to submit to Congress any agreement in Paris with regard to U.S. emissions targets and timetables or pledges that appropriate taxpayer dollars.

Americans should have a say in the approval process. A recent FOX News poll showed that only 3 percent of Americans believe that climate change is the most important issue facing our country.

In conclusion, the President's promises in Paris are not based on scientific analysis, according to these professors, but would certainly slow the economy, cost jobs, cost billions of dollars, divert money from real and pressing needs, and be of limited value. With so much at stake, these policies should come back to Congress for debate, consultation, and approval or disapproval.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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