Terminating Restrictive Enforcement of Youth Settlements Law

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the Senate this afternoon with a simple proposition and a resolution that recognizes that simple truth, and that is that: Climate change is real.

Earlier this year, I came to the floor, and I asked my colleagues if they could all agree on this simple scientific fact.

On this occasion, I also asked my colleagues to acknowledge what the fossil fuel industry has known for nearly 60 years, which is not only that climate change is real but also that they are the primary cause of climate change--their emissions. Unfortunately, Republicans refused to acknowledge those facts.

So I came back and asked for a simple recognition that sea levels were rising as a result of climate change, and Republicans refused to acknowledge that.

I came back and asked that we recognize, very simply, that oceans are warming because of climate change, and Republicans refused to acknowledge that fact.

So let's try this. It is super simple.

Resolved, That the Senate recognizes that climate change is real.

That is the text of this resolution. It is a simple, four-word proposition that I hope we can agree on.

But just to show the fact base that this simple fact stands on, we can start with NASA. NASA has pretty good scientists. They are actually driving rovers around on Mars. They are pretty good at what they do. And here is what NASA maintains:

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. [And that] human activity is the principal cause.

And if you don't trust NASA, if you don't want to take their word for it, you can just take a look at the data. It is pretty straightforward.

This graph reflects the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is a known thing. It is done by measurement. I hope we still believe, in the Senate, in measurement. This chart shows what is called the Keeling curve--daily atmospheric CO2 concentrations measured at scientific observatories. The historic data going back is actually collected from testing air bubbles frozen in ice sheets. And I have been to the Ohio State lab where some of those ice cores from old glaciers are maintained, from where they take those measurements. The Ohio State scientists know what they are doing. The measurement is not that complicated. So that is the track of CO2 in the atmosphere according to the Keeling curve.

Here is the next fact: Global average temperature is increasing at an accompanying rate as the CO2 emissions climb. You can see how well it tracks. Global temperature is not that hard to measure. Again, we are dealing with measurement--in effect, thermometers. It is not that hard.

And if you look, as I said before, at what is going on with the heat in the oceans, here is how that tracks. And the reason that the ocean heat tracks the CO2 concentration and the land heat measures is because most of the excess heat that fossil fuel emission causes gets absorbed by the oceans. We would already be on an unlivable planet if it weren't for the oceans absorbing 90 percent of that excess heat.

And the amount of heat that the oceans absorb is pretty astounding. You have to measure it in zettajoules.

Last week, I explained that we are now warming the oceans by 23 zettajoules a year, breaking the ocean heat content record for the ninth consecutive year.

As I said before, what is a zettajoule? A zettajoule is the unit of heat measure--the joule--with 21 zeroes behind it. That makes it a very big number. That is actually a billion trillions or, to put it the other way, a trillion billions. It is an enormous amount of heat. It is more than 40 times the total amount of energy that human beings generate on all of planet Earth to warm ourselves, cool ourselves, drive our cars, run our motors, push refrigerators--whatever it is we are trying to do. The whole energy footprint of humankind on planet Earth is half a zettajoule. And the oceans, because of that excess fossil fuel emission, are absorbing more than 40 times that much. It has a huge magnifier effect.

And that does things like drop the Antarctic ice shelf. And when the Antarctic ice mass shrinks, the ice that is on the land that goes into the water does what? Raises the sea level.

You can test that proposition for yourself by putting ice in a cup and letting it pour into another cup as it melts, and you will see the level of the cup rise.

So here is where global sea level has been going. Again, we are not dealing with complicated stuff here. We measure heat with thermometers. We measure sea level rise with tide monitors. It is basically a yardstick, and you go and look at the time of day when the tide is the same, and you measure where on the yardstick the sea level is. This is not something that is complex or amenable to much legitimate confusion or dissent.

Here we can look at the areas burned by wildfires. It is not just coasts and oceans that are getting clobbered by our emissions, but the area in the United States burned by wildfires keeps climbing and climbing. And the harm that this causes goes on and on. Hurricanes driven by warmer seas are becoming stronger and wetter. Wildfires driven by drought and wind are burning far more land.

And it is not just scientists who are reporting what they measure. You can actually go back to a very interesting and somewhat unique dataset. In Japan, in Kyoto, believe it or not, the Japanese people have been measuring the peak bloom of their cherry trees for 1,200 years. It is one of the longest datasets on the planet: 1,200 years of when Kyoto's cherry trees hit peak bloom.

And you can see, going back to the year 800, it moves fairly steadily along until you get to the Industrial Revolution, until you get to the fossil fuel emissions barrage that drove the CO2 concentrations so high. As CO2 went up and as the planet heated, spring came sooner. And so you see here, earlier and earlier and earlier and earlier comes the day of peak bloom. I thought that was interesting because I thought a 1,200-year dataset kept by the Japanese people was interesting.

So that is where we are. We have more violent storms. We have more ferocious and damaging wildfires. We have hotter temperatures. We have a dramatically warming ocean.

And as I have said, climate change has moved from the science department to the economics department because all of those science measures bring costs onto the American public. Droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes disrupt agriculture and the transit of groceries, and they make food more expensive for Americans.

These climate impacts drive up homeowners insurance in regions where the climate risk becomes unmanageable. And they drive down property values, because when your homeowners insurance cost doubles or triples and threatens to double or triple again, that cost knocks down the value of your home. And we are seeing that right now in Florida.

And then, of course, all of this drives up energy bills at a time when oil prices are already extremely high because of Trump's mad war in Iran.

All of this is real in family budgets today, and it is a big deal. It is a big cost when homeowners insurance, which starts as a big number, doubles, as it has in Iowa in recent years. It is a big deal when you get told by your insurance company that you are fired, they are not going to insure your property any longer, and now you have to scramble to find insurance. And when you do, it is worse. It is more expensive, provides less coverage. There is a huge cost factor, and there is a huge hassle factor for real Americans right now.

That is our reality. Climate change is real. Can we agree on that simple truth? That is my question today.

Mr. President, therefore, I ask, as if in legislative session, unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 553; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I just want to make sure it is absolutely clear that that argument is what Republicans have sent to the floor of the U.S. Senate to question the measurements and the facts of climate change. That is what they sent to the floor.

The questions are the talking points of the fossil fuel industry. To what extent does man cause it? Here is what NASA says:

There is unequivocal evidence that the Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. [With] human activity . . . the principal cause.

And lest it be not clear that human activity is fossil fuel burning and emissions. That is not a question. That is a known thing, just ask NASA.

And what to do about it? Well, one good thing to do about it would be to bring more clean energy onto the grid, and that doesn't cost trillions. Over time, that will save trillions.

Just in my State of Rhode Island, we tried to bring clean energy onto our grid at a contract price of 9 cents per kilowatt hour from an offshore wind farm. Our average grid price is 18 cents per kilowatt hour. So the offshore wind would literally be half-price energy for our grid.

And the Trump administration tried twice illegally to stop it. We would have saved a lot of money had we gone to clean energy.

Look at any one of America's grids and look at what power sources run first. It is the clean stuff. Why? Because they operate by the rule of running the less expensive power first. Wherever you go in the country, clean energy is the least expensive power. It lowers costs for people. If you want a solution, there is an easy one that protects against the dangers of climate change, and that lowers costs for consumers.

I would only advise my friend from Wisconsin that he just might want to consider running his argument by the University of Wisconsin before trotting it out on the Senate floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source