good morning and welcome to the select committee on energy independence and global warming for many members of congress and the public the concern about global warming may seem like a relatively new development in fact scientists including those advising the u s government have issued warnings about the rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere throughout the last four decades after a report from his science advisory committee president lyndon johnson noted in a nineteen sixty five special address to congress that quote a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning  fuels has altered the composition of the atmosphere and one hundred seventy eight robert white the first administrator of the national oceanic oceanic and atmospheric administration one that carbon dioxide emissions can have consequences for climate that pose a considerable threat to future society while recently a national academy of sciences found in a two thousand and one report requested by president that quote global warming could well have serious adverse societal and ecological impacts by the end of this century in a report issued earlier this year u s science agencies concluded that climate changes are under way in the united states and i projected to grow administration scientists once predicted the impacts of global warming now they can confirm them and unfortunately families from the wall and to alaska living with the harsh consequences given the upcoming international climate conference in copenhagen and the continuing work on domestic clean energy legislation in congress and update on the administration's view of the state of climate science is timely in two thousand and even the intergovernmental panel on climate change phoned in their comprehensive assessment that global warming is unequivocal and that this woman is primarily due to human activities this decade has been the hottest in recorded history with all of the years since two thousand and one being in the top ten hottest this summer the ocean was that warmest in no was one hundred thirty year record the extent of arctic ice a sea ice for the first for the past few years has shrunk dramatically compared to the previous two decades with a reduction roughly three times the size of texas we must be aware that as the climate system warms we risk passing certain tipping points of rapid and irreversible change in the united states the effects are evident daily record high temperatures are being broken twice as often as daily lows our farms are threatened by rising temperatures water scarcity and pass in the northeast extreme rain storms and the risk of flooding have increased in alaska villages of finding the land they call home literally melting out from underneath them as the permafrost thaws in the west the shrinking mountain snow pack and increasing droughts strain water resource system fortunately after decades of wanting president obama is partnering with congress to realize a new vision for america in america freed from dependence on foreign oil and thriving as a leader of the new clean energy economy the american recovery and reinvestment act included more than eighty pillion dollars for clean energy investments that jumpstart our economy and generate new clean energy jobs the cash for clunkers program so gas guzzlers off the road to and we stand as will raise for model year two thousand and eleven cars and trucks saving drivers money and spurring companies to develop more efficient affordable vehicles in june the house passed the waxman markey american clean energy and security act this legislation that will put us on a pollution cutting path and at the same time create millions of new jobs making america the global leader of the clean energy economy the act will also create a national climate service that will provide decision makers with vital climate science information as we move forward we must continue to stay abreast of the most recent findings and to ground up policy in the latest climate science witnesses today dr john holdren the president's science advisor and dr chairman and what we've just heard from the chairman is a case of denial on what's happened recently sound science depends on policy for sound science policy depends on sound science when the science itself is politicized it becomes impossible to make objective political decisions scientific policy depends upon absolute transparency as policymakers we should all be concerned when clean climate scientists write in private correspondence that they found a trick to hide the decline in temperature data documented in climate studies less than two weeks ago some one hundred sixty megabytes of data containing over a thousand e mails including one from today's witness dr john holdren and two thousand other documents from the climate research unit at the university of east anglia in the u k were posted on the internet well the emails don't undermine everything we know about climate change their contents are shocking and in the words of clive cook senior editor of the atlantic monthly a column this for a national journal and a commentator for financial times the stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering the temperature records from the climate research are one of only three major data sets which considerably overlap and which been have been used as the bedrock for the assessments by the intergovernmental panel on climate change and the united states global change research program the data set in question is the basis for virtually all p literature the documents show a systematic suppression of dissenting opinion among scientists in the climate change community intimidation of journal editors and a journal who would de publish articles questioning the so called consensus manipulation of data and models possible criminal activity to of a legitimate request for data and the underlying computer kohls filed under freedom of information act both in the us and in the united kingdom and demonstrate that many climate scientists and proponents of climate change legislation have bested interest a clear conflict of interest those with the most to gain from climate change of try to dismiss these emails as out of context so i'm going to read a few examples from kevin trenberth quote the fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty we can't the series data shows that there should be even more warming but the day are surely wrong our observing system is inadequate uncool from phil jones quote i've just completed mike's nature trick of adding the in the real temps to each series for the last twenty years that is from one nine hundred eighty one onwards and from nine hundred sixty one for case to hide the decline unquote from andrew manning quote i am in the process of trying to persuade siemens corp to donate me a little cash to do some c o two measurements here in the u k looking promising so the last thing i need is news articles calling into question again observed temperature increases i thought we had moved the data based on this but it seems like the skeptics are real die hards  quote i tried hard to balance the needs of the science of the i p c c which are not always the same i worried that you might think i give the impression of not supporting well enough while trying to report on the issues and uncertainties unquote from phil jones quote i'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the c r u station temperature data don't any of you treat tell anybody that the u k has a freedom of information act michael mann this was the danger of always criticizing the skeptics for not publishing in the peer review literature obviously they found a solution to that take over a journal so what do we do about this i think we have to stop considering climate research as a legitimate peer reviewed journal perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to our site papers in this journal we also need to consider what we tell our request of our more reasonable colleagues currently sit on the editorial board on call from phil jones quote if anything i would like to see climate change happen so the science could be proved right regardless of the consequences this isn't being political it's being selfish now these e mails show a pattern of suppression manipulation and secrecy that was inspired by idiology condescension and profit they read more like scientific fascism than scientific process they betray economic it is a logical agendas that are deaf to disk and forming evidence hopefully this scandal is the end of declarations of the science is settled and the beginning of a transparent scientific debate the serious of this of this issue justifies additional consideration the majority did not permit us to invite a witness to this morning's hearing and therefore i am requesting a minority of hearings and filing with the chairman a letter signed by all six of the republican members of this select committee pursuant to rule eleven j one of the house of representatives to have a minority day of hearings back to balance my talk i think very much of the hearing today for the purpose of hearing from the ministration witnesses in my thirty four years here whether it be a democrat or republican administration d by the democratic majority on the judiciary committee well in the fifteen years that i have chaired a committee here in the house i have always offered as a courtesy to the reagan administration to the first bush courtesy through three republican administrations so that is my own personal history and i did not think it was appropriate to have another witness sitting with these representatives of president obama since i did not allow that to happen with president reagan or the two bush presidencies but i will be more than willing to discuss future hearings with the gentleman and the minority if they would like i mean i'll turn and recognize the gentle lady from  before sunday and i am interested to hear where we are in the science i also want to know what we can do better to adapt our communities and practices to prepare for the anticipated climate change is the information found in the recently released report entitled global climate change impacts in the united states is quite comprehensive however i'm glad to see that both of you in your testimony say that we need more regional specific information to help decision makers plan in the future colorado in the third congressional district has rich agricultural resources and millions of acres of forest we also depend in large part on a limited amount of water for our survival i'm concerned about how we can effectively prepare for the changes you predict as i mentioned water is one of the natural resources my district heavily depends on while we have a lot of snow in the mountains of the valley see very little water and i'm very proud of the five million dollars appropriation for the arkansas valley conduit that was approved this year that's the first round of conduit funding which will be used for the environmental analysis and planning and design the arkansas valley conduit is designed to provide clean drinking water to proxima forty cities towns and water providers in the lower arkansas valley these communities are in dire need of a source of water that will help them comply with the clean drinking water act in a manner that matter manner that they can afford every community that will receive water from the conduit is currently rated below the eighty five percent level of average household income the roots of the arkansas valley condo stretch back to the one nine hundred sixty two when the conduit was authorized by congress as part of the frying arkansas project and the reason that i bring this up is that it took over forty five years close to forty seven years to get the funding for this critical project and if it takes that long for something this critical we need to better prioritize needs and support for our communities i'm a farmer agriculture the cornerstone of my life and also the district that i represent in my district we produce sweet potatoes barley beef and many other crops agriculture is one of the top three economies in the district the demand to produce more food will only increase as the population increases and according to the report i mentioned before climate change has the potential to negatively affect growth in yield of many crops as well as increased populations and bigger of a variety of weeds and insect species is in if this is true how soon do we anticipate these changes and how do we accommodate them we've already seen the effects of warmer weather and drought in our force over two million acres of forest in colorado are dead because of the mountain pine beetle this epidemic will change the landscape of colorado for decades we need to manage our for chairman and i apologize i have another hearing so i will have to leave for a portion of my time here but i want to begin by noting something that i think everyone in the room knows but nobody wants to acknowledge it is that there is an elephant a large elephant sitting in the middle of this room you can ignore it if you like members of the minority can ignore it if they like members of the majority can ignore it if they like members of the staff or the press or the audience and ignore it if they like but that elephant is the credibility of the entire scientific community which has told us that the science behind manmade global warming is resolved make no mistake about it when you read in the e mails which have been made public recently that that science was politicized that its proponents were unwilling to release their data but they were unwilling to have their theories tested that they were threatened by anyone and everyone who dared to challenge them when you realize they were that insecure then you have to understand that their credibility the entire credibility of the theory is placed on the line now that does not mean it cannot be rehabilitated but it's interesting to me those who have not simply accepted the claims of manmade global warming man caused global warming have been called deniers i would suggest that when the white house reads of these emails and the press secretary for the white house steps forward and says they mean nothing the science is already resolved maybe the term deniers best applies to those in that position public policy is a difficult business it is hard for those of us who sit on this side of the diocese to make decisions and to make those decisions in the best interest of the nation at times we are asked to call upon our citizens to sacrifice to pay more in taxes to lose jobs to give up lifestyles to pay more for energy we simply cannot do that when the evidence we are supposed to be basing our decisions upon has been clearly politicized when there is a grave question about its credibility on tell we address the evidence until we address the elephant in the center of this room and resolve the questions raised by the appalling e mails which have been made public it is impossible for this congress to set public policy in this area and to make the people of america accept and give of the sacrifices they will have to give to make the changes called for by the legislation that's before this congress anyone who thinks that those e mails are insignificant that they don't damage the credibility of the entire movement is naive we cannot expect people in a free society to make sacrifices on anything other than hard evidence here that are that hard evidence has to be hard evidence that in fact global warming is caused by man and that the sacrifices called for in the legislation are necessary these e mails repeatedly shown that the scientists involved and who authored them the scientists who are behind global warming or the argument that global warming is caused by manmade factors e mails demonstrate that they are afraid to re the facts that they have been unwilling to have their theories tested that they have been unwilling to revise their data and they are unwilling to have their theories openly challenged now because their own defenses and just cations are hiding these facts and their data has changed so many times we now learn that maybe the data does not even exist it is critical for this congress to find out and to get to the bottom of the question of what the elephant in the room is and what the real science is and the climate science think is particularly interesting in light of what is happening and i'd like to associate myself with the remarks made by the ranking member and and and the others on the minority side here of the panel i come from the state of michigan we have the highest unemployment in the nation everybody is well aware of that as well we derive about two thirds of our electricity from coal and for these reasons and others i really looked very closely at the cap and trade legislation and finally decided that it was just be so devastating for michigan's economy and our nation that i could not support it but you know we had been told that we had to pass this legislation because the debate was over the science was absolute the science is incontrovertibly about climate change and regardless of what it means economically to us we need to do this but to protect our environment and our very way of life and you know particularly hard hit with the cap and trade would be states like michigan in fact the detroit news editorialized that the cap and trade legislation a would be a dagger through the heart of michigan's economy so when i saw this noticed this committee hearing noticed i was very enthusiastic as i thought we were going to be able to talk this morning about what it people are calling climate gate which i think is an appropriate analogy because it is totally a cover up what is happening and ranking member has i won't go through any of the e mails i have a list of them here as well but he certainly has articulated many of them already  but i thought we were going to have a hearing about that and if we're not i would i would mention that i had also respectfully sent a letter earlier this week to the chairman and the ranking member to ask this committee to have a hearing i think it is important that the committee investigate  these e mails and what has happened in climate gate i think transparency is the most appropriate thing and i think it is very important that we have transparency and that we that we look at these things because certainly the central arguments about manmade manmade climate change is certainly in question i think the science is not settled and the debate is raging around the united states and around the globe right now particularly on the eve of copenhagen and i would simply just mention one other thing if i could mr chairman we did have a hearing just a couple of months ago about a dozen fraudulent letters that were sent during the cap and trade legislation and i thought that was an appropriate thing but certainly if we could have a hearing about a dozen fraudulent letters refusing to accept science for years are enjoying their moment talking about language from some e mails that were taken out of context i understand enjoyment continued to deny obvious facts and if you could take those e mails and chop them up and put them in a sprinkle them over the arctic and stop the arctic from melting it would be a good thing but that would happen if you could take those e mails and chop them up  iry dust and sprinkle him over the greenland ice cap and stop the accelerated melting going on there that would be a good thing but that won't happen and if you take those e mails and chop them up and sprinkle them over the oceans and stop the incredible ocean  acidification that is so damaging that would be a wonderful thing but that won't happen the fact of the matter is plain and clear for anyone who is willing to dispassionately look at the evidence and i would encourage for those who want to look at the most recent evidence on this to take a look at a group called the copenhagen diagnosis or find it w w w w copenhagen diagnosis dot com it is a it is an update of the i information and the update is it too since two thousand and seven the sequoia lie of both ocean acidification and global climate change have been either accelerating or at least worse than was predicted in the i p c c report but global deniers are right the two thousand and seven i p c c report was not entirely accurate it was not entirely accurate because this problem is worse than the last i p c c report indicated surging greenhouse gases are worse than predicted recent global temperatures demonstrate human based warming acceleration of melting icecaps in the arctic is worse as x than expected the rate of decline in glaciers is worse than expected the at the disappearance of the arctic summerize is worse than expected the current sea level rise estimates are worse than expected in the i p c c two thousand and seven report so the point of the current science is that what we had in two thousand and seven is indeed out of date this problem is worse than expected and i'll just comment on one thing that i learned sometimes you can you can learn things from silence as well as people talk you know i was at my old school at the university of washington last week and we were talking about this issue and this young man stood up and he was the global climate change denier and he was having a field day with some e mail language that he thought showed some massive conspiracy by the trilateral commission or something to take over the earth and i just said look if you're right you know if there's no global warming if you're still right what are you going to do about ocean  what do you say about that and he was silent and that silence speaks volumes if people over here want to deny clear science about global warming they cannot deny the fact that the oceans are becoming acidified no reputable science anywhere in the world recognizes is happening caused by c o two going into the atmosphere going to solution is to find our oceans so i just say that the science is clear i wish it was otherwise life would be easier but this is a challenge for the ages thank you time's expired the gentleman from oklahoma the solomon thank you mr chairman i appreciate you holding this hearing today but unfortunately we were not allowed a minority witness yesterday i was pleased to sign onto a letter by ranking member sensenbrenner and my republican colleagues on this committee requesting a day of hearings to consider the scientific evidence of climate change be observed in to support the impacts of climate change and in the key areas  further research i hope you will on or this request as we are on the eve of the copenhagen climate conference in light of the recent disclosure of emails between several prominent climatologists revealing possible deceitful manipulation of important climate data uncovered at the world's leading climate change unit at the university of east anglia anglia in england i think it is imperative that we launch an investigation into this issue and reexamine all the scientific evidence surrounding climate change with the united nations climate change conference and cope nagin said to begin in less than a week we need to have all the facts before us as we consider whether this this is in the united states best interest to agree to a binding international climate treaty for the record i am opposed  climate treaty that does not recognize the right of every country to protect its own national energy interests and would place the united states at a competitive economic disadvantage worldwide i'm interested in learning from our panel today whether or not they would support an independent investigation into the climate change unit emails and whether or not they read these e mails raise concerns about the integrity of sign of the scientific process back my time rate gentleman's assistant to president obama for science and technology used to director of the white house office of science and technology policy and co chair of the president's council of advisors on science and technology he was a professor at harvard he was the director of the independent nonprofit woods hole research center he is a member of the national academy of sciences he has received  that the gentleman the ranking member of the committee has made a request to have the witnesses as one in the chair has a right to his discretion to make that determination and i do not think it is necessary i think holdren the president's science advisor thank you chairman markey ranking member sensenbrenner members of the committee i do thank you for inviting me to testify on this timely and important topic today i had planned statement the written statement that i provided to the committee addressing current and projected impacts of climate change and also climate science research activities needs and products  as a letter of invitation requested but given the emphasis in some of the opening comments on the e mails i'm going to divert from that program and say a few words about the about the e mails and then finish with the concluding part of my original oral statement the e mails are mainly about a controversy over a particular data set and the ways a particular small group of scientists have interpreted and displayed that da it's important to understand that these kinds of controversies and even accusations of bias and improper manipulation are not all that uncommon in science in all branches of science the strength of science is that these kinds of controversies get sorted out over time as to who is wrong who is right and how much it matters by the process of peer review and continued critical scrutiny by the knowledgeable community of scientists of course openness in sharing of data and methods is very important to this process and as i think you all know this administration is a strong proponent of openness in science and in government and administrator live janko will have some things to say about public access to the climate data maintained by her agency and maintained by other agencies in the united states in this particular case the dataset in question and the way it was interpreted and presented by these particular scientists constitute a very small part of the immense body of data and analysis on which our understanding of the issue of climate change rests the question being addressed by these da was have there been natural periods of warming in the past in the last one or two thousand years in particular that have been stronger than the episode now being experienced that's an interesting question and because of the controversy around at the time most of these emails were written that is in the early two thousand the national academy of sciences undertook a thorough review of all of the relevant data sets and all of the methods of analysis not just the data set used by these particular authors are the methods used by these particular authors the national academies report on this matter was published in two thousand and six and it concluded that the preponderance of available evidence points to the conclusion that the last fifty years have been the warmest half century in at least the last one thousand years and probably much longer there is and there will remain after the dust settles in this current controversy a very strong scientific consensus on the key characteristics of the problem global climate is changing in highly unusual ways compared to long experienced and expected natural variations the unusual changes match what theory and models tell us would be expected to result from the very changes in the atmosphere that we know have been caused by human activities above all burning fossil fuels and tropical the forestation significant impacts on human wellbeing from these changes in climate are already being experienced and continuing with business as usual in the fossil fuel burning and tropical deforestation activities that are the largest contributors to these changes in the atmosphere is highly likely to lead to growth of the impacts to substantially unmanageable levels of details in support of those propositions are in my written testimony let me turn to the closing part of my remarks i've tried to indicate in the in the written testimony and here that we in fact know a great deal about global climate change what its causes are how it works what its impacts are likely to become but of course there is more to learn and the federal government is doing a lot in support of the research needed to learn more and its translation of that research into products our society can use to better cope with climate ange but there again we need to do more with that said i emphasize again that in my judgment and that of the great majority of other scientists who have seriously studied this matter the current state of knowledge about it even though incomplete as science always is and even though controversy zero in some details as science almost always is is sufficient to make clear that failure to act promptly to reduce global emissions to the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other heat trapping substances is overwhelmingly likely to lead to changes in climate to extreme and too damaging to be adequately addressed by any adaptation measures that can be foreseen the united states as the largest contributor to the cumulative additions of anthropogenic that is human caused greenhouse gases to the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution and still today the second largest emitter after china and as the world's largest economy and preeminent source of scientific and technological innovation we have the obligation and the opportunity to lead the world in demonstrating that the needed emissions reductions can be achieved in ways that are affordable and consistent with continued economic growth that create new jobs and that bring further co benefits in the form of reduced oil import dependence and improved air quality president obama is going to copenhagen underline that his administration is fully committed to assuming this leadership role the administration obviously will need the support of the congress in delivering on this promise and i'd like to thank you chairman markey and this committee for your own leadership in oceans and atmosphere and the administrators of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration she has been a distinguished scholar on these issues she is one of the most highly interest in the science of climate change and the spectrum of climate sciences and services needed in this country and abroad to make critical decisions for now and for the future as president obama said to the national academy of sciences scientists more essential for our prosperity our security our health our environment and our quality of life than it has ever been before as head of know one of the nation's premier science service and stewardship agencies with responsibilities for both oceans and atmosphere i strongly support a focus on science based decision making science can help inform the understanding of opportunities and challenges presented by climate change through sustained federal an extramural partnerships and collaboration the nation has made very significant progress in our understanding of climate change the core capabilities needed to understand the state of the climate and make projections about future climate and associated impacts include integrated and comprehensive observing systems on land in the oceans the atmosphere in space research into the physical system and its interconnectedness to the human ecological and biology chemical systems modeling interest seasonal to multi decadal to centennial time scales and a means to assess and communicate the climate information about courage and future impacts three entities the intergovernmental panel  climate change the i p c c the u s global change research program and the national academy of sciences of all published several peer reviewed sympathies of the latest climate science findings and associated i climate change impacts in the united states report a landmark assessment report but dr holden and i proud proudly announced just this last june and the scientists made seventy three percent of the federal authors in  fourth assessment report for working group one the basis of the physical understanding of climate since the i p c c process began in the late one nine hundred eighty s a wealth of global scientific information has cumulatively provided stronger and stronger evidence that the earth is warming and that humans are primarily responsible as stated in the global change impacts two thousand and nine report global warming is unequivocal and is primarily human induced this warming can be seen and increases in global average search surface air and ocean temperatures widespread melting of snow and ice rising sea levels and changes in many other climate related variables and impacts most of the observed increases in global temperatures since the mid twentieth century are due primarily to human induced increases in concentrations of heat trapping greenhouse gases when i served on the very first national academy of sciences study and policy implications of global warming in the one nine hundred eighty s we talked about what human and do climate change might look like at some point in the future today we know that it's happening now we are already seeing the effects of climate change on our landscapes our neighborhoods our farms as well as our forests oceans and mountains we were able to measure these changes through significant advances in our observing systems over the last twenty to thirty years many of which are the result of noah's responsibility and innovation and through collaborative global and national efforts to provide systematic and widespread monitoring of the climate system and associated environmental and social changes as a result we have a much better understanding of present and expected impacts of climate change widespread climate change impacts are occurring now and are expected to increase i emphasize that climate change is not a theory it is a documented set of observations about the world a key element of the u s global change research program emphasizes the importance of multiple independent analyses and data sets to quantify uncertainties and therefore we have the benefit of this policy when it comes to global change analyses the noah data used in the i p c c report are open and available widely openly available they are used heavily in the i p c c results of temperature changes similar to other major global datasets maintained by other u s agencies such as nasa and that maintained by other countries such as the united kingdom so what are these datasets what is this what are these observations tell us about climate change what do we know with certainty about trends to date and what do we think is highly likely in the future global average sea surface temperature as rich by one point five degrees fahrenheit since one thousand nine hundred and is projected to rise another two to eleven and a half degrees by twenty one hundred the current atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is estimated at around three hundred eighty five parts per million which is higher than the highest point in the last eight hundred thousand years temperatures in the next couple of decades will be primarily determined by past emissions of greenhouse gases but increases there after will be primarily determined by future emissions currents observed global emissions of carbon dioxide emissions are beginning to exceed even the upper range of the two thousand and seven i p c c scenarios there is strong agreement and much evidence that with current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices global greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades as we continue to learn more about the climate system i would like to reiterate the importance of looking at the earth system holistically and understanding the interconnected nature of the ocean atmosphere and terrestrial systems in particular want to emphasize the importance of continuing our work to better understand the oceans and the potential impacts of climate change on them i believe we've been championing the notion that we do not have urgently need a strong focus on ecosystem based science to inform decisions about adapting to climate change an ecosystem based approach also provides a broad array of possible tools for adaptation to climate change climate change interacts with an exacerbates other changes ranging from overfishing to new true pollution to invasive species and habitat destruction removing one or several of these stresses is likely to enhance the resilience of the system to other stresses equally important is the need to acknowledge that we are likely to see eyes is as human actions disrupt many fundamental baiji chemical and ecological processes the now routine  dead zones areas of low or no oxygen on the coasts of oregon and washington during the summertime is an example of an unanticipated change with possibly serious consequences what does managing with the expectation of surprises look like these are rich areas for future research and management alike and finally ocean acidification which i call the equally evil twin of climate change provides yet another major threat to coastal and ocean ecosystems getting a better handle on rates of change in ocean chemistry and the consequences to marine biota are high priorities the seemingly persistent hypoxic events off the pacific northwest coast and ness of the water because of the city are two of examples of potential consequences from increasing c o two in the atmosphere in addition climate change can exacerbate other human induce stresses to aquatic systems such as those caused by nutrient loading invasive species and overfishing as water resources are stressed coastal areas are increasing risk from sea level rise inundation and storm surge north atlantic fish populations are shifting north due to warming warmer oceans and the threat to human health increases due to heat stress air quality and water borne diseases we must continue to enhance our scientific capacities including research observation modeling predictions projections and assessments to ensure that we are providing policy and decision makers planners and the public with the best possible science based information to take on the challenges and opportunities posed by climate change thank you again mr chairman for the opportunity to provide you with this review an update of the climate change science and ocean city cation noah looks forward to continuing to provide national and international leadership in collaboration with our partners to ensure the solid foundation of climate science and service necessary to inform critical decisions about our future as a nation and a global society thank you and i know you want to give us a brief demonstration  what i would like to share with you i greatly appreciate the opportunity to not only present the oral testimony that i did but to provide a demonstration of some basic scientific concepts of ocean acidification ocean acidification is a global on life in the ocean the moniker osteoporosis of the sea gives you a hint about some of its impacts the basic chemistry of ocean acidification is understood and is not controversial here are three basic concepts number one the chemistry of the oceans is dependent upon the chemistry of the atmosphere more c o two in the atmosphere means more c o two in the ocean number two a c o two from the air dissolved into the ocean it makes the oceans more acidic the resulting change is number three in the chemistry of the oceans disrupt the ability of plants and animals in the sea to make shells and skeletons of calcium carbonate and those chemical changes also dissolve shells that are already formed so when the oceans is affected by this any plant or animal that has a shell or a skeleton made of calcium carbonate the hard parts of many familiar animals such as oysters clams corals lobsters crabs such as those on this table and those on the posters are made of calcium many microscopic plants and animals at the base of the food chain also have calcium carbonate shells or skeletons some of these microscopic plants and animals are so abundant that when they die they form massive deposits as they accumulate on the sea floor the famed white cliffs of dover are a familiar example of calcium carbonate or chalk deposits the skeletons of microscopic organisms more acidic ocean water is corrosive to all of these calcium carbonate shells and skeletons but let me focus on two quick examples number one corals the provide the fundamental structure for the world's treasured coral reefs make their skeletons with calcium carbonate more acidic ocean water makes it harder for corals to make their hard parts if the ocean becomes too acidic coral reefs may well disappear terra pods number two also called the butterflies are small shelled animals about the size of a lentil being they occur in the millions off the coast of my home state of oregon but also throughout the world's oceans they are a key or the primary source of food for juvenile salmon and many other fish around the world care pods are particularly susceptible to increasingly acidic ocean water as you'll see in a moment and i mention them in part because they illustrate the broader consequences of disruption of one part of the ocean ecosystem reverberating throughout other parts of the system potentially affecting jobs food security tourism and more the severity of ocean acidification its impacts is likely depend in part on the interaction of acidification with other environmental stresses such as rising ocean temperatures overfishing and pollution from the land early evidence suggests that some species are better able to thrive in increased acidity but the adaptability of most organisms to increased acidity is unknown far understanding of ocean acidification impacts are still unfolding the basic science of how the ocean is acidifying and the effects of increased the city on some marine organisms is well known and i'd like to now demonstrate to the basic concepts that i just mentioned the ocean does a great service the ocean does a great service by absorbing tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and in fact the oceans have absorbed already about a third of the carbon dioxide that humans have contributed to the atmosphere over the last two centuries this greatly reduces the impact of the tea trapping pollutant gases on the earth but the carbon dioxide that is absorbed by oceans changes the chemistry of brought a vessel of water some common laboratory blue dye the changes color as the acidity in the solution changes and some dry ice which is typically compressed frozen carbon dioxide so i will first squirt some of this into the pitcher of water you can see that it starts bubbling much more quickly much more rapidly and is in fact dissolving much more rapidly so here we have just a couple simple demonstrations that illustrate some very basic principles of what happens in the oceans as they absorb as they absorb the carbon dioxide that we have put into the  atmosphere i want to be crystal clear here the ocean will never be as a city as vinegar is i have used it here simply as a visual demonstration of what happens when you increase the level of acidity in a solution what happens to calcium carbonate shells to show you what actually happens in sea water the sea water that is projected to be affected by increasing too by the end of the century i have a video clip and i want to tell you a little bit about what it shows and then start the clip the first ten seconds will show you a living swimming terror pod one of these small animals but i spoke of earlier  beautiful creature about the size of a lentil being it's incredibly important as a food source for juvenile salmon for mackerel for pollock for herring they are very very abundant in oceans throughout the world after that you will see what happens to a terror pod in the water that is the same chemically as sea water that is projected by the end of the century so let's start the video clip if we could please and you will see first once we get to it see time lapse photos of what happens to the shell in seawater after forty five days projected for the year twenty one hundred and finally this last clip is an animation illustrating from the year seven hundred sixty five to twenty one hundred the effect of increasing ocean acidity on the availability of the calcium carbonate mineral but terra pods corals and other organisms need to create their shells and skeletons this is under a business as usual emissions scenario and the change in color from purple to blue to yellow to read indicates increasing ocean acidity and decreasing availability of the calcium carbonate that is needed for shells and skeletons ocean acidity has increased by thirty percent since the beginning of the industrial revolution just over two hundred years ago this increases a hundred times faster than any change in acidity experienced by marine organisms for at least twenty million years by the middle of the century it's expected that coral calcification rates will decline by a third and at that point erosion of corals will outpace new growth making be severely compromised so in conclusion our understanding of the impacts of ocean acidification is relatively new roughly two thirds of the published research has come to light since two thousand and four which is why you probably haven't heard a lot about this issue thanks to congress's action in passing the federal ocean acidification research and monitoring act more attention will be given to this subject particularly by scientists and our partners at the national science foundation and in academia nonetheless our fundamental scientific understanding of the basic chemistry of ocean acidification is sound more c o two emitted into the atmosphere will increasingly lead to more c o two being absorbed by oceans that will make oceans more acidic and we are now beginning to understand the oceans very capacity to absorb c o two from the atmosphere is being degraded classes in high schools grammar schools colleges all across the country so they might be a little bit more familiar with this than people who are a little bit older but i think that's why we call them the green generation because they're reflecting the science that is being taught them today a dramatic rise over the course of this century that it has produced the so called the hockey stick graph which is being questioned in some circles can you c larify for us the evidence that supports the significant rise in temperatures over the past century sure when one talks about reconstruction of past temperatures one is talking about using a variety of indicators of what the temperature of the earth was in the period before we had adequate thermometer measurement to meaningfully determine the average surface temperature of the earth those methods include the came about when an analysis of the last one thousand plus years of temperature based on a variety of reconstructions available at that time from these different proxies the ice cores the tree rings the sediments fossil pollens and so on came out with a temperature trace that with some bumps was relatively flat for most of the last thousand years and then rose rather sharply in the twentieth century indeed then extremely sharply so the thing had the shape of a hockey stick along relatively flat section and then a steep rise this was the particular graphic that led to a considerable amount of controversy at the end of the ninety's and the beginning of the tooth as to whether the particular approaches to developing that graph used by the group of scientists who did it and published it in the journal nature in one nine hundred ninety eight were absolutely correct there was a flurry of activity at that time a flurry of controversy about whether their statistical methods were right whether they had used the right proxies whether they had interpreted them correctly it's important to understand that there were a variety of other research groups around the world doing proxy analyses and getting similar results  with some variations because proxies are difficult to interpret the different proxy measures depict typically relate to different specific areas in the world where the proxy indicators have been preserved and you need to merge them together in a way that ultimately makes sense and is scientifically rigorous and that's very challenging but in the end as i mentioned before the effective resolution of the controversy was when the national academy of sciences conducted a major study looking at all the proxy data sets all the methods that had been used to interpret them their results published in two thousand and six led to the conclusion which i mentioned before in fact it was even a little stronger than the conclusion i mentioned before they said it was highly likely that the temperature increase of the twentieth century was unprecedented in the last two thousand years there was some greater degree of bumpiness in some of the proxy records than the one thousand nine hundred eight nature publication had included so it was kind of planet is actually not warming but cooling and the evidence over the past decade indicates that we're in a cooling period and not in a warming period historically what would your response to that be if you look carefully at the climate records the the warming that has occurred is not gradual it's jerky and you get periods of time where there are steep increases and other times where it's relatively flat other times where there are slight dips and the key point here i think is to really understand global trends you need to look at long enough periods of time that you get a clear signal  it is quite possible to have a decade in which you see very little change but if you look at the entire century you see some remarkable changes and in fact if i could have been the slide that i brought  i was hoping someone would ask this question a folk thank you mr chairman for doing so and what you will see on this slide are the actual temperature data from is the most recent data trend and if you take just that period of time there is no discernible no obvious trend in that if you then go and add take longer  interval of time next one please and keep going back through time you see more and more information that gives you a better sense of what the actual real overall trend is and so that recognizes from wisconsin thank you very much mr chairman i want to go back to the e mails that ended up being placed in the public record and i don't want to get to whether or not they were legally place u s global change research program and that means that these two books that were passed out this morning need to have a thorough review in the light of this information that has been disclosed and at worst it's junk science and it is a part of a massive international scientific fraud dr hold and you've been in the middle of a lot of this and i've got a couple of questions based upon your statements before you joined the  of possibility however that's eleven feet higher than what the p p c estimated over this period of time which is somewhere between seven and twenty three inches now with respect to the hockey stick theory which the chairman has referred to it has been pretty much discredited in the scientific community and yet near to a bar of thirteenth e mail which is now in the public record them i think it's pretty clear that in both cases you are wrong and i guess i'd like to know if you're concerned now that you're in the white house and representing all of the public whether you're concerned about the misrepresentation of the state of science with respect to global warming and i'd also like to know if you still support the principle critic of the those who trashed the hockey stick theory  and that is a dr michael mann knowing of his efforts now to hide his dad a new encourage his colleagues to shut out journals like climate research to publish works contrary to his own  bias congressman let me try to take those in the in the order you asked them and the very first part of your statement with respect i would disagree with you that this current uproar calls into question all of climate science i do not believe that it remotely sure i that say that i said it ought to be looked at again and you know there is increasing evidence of scientific fascism that's going on and i think it's policy makers who are making decisions about the state of the american economy for the next several generations that we ought to have accurate science and it appears there's enough question on whether the science we have is accurate that's got to be resolved i wish we could have done it in this hearing but the chairman wouldn't let us but i very much agree that we need to resolve of the current issue it's important to understand what has really gone on here to get to the bottom of it as i indicated before that's been one of the strengths of science over the years the capacity to get to the bottom of the controversies that emerge and i believe w get to the bottom of this one but the key point is however this particular controversy comes out the result will not call into question the bulk of our understanding of how the climate works or how humans are affecting it you mentioned  an interview of mine a few years ago in which i talked about the possibility of a sea level rise in this century as much as thirteen feet that was based on scientific peer reviewed publications that appeared in the early two thousand that indicated that over geologic time in periods of natural climate change there had been episodes in which the rate of sea level rise increased by as much as two to five meters per century and that this could not be ruled out at the temperatures for which we were heading in name calling going on because i quote from your e mail of october thirteenth two thousand and three saying doing this will reveal it soon in bali yunus are essentially amateurs in the interpretation of historical and paleoclimat records of climate change you know you're not dealing with their issue you're calling them names and i think we ought to get to the bottom of this without having the name calling and i wish that the president's science advisor and a former employee of one of the most distinguished universities in the world would be able to get beyond the name calling and get to it my time is up and i yield back i would be happy to answer all of the congressman's questions if i'm allowed you will  given enough time but let me turn right now and recognize the gentleman from washington state was tinsley it is continuing studying to me that people can sit and watch the evidence before their eyes of what the seas are going to look like in a century that might melt terra pods and somehow blow that off and be more interested in emails from london it's interesting to me and the only way i could been able understand it is that some people believe there's a massive global conspiracy it's intent on world domination associated with phoning up information about terror pods and the fact that the arc it is melting so i just want to ask you if you're part of that massive international conspiracy either one of you members of the trilateral commission specter or chaos i just need an answer congressman inslee i am not a member of any of those organizations and i do not believe that there is a conspiracy it would be an amazing thing indeed if the academies of science or virtually every country in the world that had one and if the earth and planetary sciences departments in every major university that had one around the world were all engaged together with the united nations environment program the intergovernmental panel on climate change and all the other bodies that have reviewed this matter in a conspiracy that really defies imagination that the great bulk of the scientific community all around the world looking at these matters has come to the same conclusion well just take a look at this the national academy of sciences has looked at this with in great detail and great summary from a wide variety of data sets not just from the individuals who wrote the emails but in fact from a wide variety of datasets including information generated by nasa know in a whole host of united states agencies and they concluded that in fact both there are changes in the atmospheric climate and that there is increasing acidification at least no one has associate with to even be that if that is true isn't it fair to characterize as much as we want to get people to use the right language in their emails that is this is a tempest in the teapot coming out of england isn't that a right characterization and well i think we need to wait until all the facts are in to find out exactly what some of these e mails mean in terms of how the scientists in question behaved i mean i would i would point out that scientists are human and from time to time they experience frustration anger resentment and from time to time they display defensiveness and bias and even misbehavior of some kind to like any other group of human beings they are subject to human frailties i think the facts are not entirely in on this particular case as to how much and what kinds of frailty might have been displayed here but the key point is that when we get to the bottom of it no matter how it comes out the great bulk of the data on which our understanding of the climate system rests will not have been affected and our basic understanding of where we are where we're headed and by how much we would need to change course to avoid really unfortunate consequences will not have changed and is that let me ask you is there anything about these that is something that particular research group was focused on and in my view the emails really do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus in the independent scientific analyses of thousands of scientists around the world that tell us that the earth is warming and that warming is largely a result of human activity so let me if i can i have some concerns about the state of our science that are reflected in the fact that everything that i'm reading suggests that the predictions were not were not sufficiently dire as to what we're experiencing now i'm not a scientist as you are but it seems to me the evidence that i am seeing coming and i'm looking at this copenhagen diagnosis report i made reference to my opening statement that the arctic ice sheets are melting much more fast in the summer than we anticipated that there's been a forty percent greater than average  ice sheet melt than predicted in the i p c c report in two thousand and seven if you need to have six that we've seen an increasing rate in sea rise and then was expected to me just is the evidence seems to be coming in in the last twenty four months either on the diarist end of the spectrum that was considered or outside of that spectrum what is that a fair characterization of a huge dataset or what are we to make of this well let me congressman take the opportunity this particular question to answer part of congressman sense is because he referred to the i p c c as finding in its fourth assessment report about sea level rise in that report the i p c c made clear that they were only considering the thermal expansion of sea water in a small contribution from the melting of mountain glaciers in their sea level rise estimate for the twenty first century leaving out deliberately the mechanisms thought to have caused a more rapid rise in sea level that have occurred from time to time in the geologic past and the reason they left out those mechanisms that are capable of causing more rapid sea level rise as they explained in their report was that we do not yet understand those mechanisms well enough to model them and arrive at the sort of quantitative conclusion that the i p c c was emphasizing and in addition we didn't know at that time we didn't have enough data to know whether on balance the antarctic ice sheet the larger of the two was gaining mass or losing mass since that i p c c report there's been a great deal of additional work on these questions we now know that both the antarctic and the greenland ice sheet are losing mass we know that the rate of sea level rise today is more than twice the rate of sea level rise averaged over the twentieth century and the current best estimates of the peak sea level rise to be expected in this century or one to two meters that's not as high as my number from two thousand and six the advancing science has ruled out the high end of that range but it makes me wrong in two thousand and six by about a factor of two and it makes the i p c c wrong by a much larger factor by which of their numerical estimate understated the possible rise of sea level in the century we're now are inherently conservative and scientists are by and large fairly reluctant to make statements that they can't back up with out good data and so i think the sea level rise example is a classic case in point scientists knew when they were projecting a twenty three inch sea rise increase by the end of the century that there were important factors they couldn't account for but they but they couldn't include them because they couldn't they didn't understand them well enough and so they erred on the side of caution and i think we see this over and over in many of the i p c c conclusions they are inherently conservative and so when the reality plays out it's sometimes more than what was and i've listened very closely i think it's all very interesting listening to you all and some of the other questions as well from members of the panel here i'm not a scientist but i don't question that the earth's climate is changing  you know we used to have dinosaurs and there's still a lot of debate about what happened to the dinosaurs and then we had the ice age there was a lot of debate about what happened during the ice age i was noticing an article in our  one of our papers just the other day they were there doing two studies in lake superior along the picture of rocks which they indicating that they think a couple of thousand years ago the water levels there could be anywhere as much as fifty or sixty feet higher than they are currently so the climate of the world is never static it is never going to be static the climate is going to change and for me the question is as you say the the question that i'm struggling with that's why i think all of these emails coming out are are very interesting i think it's unfortunate that anybody that questions the ideology the absolute whatever i do think that the question as i say for me is whether or not it is human induced particularly when this congress has been traveling down a path with cap and trade legislation that is going to in my opinion decimate the american economy and that of my state i think that we look at these e mails and you know it's an attempt in many cases just to silence any dissent which i think is very unfortunate and i would just read one i'm not sure the ranking member read this previously but here's one you know there weren't e mails during the dinosaur age by the way either the ice age but here's an email saying i think we need to stop considering the climate research journal as a legitimate peer reviewed journal and perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to or cite papers in this journal how we do kilis how unfortunate that here's this climate research journal that if they question the incontrovertibly science that they are you know just dismissed and made to feel as though you know it is they can't even question this i think it's a travesty and i do recognize that the e mails are an inconvenient truth perhaps are a an embarrassment particularly on the on the brink of copenhagen but i think one of the most important jobs of the congress is to exercise its oversight responsibilities and because of these e mails because in my opinion there is at least a debate a debate on whether or not climate change is human induced or man produced for instance i was just breeding the other day that in indonesia where the peat moss is naturally composting that that is the third largest producer of carbon dioxide in the planet more so than many other kinds of things i'm not sure how our cap and trade legislation is going to address that you know if i say the climate is never going to be static so what that mr chairman i guess i would just use my time here again to ask that this committee consider a hearing into this climate gate debate that is exploding around us and i would also ask dr holdren who made a comment you said that you thought that the uproar should be resolved and i guess i would just ask you how do you think we could do that without completely being dismiss anyone that would ask such a question in light of all these e mails and how would you think it could be resolved with the best transparency and with the interests of the american people in our economy certainly at heart  absolutely i think it can be resolved and i think it can be resolved without name calling and without being dismissive they're actually not withstanding occasional exceptions as a long history of respectful and civil debate among scientists who have differ views on many of the details of virtually any issue in this particular case one already sees a very substantial amount of activity of scientists who are going to be looking at these data who are going to be looking at to try to understand what the e mails are really saying who are going to reexamine the questions that were at issue then i think there's no question that this will happen whether or not this committee or any other holds a hearing on the subject that's the way the science community works when results are called into question scientists flock to the scene as it were in order to figure out what was really going on there and what the best approximation to the truth we can  get at the current state of understanding is a matter of constantly changing one needs to understand that as new information becomes available anybody who is a good scientist looks at the new information in the context of the old information and tries to develop a better picture of what's addresses the very important question that you asked earlier and that is what is the role of what's the human contribution to global climate change and how do we know if humans are having an insulin you're absolutely correct but climate has changed a lot in the past we've got good evidence of that we have been able to model those changes and understand more through time about what the natural changes are and what factors are influencing them this particular figure shows what the climate would be doing without the additional carbon dioxide that humans have put into the atmosphere along with other greenhouse gases and that's what's shown in this blue the dark blue band this is one thousand nine hundred to two thousand if i could i know my time is expired let me just ask you does that graph take into consideration what is happening in indonesia and do you consider what's happening in indonesia man induced there are many sources of carbon dioxide some of which are natural and some of which are a result of changes in land use practices so they are affected by human activities as well as burning of fossil fuels and these kinds of analyses take into account our current understanding of the sum total of emissions from multiple sources and they tease apart what's what is the human contribution from what would be happening naturally and there's clear evidence that what is happening now is strongly influenced some about the e mails to you think the the scandal in this this seems to be a culture of corruption in the scientific community right now on these emails and manipulation of data for a purpose to get their own results you see that is a problem yes or no congressman i don't believe that the exchange that you saw are typical of the broader scientific community  would add that i too do not believe that these emails are remotely sufficient to demonstrate a culture of corruption in the scientific community there are e mails from a relatively few people involved in a particular controversy that was attended by a good deal of frustration and anger and as to exactly what went on in the way of manipulation of data i think that remains to be seen to the extent that there was manipulation of data that was not scientifically illegitimate and i emphasize that scientists manipulate data all the time in order to make them comprehensible and consistent but if there was manipulation of data that was not scientifically legitimate yes i regard that as a problem and i would denounce it and i think again that the merit of the scientific system is that over time it tends successfully to underneath those kinds of an independent investigation into this i'm not sure an independent investigation if you mean by the congress of the united states is the right way to get at scientific truth i think the scientific community has well mechanisms for doing that and i believe they've already been set in motion by by these disclosures we will find out what went on there it's not clear at this point i haven't read all of the e mails either it's not clear at this point what some of the mean i would point out for example that the term trick is often used in science to describe a clever way to get around a difficulty that is perfectly legitimate the use of the word trick does not in itself in science demonstrate that there was manipulation i think we need to hear all sides of the story before we decide what happened there if it turns out there was improper manipulation again i would denounce it and i would be grateful that the scientific process had run its course and disclosed it if this committee or others want to have hearings that end up calling as witnesses people scientists who are involved in trying to sort that out i think of course that's and how much is natural percentage wise well for first of all what you need to understand is the natural flows of carbon dioxide in and out of the atmosphere out of the atmosphere by photosynthesis and absorption in the oceans back into the atmosphere from out gassing from the oceans and by the decomposition or combustion of organic matter have largely been in balance for a long time they're currently in the range of something like seven or eight times the human input but the problem is that the natural input and uptake has been in balance and the human input has driven the system out of balance and is leading to a an accumulation of additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere this is extremely well understood scientific absorbs proximity twenty five percent of the c o two added to the atmosphere from human activity each year so if there are seven or eight times more naturally because if you eliminate the human beings from the earth and all human activity would ocean acidic certification still occur it wouldn't would for the time required to take the excess out of the atmosphere that is accumulated there in other words the oceans are not yet in equilibrium with what we have done to the atmosphere but they will get there congressman i think what you're asking is  if humans were not put putting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere wouldn't the oceans already be absorbing some and the answer is yes but they would also be using some of the carbon dioxide and it would be in balance what is different now is that humans have contributed now about thirty percent of the carbon dioxide that's in the atmosphere and some of that has been taken up by oceans making them more but isn't the ocean one of the biggest emitters the oceans and the land both release e o two and take it up and now that the process has been in balance over millennia and that continues what's happening is that humans are adding more to the atmosphere and more to the oceans so there's a the total amount of c o two it's being redistributed because of our activities with ninety seven ninety six percent of emissions are natural and four percent are manmade we have responsibility for that four percent but even if we eliminated it isn't it a little arrogant to think that we can manipulate the entire process we have manipulated the entire what's changing in the oceans is where it's warm and that does change many fish move most fish and many other species stay in the type of water in which they are physiological performance is the best what we're seeing now is that because oceans are warming over all the places if you look at a place on the coastline for example in california the places that used to be a certain temperature are now warmer and so species that used to live there are moving northward to stay in that temperature zone that they would have been in previously so species are moving in response to the changing distribution of heat in the ocean dr said your testimony to this state of mind or that s that was a possible outcome an upper limit on the amount of sea level rise based on understanding of the processes that was available at the time it is now considered that the upper limit on sea level rise in this century is about two meters or a little over six feet and that's what i now say because that's what the current science says gentleman's time has expired six feet does sound like a very large increase  the water levels of the planet the gentle lady from tennessee the sparks thank you mr chairman and i want to thank all of each of you for submitting your testimony in advance we have had multiple hearings this morning for the time ago that the medieval warm period was a regional phenomena and not a global phenomenon the arguments by soon and valley units to the contrary fared very badly in the scientific community in terms of the rigor and validity of their arguments and that is the reason that they were disparaged in discussions of this matter in particular because they continued to spouse the view that the medieval warming period was a global phenomenon long after evidence to the contrary became persuasive to everyone else one of the characteristics one expects of scientists is to change their mind when data and analysis show that they were wrong the first time i changed my mind about the maximum sea level possible in the twenty first century when the analysis and the data changed and that's what we expect from others when that doesn't happen a degree of frustration and anger often materializes because of a concern that people are simply muddying the water by repeating discredited hypotheses ok well let's apply that statement than looking at the climate change data that has been lost and you think that the climate change data has been compromised since there was original data lost by the are you you know i think that's unfortunate whenever any original data are lost that is a misfortune it's unfortunate that it happened i wish it had been prevented i think the robustness of all of the data sets we have available to us is sufficient to survive that loss but i do regret the loss well if if further review on all of this shows that the i p c c report in two thousand and seven used corrupted or tainted data what do you think they ought to do about it should they be willing to go back and say you know we're going to have to change our mind on this because we used corrupted data or we didn't give the whole picture or science if you look at the whole thing it proves us wrong to the extent that it is shown that data were corrupted and influenced conclusions of the i p c c of course those conclusions should be revised and the i p c c see an every successive report that it produces which is roughly every five years revised as a whole variety of conclusions that reached in the previous assessment because new information has become available it's of course unfortunate if the new information that becomes available is that data that were previously used work corrupted but in terms of the outcome the revision of the findings based on new information is the same scientists do that all the time the i p c c does it and they will do it if it is determined that any conclusion of the i p c c was based opinion i think there is reason to believe that some of the statistical methods that dr mann used were not the best for the purpose of the academy pointed that out and it nonetheless concluded that is basic finding that the last fifty years where the warmest half century in the last one to two thousand years was none the less robust and again i would point out that arguments about what the best a typical techniques to use are pervasive in the scientific community and it's no surprise that one has a difference of opinion it's no surprise that a scientist may have made a mistake in the method chosen to analyze a particular data set again the key thing about science is not that scientists are always right it's that they fix their mistakes over time well let me ask you this i know that some of the scientists have come before us and they advocate limiting greenhouse gas emissions also have stated they may be they have global temperatures have stopped rising over the past two years even though greenhouse gas emissions have increased so how do you go about explaining that discrepancy when you look at what is natural what is the key point is that the climate and the surface temperature of the earth fluctuates all the time for a wide variety of reasons most of them natural what we are seeing is superimposed on those natural fluctuations a long term trend of increasing global average surface temperature of the magnitude and of the sort expected to result according to both theory and models from the increases in carbon dioxide and other heat trapping substances that humans have imposed on the atmosphere if you look at the actual temperature data and i have in front of me the no other data set for the global average surface temperatures through two thousand and eight what you see is that nine of the ten warmest years in the one hundred forty year are mama to record the period of time since eight hundred eighty when we've had enough their mama or measurements around the land in the ocean to meaningfully define a global average surface temperature nine of the ten warmest years in that ninety you look at the numbers you do see a bump as you see up there on the screen in the far right where in the last few years there is no discernible upward trend but this is completely consistent with having natural fluctuations natural ups and downs superimposed on a long term warming trend associated with greenhouse gases and a lady expired one other part we will have a second round  review by the national academy of science in using information base for no one nasa and a whole host of other of other data sets that there is no reason to revise their fundamental conclusion that humans are contributing to change climate and no one not to change a fundamental conclusion at the oceans are becoming more acidic mr sensenbrenner suggested that there is some scientific fasces and that's a quote is there any evidence of fasc in the nasa organization of scientific fasces an associated with this i'm not even sure exactly what that term would mean but i don't i'm not aware of any balls conspiracies  misbehavior in the characterization and use of data in nasa or nella so i take it it's troublesome to me the people who put the man on the moon the people who discovered water and on the moon the people who are doing great research figuring out how the oceans are becoming acidic some of whom are my constituents it's disturbing to me that people come to this chamber and call in fastest i got to tell you i had a problem with that i don't think that's right these men and women are doing the best they can to provide his data and conclusions to the best of their ability and they through their professional work have reached a very very strong consensus on these scientific issues who are working for uncle sam and i think it's wrong to say that about them and there's a little emotion in my voice because i've seen in my neighborhood what this phenomenon is doing i'd like to be able to catch salmon and my grandkids celebrated his first birthday sunday to catch salmon that live on terra pods maybe fifty or sixty years from now and when people watch what i watched and say that this is just big big scientific fascist conspiracy that are genin this stuff up i've got a problem with dification off the pacific coast and when they were explaining to me their findings their jobs were kind of agape because what they told me is that the rate of acidification was stunning to them particularly in the shallow waters off our pacific coast they explained to me that as i understand this correctly the waters are more acidic the lower in the water column they have been but now very acidic levels are becoming very close within one hundred fifty two hundred feet of the surface and this was shocking to them and the only the rate of change and ocean acidification has surprised many people and it is absolutely the case that off the west coast of the united states where winds blow along the coastline and push the surface waters away from the coast which pulls up cold nutrient rich low oxygen and lower ph water to the surface that that's where we are seeing some of the greatest increases in the city happening around the world and it is of deep concern because those areas as you well know are historically very very rich are wonderful productive fisheries off that area so are in large part a consequence of this upwelling i appreciate that i want to ask is there anybody in this room quoting the two witnesses and my republican colleagues my democratic colleagues or anybody in this room who has information to suggest that the oceans are not becoming more acidic has anybody got information like that anybody has anybody got  the oceans are becoming more acidic other than the fact that there's massive amounts of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere is anybody got an explanation for that i haven't heard any and yet people are trying to gin up this controversy because you know why it's not because they're not intelligent it's because they're afraid that we can't solve this problem and i think if we had a little more confidence in ourselves and our ability to solve this problem we would open our minds to the scientific information that is becoming available to us and this idea of equilibrium i'll just try one more i don't know why it's so hard for people understand the idea of equilibrium to me it's like this is a fair metaphor the guy goes the doctor says a doctor again ten pounds will you change your behavior at all yes i've started eating a huge banana split at lunch and dinner every single day and he goes well it's obviously been eating more food and he goes no no it's not the banana split look at all the other food i t's the other stuff like that's eighty five percent of my caloric intake that's eighty five percent of the c o two that's going in the atmosphere don't look at the banana split don't look at the coal fired plants don't look at the cars is that kind of a metaphor us but let me say that the controversy over the leak emails and their contents cannot be ignored because it goes to the very basis upon which this debate has gone on for the last several years and i see an awful lot of attempts by people in this room to shove that concern under the rug i'm telling you now it will get worse rather than getting better and i'll define what i mean by scientific fascism these e mails try the scientific conclusions by those who have disputed dr man's hockey stick theory their information in the emails that the publication climate research in which they were published ought to be boycotted because they weren't doing the politically correct thing and i understand that the editor of climate research ended up getting fired as a result there is intimidation in the scientific community by people who wish to be contrary to what the conventional wisdom is and we are being asked as a congress to make major changes in american society in energy use and how much the out of pocket costs is to every person in this country as a result of this debate and we in congress better get it right the scientists may be able to change their story and do more research but once congress passes a law it will be as difficult to repeal the consequences of that law as putting milk back into the cow and we know all about cows in wisconsin the denial has not stopped because six weeks ago i tobar twenty seventh michael mann wrote an e mail that says in part as we all know this isn't about truth at all it's about plausibly deniable act and we need to know the truth here before we can legislate in the name of the american people now dr hold public first of all congressman sensenbrenner let me let me say that the science is rough scientists are brutal in criticism anybody who's ever taken a doctoral exam in natural science understands that very well so there's nothing unusual about the strong language in criticizing results of others that one has concluded are deeply wrong the you are defending the results of others that since been proven right let let let me finish answering the question how can you be upset if i may we are all when we testify doing so on the basis of the best information available to us at the time as scientists the notion that one cannot be objective because one has concluded that a particular study by particular people was deeply flawed and that was my conclusion from reading the study by soon and ball units that it was deeply flawed and that has been the conclusion of the great bulk of the rest of the community that being so i cannot be expected to be unbiased as to the merits of that particular study i am biased by study i am biased by having read it studied it and understood what's wrong and i respect your opinion on that but it seems to me that other people ought to look into this and i want to ask you a question that you can answer yes or no you're the science advisor to the president and i would like to ask you to guarantee congress that you will provide the public including us access to all documents prepared with government funding relating to science change and that includes studies that the i p c c has either or utilize the but he can wiggle out of this by saying that the i p c c is exempt from this because they're an international body will you give us that information and then allow the public including other scientists to be able to see it after all the taxpayers have paid for i'm not sure what all you're asking congressman but i am absolutely in support of the public and the taxpayers having access to the results of research that they pay for the only constraints on that are research classified for national security reasons or research that is incomplete it is a problem where people insist on the release of data that scientists have not yet even finished assembling because this leads to interpretations mediately on the basis of an incomplete picture but once research is complete and is published in the peer reviewed literature or is submitted as a report for use by government policymakers i do believe that all of the data behind that all of the methods all of the analysis should be made available to the congress the public the taxpayers yes you'll be getting a few letters from us to that effect gentleman's time has created in the amount of c o two in the atmosphere this seems to be an incontrovertibly fact no one actually denies this it's measurable and it correlates almost directly with the industrialization of not only our country but europe and increasingly in china and india as the amount of c o two emitted globally has increased and in fact in two thousand and nine the trend is that this will be  warmer year than last year was and so where the spike is going back up again if all data up until the end of the member continues on for the can adding a month of that of this year so we can see this trend and it's gone  d since the rise of the industrial era now i'll show you another chart this is a chart of the number of home run hitters in the major league baseball from one hundred twenty until look today now the average was a three point three players were averaging over forty home runs per year from one nine hundred twenty until the one nine hundred ninety s which is why ted williams and willie mays and babe ruth were so famous that they could hit more than forty home runs then all of a sudden in the hundred ninety s there was a huge spike in a number of people hitting more than forty home runs no major league baseball said well you know perhaps the players are getting stronger others said well perhaps the baseballs are juiced but once a steroid testing program was put in place over the last three years an amazing thing as happened there was a precipitous drop in the number of body home run hitters back to normal levels an artificial substance injected into players a huge increase in the number of home runs but once it was removed we went back to normal levels again now some people of course arguing that the new normal was people hitting more than sixty home runs and seventy home runs  well it turns out that the testing program brought it down dramatically once we dealt with the reality of the science of what was going on in baseball well here we have the same trend but we have yet to inject solution that is the reduction in the amount of c o two being emitted by the united states by europe and by other parts of the world that is our challenge it is incontrovertibly official substance put into man or nature causes big differences and so these spikes very very coincidental now there were deniers in major league baseball they should all know steroids has nothing to do with an invite the way major league baseball wanted to go along with it in the same way that the coal industry the oil industry other fossil fuel industries want to go along with the myth that nothing really abnormal is happening but the consensus of the science in the world the national academy of sciences of every country in the world is that this spike in c o two is man made and that i causing dramatic changes in our oceans to a glacier is in the arctic in the villages of alaska that see the permafrost melting in their villages falling into the ocean and droughts being created around the world and all of this evidence is basically so massive that there's no way to avoid it and so what the minority has decided to do what the what the oil and coal industry want to do is to use the few emails of a few people who are doubting this science which is a consensus around the country as a way of trying to doubt the same way major league baseball did on the undeniable correlation between the injection of these artificial sources into the atmosphere having on our planet and so we can we can continue this you know pretense and we can use a small number of emails i suppose to have a larger debate but i think that it would be better for us to accept the science to accept this curve to basically deal with the reality that the minority has no answer for why it has spiked so dramatically why it's going back up again this year they sit over here using a couple living mails as a reason why we should stop all efforts to deal with this catastrophic threat to our planet and so since no alternative theory has been presented at least baseball said while the players are getting stronger  was their answer but everyone who was looking at it was saying how can they be so much stronger than the players just five years ago well that's the same thing that's happening with this c o two trend there is no explanation for it other than that it's manmade and by the way you can say well it's not that big what's the difference to a degree or two well a kid has a temperature of ninety eight point six nominally when you add a couple of degrees temperature to that child in there  hundred point six the doctor says well you know you've been at that new normal for raum fourteen days now so don't worry about it ma'am your son joey he's going to be fine the new normal is one hundred point six well who would ever accept that as an answer because it was only a two degree change in the child well that's what we've got here for the planet a chew degree change in the older all temperature of our planet is just as catastrophic as it would be for a small child who would receive no medical attention because the doctor had concluded our small number of doctors would say the child can live with the new normal of two degrees higher what parent would have to run that risk of not giving treatment to that child and that's what we're talking about here yes is a normal temperature for the point when you add on to more degrees three more degrees it is catastrophic you know you get the consensus says dr holdren is saying that there is a six foot rise  in the sea level of up a land that's not frightening enough for the other side they want to know why it's not eleven feet anymore well six feet has such catastrophic consequences for alaska for the everglades for boston for cape cod for southern california that it's almost unimaginable what the changes would have to take place in our country so what's the answer again we keep saying what are you saying is the answer to why this is spiking so dramatically where's your evidence just by casting doubt with a few e mails on a consensus globally and a century white study of this subject gentleman yield i will not yield at this time is not is not going to deal with this issue these scientists are our best people in our country and they are joined by thousands of others not only here but across the world in their construction of their analysis there is no alternative theory that the minority is proposing other than that which we know has been funded by the oil and coal and other industries that want to continue business as usual now we've tried to construct in the wax free market bill an alternative way in which these issues could be dealt with and they of course don't want to deal with that issue because they would prefer their denial what i'm going to say to you dr holdren if you could is i would like you to go through the other points that you would like to make in response to the questions that were raised by mr sensenbrenner in his opening question of you which i have allowed all of the minority members to do so when i expect the the courtesy of accent of the each minority member i'm going to extend to myself dr holdren well thank you mr chairman i think actually we got to the main points in the further discussion of sea level rise and i wouldn't have anything further i feel i need to add will be posed to the witnesses to be made by members who were not here we thank our two witnesses for their testimony here today it is extremely valuable at this time in our planet's history for the two of you to be working for our country and for the world it's an honor for us to have you here today we thank you for your distinguished service with that this hearing is given to general the results of the status of the chalk in the three different solutions just to bring the message back to you when you summarize the status of the in the three jars the chocolate is in the water only has not changed at all the that is in the half water half vinegar is dissolving and the chalk that is in total vinegar has dissolved quite substantially and will continue to do so we thank the the the  expert testimony that we received today again as a part of us that really needs to go back to sophomore and junior in high school my so we can get a briefing once again on the on the essential