not yet known the citizens of pakistan are in need we must support them with both thoughts and prayers and our aid and assistance while pakistan has been one of the hardest hit this year they are while pakistan has been one of the hottest hits there are others parts of the world that have been hit as well russia experienced both the worst heatwave and one of the worst droughts on record in china torren rains and flooding have claimed more than two thousand lives this year in india blistering heat killed dozens of people and just this week two million were left homeless from flooding here at home record breaking temperatures scorched the east and disastrous flooding inundated tennessee iowa arkansas and oklahoma in my home state of massachusetts we had two fifty year storms in two weeks this all comes in a year and itself bar is tied for the hottest on record and comes on the heels of the hottest decade on record meanwhile concentrations of heat trapping pollution continue to rise in our atmosphere committing us to per the warming in the decades ahead just as smoking increases your chance of lung cancer heat trapping pollution in the atmosphere increases the odds of weather disasters like we're experiencing this year the more heat trapping pollution the high of the risk for exclaim whether in the united states we are already breaking high temperature records twice as often as low temperature records and the amount of rain falling in heavy downpours has increased substantially in recent decades last year the house of representatives came together building a plan to address the climate crisis and our dependence on foreign oil the waxman marky bill would create millions of new domestic jobs and make the united states the leader in addressing the international impacts of climate change the flooding disaster in pakistan is a painful warning that we must act with today our distinguished guests will help us to understand the devastating impact stream whether the influence of climate change and the increased risks we will all face as we continue to alter our atmosphere that completes the  across eastern india and pakistan monsoon rains swept in mighty torrents between the himalayas and the sea at the heart of the populous ganges valley ten thousand villages crumbled and vanished then a farmer shared tree trunks in the worst floods since eight hundred seventy one in the coastal state of our wrists eight rivers thunders simultaneously and a spade killing at least one hundred fifty inundating thirty five hundred square miles of pakistan is a tragedy and i offer my sincere apologies and hopes of the speedy recovery but we're not here to talk about how pakistan can recover from the floods a topic i would be interested in discussing this is about how to tie this natural disaster to the democrats environmental agenda which will do nothing to stop the monsoon rains in pakistan there is no evidence of a direct link between climate change in these floods listen carefully as the words may and could are often used as qualifiers to gape a chary said it was quote scientifically incorrect on call to link this flood to the theory of manmade climate change did add however that these types of floods may become more frequent last month a paper published by the american meteorological society attributed the rise in damage and losses from extreme weather not to climate change but to increase development and has reduced areas pakistan's floods are a natural disaster of epic proportions and its people deserve aid and compassion which i support but we're not here to talk about that this briefing is about raising energy taxes on americans in an effort to advance the democrats policy of papen tax otherwise known as the waxman marky bill and you won't hear the words could when i say this it will hurt america's economy it's shameful that the democrats are putting politics before people and are using this tragedy as a platform for grandstanding now you'll back to balance my time i think  thank you that was just a video clip of showing the scale and intensity of the recent floods in pakistan and the destruction that they have caused these floods are the result of the worst monsoon rains in pakistan's history before i go on i w just make a short comment on the exchange between the chairman and the hon ranking member as your guest and as a bastard of pakistan to the united states that are two subjects i'm not going to try and address one is the potential political climate change which i'm sure both of you will agree will be purely manmade if we talk of the second i am not going to get into the scientific and technical issues because people have been affected that is more people than were affected by the tsunami that two thousand and five northern pakistan earthquake and the haiti earthquake put together that this figure includes six million children and eight hundred thousand pregnant women area the size of italy was underwater seventy percent of the infrastructure in the flood affected areas has been damaged or destroyed this includes roads rails bridges spot lines and group stations but just to give you an idea in valley which pakistan's military freed from terrorists last year there were forty three bridges spanning the different rivers and streams all forty three have been destroyed the oldest of these was built in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight the newest built in two thousand and eight so that eighty years of human construction activity water away by a single flood nearly two million homes and eight thousand schools have been damaged or destroyed throughout pakistan seventeen million acres out of forty three million acres of pakistan's edible land what inundated they have a crop standing in nine million acres we have lost the present and the poor farmers are not likely to be able to plant the next one is that they have also the ground is too soggy and the seeds have been washed away or rendered useless due to the rains and we are particularly grateful to the united states of america who were great was the first country with the most assistance in this difficult time it still remains the single largest donor for flood relief in pakistan and the united states has also box man as likely to be among the hardest hit by climate change and global warming and as i said earlier i have no intention of getting into the middle of the political debate in the united states on the causes of climate global warming i leave that to the scientists but i would point out that pakistan has always been a hot country with summer temperatures touching fifty degrees centigrade or one hundred twenty two fahrenheit in some parts of the country doing some of bach's sign is also one of the world's most added countries over seventy five percent of it receives rainfall less than two hundred fifty millimeters annually and twenty five percent receives less than one hundred  twenty five millimeters of rain annually the population and economy are heavily dependent on an annual influx into the indian river system of about one hundred fifty four million acre feet of water derived method and the monsoons unfortunately the country is getting hotter the summers are lending and winter shrinking and becoming my leader monsoons the main source of water in a presentation prepared by a ministry for water and power before the floods it was prophetically said that climate change and global warming were likely to cause water related extreme events such as drought floods baton change was one awesome display in pakistan this year mr chairman while the debate about climate change and global warming continues in the world we pakistan are living through this change we think the present rains and the resulting floods in pakistan are linked to changing climate patterns in our region which have been observed by scientists and of course while they may disagree about their causes they cannot disagree about the consequences we understand of the  climate is never static and continues to change however there is definitely an element of human activity exeter rating this process of change our scientists in pakistan believe that greenhouse gases emitted by factories motor vehicles and even farm animals across the world that contributing to rising global temperatures among other factors that we have noticed is human activity in the human activity that it hasn't ever before pakistan's own carbon footprint is minuscule compared to the developed countries in fact pakistan is a negative carbon emitter meaning that its emissions are even less than what it is allowed emit and it is bearing the burden of profligate use of natural resources by others for a developing country beset by many problems we have taken some important steps towards protecting our environment we have a full fledged ministry environmental protection and we have an effective environmental protection agency and we are looking on a national sustainable development strategy to deal with climate change and global warming we have national policies on drinking water flow to station management of range l that i think your comments about the response of the united states are very heartwarming americans are compassionate people we are a compassionate country this is obviously a tragedy of estimable proportions of course whenever a tragedy like this happens the first thing that has to be done is to provide shelter food clothing and medicine to the people who are whether it's by a flood or an earthquake or some other type of natural disaster and that's kind of phase one but the job really is not done until the actual rebuilding of the devastated people's lives take place and that will be several more phases hopefully fewer rather than more more phases i'm sure that the american aid and america technical assistance will be able to help the people of pakistan put their lives together after this tragedy and after the preservation of lives in the prevention of the disease take place so you know i would hope as time goes on you would advise the committee and members of congress exactly how the priorities will take place and what the the following steps will be because where a fifth of anybody's country is under water at one time it's something that we in the united states which has got a lot bigger area you know can't  have floods along our great rivers a potty cage and as well but certainly not the same percentage of our population as displaced when the flood takes place so thank you and you know i can say that personally my thoughts and prayers are with the people of pakistan and this tragic moment and will continue to be so because we don't want to see anybody not be able to recover from this because the whole world is hurt if the pakistani people who have been displaced can't recover from it so thank you for coming today and thank you for the video as well our second participant today is dr michael oppenheimer who is a professor geoscientists in international affairs at princeton university he is a long time participant in the intergovernmental panel on climate change and is serving as the chording lead author on the upcoming fifth assessment report the frequency and geographic extent of some types of extreme events and is expected to do so increasingly in the future i point to well there's a table which should have been shown up there  video up on the screen i think it would help us understand your testimony better with the wall back there ok great thank you mr chairman this table indicates seven types of weather extremes down  left hand column and i don't expect you to look at the table now in detail you can do so afterwards but the point is it indicate whether these extreme event number one whether a trend occurred in them during the twentieth century that is is whether we got more heat waves number two whether the likelihood whether this trend was likely or not related to the build up of greenhouse gases that the third column in the fourth column is the likelihood that this trend would continue in each case in the future and you notice that the word to use or very specific very likely more likely than not likely and these have specific numerical meanings in the report for instance more likely than not means a greater than a fifty percent chance and so that we are we try to be more specific than just saying should and may as you pointed out a few moments ago we do our best the main point of this is that you we can be rather specific about some sorts of events whether they've occurred whether they did trend in them whether humans are responsible for the trend and what's likely to happen in the future now extreme events have received prominence in the news as we've heard this morning include the including the events in pockets and i'd to emphasize the following points with respect to the relationship of this table in i p c c findings to such events first of all you have to understand a venture like pixels on a cut on a picture and a computer screen you really don't know very much the individual details the whole picture itself is climate so as has been said many times no individual heat wave storm or other short term weather phenomenon can be uniquely tied to a cause and effect in a cause and effect way to the buildup of the greenhouse gases we simply cannot do it nevertheless increased heat trapping due to the build up of the greenhouse gases does translate into for instance a better than even chance that we're loading the dice in favor of more such events like more intense more frequent heat waves and heavier precipitation events and regardless of  whether whether we can make a specific statement about the cause and effect mr chairman these sorts of events provide an adelaide for the sort of climate that we're facing in the future in particular heat waves and heavy precipitation events  very likely to further increase in the future according to the i p c c is analysis the higher or emissions the more likely are occurrences of these sorts of extremes and i want to say that what the i p c c has to say about the events in pakistan is we can't make an assertion about any trend to date resulting in intensity the monsoon but it is expected that if the greenhouse gases continue to build up the the intensity of these of soon events will increase in the future in that part of asia fourth my fourth point is that the assignment of cause for jam edging outcomes of such extremes and here i mean damaging outcomes like wildfires or increase human mortality in in heat waves is a very a difficult and complex matter to accomplish but absent a vast improvement in our adaptation strategies aimed at addressing the risks entailed in the increasing frequencies of such climate extremes like wildfires and heat waves and major flooding events we should expect more of these sorts of impacts in the future that is there are certain things we can do to defend ourselves against extreme floods by for instance managing fresh water better taking people out of harm's way but our experiences will never do that perfectly so the increase in extremes is likely in my view to be accompanied by an inch increase in damage to humans and society so much increases in extremes may well interact with each other further at exacerbating the consequences for example sea levels projected to rise by amounts ranging from least eight inches to according to some recent analyses more than three feet at the same time that the global average over the century at the same time intense hard activities expected to increase although this argument about whether it already has the combination of stronger storms plus a higher sea would likely create unprecedented flooding much more so than from either increased storminess or higher sea level separately by the way i want to point out that these sorts of findings to not be generalized to all extreme events there is yet for instance no evidence that or there is insufficient evidence to make a statement on for instance whether there'd been changes or trends in tornadoes for the future of tornadoes finally well extreme events are generally a physical phenomen circumstances where such events translate into disasters like hurricane katrina or the great european heat wave of two thousand and three or the pakistan floods depend in large measure on individual and societal anticipation planning and response capacity and implementation of that city and other words disaster is partly a social phenomenon in both the episodes above katrina and the two thousand and three heat wave where by the way upwards of forty thousand people perished the toll was much higher than was imagined possible before the events or unfortunately if history is a guide such situations may become ever more common assuming the greenhouse gases continue to build up even as we learn to cope better with certain extreme events the climate may change faster then we learn about it and faster than our ability to implement implement what we have learned the only remedy for such a situation is to slow the admissions of the greenhouse gases thank you very much thousand and nine report global climate change impacts united states currently is president of the united nations world meteorological organizations commission for climatology we welcome you dr peterson please begin we are ready thank you distinguished member of the select committee it's important to have to have an opportunity to talk about extremes which has been a focus not only of my work but the work of many other people around the country and around the world because extremes are really important how extremes are changing is really going to be how climate change is experience that we can see a slight change in the mean but it's the number of heat waves and the number of really extreme events that impact us and we're seeing that in both human systems and in natural systems as well scientists have long projected that we're going to be a seeing a change in the extremes and we're now able to document some of those changes ten years ago our knowledge on experience was primarily limited to the united states and a few countries where we have very  exchange relationships such as canada russia china and australia but over the last decade we've had a whole series of workshops coordinated through the world meteorological organizations that help build in some of that the rest of the world i'll give you one example in two thousand and five we had a workshop and india that was funded by the u s department of state and who provided the funding to know where to hold a workshop and we brought together scientists from  mongolia down to sri lanka and they brought their data with them and under the tutelage of world recognized experts we help them learn how to process their data and to calculate a suite of indices of extremes to from this region and because we're using a globally coordinated series of indices that all the results of all the different workshops could fit together seamlessly and i'm told by colleagues in india that this was the first time in anyone's memory that pakistani  climatologist had participated in a meeting in india and that some of this collaboration has been continuing since then so now that we put together all the information we're beginning to see what's showing up primarily over the last half century because that's the period when we have data for most of the world digital daily data and we're seeing as it warm extremes have been increasing more hot days and warm nights we've seen a decrease in cold extremes cold extremes still happen as we've seen you know in this part of the country last winter but the number of of cold days have been decreasing the number of cold nights has definitely been decreasing and these temperature trends have been very widespread around the world for precipitation we're seeing the strongest signal we're seeing is and increases in heavy precipitation of them so average around the world the number of days with heavy precipitation has been increasing and and the amount of pursue potations of percent of precipitation falling during these heavy days has been increasing and we've seen this in the u s as well for example most notable is in the northeast where we've had a sixty seven percent increase in amount of pursuit taishan falling from very heavy events over the last fifty years and these change makes physical sense we understand why they're occurring if you increase a global mean temperature you're going to increase and shift the distribution towards a warm inside you can increase the number of warm extremes and decrease the number of cold extremes and when it comes to we also understand that this change because warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor that's why clothes dryers are so that the air combat rate more water and hold more water vapor in and take it away from the clothes so similarly when you have have a warmer you're moving over warm ocean you're getting more evaporation and then when something does trigger the rainfall such as a passage of of a cold front we then have the potential for a much heavier pursue potations coming from the that event because we have apt moisture in the atmosphere thank you thank you thank you mr bowman our my name is michael waiter and i'm a staff scientist at the large berkeley national laboratory in california my current research focuses on the detection of observe climate change as well as the projection of future climate change i'm particularly the lead author teams of recent federal poured weather and climate extremes in a changing climate and global climate change impacts the united states i've also been selected to be lead author for the upcoming fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change i should make clear the statements i make today are my own and may not represent the balls is a position of the united states department the lawrence berkeley national laboratory of the university of california and i thank you for the opportunity express my views the fourth assessment report of the i p c c states that the warming of the world climate is unequivocal future warming is virtually certain if greenhouse gas and other manmade pollutants continue to increase at present rates in the atmosphere the consequences this will likely be most readily discernible in changes to extreme weather events i would like to begin by saying a few words about climate change projections as they are often misunderstood credible projections of anything take into account all available information in our case this consists of the observed climate change insights based on physical understanding of the climate system computer models of the earth's climate system and assumptions about the future composition of the atmosphere expert judgement let them be called upon to synthesize this information into credible projections of the future climate the computer modeling part of this process is often called into question by those who don't understand climate models are indeed far from perfect representations of reality however they do contain meaningful information expert judgment is used to extract it as on why that is double blind faith in climate models is equally ill advised to reject them entirely waves will become more common in fact projections are that future heat waves will be severe for the united states extreme heat waves that would be considered rare today will become commonplace the intensity of future where he ways is projected to be unprecedented with temperatures higher than it's ever been seen i expect that daily to high temperature records will continue to be broken to high rates across the united states in much of the world for the foreseeable future what may not be so obvious is that the future is very likely to be one where both floods and droughts are more severe than in the present there are good physical reasons why the seeming contradiction must be so and the mild reflect the intense precipitation events are projected increase in the united states simply because warmer air can hold more water as thomas said drought as measured by the amount of soil moisture in the soil is projected become the normal condition of the continental united states because of large increases due to warmer temperatures effects on global warming on hurricanes and tropical cycles are under intense scrutiny by many scientists and much remains to be learned in this exciting field a consensus view is emerged that intense hurricanes will become more frequent and more severe in a warmer world as dictated by simple energy considerations the substantial federal investment in high performance computing is fostering a rapid development the study of hurricanes by enabling the finally resolved calculations necessary to simulate the storm finally i find that these projected future changes to extreme weather and climate in a warmer world to be sobering the cost and impact of even a small increase in the these phenomena can be large both to our nation as well as to other countries of stocks these projections can give policy and decision makers an early warning as to what might be but such a future is not inevitable although some changes in extreme weather are already committed to the ultimate size of these changes as spends on the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted into the atmosphere thank you very much and let me turn to you mr ambassador thank you so much for being here i think it's very important to talk to us a little bit about the vulnerability of pakistan not only the weather pakistan and what you project going forward could be the impact on your country if these weather patterns continue in your region of the world mr chairman d pointed out that the impact of these changes is very much connected to the social conditions and the circumstances and the preparedness of our society to deal with that and pakistan of course is a society  pakistan is eighteen which means half of our population is below the age of eighteen population that's ninety million young people with twenty percent of the one fifth of the country under water not contributing to the emission of greenhouse gases at the same level as the nations of the world and in terms of the human devastation that it would cause it's all very visible concluded that climate change is a threat multiplier for instability in certain regions of the world and it will add tensions even in stable regions earlier this year the pentagon's  and the annual threat assessment highlighted climate change as a destabilizing agent and a serious threat to global security given the impacts of this flood so far what are the resulting security concerns for pakistan that you see now and what are the future threats with continued climate change to the security of pakistan just focusing on the impact of these floods i would say that a full very visible impacts on our security situation number one having twenty million people who are affected in terms of displacement not having essential commodities accessible having their life totally disrupted do you have a potential for undressed which has security implications it is plus second that is the prospect and possibility of insurgent and extremist security forces providing immediate flood relief i mean we can't anation like pakistan our entire fleet of helicopters fifty one helicopters and when you had one fifth of the country under means to be able to continue the war against al qaeda in which i must point out that pakistan has been playing a very very significant because we are the front of the absolute front line state that has lost the maximum number of people and so  you know i'm sure that the that the floods affect the terrorists as much as the state but the fact remains that the loss to the data structure to the rest of the fighting over fewer resources there's already tension between india and pakistan for political reasons water becomes another issue between our countries it is also a potential issue between afghanistan and pakistan and management of  a disaster of this nature would require greater cooperation in the region and probably on a wider scale its all of those factors have security implications and to the extend that to the united states his own security is directly linked i heard you say that the country has fifty helicopters and this flood has required redeployment of those helicopters from the places that affect the security of pakistan necessarily flooded the ability of the insurgents and the terrorists to be able to continue to remain on the move a lot on military cannot continue to be fully deployed in the sense of having the assets to be able to states because you have to redeploy our military security over to parts of pakistan that are affected by the lighting and as a result that has a dramatic impact on american and because afghanistan is now at the very top is the product and i think both of us have done right in doing that but if we could somehow understand the bigger picture and take steps that would ensure that the that we could plan better for  not sensitive to what's happening halfway around the world but maybe some things that are closer to home so i would like to just follow up very briefly with a couple of the comments from our other witnesses there was reference to rain at the same time we're having a change in that moisture competent composition of the soil which sounds like it's bad for agriculture so i wonder if witnesses could give a little briefly give that's ok sorry wasn't a really intense heat wave in this country say parallel to the event that killed forty thousand people in europe or really it's a really extreme event a once in a thousand year event in that case could become sort of a once in several year event by the end of this century if the emissions of the gases continue to build as they are that is something that almost never happens virtually unprecedented maybe unprecedented could become rather common in the future with the attendant consequences so for instance an extreme heat wave in one thousand nine hundred five in the midwest killed over a thousand people to the direct and indirect effects of the heat that was a relatively rare event and people weren't prepared to deal with it that kind event might become instead of a hundred year event something like several it would happen every several years it would happen repeatedly will we be prepared to deal with that kind of onslaught what we learn more in the meantime probably but as the climate changes stranger and stranger events will become more and more common as far as your question agriculture is concerned it's a mixed picture for the united states if you look toward the more southerly and westerly and drier parts of the united states one would expect that the standard cereal grains for instance to decrease the productivity of those grains to decrease up to the north and more to to the east or central part of the united states the climate might actually become more favorable so most of the analyses show a kind of balance picture for the united states as a whole with some regions losing and some regions maybe coming out some the heat wave that we consider to be likely to happen once every twenty years if in a business as usual greenhouse gas emissions scenario that what we consider once in twenty years now would be every other year and so hence that's the root of the rare event becoming commonplace and so there certainly would see that adaptation of that if you have to severe years in a row the second time is that you know the people that were going to die the first time already did that's as harsh as that the horses that reality i think but the rare events predicted at the end of the century under this scenario would be as much as eleven temperatures get higher when we're talking about increases in the highest of five or ten degrees fahrenheit it strikes me that that has dimensions that we are going to have a great deal of difficulty contending with  even our capacity to be able to provide cooling for instance overstressed grid or extreme weather events could interact in terms of posing problems with actually the states we have a chapter on health a chapter on energy and a chapter on agriculture and you're summing up some of the concerns quite well that for example in the chapter on energy we talk about how how  thermal power plants coal burning power plants require a lot of water to cool them and the times when you need the energy most during summer in particular really hot dry summers and so there's been been some droughts and in my part of the world in the southeast where there were some concerns that even some nuclear power plants might have to shut down because of the lack of cooling water potential x o there's all these interactions we have to take a concern about in as far as heat waves and human health we reported on studies showing potential dramatic increase in heat wave deaths in cities like chicago and even with some adaptation going on where there some of the adaptation aspects are cooling centers there's an effort in chicago that they're doing a great job in trying to to have cool roughs painting rough white or planting putting plants on top of the rest to help cool some of the center but there are there have been studies looking at the impact of heat waves sort of an analog heat wave to the european heat wave what it would impact the united states and found that the impact is much more in cities that were not designed for that kind of temperature so washington d c had less of a problem coping with really high temperatures than say new york city and because the infrastructure in new york city was designed for the climate that they had when they when the city was being built and is now warmer and getting even warmer regarding agriculture we've clearly stated in the report that agriculture is going to be challenged there's going to challenge to the heatwaves the impact in impacting some of the livestock and you know dairy industries where it's going to be a challenge from the increase of heavy downpours and the longer periods of dry periods but even the question of c o two which is known as a plant fertilizer that isn't all rosy that plants do tend to grow larger from c o two but we make a point that they're not always more nutritious and this is particularly t of pasture plants that the grasses they'll be they'll be larger and they may grow larger in a higher c o two environment but the amount of the tradition does not increase proportionally protein and the plants thank you thank you basic laws of thermodynamics and so i appreciate you guys standing up and against that assault i heard someone who might have been john holdren or something use the term climate disruption he basically said we should be using the term and climate disruption rather than global warming as to what we really are facing is that a better term to use listening to your description of the probabilities of increased frequency of these is a better term to use to convey what we're facing to folks who may not have degrees in chemistry thank you that is an excellent term to use and part of it is because of the point i made is that the natural and human human systems are adapted to the past climate when you change that you get different responses and one of the things we've seen and alaska for example on the kenai peninsula where winter temperatures are really cold extreme cold winter temperatures have lessened and have warmed allowing a greater number of spruce beetles overwinter which has then just helped devastate the whole forests in that area so it's very much not just a gradual shift but a real disruption we have a figure in our report global climate change impacts the united states showing moving states during the summer that that the projection is he's in emission scenario that the summer in southern minnesota at the end of the century will be very similar to the current summers in northern oklahoma so if you think of about the disruption that would cause that you know there's different plants grow growing along the river system different animals farmers grow different crops build houses differently you lay railroad tracks differently to adjust for it so so that can have a lot of disruption on a whole systems let me let me add that the question of disruption really gets to the root of the root issue which is how will we be able to respond as a society and as individuals as the climate inevitably does change because we're going to get climate change or climate change  whether we can limit its extent eventually so really this gets to an issue which is by hanging around for a long time it used to be argued and it had some traction in the expert community that i meant that the rich countr like the u s could deal with these changes and it was really left well off countries like pakistan that were going to have trouble but the recent in recent years they were two outstanding advance and they point again to hurricane katrina which may have had nothing to do global warming but it's a it's an extreme that we got a good lesson on and the european heat wave which taught us that even in rich countries which are supposed to have the resources and the experience to deal with the vagaries of climate the disruptions that climate some sometimes accompany climate events we were incapable eve in a situation like with katrina where we anticipated what would happen even where we had a building infrastructure for instance along the coast and are damaged and it demonstrated limits no matter how wealthy we are no matter how much we look forward our demonstrated limits to incorporate that knowledge and turn it into implementation of ways to defend ourselves from the coming climate change is just i've got a two year old grandson who is going to be living in a very different world i think than that i grew up in and some things i enjoy which is salmon in the rivers snow in the mountains and stay washington i think aren't going to be there in a hundred years during his lifetime i just want to ask you and yet there are people many people in our country who do not feel compelled to say we should do something about this or even recognize there's a problem and given the extent of the science on this that's very difficult for me to understand given how clear the science is in this regard because you just tell us each of you if you were to run into someone at a party and they said you know i was listening to one of my favorite t v channels and one of my favorite talkathon people and they said this is just kind of a plot that this is not really science  and i don't believe that there's global warming or global destruction as a result of human activity and you had you know sixty seconds with what would you tell that person you what's your best shot what is the most compelling thing to a person like that who so far hasn't been willing to listen to the science a good friend of mine used to say when somebody asked him where they believe in global warming he said i believe in quantum physics that the physics are clear but in response to some of this concern that people are trying to find nits to pick in the bulletin of the american meteorological society in july we published a large article the climate of two thousand and nine and we had a special section lead authored by john kennedy the u k met office now as a colleague on that process which looked at all the different times serious for like eleven different indicators you know troposphere temperature the temperature of the atmosphere temperature at the surface ocean temperature ocean heat content sea arctic sea ice glaciers and every single time series of every one of those eleven indicators supported global warming day basically which range from conspiratorial to threatening trying to you know which accuse me and my colleagues of sort of making this up for our own benefit which is hard to imagine i have young kids and i can imagine when i think about you know for them the same way you do with the benefit of living in that sort of world would be and so i think people think it's a plot i think is a limit to what you can deal with but for most people i don't i think it's a real concern about the uncertainties there were big uncertainties in climate change and we face an uncertain future because we can't predict everything you know nail it down perfectly and what i say to those people is that we are using a metaphor that's been used many times as if we were in a car driving at night with our lights off towards a cliff and we have a chair a choice of stepping on the accelerator slowing down stepping on the brakes giving us a chance to learn more and giving us a chance to avoid some of the worse risks and the same person makes the latter choice of course i don't know how else to say it because the reality is people are overwhelmed with a lot of other stuff in their lives it's easy to push off a problem the worst effects of which may happen later but i think if we try to frame it as well you make risk decisions every day in your life you buy insurance against a fire that will probably never take down your house this is a similar situation i've been asked that very question by another parent at my daughter's school and  d my first response was right there why would i make this stuff up and i don't think that convinced her and i would agree with with dr peterson that the compelling evidence is is is that we look at so many different things and there's a consistent story here but i but i also might appeal to the second part of the first part of this committee's name which is energy independence it's not just about global warming the nation has other  compelling problems one of which is is its reliance on foreign sources of energy and so it's it's it's it's not an either or close one com in that regard in two thousand there were five major solar manufacturers companies in the united states and there were five in china that was in two thousand in two thousand and nine there are still five major solar manufacturers company united states remote villages almost instantaneously once it was the same cost as coal without building that whole infrastructure and i think what the rest of the world thinks that we want to do hundreds of other universities but we still haven't put in place the plan to accomplish scientists in the world ninety eight percent say there is a problem here we should start to put in place the kinds of policies that will deal with the worst consequences of it there are still scientists being funded by the fossil fuel industry to raise enough questions that we still have a debate here as to whether or not there is a problem and i think there is incontrovertibly evidence that pakistan is a good example of what is happening and the will be innocent victims you know my father and millions of others across the planet to the science of tobacco and it will be here as well unfortunately what i'm wondering is from in pakistan the heavy monsoon event isn't on precedent that it does happen with the difference this time that the precipitation event itself was more severe or had there been changes in the way to be the ones that got flooded this time it was a totally different something that has not been on record which is that the floods of the last time out of through heavy rains in the northwest as i said  infrastructure to be able to predict the patterns and so the primary flooding was caused by the rising water levels in the western tributaries of which have historically never thank you what i'm personally going to bring home most from this are the images of the suffering in pakistan scientists often are locked in our offices and we you know tend to be theoretical and those images are astonishing painful and and bring a reality to my work that i didn't appreciate before i got here and i thank you for that and  examples of extremes and one of the points that i bring is we measure extreme somewhat differently when we're dealing with strictly daily data but throughout the world we're seeing the changes in extremes the way we scientists have been projecting based on global warming dr robin and i would just add that we have here a consensus and if it gets as is that reflects the thinking of the scientific community that the climate is already changed that extremes are have already changed and they are going to change more in the future that they obviously have vast and in some cases devastating human impacts and the only way to rein this in in addition to getting better at our it is a patient of the extremes which is difficult in a changing climate after all is to limit the changes in emissions that are causing extremes to change thank you dr intimate let me turn to congressman instead thank you i just wanted to alert the committee to something requests the republican party some time ago who basically asserted that there was no scientific basis for this and i just want to alert the committee to this because that report included responses by twenty one prominent clients scientists who reviewed the claims by mr monckton and concluded that his assertions were either variously very misleading profoundly wrong simply false chemical nonsense and cannot be supported by climate physics and i want to laud those scientists for getting engaged in what is clearly a war on science because we have special interests who are financing a war on science right now and i want to i want to thank the scientific community who is starting to understand this is a war on science and we need scientists to respond to that war frankly and this document that's been filed is helpful in that regard  you know this was an individual who whose primary scientific credibility was that he asserted that he was a lord and we're more appreciative of scientists so i wan just say that people need to pay attention to what it means for people rather than what it does in terms of winning or losing that i can't thank you mr investor very much the flooding disaster in pakistan is a warning of what lies ahead if we do not cut carbon pollution from heavy downpours and flooding to more intense heat waves and tropical storms extreme weather by climate change is becoming a greater threat yet there are in america powerful forces with an interest in maintaining the status quo trying to prevent us from taking action in fact as we speak today to texas based boy we will arrow and test and the oil and gas billionaires and global warming deniers chiles and david koch bankrolling the effort to overturn california's global warming solutions  might work the bank accounts of oil tycoons but it sends the rest of us on a path towards greater extreme weather instability and suffering at a global scale we need to protect california we're thinking and on a national scale we need to put in place the policies that will drive a new energy economy towards a clean prosperous and secure future that's what the waxman marky bill did as it passed the house of representatives june twenty sixth two thousand and nine and that's what the citizens of the united states and the world deserve that the united states is the leader in developing the new technologies we thank the participants for the for delivering their important messages here today conveying the plight of the people of pakistan to us it touches our hearts our consciences and hopefully our political responsibility here in the united states to not only give shot term really to your country but a great a long term program that will reduce the likelihood of even more catastrophic events in the future we have to begin the process of cutting carbon now to avoid those even greater dangers that the planet will suffer so with that we very much thank all of you for your participation and this briefing is