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GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE -- (House of Representatives - November 16, 2004) GPO's PDF
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The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I come to address the House this evening on an issue that has some similarities to the issue my colleagues, my Democratic colleagues, just addressed on the Federal deficit. The Federal deficit is this long-term, rather insidious challenge to our Nation that sort of is something that can sneak up on us and over the long term can cause us great grief. And the issue that I am compelled to address the House on tonight is a similar issue with even larger global concerns that has the capability of causing major changes to the way we live and our kids live and our grandchildren live, and that is the issue of global climate change, which is being precipitated by our enormous contributions of carbon dioxide and methane into our atmosphere.
And as I come here tonight, this is the first night we have been in session since the election, and a couple things have changed relatively dramatically actually since the election. And one of the things that has changed when it comes to the atmosphere we are going to leave to our kids and our grandkids is that there was a major scientific announcement made last week that basically should send off red lights, alarm bells, and whistles in the United States Congress which indicated that the problem of global warming is much more acute and is happening much more quickly than many of us anticipated. So tonight I would like to address the science that has now become available to this body in the House of Representatives, which I hope that we would act on fairly shortly.
Unfortunately, the U.S. House has been somnambulant when it comes to global warming to date. This Chamber, for all its virtues, basically has not acted at all in the face of what has been very rapidly accumulating scientific evidence about this problem. But after the report came out last week, which I am going to address, there really is no longer any excuse for inaction by the House; and that is why this evening I would like to address the scientific report that became available to us.
Last week, eight nations that have been working for 4 years now to try to get a handle on the scientific information that is now available to us issued a report called the ``Impacts of a Warming Arctic,'' and this was a report issued by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. This is a group that has been working of the best scientists in the United States, nonpartisan, no ax to grind. These people, a diverse group from the National Oceanographic Administration, from the University of Fairbanks have been working in conjunction with seven other nations on this report. Those other countries are Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Canada, and six indigenous groups in Canada.
GPO's PDF
And this group basically for the last several years has been taking a very acute and sensitive look as to what is going on in the Arctic to determine whether or not there is evidence that can guide us policymakers and whether we should or should not treat global warming as a serious issue. And I have to say that when I read this report, I was blown away. And I was blown away because it is the most concrete, cemented, and alarming report that I have read about an environmental issue in the last 10 years. And this report, which is about 120 pages, one can get online. If I can get the site here, they can read it on line at acia.uaf.edu. That is acia.uaf.edu. They can also get it through the Cambridge University Press at cambridge.org.
Basically what this report concluded is that global warming is, number one, a fact; number two, likely caused by significant human activity; and, third, that the rate of global warming in the Arctic regions surpasses anything that we really would have assessed or predicted even 2 years ago and that that rate has the capacity to cause significant changes not only in the Arctic but where we live in our homes and towns where we expect our grandchildren to have a life like we do.
And what I would like to do is go through this report. And basically this report synthesized scores of scientific assessments that have been done on the Arctic. For reasons that are quite complex, what we have found is that the changes that are happening in global warming are even faster in the Arctic than other places. So I would like to go through some of the findings of this scientific report.
First, the report found that Arctic climate is now warming rapidly and much larger changes are projected. The annual average Arctic temperatures have increased at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world and over the past few decades with some variation. And additional evidence comes from widespread melting of glaciers and sea ice and a shortening of the snow season. We are seeing actual changes in our climactic systems now due to global warming.
Rest is here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?r108:51:./temp/~r108I4c1c6:e0: |
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