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Update on the Latest Global Warming Science Hearing S. HRG. 111–1179 UPDATE ON THE LATEST GLOBAL WARMING SCIENCE HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION FEBRUARY 25, 2009 Printed for the use of the Committee on Environment and Public Works ( Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 94–021 PDF WASHINGTON : 2015 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Publishing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800 Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001 COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION BARBARA BOXER, California, Chairman MAX BAUCUS, Montana JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio FRANK R. LAUTENBERG, New Jersey DAVID VITTER, Louisiana BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont MIKE CRAPO, Idaho AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee TOM UDALL, New Mexico JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND, New York ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania BETTINA POIRIER, Staff Director RUTH VAN MARK, Minority Staff Director (II) CONTENTS Page FEBRUARY 25, 2009 OPENING STATEMENTS Boxer, Hon. Barbara, U.S. Senator from the State of California ........................ 1 Inhofe, Hon. James M., U.S. Senator from the State of Oklahoma .................... 3 Lautenberg, Hon. Frank, U.S. Senator from the State of New Jersey ............... 7 Bond, Hon. Christopher ‘‘Kit’’, U.S. Senator from the State of Missouri ............ 9 Klobuchar, Hon. Amy, U.S. Senator from the State of Minnesota ...................... 14 Specter, Hon. Arlen, U.S. Senator from the State of Pennsylvania .................... 15 Merkley, Hon. Jeff, U.S. Senator from the State of Oregon ................................ 17 Sanders, Hon. Bernard, U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont ....................... 17 Barrasso, Hon. John, U.S. Senator from the State of Wyoming .......................... 18 Cardin, Hon. Benjamin, U.S. Senator from the State of Maryland .................... 20 Whitehouse, Hon. Sheldon, U.S. Senator from the State of Rhode Island ......... 22 Udall, Hon. Tom, U.S. Senator from the State of New Mexico ............................ 23 Gillibrand, Hon. Kirsten, U.S. Senator from the State of New York .................. 24 Crapo, Hon. Mike, U.S. Senator from the State of Idaho, prepared statement . 196 WITNESSES Pachauri, Rajendra K., Ph.D., Chairman, United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change .................................................................................... 25 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 28 Responses to additional questions from Senator Cardin ............................... 84 Response to an additional question from Senator Sanders .......................... 85 Responses to additional questions from: Senator Inhofe ........................................................................................... 85 Senator Crapo ............................................................................................ 88 Field, Christopher, Ph.D., Director, Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford University; Co-Chair, Working Group II, United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ........................ 91 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 94 Responses to additional questions from Senator Cardin ............................... 113 Response to an additional question from Senator Sanders .......................... 115 Responses to additional questions from Senator Inhofe ............................... 115 Response to an additional question from Senator Crapo .............................. 117 Frumkin, Howard, M.D., MPH, DR.PH., Director, National Center for Envi- ronmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Director, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry .......................................... 118 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 121 Response to an additional question from Senator Sanders .......................... 146 Responses to additional questions from Senator Crapo ................................ 147 Happer, William, Ph.D., Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Princeton University ............................................................................................................. 149 Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 152 Responses to additional questions from Senator Inhofe ............................... 163 (III) UPDATE ON THE LATEST GLOBAL WARMING SCIENCE WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2009 U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS, Washington, DC. The full committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m. in room 406, Dirksen Senate Building, Hon. Barbara Boxer (chairman of the Committee), presiding. Present: Senators Boxer, Inhofe, Carper, Lautenberg, Cardin, Sanders, Klobuchar, Whitehouse, Udall, Merkley, Gillibrand, Barrasso, Specter, Bond. OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BARBARA BOXER, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA Senator BOXER. The hearing will come to order. Today we are going to have a very esteemed panel to discuss the latest global warming science. Senator Inhofe and I will have 6 minutes, not 5, for our opening statements, and then the rest of our colleague will have five. And then our friends on the panel, our distinguished panel, all of you will have seven minutes in which to present, and then we will have questions. We are having this hearing because obviously we all feel we must be guided by the best available science as we address the challenge of global warming. This morning we will hear from sev- eral of the world’s leading scientists about the latest global warm- ing science. In 2007, the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, painted a stark and sobering picture of the future that awaits us if we fail to act quickly to curb global warming pollution. The IPCC’s projections for North American in- clude an increase in the frequency and duration of heat waves and heat-related illness; an increase in water-borne disease from de- graded water quality; more respiratory disease, including asthma and other lung diseases from increased ozone or smog concentra- tions, particularly dangerous to children and the elderly; more win- ter flooding, reduced summer flows and intensified water shortages in the West due to reduced snow pack; droughts and insect inva- sions that will kill crops and forests and will leave forests more susceptible to fire; intensified storms that will batter coastal com- munities and habitats, with the damage compounded by erosion. Since 2007, new studies have confirmed the warnings sounded by the IPCC, and many of the latest findings suggest that the situa- tion is more urgent than previously stated. Recent scientific reports (1) 2 have found that greenhouse gas emissions are increasing faster than predicted, black carbon soot is trapping more of the sun’s en- ergy in the atmosphere than previously understood, sea levels may be rising faster than previous estimates predicted, the likelihood of destabilizing releases of carbon from melting permafrost is greater than once thought. We are reminded of the mounting evidence of the threat posed by global warming in recent headlines. And I want to share some of these headlines with you. The Washington Post: Faster Climate Change Feared. The L.A. Times: West’s Trees Dying Faster as Temperatures Rise. The Washington Post: Long Droughts, Rising Seas Predicted Despite Future CO2 Curbs. And the San Jose Mer- cury News: Global Warming Danger Threat Increased. The testimony we hear today will underscore the urgent need to respond to these findings with decisive action. I am so pleased to welcome our witnesses today. Dr. Pachauri is the Chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2008, Dr. Pachauri accepted the Nobel Prize on behalf of the panel’s 2,000 participating scientists. And he has been, I say to my colleagues, so generous with his time. If any of you have questions for him, he is there for you. We also have Dr. Christopher Field. He is with us from Stanford University. Dr. Field was the Co-Chair of Working Group II of the IPCC, which focused on the impacts of global warming. He is an expert on how global warming is already affecting North America, and the additional impacts that are likely to come with increased warming in the future. I am also pleased that we have Dr. Howard Frumkin here today. Dr. Frumkin is Director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the CDC. The last time the CDC testified here on the public impacts of global warming, we discovered that the written testimony had been heavily redacted by the White House. I am looking forward to the opportunity for a full accounting of the dan- gers global warming poses to human health. Dr. William Happer, a Professor of Physics at Princeton, is a wit- ness for the minority today. And I also want to thank him so much for participating in this hearing. In one of his first major statements after the election last No- vember, President Obama said ‘‘Now is the time
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