{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://web.archive.org/web/20141113193148/http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/not-a-scientist-ask-one", "Not a Scientist? Ask One.", "2014-11-12", "2014", "2014-11", "Democrat", "House", "RI", "Sheldon Whitehouse", "W000802", "web.archive.org", null, null, "legacy", "As delivered on the Senate floor\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tWednesday, November 12, 2014\n            \n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tMr. President, we are now reconvened from the election recess and I\u2019m back on the Senate floor for the seventy-ninth consecutive week of Senate session to draw the attention of this body to the growing threat of global climate change.\u00a0\nLet me first \u00a0congratulate my Republican colleagues on achieving a majority in the Senate in the coming Congress.\u00a0 With control of the House, and a majority in the Senate, Republicans now have great power in Congress.\u00a0 As the well-known saying goes, however, \u201cwith great power comes great responsibility.\u201d\nThe hallmark of the Republican minority was obstruction, often pointless obstruction, obstruction for obstruction\u2019s sake.\u00a0 A rational and fact-based focus on the issues has not been, to put it mildly, their hallmark.\u00a0\nThat was their choice, and it is the privilege of the minority party in the Senate to behave that way.\u00a0 The minority party can choose to simply make themselves antagonists, with no policy responsibility.\u00a0\u00a0 And I have to say, they did an amazing job of that.\nBut now my colleagues have a majority, and they have the power\u2014and responsibility\u2014that comes with that, beginning in January.\u00a0\nMr. President, the touchstone of responsibility is to be responsible.\u00a0\u00a0 And I\u2019ll concede, this Senate actually could become a better place if the new majority, when it comes in, chooses to be responsible, and the uniquely partisan obstruction that characterized their role as the Senate minority passes away as they move to the majority.\nA key test, however, will be whether the Republicans here in the Senate choose to become responsible about climate change\u2014about what carbon pollution is doing, all around us, \u00a0\u00a0to our atmosphere and our oceans.\u00a0 About what happens when carbon concentrations in the atmosphere that have varied between 170 and 300 parts per million for as long as we have been a species on this planet suddenly surge to 400 and beyond.\u00a0\u00a0 About what happens when scientific laws that have been understood since Abraham Lincoln was riding around Washington D.C. in his top hat begin to impose their inexorable effects on our world.\nIn the minority, they pretended it wasn\u2019t real.\u00a0 Some even said climate change was a hoax.\u00a0 Many said they were not scientists and so couldn\u2019t do anything about it. \u00a0(I\u2019d note that they are not gynecologists either, but many have no hesitation about trying to regulate that area.) \u00a0\nNo one would work on doing anything serious about carbon dioxide emissions.\nIt was not always like this.\u00a0 Republican Senator John Warner was the lead sponsor of the Warner/Lieberman climate bill.\u00a0 Republican Senator John McCain ran for president on a solid climate change platform.\u00a0 Republican Senator Susan Collins coauthored an important cap and dividend climate bill with Senator Cantwell.\u00a0 Republican Senator Mark Kirk voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the House of Representatives.\u00a0 Republican Senator Jeff Flake was an original cosponsor of a carbon fee bill, led by former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis, that would have placed a $15-per-ton fee on carbon pollution in 2010, more than $20- per-ton in 2015, and $100-per-ton in 2040.\u00a0\u00a0\nWell, all of that ended, that and more, ended shortly after the Citizens United decision, when our elections for the first time were flooded with polluter money and dark money, which is probably polluter money, but because it\u2019s dark and anonymous, you don\u2019t really know.\nBut say you\u2019re not a scientist; isn\u2019t the responsible thing to sound out scientific opinion?\nScientific opinion about climate change is now firmly settled.\u00a0 Climate change is caused by the massive carbon pollution we have unleashed.\u00a0 Every major scientific society in our country knows this and has said so.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a list, if you want to check in with them yourself. This is a list from a letter, dated October 21, 2009, more than five years ago. We have been fiddling around on this since the science was so clear. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be made addendum to my remarks in the Congressional Record.\nI could start with the body that is chartered one hundred fifty years ago, actually, to provide us independent, objective scientific advice: the National Academy of Sciences. \u00a0If that doesn\u2019t suit, try the American Association of the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, or the American Meteorological Society, or the American Geophysical Union, or the American Medical Association, or the American Chemical Society, or the Geological Society of America. If you\u2019re not a scientist, check it out. Ask the responsible scientists. Ask the leading scientific societies.\nIf you don\u2019t believe them, measurements, measurements confirm what the scientists know.\u00a0 Sea level is rising and the rise is accelerating.\u00a0 You measure that with a glorified yardstick.\u00a0 It\u2019s already up nearly ten inches at the Newport Naval Station since the 1930s, when we in Rhode Island had the devastating Hurricane of 1938.\u00a0 It\u2019s similar at Fort Pulaski in Georgia.\u00a0 And go visit Miami Beach, where they just spent hundreds of millions of dollars installing huge, 14,000-gallon-per-minute pumps to keep the city dry, as the rising tides flood in\nThe ocean is warming.\u00a0 You measure that with a thermometer.\u00a0 Narragansett Bay is nearly four degrees Fahrenheit warmer, mean winter water temperature, than fifty years ago.\u00a0 That is an ecosystem shift, and it has wreaked havoc with our winter flounder catch, for instance.\u00a0 Warmer waters aren\u2019t just in Rhode Island; they\u2019ve brought the snook, a gamefish from the Florida Keys, up into Georgia waters.\nThe ocean is more acidic, and it\u2019s getting more acidic, at the fastest rate measured looking back millions of years in the geologic record.\u00a0 If you doubt that the ocean is acidifying, ask the oyster growers in the Pacific Northwest and Maine.\u00a0 Ask the scientists who study Alaska\u2019s salmon fishery about what\u2019s happening to the pteropod, a key food source for salmon.\nHere\u2019s my challenge to my Republican colleagues who say they are not scientists:\u00a0 ask the scientists. Ask the scientists at your own home state universities, and ask the folks, by the way, employed by your outdoors industries, the people see the changes happening around them.\u00a0 Ask your park rangers. Ask your forest rangers.\nIf you\u2019re from North Carolina, ask the scientists at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences.\nIf you\u2019re from Colorado, ask the scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.\nIf you\u2019re from Iowa, ask the scientists at the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research at the University of Iowa.\nIf you\u2019re from Arizona, ask the scientists at the University of Arizona, which hosts the Climate Assessment for the Southwest program.\nIf you\u2019re from Florida, ask the scientists at the University of Florida\u2019s Climate Institute.\nIf you\u2019re from Texas, ask the scientists at the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A&M. The Aggies get climate change. Check it out.\nIf you\u2019re from New Hampshire, ask biologist Eric Orff, who worked for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department for thirty years, what\u2019s happening to your moose, and ask Mike Bartlett of the New Hampshire Audubon Society what\u2019s happening to your purple finch, your state bird.\nIf you\u2019re from Utah, ask the Park City Foundation and, while you\u2019re at it, employees at Alta Ski Area, Canyons Resort, Deer Crest, Deer Valley, or Park City Mountain Resort what they foresee for that industry.\nIf you\u2019re from Idaho, ask University of Idaho Professor Jeffery Hicke how rising temperatures let loose the bark beetle and decimated almost 1000 square miles of your iconic mountain pine forests.\nIf you like big business, if f you think that only the private sector knows anything, then ask the big property casualty reinsurers like Munich Re or Swiss Re, who have billions of dollars at stake, and have to get this right.\nIf you\u2019re from Georgia, ask the folks from Coca-Cola.\u00a0 If you\u2019re from Arkansas, ask the folks from WalMart.\u00a0 If you\u2019re from North Carolina, ask the folks at $30 billion-dollar clothing maker VF Corporation.\u00a0 They all have a lot of money riding on getting this right, and they\u2019re making decisions based on business not ideology.\u00a0 So, ask them.\nAnd if you trust the military, ask Admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, who says climate risk is the most dangerous long-term challenge we face in the Pacific.\u00a0\nIf you\u2019re looking for some pretty good, high level scientists you might want to ask NASA and NOAA.\u00a0 Remember, NASA, they put a rover down safely on Mars and they\u2019re driving it around on Mars.\u00a0 You think they \u00a0might know what they\u2019re talking about?\nAnd if you need to hear it from Republicans?\u00a0 Ask former Republican Treasury Secretaries like George Schultz and Hank Paulson. \u00a0Ask former Republican EPA Administrators like Bill Ruckelshaus, Christine Todd Whitman, William Reilly, and Lee Thomas. \u00a0Ask James Brainard, the Republican Mayor of Carmel, IN. \u00a0Ask Bob Dixon, the Republican Mayor of Greensburg, KS. \u00a0Ask Betsy Price, the Republican Mayor of Fort Worth, TX. \u00a0Ask Republican Mayor Silvia Murphy and County Commissioner George Neugent of Monroe County, FL.\nIf you\u2019re not a scientist, just ask.\u00a0 Do your homework.\u00a0 Exercise this new great responsibility that will come with the great power you have won.\nBut don\u2019t pretend climate change isn\u2019t real.\u00a0\u00a0 Even your own young voters know better than that.\u00a0 A majority of Republican voters under age 35 think a politician who denies climate change is \u201cignorant,\u201d \u201cout of touch\u201d,\u201d or \u201ccrazy.\u201d Those were the words checked off in the poll\u00a0 To paraphrase Michael Corleone in that great movie, \u201cdon\u2019t tell me it isn\u2019t real, because it insults my intelligence and makes me very angry.\u201d\nTo Republicans, I say I want to be your best friend in all of this; the kind of best friend who tells you when you\u2019re in no shape to drive and should hand over the keys to your car until you\u2019re sober enough to drive safely, even if it makes you mad to hear it. The kind of friend who will tell you the truths you need to hear, but don\u2019t want to hear.\u00a0 And let me say, friends don\u2019t let friends deny climate change.\nI know the big carbon polluters want this issue to be ignored.\u00a0 But responsibility is knowing when to tell even your friends \u201cno.\u201d\u00a0 Responsibility is doing what is factual and based in real science and measurement.\u00a0 Responsibility is doing what is right for your state and for your country in the long run, not just what rewards your supporters\u2014even those really, really big supporters\u2014in the short run.\nMaybe, as their friends, you might even want to have a little conversation with them.\u00a0 Because, this is only going one way.\u00a0 As Pope Francis just said, God is not \u201ca magician with a magic wand.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 He put laws of the universe, laws of nature, in place, and we don\u2019t get a pass on them just because it is politically convenient.\nHow long does ExxonMobil think it can pursue unsustainable fossil fuel goals by fixing the politics?\u00a0 Laws of nature can\u2019t be bought or repealed.\u00a0 The Koch Brothers are rich enough to buy virtually anything, but even they can\u2019t buy new laws of nature.\u00a0 BP went and quietly shut down its solar and wind programs, but carbon still does what carbon does.\u00a0 As your friends, they might need a little intervention from you.\nAnd just so you know, I\u2019m not going anywhere.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got homes and businesses being swept into the ocean in my state.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got fishermen who tell me that \u201cit\u2019s getting weird out there\u201d in Rhode Island Sound; that the lobsters and fish aren\u2019t where they\u2019re supposed to be when they\u2019re supposed to be there; that they\u2019re catching kinds of fish their fathers and grandfathers never saw in their nets. It\u2019s getting weird out there.\nI'm not going anywhere.\u00a0 My state is small and coastal, and worse, bigger storms put us in serious danger.\u00a0 I am not ever going to ignore that.\u00a0\nI\u2019m never going to \u00a0walk away from this issue.\u00a0 I will never deny what Rhode Islanders see right in front of their face, and what all our expert warnings tell us are only going to get worse.\u00a0\nAnd if you are going to be responsible and not just powerful, you won\u2019t deny this issue and walk away either.\u00a0 One way or another, we are going to get this done.\nI yield the floor.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://web.archive.org/web/20141113193148/http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/not-a-scientist-ask-one"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.8256520852446556, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}