releases: https://web.archive.org/web/20141113193148/http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/not-a-scientist-ask-one
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| 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 | legacy | As delivered on the Senate floor Wednesday, November 12, 2014 Mr. President, we are now reconvened from the election recess and I’m 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. Let me first congratulate my Republican colleagues on achieving a majority in the Senate in the coming Congress. With control of the House, and a majority in the Senate, Republicans now have great power in Congress. As the well-known saying goes, however, “with great power comes great responsibility.” The hallmark of the Republican minority was obstruction, often pointless obstruction, obstruction for obstruction’s sake. A rational and fact-based focus on the issues has not been, to put it mildly, their hallmark. That was their choice, and it is the privilege of the minority party in the Senate to behave that way. The minority party can choose to simply make themselves antagonists, with no policy responsibility. And I have to say, they did an amazing job of that. But now my colleagues have a majority, and they have the power—and responsibility—that comes with that, beginning in January. Mr. President, the touchstone of responsibility is to be responsible. And I’ll 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. A key test, however, will be whether the Republicans here in the Senate choose to become responsible about climate change—about what carbon pollution is doing, all around us, to our atmosphere and our oceans. 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. 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. In the minority, they pretended it wasn’t real. Some even said climate change was a hoax. Many said they were not scientists and so couldn’t do anything about it. (I’d note that they are not gynecologists either, but many have no hesitation about trying to regulate that area.) No one would work on doing anything serious about carbon dioxide emissions. It was not always like this. Republican Senator John Warner was the lead sponsor of the Warner/Lieberman climate bill. Republican Senator John McCain ran for president on a solid climate change platform. Republican Senator Susan Collins coauthored an important cap and dividend climate bill with Senator Cantwell. Republican Senator Mark Kirk voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in the House of Representatives. 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. Well, 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’s dark and anonymous, you don’t really know. But say you’re not a scientist; isn’t the responsible thing to sound out scientific opinion? Scientific opinion about climate change is now firmly settled. Climate change is caused by the massive carbon pollution we have unleashed. Every major scientific society in our country knows this and has said so. Here’s 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. I 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. If that doesn’t 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’re not a scientist, check it out. Ask the responsible scientists. Ask the leading scientific societies. If you don’t believe them, measurements, measurements confirm what the scientists know. Sea level is rising and the rise is accelerating. You measure that with a glorified yardstick. It’s already up nearly ten inches at the Newport Naval Station since the 1930s, when we in Rhode Island had the devastating Hurricane of 1938. It’s similar at Fort Pulaski in Georgia. 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 The ocean is warming. You measure that with a thermometer. Narragansett Bay is nearly four degrees Fahrenheit warmer, mean winter water temperature, than fifty years ago. That is an ecosystem shift, and it has wreaked havoc with our winter flounder catch, for instance. Warmer waters aren’t just in Rhode Island; they’ve brought the snook, a gamefish from the Florida Keys, up into Georgia waters. The ocean is more acidic, and it’s getting more acidic, at the fastest rate measured looking back millions of years in the geologic record. If you doubt that the ocean is acidifying, ask the oyster growers in the Pacific Northwest and Maine. Ask the scientists who study Alaska’s salmon fishery about what’s happening to the pteropod, a key food source for salmon. Here’s my challenge to my Republican colleagues who say they are not scientists: 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. Ask your park rangers. Ask your forest rangers. If you’re from North Carolina, ask the scientists at the University of North Carolina Institute of Marine Sciences. If you’re from Colorado, ask the scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. If you’re from Iowa, ask the scientists at the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research at the University of Iowa. If you’re from Arizona, ask the scientists at the University of Arizona, which hosts the Climate Assessment for the Southwest program. If you’re from Florida, ask the scientists at the University of Florida’s Climate Institute. If you’re from Texas, ask the scientists at the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A&M. The Aggies get climate change. Check it out. If you’re from New Hampshire, ask biologist Eric Orff, who worked for the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department for thirty years, what’s happening to your moose, and ask Mike Bartlett of the New Hampshire Audubon Society what’s happening to your purple finch, your state bird. If you’re from Utah, ask the Park City Foundation and, while you’re at it, employees at Alta Ski Area, Canyons Resort, Deer Crest, Deer Valley, or Park City Mountain Resort what they foresee for that industry. If you’re 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. If 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. If you’re from Georgia, ask the folks from Coca-Cola. If you’re from Arkansas, ask the folks from WalMart. If you’re from North Carolina, ask the folks at $30 billion-dollar clothing maker VF Corporation. They all have a lot of money riding on getting this right, and they’re making decisions based on business not ideology. So, ask them. And 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. If you’re looking for some pretty good, high level scientists you might want to ask NASA and NOAA. Remember, NASA, they put a rover down safely on Mars and they’re driving it around on Mars. You think they might know what they’re talking about? And if you need to hear it from Republicans? Ask former Republican Treasury Secretaries like George Schultz and Hank Paulson. Ask former Republican EPA Administrators like Bill Ruckelshaus, Christine Todd Whitman, William Reilly, and Lee Thomas. Ask James Brainard, the Republican Mayor of Carmel, IN. Ask Bob Dixon, the Republican Mayor of Greensburg, KS. Ask Betsy Price, the Republican Mayor of Fort Worth, TX. Ask Republican Mayor Silvia Murphy and County Commissioner George Neugent of Monroe County, FL. If you’re not a scientist, just ask. Do your homework. Exercise this new great responsibility that will come with the great power you have won. But don’t pretend climate change isn’t real. Even your own young voters know better than that. A majority of Republican voters under age 35 think a politician who denies climate change is “ignorant,” “out of touch”,” or “crazy.” Those were the words checked off in the poll To paraphrase Michael Corleone in that great movie, “don’t tell me it isn’t real, because it insults my intelligence and makes me very angry.” To Republicans, I say I want to be your best friend in all of this; the kind of best friend who tells you when you’re in no shape to drive and should hand over the keys to your car until you’re 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’t want to hear. And let me say, friends don’t let friends deny climate change. I know the big carbon polluters want this issue to be ignored. But responsibility is knowing when to tell even your friends “no.” Responsibility is doing what is factual and based in real science and measurement. Responsibility is doing what is right for your state and for your country in the long run, not just what rewards your supporters—even those really, really big supporters—in the short run. Maybe, as their friends, you might even want to have a little conversation with them. Because, this is only going one way. As Pope Francis just said, God is not “a magician with a magic wand.” He put laws of the universe, laws of nature, in place, and we don’t get a pass on them just because it is politically convenient. How long does ExxonMobil think it can pursue unsustainable fossil fuel goals by fixing the politics? Laws of nature can’t be bought or repealed. The Koch Brothers are rich enough to buy virtually anything, but even they can’t buy new laws of nature. BP went and quietly shut down its solar and wind programs, but carbon still does what carbon does. As your friends, they might need a little intervention from you. And just so you know, I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got homes and businesses being swept into the ocean in my state. I’ve got fishermen who tell me that “it’s getting weird out there” in Rhode Island Sound; that the lobsters and fish aren’t where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there; that they’re catching kinds of fish their fathers and grandfathers never saw in their nets. It’s getting weird out there. I'm not going anywhere. My state is small and coastal, and worse, bigger storms put us in serious danger. I am not ever going to ignore that. I’m never going to walk away from this issue. 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. And if you are going to be responsible and not just powerful, you won’t deny this issue and walk away either. One way or another, we are going to get this done. I yield the floor. | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |