Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. May I inquire how much time I still control, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. First, let me say I rise in strong opposition to this bill. I did support marking it up at the Energy and Commerce Committee to maintain jurisdiction over this agency and other agencies in our committee's jurisdictions, and I did work with Chairman Waxman to make some perfecting changes to the bill that is before us. But having said that, I think that it is a bad bill, it's an unnecessary bill, and it's a bill that will have unintended consequences of a negative fashion if enacted in its current form. I'm glad that some of the Federal Trade Commission's jurisdiction that was originally stripped from the bill and given to the new agency has been retained and put back with the FTC. I also think, though, that a new agency cobbled together by Congress from existing regulatory structure will not eliminate one of the world's oldest sins. Hucksters and scam artists will not throw up their hands and turn honest because there is a new Federal regulator on the block. They will simply find new ways to cheat the government as it tries to get on its wobbly new feet. Bureaucracies, particularly new ones, don't move at the speed of businesses, especially shady, illegal businesses, and they certainly don't move at the speed of fraudsters. I want to commend Chairman Frank for his hard work on a tough issue. Having said that, the outcome of his hard work is an enormous bill and an enormous bureaucracy that, in my opinion, just won't do the job. Having said that, the Obama administration apparently wants this new behemoth, so we're going to get it--at least we're going to attempt to get it through the House on the floor this evening or tomorrow, whenever the vote may occur. I wish that a superregulator could find and repair the underlying problems with the housing and mortgage markets, but I don't think it can. Empowering a new agency with nearly limitless power to deem almost any product or service of financial activity is questionable at best and tyrannical at worse. This legislation even fails to create a national standard for the superregulator to enforce. Instead, it adds another layer of Federal regulation on top of existing State laws. Finally, the legislation gives broad, new authority to the FTC that really has nothing to do with the proposed agency and covers everything beyond consumer financial products. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the bill, and I would hope that we would defeat it. With that, I want to yield the balance of my time that I control to the distinguished ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, Congressman Bachus of Alabama.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I would yield myself 4 minutes. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce).

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that during consideration of H.R. 4173 pursuant to H. Res. 956, the ranking member of the Committee on Financial Services be permitted to control 10 minutes of the time allocated to the Chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the gentleman for bringing that to our attention, and it sounds like a worthy proposal.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. When was that email? Was that 10 years ago? Was that a decade ago? When was that?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. We just said, We'll assume that, since Congressman Linder says he won, he did win.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I would like to yield such time as he may consume to a member of the committee from the great State of Illinois (Mr. Shimkus). (Mr. SHIMKUS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I do think that I will use the 1 hour. I understand there's going to be a rule reported in the time, and we'll certainly yield to the person from the Rules Committee to file that rule. Madam Speaker, I wish to rise to discuss a topic that's already been discussed on the House floor this evening. It's the issue of climate change or global warming. Next week, I am honored to be one of the congressional delegation attending the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, that's going to be led by our esteemed Speaker, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi. I also attended Kyoto, Buenos Aires, and The Hague. I'm the ranking Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee and formerly also on the Science Committee, and I have been a participant at the congressional level on the climate change debate for the last 20 years. I'm going to start off by putting into the Record a suppressed report that Congressman Poe just talked about that has never before this evening been made public in its entire, unexpurgated form. The title of the report is Comments on the Draft Technical Support Document for the Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act. This report was compiled by Dr. Alan Carlin, who is a career scientist and investigator at the EPA. At one time, he self-described himself, I'm told, as a global warming believer. He prepared this report. He works in a group within the EPA that is responsible for conducting an internal review of some of these draft orders before they go public. And I'm not going to read the entire report. I'm going to read excerpts of the preface and the executive summary, and then I will put the entire report into the Record. This is from the executive summary and the preface, and I quote, ``We have become increasingly concerned that EPA has itself paid too little attention to the science of global warming. EPA and others have tended to accept the findings reached by outside groups, particularly the IPCC,'' which is the International Protocol on Climate Change under the auspices of the United Nations, ``and the CCSP, as being correct without a careful and critical examination of their conclusions and documentation. If they should be found to be incorrect at a later date, however, the EPA is found not to have made a really careful independent review of them before reaching its decision on endangerment, it appears likely that it is the EPA rather than these other groups that may be blamed for any errors. Further down on the executive summary, Page 1, ``Our conclusions do represent the best science in the sense of most closely corresponding to available observations that we currently know of, however, and are sufficiently at variance with those of the IPCC, CCSP, and the Draft TSD that we believe they support our increasing concern that the EPA has not critically reviewed the findings by these groups.'' Further, ``we believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA before any attempt is made to reach conclusions on the subject of endangerment from greenhouse gases.'' And on Page 2, ``What is actually noteworthy . . . is not the relative apparent scientific shine of the two sides''--those that oppose and those that support the global warming argument--``but rather the relative ease with which major holes have been found in the greenhouse gas/CO2/global warming argument. In many cases the most important arguments are based not on multimillion dollar research efforts, but by simple observation of available data, which has surprisingly received little scrutiny. The best example of this is the MSU satellite data on global temperatures. Simple scrutiny of this data yields what to us are stunning observations. Yet this has received surprisingly little study or at least publicity. In the end it must be emphasized that the issue is not which side has spent the most money or published the most peer-reviewed papers, or been supported by more scientific organizations.'' This is very important, the next sentence. ``The issue is whether the greenhouse gas/CO2/AGW hypothesis meets the ultimate scientific test--conformance with real world data. What these comments show is that it is this ultimate test that the hypothesis fails.'' That the hypothesis fails. ``This is why EPA needs to carefully reexamine the science behind global warming before proposing an endangerment finding.'' Now, this is from Dr. Carlin in the EPA. This is not some disgruntled Republican Congressman. This is a professional scientist, Ph.D., in an office within the EPA that is tasked with reviewing this endangerment document before a final decision is made. And in his words, the ultimate test is whether the greenhouse gas CO2 hypothesis meets the ultimate scientific test conformance with real world data. These comments show that it is the ultimate test that the hypothesis fails. Further, on Page 3 of the executive summary, there are several principal comments that they wish to raise in their review. ``As of the best information we currently have''--and this was in March of 2009-- ``the greenhouse gas/CO2 hypothesis as the cause of global warming, which the Draft TSD supports, is currently an invalid hypothesis from a scientific viewpoint because it fails a number of critical comparisons with available observable data. Any one of these failings should be enough to invalidate the hypothesis; the breadth of these failings leaves no other possible conclusion based on current data.'' As Feynman said in 1975, ``failure to conform to real world data makes it necessary from a scientific viewpoint to revise the hypothesis or abandon it. Unfortunately this has not happened in the global warming debate, but needs to if an accurate finding concerning endangerment is to be made.'' The failings listed below why we should not have an endangerment finding in order of importance in our view: Number 1, the lack of observed upper tropospheric heating in the tropics; Number 2, the lack of observed constant humidity levels; Number 3, the most reliable sets of global temperature data we have, using satellite microwave sounding units, show no appreciable temperature increases during the critical period from 1978 to 1997. Satellite data after 1998 is also inconsistent with the greenhouse gas/ CO2/AGW hypothesis; Number 4, the models used by the IPCC do not take into account or show the most important ocean oscillations which clearly do affect global temperatures; Number 5, the models in the IPCC ignored the possibility of indirect solar variability; Number 6, the models in the IPCC ignored the possibility that there may be other significant natural effects on global temperatures; Number 7, surface global temperature data may have been hopelessly corrupted by the urban heat island effect. Now, this one is the one that I was asking Mr. Markey about to see where he got his data set, because surface global temperature, if you take it in downtown Manhattan, for example, is going to be very different than if you take a surface temperature in a rural area. The actual urban effect, the concrete, the asphalt, the buildings raise the temperature, and there is some concern that this urban heat island effect has corrupted the temperature. Those are just seven reasons in this draft document why this author had skepticism about going forward with an endangerment finding. And yet, this report was not made a part of the record. This report was not made public. In fact, this report was suppressed, and because of considerable anxiety on the part of people like myself and Congressman Issa, Congressman Sensenbrenner, the author was allowed to put a redacted version of this report on his personal Web site. Then we were able to get the unredacted version provided to us by the EPA, and that's the version that I'm going to put in the Record. As this author says, Dr. Carlin, he was prophetic because we're now seeing that some of the climatologists--maybe more than some--have attempted to suppress certain data, to destroy data sets, to manipulate data sets, to not get a true scientific review, but to reach a preconceived conclusion. Madam Speaker, I think that is wrong.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I will yield to the distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. So that was 2 months ago.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. One of whom just resigned from his position in East Anglia.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. So I would hypothesize that the CO2 concentrations going up are going to prevent as much cooling, and it will keep the planet warmer than it would be otherwise, but still cooler overall, which would be a good thing for mankind. We don't want another ice age, do we?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I'm told this, you probably know, that there are more glaciers in the world that are growing than there are that are in decline.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. But it would have been a little warmer than it is today. We might not have been comfortable wearing a woolen sweater back then.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I know it's dangerous for Congressmen to actually think. We are not accused of doing that very often, but there are sometimes some Congressmen, you and I, I think, are two, not that others don't, but we actually think. Now I want to build on what you just said. These ice core samples that you got the data that show temperature goes up, and then CO2 goes up. And if temperature were to go down, then CO2 would go down.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. We are in a situation right now where it appears, it depends on the data that you believe; but if the data points that we think are correct are correct, we are in a cooling period. Temperature has gone down at least 8 years in a row and probably 12 years in a row, and we appear to be in a cooling period. But at the same time, we have to admit that CO2 concentrations are going up.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. All I know is when people retire, they move to Florida and Texas.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Then we want to go to Mr. Scalise.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. It would be similar if we held an election and if we just said, Assume that I won----

Mr. BARTON of Texas. But we didn't release the documents, and we didn't release the ballots, and we didn't let them be audited, and we didn't have a canvassing committee.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I encourage you to listen, and if you wish to stay and maybe participate in our Special Order, you would be welcome.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. We are going to introduce, in our Special Order, some serious concerns that some of the scientists that maintain these data sets manipulate, change and eliminate for their own conclusions. And again, it's very fair to have an opinion and have a scientific debate, but it shouldn't be fair to manipulate the data in a way that at best is disingenuous, or in some cases deceitful, and I hope you would agree with that.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Well, one of the things that I hope we can agree, we can have different opinions, different views on issues, but between you as chairman of the Climate Committee and Mr. Waxman as chairman of the Energy Committee and Mr. Sensenbrenner, who is your ranking member, and myself, who is the ranking member on Energy, we should be able to get a data set that we both agree is what the facts are, and I would like your cooperation in doing that. Our data sets that I'm going to allude to are different. Now, I know enough to know what I don't know. And I don't know if that's a surface temperature, I don't know if that's a tropospheric temperature in the upper atmosphere, I don't know if that's a local temperature that's some sort of an annual mean. There are all kinds of different ways to describe it and to calculate it, but we ought to agree, as policy leaders, on a way to get a data set that everybody says, then we are going to debate the implications of that data set, whatever it is. And I hope that you and Mr. Waxman----