Dana Rohrabacher

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. Wake up, America. What's happening on the floor today is a power grab that will leave you with empty pockets and no jobs. The jobs will go to China, and the economy will go to hell. Worse than that, the scientific basis for the claims being made to frighten us into accepting this economy-destroying legislation are wrong. Wake up, America. There hasn't been any global warming, which is what we heard over and over and over again--there hasn't been any global warming for 10 years. In fact, the ice caps are melting, which we see over and over again. Yeah, they're melting on Mars too, which in any honest discussion would lead to the conclusion that the ice caps are melting and these things are happening because of solar activity, not because of the activity of human beings. The science is wrong. The economics is wrong. You're going to cause great damage to the people of this country, to their well-being, in the name of phony science. There are hundreds and hundreds of scientific leaders, like Dr. Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that have refuted the arguments. They are pleading with us. Pay attention to the good science. Don't hurt our people based on the false claim of global warming, which they don't even use that language anymore.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, as I stand here on the floor of the House tonight, I am reminded of the television series the ``Twilight Zone.'' And these days I half expect Rod Serling to appear from behind a curtain and announce, ``This is the Twilight Zone.'' Yes, there is an almost bizarre sense of unreality here in the Nation's Capital. The transformation of private liability into public debt on a massive scale. The unprecedented level of deficit spending, debt piled upon debt, borrowing from China to give foreign aid to other countries. The willingness to pass draconian restrictions and controls on our national economy and on the lives of our people. And while seeking to save us from a recession, Congress shovels hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial industry, much of which has ended up in the pockets of fat cats and wheeler-dealers who have been giving themselves multi- million dollar bonuses even as they drove their own companies into bankruptcy. The giveaway and the lack of oversight has been mind- boggling. And we don't know where hundreds of billions of dollars have gone, and we don't know to whom. Yet we know that the taxpayers are now on the hook for this increase in our national debt. We have watched as this has been happening, and, of course, there are so many things that are being done here today to our people. But we also note how much is not being done that needs to be done to protect our people, which is just as mind-boggling. Our Nation's borders leak like a spaghetti strainer. Millions of people illegally continue to pour into our country to consume our limited health care. And, by the way, we just heard a lot about health care. Why are we not hearing that we should not be picking up the tab for the tens of millions of illegals that have come into this country? But that's not part of the discussion. But millions of people are flowing into our country, and they are consuming the limited health care, education, and other social service dollars that we have. We have limited money; and yet they are taking that money, and they're taking jobs from our people. And sometimes they come here and they commit crimes against our people. And our government just sits and lets it happen even while we are passing all these hundreds of millions on to wheeler-dealers in the financial industry. We can't even come to grips with our illegal immigration problem. We can't even build a fence. In California we can't even build a new water system in the middle of a drought. This we are told is because of a tiny fish, the delta smelt. So our people will have to suffer because of concern over a little tiny worthless fish that isn't even good enough to be used as bait. So last week even amidst California's tremendous difficulties, with drought conditions and a shortage of water at near crisis, this House, the House of Representatives, voted not for the people of California but for a fish. No water for our people because if we would give it to the people, that little fish might be affected in a detrimental way. Perhaps the most damaging of the weird policies that I have described is America's longtime commitment not to develop its own domestic energy resources. Even as high energy prices have brought suffering and economic hardship to our people, we have not been developing our own resources. Even as we see dollars being siphoned from the pockets of our people and deposited in coffers overseas, enriching foreigners, some of those foreigners who hate us, while our hard-earned dollars are being extracted from us, massive deposits of domestic oil and gas worth trillions of dollars are untouched, untapped, and unused. Even as California sinks into an economic catastrophe, off the coast are huge caverns filled with massive deposits of oil and gas just sitting there. And even as California cuts and cancels public services to our own people, billions of dollars of tax revenue could be derived by utilizing that oil and gas that's just sitting there right off our shore. Yet the State of California lets it sit there while our people suffer and the State goes broke. Trillions of dollars have been sent overseas for energy, while at home no new oil refineries, no hydroelectric dams, no nuclear power plants. As I say, all of this seems a bit bizarre. And it may be a bit bizarre, but it is not meaningless nonsense. Those who have insisted upon these antidomestic energy development policies know exactly what they're doing. They want to change our way of life whether we like it or not. So a few decades ago, they grabbed onto a theory, a theory that the world is heating up because humankind uses carbon-based fuels. Read that oil, gas, and coal. This theory gives them the ability to stampede politicians and even stampede scientists with a certain amount of prodding and promises of being excluded from grants or promises to receive grants, but that theory gives them the ability to get these people, whether they are scientists or politicians, to support draconian policies and mandates, changes in our economy and lifestyle that they otherwise would never dream of considering and supporting. All of this is in the name of protecting us from a climate calamity: man-made global warming. Well, the Good Book says: ``The truth shall make you free.'' A caveat might be: ``And a lie can destroy your freedom.'' Man-made global warming has given respectable cover to advocates of a tax and regulatory policy that no one would even consider except, of course, unless it's to take care of an emergency. In reality, the effort behind the man-made global warming juggernaut is the biggest power grab in history. It gives politicos who always wanted to control the behavior of normal people a seemingly legitimate reason to do so, even over those normal people's objections. This power grab was set in motion in the very first days of the Clinton administration in 1993. When the Clinton administration took over, one of the first actions that the administration was to do was to fire Dr. William Happer, a man who dared challenge Vice President Gore. Yes, Dr. Happer believed in science, not in the junk science of radicals, and he was skeptical, although not an advocate of either side of the global warming debate. He didn't fit in, so out he went. From there on, the pattern was very clear, and it's very clear. In order to receive even one penny of Federal research money, a scientist would have to tow the line on the man-made global warming theory. Any dissident would be quickly squashed or at least be cut off from any Federal research funding. That went on for 8 years. So when approaching this concept of man-made global warming, we must examine the science behind it. So let's state right off, the unconscionable intimidation of the science community during the Clinton years has ensured that bad science permeates the entire argument of the alarmists who are perpetuating this man-made myth. This man-made myth global warming is based on bad science, and it's very easy to discern this by the Herculean efforts made by the man-made global warming advocates to cut off all debate on this issue. So not only did we see people in the scientific communities being intimidated with the promise of having their research funds cut off, but now, after this, and after the presentation of the global warming alarmist alternative, let's say, alternative projects and alternative policies, that there has been an intense effort to cut off debate on the issue of man-made global warming itself. That is why in Congress they are now trying to quickly slip by a drastic life-altering legislation that is based on the science of man-made global warming. And they want to do this without confronting the basic science. So, if we want to take a look at the science of global warming, the first thing to notice is why have those people who believe in global warming spent so much effort and so much time and been so abusive in trying to cut off debate? Has anyone ever heard the slogan, case closed? Come on, if you really are honest, admit that is an attempt, and it was a huge attempt, to cut off debate. The debate is over. How many heard that? Again, an attempt, not to discuss the issues, not to have an honest discussion of the science, but never to discuss the science. That is what the language--and that is the language of the debate. And what we have here is a language of debate and discussion restriction, not the language being used by the advocates of global warming for let's have an honest discussion, the words they used are aimed at limiting and restricting and cutting off debate. Case closed. Al Gore never takes any questions. Do you know that, when he goes out and speaks and goes to universities, not only does he not debate, which would be a good idea, he refuses to take questions. I don't know how many times have we heard, every prominent scientist agrees, so you must be a kook if you disagree. Well, every prominent scientist doesn't disagree and the names of hundreds, of those people in the scientific community, people who are heads of universities like Richard Lindzen, one of the great scientist from MIT, from all over the world there are major scientists who have put themselves on the record and taken great risk in doing so, telling them that they are, no, very skeptical and have serious doubts about the man-made global warming theory. The name calling and stifling in this debate by the man-made global warming advocates has been shameful and a disservice to democracy. If someone so much as tries to make a joke, it is reported as if it is being serious. The people who do that are themselves admitting that they cannot stand a major scientific and truthful scrutiny and exchange of ideas. So what about the science? Let's take a look, and I would challenge any Member of Congress to come here and debate me on the science of this issue. First, let's talk about the so-called global-warming cycle that's being caused by human activity. That's the bases of what this whole issue is. We know that there have been weather and climate cycles throughout the history of the world, going back to prehistoric times. The global warming alarmists now are using a low point of a 500-year cycle of cooling, and that was at the end of the Little Ice Age, as the baseline for determining if humankind is making the planet hotter at this time. So, let's get back to it. There have been all of these cycles through the history of the planet, and this cycle, there is a cycle that is going on. But to analyze that cycle, those people are saying man-made global warming, as differentiated from all the other cycles, are using the 1850s as their baseline, and that is at the 500-year low in the temperature of the Earth. It was the end of what they call the Little Ice Age. Is that good science? Should we really be upset when there is a 1- or 2-degree rise from a 500-year low point in temperatures? So, come on, let's answer that scientific question. Let's not call me names, which is what's happened over and again, as if I don't believe in science, and I am some sort of Neanderthal, or that I am any number of pejorative names. Let's look and be honest. Those people using names do not understand the issues and are afraid to discuss the science and the issues at hand. They are doing a disservice to our country, and they are exposing themselves as being people who do not believe in the very issue they are advocating because they can't defend it. So, science question number one: Are they not using an unreasonably cooler moment as the baseline for analysis? Is that not an unreasonable thing to do, to start your settings and use as a baseline a 500-year low in temperature when trying to tell us that we should be concerned about the warming trend that's going on? Question number two: What about those other weather cycles that we have had long before humankind emerged on this planet? A thousand years ago, even after we had people, things were much warmer than now. Iceland and Greenland were farmed by Norsemen. Farms, there were farms there. It was a time period a thousand years ago when there were not only cattle, but there were plants going there. Vineland, was actually--people thought Vineland was something that Leif Erickson made up. No, there was a place, a Vineland, back in Nova Scotia, and in those days grew grapes. Well, that's because the weather was warmer then, and there was a cycle, as I say. Was that cycle--as I say, was that cycle--was the decline in temperature by the Little Ice Age, was that caused by human beings? What about all the other cycles taking place. Were those caused by human beings? If we see that there were cycles that even happened before prehistoric man even existed, well then there must be some other explanation. Well, what is that explanation? So, if there were cycles before human beings were forced on the planet, what is the other explanation? Well, it seems to many scientists who believed this that the cycles of climate have followed solar activity. That's why, and I get that, the sun is the biggest force of energy on the planet, and they believe that many scientists believe that it's solar activity and not human activity that's creating this cycle, just as it did the other cycles that we have gone through long before human beings even existed on the planet. And that also explains why we have cycles, monitoring those on Earth, that have been observed on other planets. That's right, on other planets. In recent years, we have been treated to the outcries of agony about the melting that is taking place in the Arctic. This is being used to touch people's hearts to get them alarmed so they will accept the draconian controls that will come from those people who are advocating policies to deal with man-made global warming. They're saying, Oh, it's our activity that's causing the ice caps to melt. Well, who hasn't seen these pictures of these polar bears? The poor polar bears on the ice floe, obviously a victim of man-made global warming. Well, not so fast. Yes, the ice cap is retreating. There's no doubt about that. But what about the ice cap on Mars? Yes. Right now, at the same time we have our ice cap that is retreating, the ice cap on Mars is retreating at exactly the same time, and it seems to be mirroring, paralleling what's going on on the Earth. Doesn't that indicate that it might be the Sun and not somebody driving an SUV or using modern technology that is creating such a cycle; it's creating the situation that left the bear in a warmer climate? Well, if so, let us note this. If it is indeed caused by the Sun, and yet we have had all this propaganda to touch our hearts and get us to think, not to feel about the poor polar bear, let us note that if it is the Sun and it's not us, then that polar bear is the victim and has nothing to do with man-made global warming, but is being challenged, just like animals have been challenged throughout the history of our planet by planet cycles. By the way, let me just note this. How many have not heard the polar bear is becoming extinct? The polar bears are not becoming extinct. In fact, the number of polar bears on this planet has dramatically expanded. There are four to five times the number of polar bears on the world than there were in the 1960s. But you would believe from what you have seen and the movies and the ice caps melting and Al Gore showing, by the way, a false--a piece of Styrofoam that was breaking off in a movie, presenting to us as if that's the ice caps breaking off the Arctic. You'd think that it was that the polar bears were doomed and that we were to blame for it. Well, here's another scientific challenge. Okay. If we have cycles already, if the ice is melting on Mars, just as it is here, what is the science behind this claim that mankind is causing the climate cycle, if there is a climate cycle, and what climate cycle it is? So, let's have an answer to that. Let's not call me names. Let's not just say, Oh, the polar bear--I remember reading this on the Internet-- the polar bear is near extinction, when it is clear from many other sources, which I will be happy to provide, that the polar bear population is actually going up. Besides that, that's not the point. The point is that the polar bear is, whatever condition it's in, is not due to the fact that human beings can drive in automobiles or that we have to change our lifestyle and be controlled by the government in order to protect the polar bear from climate changes that our activities bring about. Man-made global warming theory? And my colleague from Texas, if he would like to step in for a few words, I'd be very happy to have him.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you. I appreciate my friend from Texas reminding us of a past scare that proved not to be based on science. I remember about cranberries. Couldn't eat cranberries for 2 years because that caused cancer. I remember when they took cyclamates off the market to the cost of a billion dollars for the industry, then, 20 years later, found out that that was not legitimate. I remember during the Reagan years, the same sort of intensity now being used on global warming was used to advocate we have to have massive controls on our economy based on controlling acid rain. And what happened to that? Ronald Reagan held firm. There was a scientific research project that went through for a $500 million research program that showed that, yeah, there's a little bit of a problem with acid rain, but not very much. In fact, it was not the threatening force that we were told at that time, which would have cost tens of billions of dollars if we tried to use their agenda, what was being put forward in order to ``stop acid rain.'' Well, the man-made global warming theory, again, is like that. It is based on another scientific factor, and that is CO2. So let's talk about CO2. CO2 is a part of what is in the atmosphere. CO2, carbon dioxide, is a miniscule part of our atmosphere. So, CO2 is, yes, part of the atmosphere, but it was always considered a very small part of the atmosphere. Let me just make sure we get this right. That CO2, most people believe that it is a large part of the atmosphere, because I have asked them, but in reality it is less than .04 percent. So what we're saying is much less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the atmosphere is CO2. So at that rate, basically when we take a look at that, one-tenth of 1 percent and 80 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere is not traced to human activity. There has been, over the years, times when CO2 was going up. Now we are being told that the rise of CO2 is causing the atmosphere to warm. But we have times when CO2 was going up, but it didn't seem to affect the climate and the planet. For example, if man-made CO2 causes warming, then why is it that when mankind was using much more CO2 in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, as the CO2 was rising, there was an actual cooling going on in the climate? Okay, so let's hear the science about CO2. Why is everyone afraid to try to look at the specific science? If CO2 causes warming, why is it, when there were dramatic times of CO2 increase that the Earth got cooler? I had one person suggest that the pollution in the atmosphere completely overwhelmed the greenhouse effect during that particular time period. Well, if that is true, then what we have to say is the Clean Air Act of 1970 is directly responsible for man-made global warming. And does anyone believe that? No, of course not. By the way, anyone telling a joke or trying to make humor is always reported as if that person is being serious. So here is another scientific challenge. The recent studies show that over 80 percent of America's temperature and weather stations, the monitors who have been collecting the information that is being passed on to us by the global warming, man-made global warming advocates, that 80 percent of these stations have been compromised and are faulty in the information they are providing. The numbers have been skewed. They are suspect because the monitors have been placed in locations that do not meet the National Weather Service basic standards. In other words, the equipment is being compromised. The figures coming out of the equipment cannot be relied upon. And our system, with its 80 percent of the monitors that do not meet the standards, has been heralded as the best in the world. So think about that, what is going on in the rest of the world. What we are talking about here is we are talking about a 1-degree, of course, rise in temperature, from the depths of the mini-ice age, and yet now we have these monitors that even by today's standards are substandard. And that is by today's standards, not back in the 1860s and not in other parts of the world. So how is that for a scientific challenge? If the data is being based on monitors that don't meet scientific standards either today or in the past, how could we pass laws with taxes and controls on our people if the so-called problem is based on bogus or absolutely unscientifically obtained numbers? And even with the current methods of collecting data, we have been warned time and again of dire predictions. So the numbers themselves are suspect. But those people who have been warning us about those numbers over the last 20 years have been spreading incredible alarm, as exemplified by Vice President Gore and others. The temperatures, we were told over and over again, were going to climb. And they were going to continue to climb, and then it would reach a tipping point, and then the temperatures would really jump up. Well, wake up. Let's talk reality here. Again, let's talk science. Let's quit saying ``case closed.'' Let's not give speeches but never take any questions. Let's quit saying that all the scientists agree when there are scientists all over the world disagreeing. They were wrong. When they said that there was going to be a continued climb in the temperature, they were 180 degrees wrong, much less having reached a tipping point which then jumped the temperature of the world by even a larger amount. It has not gotten warmer for over a decade. And it looks like it is still getting cooler. Now, that is totally contradictory to the predictions of the alarmists and those media people around the world who pushed that idea. It is totally contradictory to what was aggressively told to us, to what was foisted off on the American people and people throughout the world. They were totally, 180 degrees wrong. Please let's talk about the science here. Come and talk to us about why, if your major prediction was that the Earth was going to continue getting warmer because of this CO2 that comes out of the engines that we use and the coal and the oil and natural gas, if that was what you were saying and that you were very aggressive in your advocacy of this, now that it hasn't happened, come and talk to us. Don't dismiss us. Don't try to pass a piece of legislation here based on the alarms that went off 15 years ago that have been proven not to be true. So that is another scientifically based challenge, again, not just ignored; but I would say that this is the arrogance behind never answering these types of science charges remains evident. Please don't ignore it anymore. Please let's respect each other, and let's get away from this basic idea that you can just shut off debate. But let's pay attention to what the debate was like before, if there was any debate. There was just a one-sided debate, because people weren't able to get any government grants, so we had a one-sided drumbeat going on. But those people were aggressive in that man-made global warming was being caused by CO2, and we have got to control human beings for this. Well, by the way, they don't even use the words ``global warming'' any more. Think about that. We have a situation that people who were just aggressively talking and putting down anybody who disagreed with them about man-made global warming, now they use the word ``climate change.'' Now if I am proven wrong in a point, if I were to be proven wrong in any point of this speech, I will apologize, and I will change my position. I won't try to change my wording so it sounds like I was never wrong in the first place. These people were wrong. Remember it. Every time they say ``climate change,'' remember that that is an admission that they didn't know what they were talking about before. Man-made global warming. Their dishonesty is underscored every time they use the phrase ``climate change.'' Now, no matter if it gets warmer or if it gets cooler, they can tell us that that backs up their theories, and we should do what they say, because now whether it is warmer or cooler, they have been proven right because they were saying and they were predicting nothing. Well, they believe they should have the power to tax and control us, even though the preponderance of evidence shows that the cycles that we are talking about were not global warming cycles created by human activity or even a cooling cycle created by human activity, but instead something that is based on solar activity. Let me note this, the gang that told us that human activity was causing the planet to warm and to dramatically heat up, now I say they are using the word ``climate change,'' is an admission of something. But what is it an admission of? They were saying ``global warming,'' and now they are saying ``climate change.'' It is basically an admission that, yes, for 10 years the world has been getting cooler. So if human activity through CO2 was making it warmer, then maybe it is a good thing that human beings will mitigate the cooling cycle. Now they are sort of admitting we are in a cooling cycle because they are saying global ``climate change'' and not ``warming.'' So if they said that our activities were going to make it warmer, and now they have admitted they were wrong because they are using a different word, and it is actually getting cooler, then will the human activity that they were complaining about before that was making it warmer, well, logically then shouldn't Al Gore and these other people be advocating more fossil fuel use? Anybody who advocated global warming before and now says ``climate change'' is admitting that it is cooler now, that maybe we are in a cooling trend. Well, if they believed that human activity made things warmer, maybe they should be advocating that we use more fossil fuel to mitigate the problem of a declining temperature of the planet. So all of Al Gore's scientific mumbo jumbo is deceptive, and the contention that all of the prominent scientists that agreed with him was not true, wasn't true then, and it is especially not true now, and I would like to add to the Record, Mr. Speaker, a long list of prominent scientists who opposed the man-made global warming theory. Temperature predictions have been wrong. The CO2 premise is wrong, and we now find out that the monitors that were used to collect the data that were placed next to the air-conditioning exhaust vents in parking lots and on top of buildings near to heat sources, which of course made all of their data unreliable, we now know that was done wrong. And we also know the methodology of using computer models has been questionable from the very beginning. We know the saying garbage in and garbage out. But let's look at the computer models we have been told are the basis for all of these predictions, many which we now know are wrong. No one was permitted to hear the questions, and no one was permitted to ask follow-up questions. And what about the information that was fed into the computer? We weren't actually able to find out exactly what the basis of and what was going into those computer models. That was kept from us as well. But we do know that the projections have been wrong. We know there has been an attempt to stifle and shut up debate. People have been called names. Grants have been denied and personal attacks have been evident. All of this has been wrong. So let's review the scientific challenges of man-made global warming, of the man-made global warming theory, which they have even given up because they now note that it is getting cooler, which is contrary to all of their predictions, because now they use the word ``climate change.'' I have issued a challenge to any of my colleagues to debate me on this issue. No one has come forward. And yet these very same people who refuse to debate the science will vote for draconian legislation that will implement the recommendations of global warming alarmists, even though these people have not stepped forward to debate, they will vote for the program that these alarmists have been advocating. I am afraid that we should have some confrontation of ideas here and an honest discussion, and this issue has not been honestly discussed in terms of the science. The baseline comparison, I just noted, started in a 500-year decline. It was based at the bottom of a 500-year decline in temperature. Science measurements were partly or severely flawed by monitoring systems that do not meet minimum acceptable standards. And past climate cycles were frequent even before the emergence of mankind, cycles like the retreating of polar ice caps that we are shown all of the time to touch our hearts so we won't think but will feel. Those solar ice caps and the retreat of the solar ice caps are very similar to the cycles on other planets, especially the planet Mars, for example, suggesting that solar activity rather than human activity is the culprit. Increasing levels of CO2 did not cause warming back in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and even the 1970s, when there were large increases of CO2, yet we are told now that the CO2 was causing the world to get warmer. But yet more CO2 has even been produced and for 10 years we haven't had a warming. Now that man-made global warming has been driven into the public consciousness, the alarmists have the leverage here in Washington. I could talk all night long, but no one is going to confront the science on this, as rotten as the science is. So right here there is a price to pay when the American people have been lied to in a big way. If the truth will set you free, lies will enslave you. There is a price to pay. Like, for example, the millions of children dying in Third World countries of malaria, all because we wanted to prevent the use of DDT. Why did we want to stop DDT? Because bird eggshells were thinning out, we believed, because of DDT. And thus, millions of children in the Third World have lost their lives to malaria because birds were more important to those who made policy than the millions of children in the Third World who were going to die as a result. Remember, there is a serious price to pay for listening to irrational alarmists. And now all of this confronts us, and there is a bill to be voted on this week called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. I call it the Destroy American Jobs and Use Candles Act. It is a bill, of course, that is based on the theories of the man- made global warming alarmists that I have just demonstrated is totally flawed and wrong science, and a science that these people refuse to get up and defend. This bill, of course, comes at exactly the wrong time, and its negative consequences will be ever more severe in economic hard times as we are suffering right now than they would be if we were in times of prosperity. Even if it were true that man-made use of CO2 was causing a warming, a global warming, this wouldn't be the time to try to implement it, at a time when we are going into such a recession and depression. Maybe we are like the Third World children in the minds of the people who are going to vote for this horrible legislation. Maybe the birds are more important than the suffering of our own people. Maybe it is more important to posture yourself as a friend of the planet than it is to try to take care of the people of this country and try to alleviate their suffering. So let's be clear. Our unemployment is currently at 9.4 percent, and that is expected to rise into double digits. There are unsubstantiated boasts coming about jobs saved through the Stimulus Act, but that doesn't help the 345,000 Americans who lost their jobs just last month. It doesn't put food on their table. Our projected Federal deficit this year is going to reach $1.8 trillion, almost $2 trillion, which our children are going to have to pay for. We are going to have to service that debt. When the interest rate goes up, it will destroy all of our discretionary money. We will soon auction off an unprecedented $104 billion of debt. That $104 billion has $11 billion in interest. That is $11 billion that we are going to pay, and that is just thrown away. Wait until the interest rates go up. This $11 billion will not save anybody's job or pave any roads or provide any health care. It will just be used to continue our massive level of deficit spending. And yet, excessive taxation and regulation mandates are now being proposed in Washington to deal with man-made global warming, which is a total fraud, as I have demonstrated, and which they admit because they are unwilling to debate the basic facts of global warming, the scientific facts that I have over and over again, myself and Senator Inhofe and others, have over and over presented, but instead we are called names and belittled by this arrogant group that just has in mind they want to tax and regulate and control us, and they always have. So here and now we are asked to pass this economy-killing bill in the name of stopping man-made global warming. What's in the bill? I don't have to go into total detail here, but let's just mention that Chairman Waxman was asked about a certain section of the bill. And he said, and this was in committee, Why are you asking me? I certainly don't know everything that is in my bill. I would suggest if you are writing a bill that will have such profound repercussions for decades to come by killing our economy and subduing our people, that is an unacceptable answer. We know that there are many dangers that are going to be unleashed by this legislation, and it's an economy-killing piece of legislation. Its aim supposedly is to reduce CO2 emissions--and let's again say this. CO2, 80 percent of it in the atmosphere is traced not to human activity, it's a minuscule part of the atmosphere. Yet the goal of this draconian legislation, this oppressive, anti-economy legislation is to reduce emissions to around 80 percent of the current level of the world level by 2020. From there, it would be gradually reduced further. In order to do this, the Federal Government would issue permits that companies would use in exchange for the right of emitting CO2. Now, let's make this very clear; CO2 does not harm human beings. CO2, we pump it into these greenhouses to make tomatoes grow better. I am all in favor of controlling pollution, pollution of the water, of the air, of the ground. CO2 is not a pollutant that hurts human beings, but that's what we are being asked to focus on and that's what this legislation that will destroy the jobs of the American people focuses on. Well, one wonders who will decide who will receive the vouchers that are going to be given out. Apparently, 85 percent of the vouchers for the next few years will just be given out by the government, and those vouchers will be used to give permits to people who want to do business that produces CO2. Who is going to get those? This is an invitation for corruption, an invitation for corruption. We don't even know where the money went from the TARP bill where we spent hundreds of billions of dollars. So let's remember that this bill will have a dramatic impact on our economy and the American family. There will be over $1,600 in new taxes per American family by this legislation. And all the jobs will then go to India and to China. That's what we're doing. We're taxing our people, regulating our business, and encouraging our businessmen then to go to China and to India. It will destroy millions of jobs by 2012. Electricity rates will go up 90 percent above the inflation rate. We will incur $33,000 worth of additional Federal debt for every man, woman, and child in America because of this legislation. And gas prices will rise over 50 percent, natural gas prices well over 50 percent. And who will be helped by this? The Chinese and the Indians. That's what we're going to get out of this legislation. What did you expect from legislation that was designed to meet a phony problem, man-made global warming, which I have just demonstrated doesn't exist. So, why is this happening? Why are we on the verge of passing legislation? Why have people even advocated man-made global warming? Well, this has all come about because there are people in our country and throughout the world who want to control the American people. They have wanted to do this forever. They have wanted to change our lifestyles whether we like it or not. But this is a democracy, and they had to scare us and they had to skew the argument. They had to beat down anybody who wanted to offer alternative arguments in order to get us to this point of passing legislation that will dramatically control our people and control industry and put us under a burden of taxation and regulation that will destroy the meaning of opportunity in America in the years to come. Now, why do they want to do this? Because they want to build a whole new world based on benevolent control of people like themselves. And that's where the real threat comes in. The real threat comes in that this is not just the idea of centralizing power in the Federal Government--which in and of itself is contrary to what America is supposed to be all about. We're supposed to let local government and State governments control many things, but this is a centralization of power into the hands of global government. Yes, you hear global answers, We're global this and global that. What that means is international organizations like the United Nations-- which is filled with corrupt governments and representatives from corrupt governments, filled with representatives from governments that are despotic gangsters who murder their own people. We should not be transferring power globally. That is the worst possible scenario. But this, too, like the man-made global warming theory, is their dream, the dream of a planet being planned out by benevolent people, as if people on the international scale and Washington, D.C., are naturally more competent and more benevolent than the people themselves or the people in local government. What can we expect? Yes, as this moves along, this is the first major step. This bill that will be coming up this week, the cap-and-trade bill based on fraudulent science, this will be the first step towards what? Towards centralizing money and power in the Federal Government. The next step is centralizing that power globally, all in the name of benevolent ends, all in the name of stopping this horrible threat that's hanging over our heads, man-made global warming. Of course, they don't use that anymore. Again, remember, every time the word ``climate change'' is used is an admission that the people who advocated man-made global warming were wrong all along. So I would suggest that this is the time for the patriots to stand up to the globalists. This is the time for us to say, We don't want this legislation. It will be harmful to our families. It will centralize power and money and resources in the Federal Government. It will destroy our economy at a time when people need jobs and a stronger economy. It will actually help the Chinese and the Indians more than us, all in the same benevolent-motivated activity, which is very similar to the ending of the use of DDT, which caused millions of children in the third world to die. I don't care if people are benevolent. I don't care what their motives are, if their motives are benevolent. What is important is whether they're rational and whether they're right. I have pointed out in this speech numerous examples where the science is wrong, and I would suggest that the theory that big government controlling our lives as the way to solve our problems is also wrong. It will lead us not to more prosperity and not to more liberty, but a diminishing of the liberty and prosperity of our people. Again, wake up America. It's time for the patriots to act. We still have time to turn this around. We have seen $4 trillion being given out, $4 trillion of private liability put on our shoulders as public debt in this last year. This is a tremendous centralization of power. We will not give up our freedom and let this happen. We are not powerless. This is still a democracy. People need to call their Member of Congress. They need to call their Senator and say man-made global warming was a hoax. It was not something that we should be basing a centralization of wealth and power in the Federal Government, and certainly not something that we should be getting involved in in order to enrich the power of the United Nations and other international bodies. I would invite my fellow Americans to get involved in the system. If one does not get involved in the system, we will not go the right way. And I will say that in our country's history, it has always been the intervention of the American people at the right moment that has kept us on the right track. It wasn't just sitting back and allowing special interests--like are so evident in this cap-and-trade legislation that will be voted on later on this week--to write the legislation, to control what sounds like a benevolent-sounding initiative which will wreak havoc on the life of the American people. They want to control us and change our lifestyle. Let them convince us. Don't let them control us and take away our democratic rights. Mr. Speaker, as I stand here on the floor of the House tonight, I am reminded of the television series, The Twilight Zone. These days I half expect Rod Serling to appear from behind a curtain and announce that ``This is the Twilight Zone.'' Yes, there is an almost bizarre sense of unreality here in the Nation's Capitol: The transformation of private liability into public debt on a massive scale, the unprecedented level of deficit spending, debt piled on debt, borrowing from China to give foreign aid to other countries, the willingness to pass draconian restrictions and controls on our national economy and on the lives of our people. While seeking to save us from recession, Congress shovels hundreds of billions into the financial industry, much of which has ended up in the pockets of fat cats and wheeler-dealers who've been giving themselves multi-million dollar bonuses even as they've driven their own companies into the ground. The give-aways and lack of oversight have been mind boggling. We don't know where hundreds of billions of dollars went and to whom, yet now the taxpayers are on the hook for this increase in our debt. We've watched as nothing has been done to protect the well being of our people. Our nation's borders leak like a spaghetti strainer, millions of people illegally continue pouring into our county to consume our limited healthcare, education, and other social service dollars, and yes, to take jobs from our people, and in some cases commit crimes against our people. Our government lets it happen. We can't even build a fence. In California we can't even build new water systems in the middle of a drought, this we are told because of a tiny fish--the delta smelt--so our people will suffer because of concern over a little, tiny, worthless fish that's not even good enough to use as bait. So last week, even amidst California's tremendous difficulties, with drought conditions and a shortage of water at near-crisis, this House voted not for the people, but for fish. No water for our people if that little fish might be affected. Perhaps the most damaging of the weird policies I've described is America's long time commitment not to develop our domestic energy resources. Even as high energy prices have brought suffering and economic hardship to our people. Even as dollars have been siphoned from our pockets and deposited in coffers overseas, enriching foreigners, some of whom hate us. While our hard-earned dollars are being extracted from us, massive domestic deposits of oil and gas worth trillions of dollars are untouched, untapped, unused. Even as California sinks into an economic catastrophe--off the coast, are huge caverns filled with massive deposits of oil and gas sitting there? Even as California cuts or cancels public services, billions of dollars of tax revenue from that oil and gas sits right off shore, yet the state of California lets it sit while our people suffer and the state goes broke. Trillions of dollars have been sent overseas for energy while at home, no new oil refineries, no hydro electric dams, no nuclear power plants. As I say all of it's a bit bizarre. But it is not meaningless nonsense. Those who've insisted up these anti-domestic energy policies know what they are doing. They want to change our way of life whether we like it or not. So a few decades ago they grabbed onto a theory that the world is heating up because humankind uses carbon based fuel--oil, gas, coal, etc. This theory would give them the ability to stampede politicians, even scientists, into supporting draconian policies and mandates, changes in our economy and our lifestyle. All in the name of protecting us from a climate calamity: Man-made Global Warming. The good book says ``the truth shall make you free''; a caveat might be ``and a lie can destroy your freedom.'' Man-made Global Warming has given respectable cover to advocates of tax and regulatory policies that no one would even consider, except, of course, unless it is an emergency. In reality, the effort behind the Man-made Global Warming juggernaut is the biggest power grab in history. It gives politicos, who've always wanted to control the behavior of normal people, a seemingly legitimate reason to do so . . . even over their objections. This power grab was set in motion back in the very first days of the Clinton administration in 1993. When the Clinton Administration took over, one of the first actions of that administration was to fire Dr. William Happer, a man who dared challenge Vice President Gore. He believed in science, not the junk science of the radicals. He didn't fit, so out he went. From there the pattern became all too clear. In order to receive even one penny of federal research funds, a scientist would expected to toe the line of Man-made Global Warming alarmism. Any dissent would be quickly quashed, or at least cut off from any federal research funding. So when approaching this concept of Man-made Global Warming we must examine the science behind it. So let's state right off, the unconscionable intimidation of the science community during the Clinton years has ensured that bad science permeates the entire argument of those alarmists perpetuating this man-made myth. That it is based on bad science and lies is easy to discern by the herculean effort Man-made Global Warming advocates have made to cut off debate. That is why in Congress they are now trying to quickly slip by drastic life altering legislation based on the Man-made Global Warming theory without confronting the basic science. How many of us have heard ``Case closed?'' ``This debate is over.'' That is the language of debate and discussion restriction. Case closed. Al Gore takes no questions. Every prominent scientist agrees so you must be a kook to disagree. The name calling and stifling of debate by the Man-made Global Warming advocates has been shameful and a disservice to democracy. So what about the science? First, about the so-called warming cycle caused by human activity--we know that there have been weather cycles and climate cycles throughout the history of the world. The Global Warming alarmists are now using a low point of a 500 year cooling cycle, the end of the Little Ice Age, as their baseline for determining if humankind is making the planet hotter. Should we really be upset when there is a 1 or 2 degree rise from a 500 year low point in temperatures? So science question number one: are they not using an unreasonably cooler moment as a baseline for analysis? Question number two: what about the other weather cycles that have had nothing to do with human activity? A thousand years ago things were much warmer than now. Iceland and Greenland were farmed by Norsemen. What about the many other cycles, many of them to prehistoric times, even before man? So, all of a sudden it's man's fault? So, if these cycles were happening before humans were a force on the planet, isn't it likely there is another explanation for the cycles? Well, it seems to many scientists that cycles of climate follow solar activity. That's why cycles mirroring those on earth have been observed on other planets. In recent years we've been treated to outcries of agony about the melting taking place in the Arctic. Who has not seen the pictures of the poor polar bear on the ice flow, obviously a victim of Man-made Global Warming? Well not so fast. Yes, the ice cap is retreating. There's no doubt about that. But what about the ice cap on Mars? There is an ice cap on Mars and it is retreating at exactly the same time as our ice cap is retreating. Doesn't that indicate that it might be the sun and not driving SUVs or modern technology that's creating such cycles, including the one that we are already in? So, if a polar bear is hurt it is not caused by human activity. And by the way, the polar bear population has dramatically expanded--there are 4 to 5 times the number of polar bears as there were in the 1960s. So here's another scientific challenge: were there already cycles? And if polar ice on Mars is retreating as well, aren't cycles likely the result of solar activity? Let's have an answer to that. The Man-made Global Warming theory has been focused on CO2. Let's talk about the science of this. CO2 is a miniscule part of our atmosphere, and if you ask the ordinary person, they think it's 20 percent of the atmosphere. Well, actually it's less than 0.04 percent. Much less than 1 tenth of 1 percent of the atmosphere is CO2. And of that, at least 80 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere is not traced to human activity. There have been, over the years, times when CO2 was going up and down dramatically but did not affect the climate of the planet. For example, if Man-made CO2 causes warming, why, as CO2 levels were rising dramatically in the 1940s, fifties, sixties and seventies why, if the CO2 was rising in those decades, why was there actually a cooling of our climate in those decades? Okay. Let's hear the science. Come on. Why is everyone afraid to take on these scientific answers? I had one person suggest to me that the pollution in the atmosphere completely overwhelmed the ``Greenhouse Effect'' during this period. If that's true, then The Clean Air Act of 1970 is directly responsible for Man-made Global Warming. Does anyone believe that? And here's another scientific challenge. A recent study shows that over 80 percent of America's temperature and weather stations have been compromised and are faulty in the information they're providing. The numbers have been skewed. They are suspect because the monitors have been placed in locations that do not meet the National Weather Service basic standards. In other words, the equipment is compromised; the figures coming out of the equipment cannot be relied upon. And our system, with 80 percent of our monitors that do not meet the standards, has been heralded as the best in the world. So think about that. What's going on in the rest of the world when we're talking about a one-degree rise in temperature since the end of the little ice age? So how about that as a scientific challenge? If the data is based on monitors that don't meet scientific standards, how can we pass laws with taxes and controls on our people, even if the the so-called problem is based on a bogus number? And even with the current methods of collecting data, we have been warned time and again with dire predictions. Over the last 20 years, spreading the alarm, told us, Vice President Gore and others. The temperatures were going to continue to climb and then we would reach a tipping point and temperatures would jump dramatically. Well, wake up. Quit talking theory. The Global Warming alarmists' predictions were wrong, 180 degrees wrong. It has not gotten any warmer for over a decade and it looks like we're even still getting cooler. That is totally contradictory to the predictions that alarmists like VP Gore and others aggressively made to us. OK, this is yet another science-based challenge. Don't ignore it, please pay us more respect than just changing your basic mantra from ``Man-made Global Warming'' to ``climate change.'' If I am proven wrong on a point, I will apologize and change my position. I won't try to change my wording so it sounds like I was never wrong in the first place. These people were wrong. Remember it. Every time they say ``climate change'' remember these were the same people who were talking about Man-made Global Warming. Their dishonesty is underscored every time they now use the phrase ``climate change.'' Now, no matter if it gets warmer or colder, they want us to give them the power to tax and control us even though the preponderance of evidence now suggests that cycles come from solar activity. Let me note this, this gang told us human activity was causing the planet to warm. Now they are using the words ``climate change,'' which is an admission that the Earth is getting cooler. So if human activity was making it warmer, then maybe it is good that human beings will mitigate a cooling cycle with the human activity that, according to Al Gore and others, was making it warmer. Logically, they should now be advocating we use more fossil fuel. So Al Gore's scientific mumbo-jumbo was deceptive, the contention that all of the prominent scientists agreed with him was not true then and especially not true now. I'd now like to add a long list of many prominent scientists who oppose the Man-made Global Warming theory. The temperature predictions have been wrong, and the man-made CO2 premise is wrong. Now we find out that the monitors used to collect the data were placed next to air-conditioning exhaust vents, and in parking lots, and on top of buildings, and near other heat sources which, of course, made all of their data totally unreliable. We also know the methodology of using computer models has been questionable from the very beginning. We all know the saying: garbage in, garbage out. But no one was permitted to hear the questions; no one was permitted to ask follow-up questions; and to this day no one has been permitted to view the assumptions and calculations that went into the incorrect computer models used to justify the alarmist campaign that is now being used to justify punitive taxes and controls on our people. The projections have been wrong. The attempt to stifle debate and shut up those people who disagree by calling them names, denying grants, and making personal attacks has been wrong. So, let's review the scientific challenges to the Man-made Global Warming theory. I have issued challenges to any of my colleagues to debate the science of this issue, not one of those who now seem willing to vote for draconian legislation to implement the recommendations of the Global Warming alarmists have ever stepped forward. What is it they don't want to confront? Baseline comparison is at the bottom of a 500-year decline in temperature. The science measurements were partly or severely flawed by a monitoring system that does not meet minimum acceptable standards. Past climate cycles were frequent even before the emergence of mankind. Cycles like the retreating polar ice caps are parallel to similar cycles on Mars suggesting solar activity, rather than human activity, is the culprit. Increasing CO2 levels did not cause warming, which can be shown in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s where there was an increasing level of CO2, but yet it was getting cooler. Now that Man-made Global Warming has been driven into the public consciousness, the alarmists have the leverage right here in Washington. There is a price to pay, like the millions of children dying in Africa of malaria because we prevented the use of DDT. We did this so that bird egg shells would be thicker. The birds were more important to them than millions of third world children. So remember, there is a serious price to pay for listening to irrational alarmists. And now all of this confronts us. There is a bill to be voted on this week--the ``American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009'' though I would call it the ``Destroy American Jobs and Use Candles Act.'' It is a bill that comes at exactly the wrong time, and its negative consequences will be ever more severe in economic hard times as we are now suffering. Maybe we are like the 3rd world children in their minds. The birds are more important than our own suffering people. So let's be clear. Our unemployment is currently at 9.4%, and that is expected to soon rise over double digits. There are unsubstantiated boasts of jobs saved through the stimulus act, but that doesn't help the 345,000 Americans who lost their jobs last month put food on the table for their families. Our projected federal debt for this fiscal year reaches to one point eight trillion dollars! We will soon auction an unprecedented $104 billion in debt. $104 billion with $11 billion in interest. That's $11 billion just thrown away. It will not save jobs; it will not repave roads; it will not provide healthcare. It will just be used to continue our massive level of spending. And yet excessive taxation regulation mandates are now being proposed in Washington, and they will have severe consequences. So here we are, and now we are asked to pass an economy killing bill, in the name of stopping Man-made Globa Warming. What's in this bill? Well don't ask the bill's author. During markup of this bill, Chairman Waxman, when asked about a section of the bill claimed, ``You're asking me? I certainly don't claim to know everything that's in this bill.'' Well I would suggest, that if you are writing a bill that will have profound repercussions for decades to come, that is an unacceptable answer. Of course, we know the aim of this bill is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. As I have already said, this goal is foolhardy at best. It will reduce emissions of a harmless gas, while neglecting to address the dangerous pollutants that have had a demonstrated negative effect on human health. The current proposal would reduce allowable CO2 emissions to around 80 percent of the current level by 2020. From there it would gradually decrease further. In order to control this, the federal government would issue permits that companies would use in exchange for the right to emit CO2. These permits could be traded, bought and sold. Companies which emit more CO2 than they have allowances for would face heavy fines. The sale of these revenues will supposedly cover the cost of the bill. It is surprising then, that 85% of these allowances will be given out for free during the next twenty years. What?!? One wonders who will decide who receives what will become yet another government subsidy, or a political giveaway. According to recently released numbers by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, this bill gives away $821 billion worth of allocations to who the hell knows who, while consumers are going to pay $846 billion more in carbon energy costs. We have no idea where those funds will go. The last time we passed legislation with no idea what we were voting on, AIG got big bonuses. Who will win big under this bill is still unclear, but what is clear is who will lose: The American worker. But even if we believe all of the arguments made by those who would foist this bill on us, it will still not accomplish any meaningful CO2 reduction. Remember, 80 percent or more of the CO2 in the atmosphere is not linked to human activity. We must ask ourselves if the cost of this bill, over $1600 in new taxes per American family, is warranted given the fact that the U.S. share of CO2 emissions is falling as China and India's emissions are rising. So again, is it really worth it? Both of these countries have already stated publicly that they will not match these suicidal policies being proposed. All this bill will do is further encourage manufacturing to leave the United States for these countries. All of this will cost America. All of this, to decrease worldwide temperatures by less than one degree over the next 20 years, that might take us a little close to the 500-year low in global temperatures. So it will not do what the bill's sponsors claim it will. But what this bill will also do is reduce our gross domestic product by over $7 trillion and destroy nearly 2 million jobs by 2012. It will raise electricity rates by 90 percent above inflation, incur $33,000 worth of additional Federal debt for every man, woman and child in America. Gas prices will rise over 50%. Natural Gas prices will rise by 50% as well. And it will help the Chinese and other people steal our businesses from us. This is the real climate change calamity. So yes, this bill costs on average 1.1 million jobs a year. Between 2012 and 2035 the US GDP will lose $9.4 trillion. All of this leads me to ask this simple question Mr. Speaker: What is worse: Living under Man-made Global Warming, or living under Man-made Global Warming legislation? I would suggest the latter. For decades, phony, frightening predictions, false climate assumptions and inaccurate information fed into computer climate models have been foisted on the American people, including our young people, and people throughout the world. Even worse, honest discussion on these issues of climate have been stifled, and critics have been silenced in order to create an illusion of a consensus that the climate is going haywire and that we're in for a Man-made Global Warming calamity. So why is this? Why do we have this specter of Man-made Global Warming being portrayed as a global calamity in the making? Well, it's being used to stampede the public and, yes, stampede officials into accepting what appears to be the biggest power grab in history. One doesn't have to be a conspiracy nut to realize there are a significant number of people who really believe in centralizing the power of government into the hands of elected and even unelected officials, centralizing that power in Washington and elsewhere. And these unelected officials, who now will be given so much power, are expected to be competent and expected to be well motivated. They are expected to prove that by doing the things that are consistent with the goals and the values of the people who are pushing to centralize power in their hands. That we have a group of leftists who believe in centralizing power should not surprise anyone. But what we have here is the leftist politicos in this country who believe in centralizing power anyway. Global and international bodies and our own government and our own Congress will be given the right and power to intervene in our lives to prevent Man-made Global Warming. That's what it's all about, globalism. If man makes it, man must then be controlled. That's why it was so important for them to steamroll over anybody who is in opposition and wanted to ask some questions. They want nobody to ask questions about their theory about Man-made Global Warming because they believe men and women, people, need to be controlled. That is part of their theory of government. It will make it a whole new, more benevolent world. Unfortunately, a lot of the government they are talking about is not the American Government. We are talking about international mandates from unelected bodies that we will then pass on power and authority to, which is supported by many of the people right here in this Congress. Of course, the proposal before us will destroy the economy, and the irony of it is that it will have nothing to do with saving the planet, but will in fact perhaps make the environment of our planet worse, rather than better. That is why they have tried to stifle the debate and the attempt to push climate change legislation has never been more intense. People in Washington, we don't need to be told that there has been an attempt to stifle debate. But I would ask that the American people think about what they have heard about the Man-made Global Warming theory over these 15 years, but especially over these last 4 years. The attempt to ramp up these scare tactics is at an all-time high. But mark my words, the real calamity will not be an out-of-control climate caused by humans; the real calamity brought on by Man-made Global Warming will be the economy- killing taxes and regulations that are put in place to solve a nonexistent problem. That economic decline that we're talking about is just Round one, however. Round two is easy to predict. For example, in the future, we are going to face all kinds of mandates and controls from the Federal Government and the internationalcy. Some of these would be, for example, mandated increases in parking fees. Do they tell you that now? All your local communities are going to have to raise your parking fees. And there will be major impediments to the private use of automobiles. And then, of course, they've got to end frequent flyer miles and they've got to end discount air travel because, believe it or not, and nobody has ever been telling you this, they believe that airplanes are the biggest CO2 footprint of all. That's right. Your frequent flyer miles and your discount tickets have got to go. Of course, the elite will be able to fly around in their private planes giving a donation by supposedly planting trees somewhere and thus they can fly in their private planes. But the rest of us cannot go to see our sick relatives on a discounted ticket. No one has heard about this. Nobody has heard about these types of controls that are going to be mandated on our own people by the United Nations perhaps. What has been the purview of local government will be transferred to much higher authorities. Local government will be required to follow international guidelines, climate guidelines, when it comes to building, zoning, even local planning. This is part of our liberty. Where we live, what we eat, how we run our lives, this is what is at stake. It's called liberty. This is a fight between the globalists, who found a vehicle to try to gain power and grab power, and those people who do believe in liberty and justice. We call them patriots. We call them people around the world who do believe in these Western values of dignity for the individual and freedom and justice. If you aren't frightened by this, you should be. We have a fanatical movement of steely-eyed zealots who cannot admit they made a mistake, who always attack the other person rather than trying to have honest discussions of issues. Couple that with self-serving interests, and there are many self-serving interests who are involved in this. They now have joined in a political coalition that believes they have the right to run the economy, run business, run local schools, and run our lives. They have been looking for an excuse to assume power. We must stand up and defeat this power grab. Wake up America! Your freedom and prosperity are at stake. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Today, I rise in strong support of this resolution which ratchets up, to a degree, America's willingness to express its heartfelt support for the Iranian people and their struggle against the mullah dictatorship that oppresses them. Now, it has been said that you cannot champion the oppressed unless you are willing to take on the oppressor. America should not intervene in every struggle taking place, but we should be unapologetically on the side of those who are in desperate battle for their own freedom. Tempered rhetoric can be interpreted by tyrants as weakness. We need to send a strong message to those tyrants and a strong message to the people who are willing to risk their lives on the streets of Tehran that we are on the side of the people and the side of democracy and freedom. Any other message would be a betrayal of our fundamental principles, the principles of liberty and democracy that so many Americans have sacrificed to give us and to pass on to other generations. Yes, we should not intervene, but it is up to us to make sure those people struggling throughout the world know we are on their side. We must be bold in our words of support. I was honored to be one of five speech writers serving Ronald Reagan. He too was told to tone down his rhetoric. He too was told that strong words would be interpreted as belligerence. But with his strong words, he ended the Cold War, without the conflagration that hung over our heads for decades. He made it a better, a more peaceful and a freer world with a strong message and no apologies. We should follow the lead of Ronald Reagan. It will make this a better world if we side with the people in Tehran who oppose their mullah dictatorship.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the requirements of the Republican Conference of the House, I am submitting for the Record the following information regarding earmarks I received, which were included in the reported version of H.R. 2847, the ``Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2010.'' Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 2847 Name of Project: Virtual Interactive Training Simulator Account: Department of Justice, OJP--Byrne Legal Name of Requesting Entity: The Criminal Justice Training Center, Golden West College, Huntington Beach, CA Address of Requesting Entity: 15744 Golden West Street, Huntington Beach, CA 92647 Description of Request: I received $900,000 for Golden West College's Virtual Interactive Training Simulator. Funds will be used for purchase of a virtual training facility for regional law enforcement. The simulator offers a cost-effective approach by creating an engaging virtual training solution. The system immerses the trainee in a realistic 3-D environment, with the sense of immersion being enhanced both by the high-fidelity situational rendering and by the ease of navigating through the environment using simple controls mounted on the tether-free simulated weapons. It is my understanding funds will be used consistent with the following manner: For the system hardware, software and simulated weapons: $463,432 For the trailer classroom: -$252,221 Truck with towing package: $66,623 Training of instructors on virtual training system: $58,513 Twelve training databases and scenarios: $109,211 Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 2847 Name of Project: Asian Criminal Enterprise Initiative Account: Department of Justice, OJP--Byrne Legal Name of Requesting Entity: City of Westminster, CA Address of Requesting Entity: 8200 Westminster Blvd., Westminster, CA 92683 Description of Request: I received $290,000 for the city of Westminster's Asian Criminal Enterprise Initiative. Funding is for the third and final year of federal funding for the city of Westminster's Asian Criminal Enterprise Initiative. The detectives assigned to the Little Saigon Substation are already in operation, focusing on identifying, investigating and dismantling criminal enterprises, having both national and international implications, within the Little Saigon area. Under this project, the Westminster Police Department's Crimes Against Public Unit occupies office space within the Little Saigon district of Westminster, placing a powerful investigative engine into the heart of the area where Asian Criminal Enterprises operate. The city will provide a $776,000 match. It is my understanding federal funds will be used in the following manner: Office Space: $60,000 Utilities: -$12,000 Vehicles/Maintenance: $44,000 Police Aides: $31,700 Police Service Officer: $96,000 IT Support: $6,000 Travel/Training: $15,000 Safety Equipment: $10,000 Operational Funds: -$15,000 Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 2847 Name of Project: Mobile Live Scan Fingerprint Devices for LA and Orange Counties Account: Department of Justice, COPS Tech Legal Name of Requesting Entity: California Department of Justice, Sacramento CA Address of Requesting Entity: 1300 I Street, Sacramento, CA 95814 Description of Request: I received $100,000 for the California Department of Justice's Mobile Live Scan Fingerprint Devices. Funds will be used for a Justice Information Sharing initiative called ``Vision 2015'' that will significantly enhance the quality and usability of criminal justice identification and records information maintained by the state. The project will include the deployment of mobile Live Scan devices for use in police vehicles that will allow officers to capture fingerprint identification and arrest information during the citation and/or arrest of a subject. It is my understanding the California Department of Justice has allocated $3.8 million for this project. It is further my understanding that federal funds will be used consistent with the following manner: $210,000--purchase and deployment of live scan devices for law enforcement vehicles in LA and Orange Counties. $140,000--purchase and installation of necessary software/ infrastructure for CA DOJ and local courts.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I rise in opposition to this effort to send billions of more dollars to Pakistan. I have reached my threshold with Pakistan. We have sent them billions upon billions of dollars, and we still have an anti-American sentiment all the way through that government. They were our friends during the Cold War. Yes, they sided with us against the Soviet Union. The Cold War is over. It is long over. And since that time, the leaders of Pakistan have allied themselves with the most radical elements of Islam who hate the United States; and the Pakistani officials and the ISI, their CIA, have been working in conjunction with these radical Islamicists in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere ever since. We should not be sending them billions and billions of more dollars. We should be seeking, instead, to start relying on relationships with India, Russia and other countries that will be more reliable allies. I'm sorry that I'm having to say that we should be writing off a country like this. Let's focus on Afghanistan and quit sending billions of dollars to Pakistanis.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I certainly would. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. Again, thank you to the ranking member as well.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I thank you and the ranking member. This is a vitally important clarification for our aerospace industry. While at the same time opening up better trade and technology with friendly countries, it ensures that we do not send technology to the Chinese.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would like to thank the chairman and the ranking member very much for this courtesy. Mr. Chairman, section 826 of our bill has been carefully crafted to protect our national security interests. Subsection (b) of that section provides that the President's authority in paragraph (a) to remove satellites and related components from the United States munitions list may not be exercised with respect to any satellite or related component that may, directly or indirectly, be transferred to, or launched into space by the People's Republic of China. Do you agree with me that the intent of paragraph (b) is that, with respect to any transfers to or launches by China, no satellite or related component shall be removed from the United States Munitions List?

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. And no one argues with that.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. As we are making fundamental decisions about things such as health care, which is so important to our country and important to each and every citizen, we should keep in mind the fundamental differences that you are bringing up tonight between a government- controlled health care system and an individual-controlled health care system, where the individual basically controls a great deal of the resources that he or she depends upon for his or her health or the health of their family as compared to having those resources totally at the command of the government. And the one word that comes to mind is politicalization of what's happening and what could that possibly mean in health care. Let me give a little suggestion that if we have government-controlled health care, we're going to have illegal immigrants involved in the system. Our Democratic colleagues, as good-hearted as they are, cannot get themselves to say ``no'' to providing health care benefits to illegal immigrants. If we provide the type of operations that we want for our own people--heart operations and various things that are very expensive operations for health care--to be granted to illegal aliens, you can expect that it will, number one, bankrupt the system; but, number two, we will have illegal aliens coming here from every part of the world. And, in fact, one of the problems right now is that we already provide too much health care for illegal immigrants. That issue alone should be a red bell for everyone out there saying, Do I really want the government to control health care and make the decision and give part of the money to an illegal immigrant?

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. Madam Speaker, a thought came across me about 2 days ago. I was out on the water, surfing off of San Clemente, California. I was sitting there on my surfboard. The pelicans and the birds were jumping into the water and carrying fish out of the water, and the dolphins were swimming by. It was just a beautiful day. I couldn't help but remember that many years ago when I was a young reporter, one of my first assignments was to cover a speech being given by Jacques Cousteau. He was a hero to me at that time, and I really relished the idea of going out and being able to interview him after a speech he was giving at UCLA. I got to the speech, and I found that Mr. Cousteau was being very pessimistic about the future of the oceans, and he was telling the kids there was no future in the ocean, that 10 years from now--this was in the early 1970s he was saying this--there would be no life in the ocean. ``The oceans will be black, lifeless masses, black goo.'' I felt that it was a bit pessimistic; and when I had my chance to interview him afterwards, I turned on my tape recorder and introduced myself. He was ready for the interview. I said, Aren't there also some optimistic sides about the ocean, that perhaps we will someday be able to farm them, like with shellfish and regular fish perhaps, being able to ranch them, you might say, in the ocean? And that might be a great source of protein for the whole world that we would then have under better control. He came right up to me, and all these students were watching, and he put his face right up next to my nose, and he said, Didn't you hear me? The oceans will be dead in 10 years. Black goo. Dead. I'll never forget that. I mean, that was something that was really pounded right into my memory because his nose was almost touching my nose. I could smell the garlic on his French breath, and I will tell you that it was an experience. I thought about that just 2 days ago while I was surfing. The fish were jumping, and the porpoises were swimming, and the pelicans were landing and picking up the fish in the water, the oceans totally alive, and I am totally alive and very grateful to have the oceans that we have. Obviously Mr. Cousteau was wrong. I can't tell you today whether he was lying or intentionally misinforming those students, but he was dead wrong. Now students come to visit me a lot. I've been in Congress now over 20 years, and I try to see every student that comes from my district. I try to see them; and I talk to them, giving them a chance to ask me questions. But I always ask them a question too. So my students from Southern California, young high school students, I always ask them, Is the air in our congressional district, in our area of Southern California, is it cleaner or dirtier than it was 45 years ago when I went to high school in this very same area? And almost 90 percent of the students adamantly insist that the air back then was so much cleaner: Oh, you're so lucky to have lived in an age in Southern California where the air was so clean, and now it's so dirty and all of us are destined to die and to be infected with this pollution in our lungs. Well, the fact is, that is dead wrong as well. Someone continues to misinform our young people, perhaps for political reasons, whatever. But the fact is, when I tell them that they are 180 degrees wrong, that, in fact, the air is so much cleaner now that there's almost no comparison to what it was when I was a young person in high school, they are incredulous. Many of them don't believe me when I say that. But they know afterwards when they check up on it that they have been lied to. Well, whatever the reason, whatever the motive behind this misinformation that's being provided to young people, whether it was Jacques Cousteau or whether it's the educational establishment or if it is any of the other people we're talking about who have ties to the radical environmental movement, whatever the reason they are misinforming our students, it's not just the students. It's our general population as well. For decades, phony, frightening predictions, false climate assumptions and inaccurate information fed into computer climate models have been foisted on the American people, including our young people, and people throughout the world. Even worse, honest discussion on these issues of climate have been stifled, and critics have been silenced in order to create an illusion of a consensus that the climate is going haywire and that we're in for a global warming calamity. So why is this? Why do we have this specter of man-made global warming being portrayed as a global calamity in the making? Well, it's being used to stampede the public and, yes, stampede officials into accepting what appears to be the biggest power grab in history. One doesn't have to be a conspiracy nut to realize there are a significant number of people who really believe in centralizing the power of government into the hands of elected and even unelected officials, centralizing that power in Washington and elsewhere. And these unelected officials, who now will be given so much power, are expected to be competent and expected to be well motivated. They are expected to prove that by doing the things that are consistent with the goals and the values of the people who are pushing to centralize power in their hands. That we have a group of leftists who believe in centralizing power should not surprise anyone. But what we have here is the leftist politicos in this country who believe in centralizing power anyway have been willing to go along and exaggerate and, yes, play fast and loose with the facts in order to promote this notion of man-made global warming. But we didn't expect these people who have a motive of trying to centralize power, or whatever the motive is of these alarmists in the radical environmental movement, we didn't expect them to act any other way. But we need to ask ourselves, why did it take prominent members of the science community so long to step forward to be counted in the face of this massive, heavy-handed campaign of deceit? Well, I trace the reluctance of our scientists to step up back to the abrupt dismissal of Dr. William Happer, who was then the top scientist at the Department of Energy back in 1993. Happer was too professional, too objective for what Vice President Gore had in mind. So off with his head. Immediately that was one of the first actions taken when the Clinton administration took power. Out the door with Dr. Happer. This man, this prominent and very well-respected Ph.D., his dismissal in that way was a message to the science community: If you want a grant, you toe the line. And what followed was a one-sided drum beat, one- sided promotions, one-sided research grants, and one-sided thinking. Those were the order of the day for the 8 years of the Clinton presidency. The media bias, which of course went along with that, played hand in glove, has never let up with that bias. We just had a major conference here in Washington with hundreds of prominent individuals, many of whom are great scientists, Ph.D.'s, and heads of major university science departments. Yet that conference, which was skeptical of man-made global warming, didn't get any publicity. Very, very few news articles came out of this. Yet these were very prominent and important people. This kind of repressive atmosphere where the press doesn't report that and that we had years and years where people were not being able to get grants unless they toed the line that Vice President Gore wanted, in this repressive atmosphere, many leaders of the scientific community just remained silent. They sort of became turtles. They tucked their heads in and figured they'd hunker down and live through it. But the ignoring of a campaign of deceit that was utilizing the prestige of the science community has taken its toll, and it's taken a long time to get these scientists out of their shell and to step forward with integrity, as is expected of the men and women of science. So here we are on the edge--laws, taxation, controls, regulation, mandates are about to be enacted; and we've had 15 years of stifled debate. Even my GOP colleagues are afraid to take on the phony science that is at the heart of the man-made global warming propaganda juggernaut. Again, these people in the GOP, they oppose this theory; but they just want to say that what is being proposed by the Democrats will cost too much and will have too little impact on climate or temperature for it to justify this huge cost. Well, they're right. What's being proposed will have a huge cost and very little impact; but if, indeed, we are facing a global warming calamity that's being caused by human activity, the costs shouldn't matter. So I have to argue that principle and basic science is the important element of the discussion of the manmade global warming theory and the laws and regulations and controls and taxation that we are now on the verge of passing here in Washington, D.C. The bottom line is that the science behind the manmade global warming proposals in Congress and the draconian laws which will follow are based on faulty science. The science is wrong. What has been presented to us by Vice President Gore and the radical environmental community and liberal leftists who want to centralize power in government, the facts that they have presented us have not been accurate. This has either been an intent to deceive, or perhaps just a benevolent intent to save the world. So it is not just a cost analysis of current legislative proposals that show that the proposals claiming to thwart manmade global warming would obliterate jobs. We know that. All these proposals that say, well, we are going to try to thwart global warming that way or this way, or this regulation, this taxation, this requirement of cap-and-trade, we have had major economists warn these things will destroy the American economy. But if they claim it is about saving the planet, people are going to listen to them. But it will destroy the economy, and the irony of it is, this will have nothing to do with saving the planet, but will in fact perhaps make the environment of our planet worse, rather than better. That is why they have tried to stifle the debate. The real scientific justification for their power grab is science, and an honest discussion of that science will show that the science being presented to justify this power grab is at best inaccurate, and, at worst, a total lie. You have all heard it, and everyone knows about this. People in Washington, we don't need to be told that there has been an attempt to stifle debate. But I would ask that the American people think about what they have heard about the manmade global warming theory over these 15 years, but especially over these last 4 years. How many have heard the words ``case closed?'' Isn't it ironic that all of a sudden everybody started using the words ``case closed?'' What does that mean? That means no more debate. The words ``case closed'' was a clumsy, and, I might add, a heavyhanded attempt to shut off discussion even before we had a chance to have an honest discussion of the issues. Because, as I said, the scientists in the 8 years beforehand had been denied research grants unless they were wanting to toe the line on global warming. How many have heard ``case closed?'' We all have. When Mr. Gore speaks about global warming, he never takes questions. Why would it be that someone who believes in something so adamantly refuses to debate the issue on TV and refuses to take questions? I have certainly a lot less invested in this issue than Vice President Gore. I give speeches and always take questions, and I have certainly been willing to debate this issue in public and on television. So why do we hear the words ``cased closed,'' stifling debate, and Mr. Gore, one of the prime advocates of this issue, not willing to take questions? Why is it that people who have, you know, skepticism about manmade global warming, why is it that they complain, like Robert Gray, former chairman of the American Meteorological Association? Why do we hear from them that they were turned down for grant applications so many times? Why do we hear that from a man who mentioned that he had received 13 such research grants prior, prior, to the Clinton administration, and then been totally cut off? Doesn't that say something, when someone of that caliber, a Ph.D., the president of the Meteorological Association, can't get a grant to study the frequencies of hurricanes? And even today this man points out contradictory information. His view is--a man with decades of experience and credentials, Ph.D.'s and credentials in meteorology, says no, the idea that mankind's human actions is causing hurricanes is false, and there is no evidence of that. Well, and then what else do we hear? We hear name-calling. I was on a television show recently where they called me a troglodyte, I guess troglodyte, that is the word, that I am anti-science, and I am bigoted in some way. I kept presenting scientific arguments about manmade global warming, but all I got back was name-calling. Case closed. We are not going to answer any questions. No grants for skeptics. And, yes, anybody who disagrees with us is a low-life who doesn't believe in science. Yes, you don't believe in science. Can you imagine moving forward to have an honest discussion about manmade global warming and being dismissed before you get to the discussion as being anti-science, and then after insisting on four or five issues on science, not having those arguments even answered, but instead having my religion questioned? Well, dismissing rather than answering legitimate challenges to the manmade global warming theory is par for the course. This is standard operating procedure. Case closed, standard operating procedure. No questions, standard operating procedure. No grants for skeptics, standard operating procedure. These people have been trying their best to basically steamroll over anyone who would get in their way without having to have the honest discussion of an issue of this magnitude. All of it is simply a Herculean effort not to discuss the scientific assumptions that are at the basis of the manmade global warming concept. So what is that all about? Why are they not willing to discuss the science? All it is about is not discussing the science, shutting down anybody else with any other ideas without combating the ideas. Well, the reason why they have tried so hard to have ``case closed'' and all of these things that I have just mentioned, it is because their basic theory, the science theory behind manmade global warming is wrong. It is dead wrong, and that is why they won't discuss it. And if they won't discuss it, we can discuss it. I would suggest that if there is anyone in this Congress who would like to debate me on this issue for an hour sometime between now and the time this Congress has to vote on cap-and-trade legislation, I will gladly meet them for an hour and discuss this issue. So let's start discussing it tonight, and then maybe sometime in the next few weeks someone from the other side will take advantage of that offer to have an honest discussion with me and with the public about this issue. If it is so important, let's have an open and honest discussion. So let's look at some of the real science-based challenges to the predictions of an oncoming manmade global warming calamity. Okay. In briefing after briefing--I am a senior member of the Science Committee--and over the years in briefing after briefing on global warming, I couldn't help but notice that the charts that showed that we have increased the temperature of the planet by 1 degree, here is the chart, it is going up like this, I couldn't help but notice where they started, down here. And down there was 1850. 1850 is actually the line, the baseline that is used for temperature comparisons by the global warming community, by the people who believe in manmade global warming. But 1850 has some significance. 1850, in that era, those few years there, that was the end of the little ice age. That was the end of a 500-year decline in world temperatures. Okay, so why is it that people who want us to be concerned about a 1 degree temperature increase are making the baseline of comparison the bottom of a 500-year decline? Well, if it is at the bottom of a 500- year decline, if it is that low point they are comparing it to, what is all the hysteria about if we are talking about a 1 degree rise in temperature? What is that all about, or even a 2 degree rise in temperature? The fact is we know that there have been weather cycles and climate cycles throughout the history of the world. They are now trying to use a low point of a cooling cycle to compare it to say we should be upset when there is even a 1 degree change. What about those other weather cycles? Number one, let's ask, how can you use that as a baseline? Number two, what about the other weather cycles and that weather cycle? How about the weather cycle that went down for 500 years? The fact is that over 500 years ago, actually 1,000 years ago, the weather was very warm. It was a lot warmer than it is today, a lot warmer than the 1 degree that we have. The fact is, there were big areas of Greenland that were green. They actually had agriculture and a green part of that area. Iceland was an area that had plants and crops. Vineland, which the Vikings said, people thought, well, they were claiming that there were vines there but there really weren't. No, the temperature was different. It was warmer 1,000 years ago. So there have been numerous weather cycles that have had nothing to do with human activity, unless you believe that the Vikings, of course, there was something that they were doing that was changing the weather. And, if there was a warming cycle, and again, if we've had a warming cycle since that time, it's only been 1 degree. But these past climate cycles, there's one thing that we have to try to pick up. Why is it then that we've had these cycles? Why is it then, and why is this cycle we are claiming which is a 1 degree rise in temperature from a 500-year low, why is this different? Why are we trying to change the rules of the game and centralize power and look at this as some sort of crisis when it's just another cycle? And why, what is causing the cycle then? Well, it seems that cycles of climate follow solar activity. The cycles we've had before mankind even emerged can be traced back through ice cores to solar activity. Now, we've seen it here on Earth and we've seen it on other planets. Let's note this. When I was in this debate the other night, a Member of Congress, a good friend, went on about how horrible it was, of course we're having manmade global warming. Look what's happening in the Arctic. In the Arctic, the polar bears are being destroyed. Well, of course that's not true. There's a polar bear explosion in terms of their population. There are two types of polar bears that are losing, that are not able to keep up with the changes in the climate there. But most other polar bears, because it's warmer, actually are living better than they were before, and the population of polar bears is going up. How ironic that we end up putting them on an endangered species list at a time when their numbers are increasing. But let's get back to the central point. Something's going on in the Arctic. And my friend and colleague is saying, oh, how horrible it is and going into great detail to touch people's hearts about a polar bear on a piece of ice. And then I said, you're saying that this is caused by human activity and, thus, we have to have all these taxes and controls and things to save the planet from this? Well, yes, that's what he's saying. Well, I said exactly what I've said to Arnold Schwarzenegger. I said this to myself on the program. Yes, the ice cap is retreating. There's no doubt about that. But when I say that, I'm not talking about our ice cap. That's clear to us. But what about the ice cap on Mars? There is an ice cap on Mars, and just by coincidence, it is retreating at exactly the same time as our ice cap is retreating. Doesn't that indicate that it might be the sun and not us driving SUVs or modern technology that's creating these many, many cycles that we've had, including the one that we are already in? Yes, an ice cap is retreating on Mars and it's retreating in the world. Is that just a coincidence? Well, that's a scientific challenge. Let's have an answer to that. So, we have polar ice caps melting on Mars, and it's not just a coincidence, I believe. So tell me why this doesn't indicate to us that what we're really talking about is solar, what we are facing today in the climate changes that have taken place today, just as it has in the past is that it has to do with solar activity. So now remember, by the way, ice caps may have been melting in the Arctic, but one thing people miss, the ice caps are not melting everywhere, just the northern ice cap. In Antarctica, to the south, ice is actually accumulating. And so in the north, yeah, there is a polar bear population, I think two species of polar bears are suffering. Most every one, the rest of them are expanding their population. And by the way, I understand now, even in that area, the ice is beginning to return. But the ice has always been accumulating in the Antarctic over these years. That's never told to us. It's as if the whole world is increasing in temperature, but they don't bother to mention the areas where the ice is actually accumulating. Well, the manmade global warming theory has been focused on CO2. This is, of course, and again, let's talk about the science of these issues. CO2 is a miniscule part, a miniscule part of our atmosphere, and if you ask the ordinary person, they think it's 20 percent of the atmosphere. Well, actually it's .023 percent, I believe, so that's less than 1 quarter of 1. It's less than 1 quarter of 1 percent of the atmosphere is CO2. And of that, at least 90 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere is not traced to human activity. I've been in hearings where most people claim it's more like 5 percent of the CO2 in the atmosphere is traced to human activity. You know, and by the way, one huge volcano or even massive fire like they've had in various countries would dwarf everything that we're trying to do to reduce CO2 into the amount of CO2 that that would put into the atmosphere, because CO2 is not a significant part of the atmosphere. It's a miniscule--it's like a thread being put across the line on a football field, and that's what you're changing by focusing not just on the CO2, which is .023 percent, but it's also, of that, 90 percent of that is not manmade. It's made by nature. So the most important discussion in terms of manmade CO2, which, as I say, the manmade part of it is just a small contributor, it's a small contributor to a very tiny element in the atmosphere, and suggesting that that is changing our climate is ludicrous. In fact, it is warming and has released CO2 and there have been--it is warming a little bit. There has been, over the years, until recently, and over the years, there has been times when CO2 was going up dramatically and down dramatically but had nothing to do with the climate of the planet. For example, manmade--if manmade--here's a basic can question. Here's another science challenge. If manmade CO2 causes warming, why, as CO2 levels were rising dramatically in the 1940s, fifties, sixties and seventies, why, if the CO2 was rising in those decades, why was there actually a cooling of our climate in those decades? Okay. Let's hear the science. Come on. I just had a science. I've had five or six points now. Why is everyone afraid to take on these scientific answers? If indeed CO2 causes it to warm, well, then how come, when we had massive increases in CO2 in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies that it got cooler and not warmer? Well, the calculations on global warming have been based on fraudulent numbers. And here's another scientific challenge. A recent study shows that over 80 percent of America's temperature and weather stations which have been the source of temperature readings that supposedly indicate a warming trend, supposedly, these very same monitoring facilities have been compromised and are faulty in the information they're providing. The numbers have been skewed. They are suspect because the monitors that have been relied upon do not meet the basic scientific standards that are required of them for us to believe in the numbers that they're giving us. In other words, the equipment is compromised; the figures coming out of the equipment cannot be relied upon. And our system, with 80 percent of our monitors who do not meet the standards, the scientific standards for us to rely on their numbers--our system has been heralded as the best in the world. So think about that. What's going on in the rest of the world when we're talking about one little rise, a one-degree rise in temperature since the end of the little ice age which was a 500-year low of temperature? So even that we can't figure out--even with that one degree we don't know, because the monitors have been placed in faulty ways or have not been kept and maintained in the right way. And so what we have had is a lot of people who have been making predictions over the last 20 years, especially Vice President Gore. But if the science community had been given these grants--but only if they're going to come to the conclusion about global warming that we want you to-- these people in the science community and these other political people who have got their own motives behind this bulldozer approach and this steamroller approach to accomplishing what they're out to accomplish, those people have been telling us that we're facing a man-made global warming climate calamity and it was in the making. And we were told that the temperatures were either going to continue to go up and up and it would reach a certain point and then there would be some sort of tipping point and then it would jump up by a number of temperature points. So it would be five or six points, or whatever they were predicting. It was a huge jump in temperature at some point. Well, that's not what's happened. I heard that for 10 years, 10 years for the people who were giving out all of the grants, 10 years from all of the people who were shutting out any type of real debate, 10 years of ``don't ask any questions, case closed.'' And those people are on the record, and they have been warning us of man-made global warming that was about to get out of hand. But for over a decade, it has not gotten any warmer. Yes, 11 years ago in 1998 it was a very hot year, and that was the year--since then, every year has been cooler. It has not gotten warmer since then. And they say, Well, that was a very hot year. Well, so was 1931 was a very hot year, and it was followed by decades, I might add, of cooling. So that doesn't mean anything. That was just an anomaly that we had a hot year in 1998, because ever since then the temperature has not been going up. The global warming alarmists' predictions were wrong, all right? Come and debate that. There is a scientific challenge. I keep giving scientific challenges, and what I get back in this debate is, You're a bigot; you're anti-science; you're stupid. Name-calling. I mean, the people on the other side who always are willing to call people names rather than confront their arguments are very easy to spot. You just take a look. You listen to what's being said. Who is offering an argument that needs to be discussed? Who's calling names? They have been trying to shut down this debate by calling anybody who disagrees with them horrible personal names. Well, let me repeat this one point: it has not gotten any warmer for over a decade and we're still--it looks like we're even still getting cooler. That is totally contradictory to the predictions that were aggressively made to us, as they only gave their grants to the people who would agree with that over the years. This is why global warming alarmists have now, en masse, changed the wording that they use. They were wrong, so let us just change the way we talk about things. Now it's climate change, okay? Everybody think about it. All of these same people were talking about global warming 20 years ago, spending billions of dollars on research that was bogus research, you know. It was intended to come out with what they were buying from the scientists. They were telling us it was going to get warmer, and they kept using the term ``man-made global warming.'' And now they call it ``climate change,'' and all of a sudden, they all change and it all became climate change. Well, every time you hear that word used by an environmental radical, by one of these alarmists, it is an admission that they were wrong and that they refuse to admit that they were wrong. Refusing to admit you're wrong after you've been so aggressive in promoting something is certainly not an honest debate and an honest discussion. If I am proven wrong on a point, I will apologize and change my position. I won't try to change my wording so it sounds like I was never wrong in the first place. These people were wrong. Remember it. Every time the word climate change is used, remember these were the same people who were talking about global warming, and they want to have it both ways. No matter if it gets warmer or colder, they want to blame it on human activity when, in fact, all of the evidence suggests that cycles come from solar activity. Expert after expert is now pointing to the flaws in the central argument. And the other thing you hear is, of course, that all of the scientists agree. There is your other way of shutting down debate. All of the scientists, all of the prestigious Ph.D.s and scientists agree. That is not true. And it hasn't been true for years. So Al Gore's scientific mumbo-jumbo was wrong, all of the scientists agreeing with him is wrong, the temperature predictions have been wrong, and the man-made CO2 premise is wrong. Now we find out that the monitors used to collect the data were placed next to air-conditioning exhaust vents--which made the temperature higher--and in parking lots, and on top of buildings, and near other heat sources which, of course, made all of their statistics totally unreliable. We hear that. We also know the methodology of using computer models has been questionable from the very beginning. We all know the saying: garbage in, garbage out. But no one was permitted to hear the questions; no one was permitted to ask follow-up questions as to--no one has been permitted to totally understand the software that went into that questionable computer modeling. The observations have been wrong. The attempt to stifle debate and shut up those people who disagree by calling them names, denying grants, and making personal attacks has been wrong. Thus, I would suggest the biggest power grab in our history is wrong, and the public should wake up. The public should understand that what we are seeing is a brazen power grab that is wrong. So, let's review the scientific challenges to the man-made global warming theory. See if anybody ever tries to come and have an argument about the science. Baseline comparison is at the bottom of a 500-year decline in temperature. That is not the scientific way of determining whether a slight rise in temperature is significant. The science measurements were partly or severely flawed by a monitoring system that was--did not meet the standards necessary to have accurate information. Past climate cycles were frequent even before the emergence of mankind. Cycles like the retreating polar ice caps are parallel to similar cycles on Mars suggesting solar activity, rather than human activity, is the culprit. Increasing CO2 levels did not cause warming, which can be shown in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s where there was an increasing level of CO2, but yet it was getting cooler. So let's have an honest debate. Let's quit calling names. Let's quit dismissing legitimate science-based questions. Address the scientific issues being raised rather than sloganeering about a consensus of scientists that does not exist. Again, the so- called ``consensus,'' case closed--that consensus does not exist. More and more, thousands of scientists are signing on as skeptics to this manmade global warming theory. This leads to an important point that needs to be made. Perhaps the biggest lie the public must deal with is that all the prominent scientists in the world totally agree with the manmade global warming theory. That's probably the biggest lie, as I mentioned. Instead of answering scientific questions, alarmists have simply claimed all the scientists agree. I've been interviewed on this at least half a dozen times, and every interview begins with, well, all of the scientists agree that manmade global warming is a reality, how can you disagree with all of them? It is just another tactic aimed at repressing an honest discussion of something that should be a scientific issue and discussed with all sincerity. I will now submit the names of 10 prominent scientists, 10 of the thousands of scientists who have signed on to suggest that manmade global warming is far from accepted by all scientists. These are the heads of science departments, the presidents of scientific and academic associations, people with doctorates in the areas of study, and they are coming forward at last, they're coming out of their shell at last after all of these years of intimidation. This is only a list of 10, but there are thousands more who are stepping forward to voice honest skepticism, if not total rejection, to the claim that human activity is creating a global warming climate catastrophe. The first one is Dr. Richard Lindzen, top scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. William Gray, Colorado State University, former president of the American Meteorological Association. Dr. David Nowell, former chairman and NATO meteorologist from Canada. Dr. Gerhard Kramm, University of Alaska in Fairbanks. Dr. Yury Izrael of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a senior member of the Russian Academy of Sciences whom I met and spoke to, and also a member of the IPCC United Nations report, who now makes it very clear that he does not believe in that report or manmade global warming. Dr. Ian Pilmer of the University of Melbourne. Dr. Diane Douglas, climatologist and paleoclimatologist. Dr. Harry Lins, cochairman of the IPCC Hydrology and Water Resources Working Group. Dr. Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists. Dr. Ivar Giaever, Nobel Laureate and physicist. So this idea that all the scientists are lockstep in favor of the theory of manmade global warming is a lie, not just a lie, a damnable lie aimed at cutting off honest communication. And who's doing that? Who's making this adamant statement that all the scientists are in agreement with this? Well, we've had people who say these things and said things all along. There's the global warming alarmists now who are making these statements. But let us just remember, these scares have happened in the past. I remember when my mother wouldn't serve cranberries at Thanksgiving because they caused cancer. I remember when Professor Meryl Streep warned us of alar-causing cancer, which just about ruined the apple industry for 2 years. That also was wrong. We heard about cyclamates causing cancer, which cost the industry billions of dollars and disrupted very healthy patterns of nutrition that could have been based on cyclamates rather than high fructose corn syrup. That, too, was wrong. We remember the nuclear power catastrophe at Three Mile Island, when Dr. Jane Fonda, that Ph.D. genius, taught us that nuclear power was so dangerous, that what we have done instead of using nuclear power, we began relying on overseas oil and gas and burning coal. Then remember the acid rain? That was as near a high pitch as what we hear about global warming. Ronald Reagan stood up, put his hand up and said, no, we are going to have scientific research on this acid rain issue before we commit to all sorts of regulations and taxes that will destroy our economy. Luckily, Reagan did that, and when a $500 million study was complete, it verified the fact that acid rain was a minimal problem, not a major problem, a minimal problem that didn't justify any of the draconian raises in taxes and controls that were being suggested by those environmental alarmists. Then of course the granddaddy of them all was, many of the same people who now talk about global warming were then talking about global cooling back in the early 1970s, some of the very same people. Yes. And what happened to global cooling? The cycle started going in another direction. Then it became, Oh, my God, it's global warming. Well, now it's back to global cooling. So is this all caused by us driving SUVs? No. Maybe it's caused by the sun. Maybe there are natural reasons for the cycles of climate on this planet. The so-called ``experts'' were wrong when they told us about all of these things. All of these were exaggerated problems, exaggerated threats to our well-being. And the American people were deceived in many of these cases, whether it was about nuclear energy or whether it was about cranberries. And we had fanatics who were fast and loose with the truth and fast and loose with facts. Well, that's exactly what's going on today. And what's the problem with that? Well, the problem is there are serious side effects when one gets you focused on something that's not true, like cranberries causing cancer or nuclear energy being such a threat. You end up doing things that are actually harmful to you that you wouldn't do otherwise. When you have CO2 being called the primary pollutant for concern, you are doing a horrendous disservice to the people of this country. By focusing on CO2, which is not harmful to human beings at all and in fact is a plant food--CO2 makes plants grow better, it does not harm human beings. And if our job is just to try to reduce the amount of CO2 in the world, we will actually be doing a grave disservice because we won't be concentrating on the pollution, like NO2 and other things that are very harmful, the particulates out of diesel trucks that are particularly--again, no pun intended--but particular particulates that are very harmful to people. I have three children. I have my baby Anika and Tristan and Christian. I love those babies, and I do not want them to breathe in dirty air. And if we focus on CO2, we are doing a disservice to them and their generation and we are doing a disservice to the older people of this country who will also breathe in the dirty air. And focusing on CO2 to save the planet. That's because what's happening here is these people are out to save the planet, but they are not out to save the people of the planet. I remember one solution to a nonexistent threat, which also caused a huge destruction of people, was, of course, the eliminating of DDT. Now, DDT, we were told, was destructive to the environment, especially to bird egg shells. Well, then, DDT is banned. And what is the result of DDT being banned? Malaria out of control in Third World countries where before it had been nearly eliminated. DDT was eliminated and malaria made a comeback, and millions of children in the Third World have died because of this nonsense. I can't tell you if pelican egg shells are less fragile because of DDT, but I can tell you the tradeoff with millions of young children dying in Third World countries isn't worth that tradeoff about how fragile and building up the shell of a pelican. Unfortunately, the people driving policy here are out to save our planet; they're not out to save our children or our seniors or any other people on the planet. That is the same mindset that would dramatically damage our economy in order to save the planet, with no consideration of the hardship and deprivation to ordinary people that would result from the draconian controls and taxation that is being proposed here in Washington right now as an answer to the global warming threat, the manmade global warming threat. Now that manmade global warming has been driven into the public consciousness, the alarmists have the leverage right here in Washington. What should we expect unless the public changes its perception? There is a price to pay, just like those millions of little kids dying in Africa of malaria, and there is a price to pay for listening to irrational alarmists. Excessive taxation regulation mandates are now being proposed in Washington, and they will reduce our gross domestic product by over $7 trillion, destroying nearly 2 million jobs by 2012, at a time when we really need jobs. It will raise electricity rates by 90 percent above inflation, incur $33,000 worth of additional Federal debt for every man, woman and child in America. And it will help the Chinese and other people steal our businesses from us. And this is only step one. And even with this monstrous cost, little progress is expected. Here's back to the central point most Republicans want to make: That that cost isn't worth what we're going to get out of it. Well, no, there won't be any change in the temperature, and little change in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. And CO2 isn't harmful to people or this world. The real calamity brought on by global warming will be the economy- killing taxes and regulations that are put in place to solve a nonexistent problem. That economic decline that we're talking about is just Round one, however. Round two is easy to predict. Global and international bodies and our own government and our own Congress will be given the right and power to intervene in our lives to prevent manmade global warming. That's what it's all about, globalism. If man makes it, man must then be controlled. That's why it was so important for them to steamroll over anybody who is in opposition and wanted to ask some questions. They want nobody to ask questions about their theory about manmade global warming because they believe men and women, people, need to be controlled. That is part of their theory of government. It will make it a whole new, more benevolent world. Unfortunately, a lot of the government they are talking about is not the American Government. We are talking about international mandates from unelected bodies that we will then pass on power and authority to, which is supported by many of the people right here in this Congress. For example, in the future, we are going to face all kinds of mandates and controls from the Federal Government and the internationalcy. Some of these would be, for example, mandated increases in parking fees. Do they tell you that now? All your local communities are going to have to raise your parking fees. And there will be major impediments to the private use of automobiles. And then, of course, they've got to end frequent flyer miles and they've got to end discount air travel because, believe it or not, and nobody has ever been telling you this, they believe that airplanes are the biggest CO2 footprint of all. That's right. Your frequent flyer miles and your discount tickets have got to go. Of course, the elite will be able to fly around in their private planes giving a donation by supposedly planting trees somewhere and thus they can fly in their private planes. But the rest of us cannot go to see our sick relatives on a discounted ticket. No one has heard about this. Nobody has heard about these types of controls that are going to be mandated on our own people by the United Nations perhaps. What has been the purview of local government will be transferred to much higher authorities. Local government will be required to follow international guidelines, climate guidelines, when it comes to building, zoning, even local planning. This is part of our liberty. Where we live, what we eat, how we run our lives, this is what is at stake. It's called liberty. This is a fight between the globalists, who found a vehicle to try to gain power and grab power, and those people who do believe in liberty and justice. We call them patriots. We call them people around the world who do believe in these Western values of dignity for the individual and freedom and justice. Yes, even our diet has been targeted by those claiming that animal flatulence and deforestation make meat the enemy of climate. We aren't even going to be able to have barbecues in our backyard, much less have hamburgers. Now, these are one of those things that people will laugh that no one could ever go that far. What is going on here is laying the foundation for extensive controls that now are up to the individual or up to the local government being given to a central government. If you aren't frightened by this, you should be. We have a fanatical movement of steely-eyed zealots who cannot admit they made a mistake, who always attack the other person rather than trying to have honest discussions of issues. Couple that with self-serving interests, and there are many self-serving interests who are involved in this. They now have joined in a political coalition that believes they have the right to run the economy, run business, run local schools, and run our lives. They have been looking for an excuse to assume power. Now, the left has always wanted to have power. Leftists have always wanted it. They believe that they can do better and make humankind over and make it a better world by having absolute power over the choices of the people who live in this world. Well, they have found a calamity. They can threaten the people of the world with a calamity in order to stampede them into a monstrously horrific policy, and that's what we are on the edge of here in Washington. In this last 8 months here in Washington, hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars have been shoveled into the coffers, and no one knows where the heck this money has gone to. There have been looters from all over the world in our financial system and everyone who has benefited from that. The American people know that this Congress was stampeded into giving away trillions of dollars because we were told there was going to be an economic calamity. I'm very proud I never succumbed to that hysteria that was perhaps the greatest rip-off in history. Well, the global warming stampede is designed to cover up the biggest power grab in history, and it too will be costly. Wake up, America. Wake up, America. We should not be giving our power and our liberty, not to the central government in Washington, D.C., certainly not to the United Nations, which is composed of countries who are governed by crooks and kooks. And the United Nations having power to set regulations over our lives in the name of saving this world from a climate catastrophe would itself be a catastrophe to the freedom of liberty and justice in this country and to the freedom-loving people of the world. Well, even Al Gore must be a bit embarrassed now that he has to use the words ``climate change'' rather than ``global warming.'' It's an inconvenient truth for him. The fact is it's no longer warming. He must think that we are stupid if he thinks that we have not noticed that it's now ``climate change'' instead of ``global warming'' and that we haven't noticed that there are large numbers of scientists that are opposing what is being proposed. And he must think we are stupid if he thinks that these taxes and regulations and draconian laws that are being proposed are things that we will just accept because we have been frightened into submission. Wake up, America. We need to save our country and future generations and we need to save the world from this incredible power grab, the greatest power grab and worst power grab in history.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, June 4 marks the 20th anniversary of the massacre of the Chinese democracy movement at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. This date marks a turning point, and it also marks a day of shame for the bloody murder, a murder that was committed by the Communist party bosses when they sent Chinese troops to slaughter the idealistic Chinese people who were demanding democracy in Tiananmen Square at this time just 20 years ago. This day the government of China affirmed to the world that it is a criminal enterprise that is perfectly willing to murder unarmed people in order to stay in power. Shame on those Communist Party bosses who still 20 years after Tiananmen Square would still massacre advocates of democracy if they would gather in their streets, just as they would massacre Falun Gong members one at a time as they would arrest them, put them into prison, murder them, and would sell their body parts, just as they would murder Tibetan nationalists or Christians or other religious believers. Shame on Beijing. Shame on the people of the world who would treat the Government of Beijing as if it were the same as a democratic government. June 4 is not just a day of shame for the Beijing regime, however. It is a day of shame for our government as well. Under President Reagan, we made it clear that the United States would continue providing credit, investment, beneficial trade arrangements, and technology transfer as long as China was willing to continue on the path of reform and on the path of making their society more open. Reagan, had he been confronted with Tiananmen Square, would have sent a message: if you send the troops in to massacre these people, the deal is off. You will pay a price. Do you know what our government did? It wasn't President Reagan. It was President Herbert Walker Bush. Do you know what his message said? It said nothing because he didn't send a message, and that was the message the murderers in Beijing needed to hear. America really doesn't give a damn about democracy. America doesn't care about human rights. We care about making a buck, and if you have to slaughter the people at Tiananmen Square, the Americans will never ever protest; they won't whisper a protest; they won't cancel contracts, because money is more important to the Americans than freedom. Well, I'm afraid that did not represent the America that I'm all about. That immorality of siding with a dictatorship, of siding with the gangsters, of siding with the murderers in order to make a short- term profit--that policy--is coming back to haunt us now. That policy has created a monster in Beijing--a powerful, powerful force for evil in this world that we now must confront. Today marks an anniversary--an anniversary of shame on those who committed the murders, an anniversary of shame on what our reaction was to those murders and to the repression that took place 20 years ago. Let us send a message to the people of China: We are on their side. Hopefully, if nothing else, this resolution will let them know that, as our people stumble over themselves in trying to make short-term profits by making deals with the gangsters who have oppressed the people of China, there are Americans here who still hold true to the values of Jefferson, of Washington--of our Founding Fathers--and that there are Americans who still hold true to those values that liberty and justice for all is more important than short-term profit gains for American capitalists.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2346, but I do so reluctantly. I am reluctant because as someone who has spent the last 30 years studying Afghanistan and having been in and out of that country and being someone who has studied the current administration's plan, I am sorry to say that the current administration's plan will not work. It is doomed to failure. Thus we are here allocating money, supplemental money, for our troops to send them overseas, but we are not backing them up with a political plan, a structure for Afghanistan that will work, that is consistent with the customs of the people of Afghanistan. Also their plan does not focus on drug eradication and how we are going to eliminate the problem in Afghanistan. How will our people succeed without the drug eradication problem that we know, the alternative that exists, that is being ignored? No. We are sending our people over. They deserve our support financially. But we should get together and work with the administration to reform their plan because it will not work.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the City of Huntington Beach on its one hundredth anniversary. One of the most beautiful, comfortable, successful, clean, and vibrant cities of America has transformed itself from a tiny oil-producing and cow- grazing piece of land, into the vibrant metropolis it is today. The home to nearly 200,000 people, Huntington Beach, CA has become a great example of what cities across America should strive to be. Anybody who has ever strolled along the boardwalk, played volleyball in the sand, surfed the waves, trekked out over the pier and watched the sun set know that they are experiencing something special. But leisure is not the only thing valued in Surf City, USA. The city has established a commitment to education with 35 elementary schools, five high schools, as well as two community colleges within the city's limits. The people of Huntington Beach are also very hard workers who have labored to contribute a great deal to their city, state, country, and world. The city plays host to a diverse range of industry, from low-tech to high-tech aerospace, among them The Boeing Company. The city is also home to part of the upper stage of the Saturn V rocket, which was engineered and built by Douglas Aircraft (later McDonnell Douglas), which took the first American flights to the moon. I must point out another aspect to this city that is near and dear to my heart, as the Chairman of the unofficial, yet powerful, House Surfers Caucus. Visit Huntington Beach, and within a short distance of each other, you will find the International Surfing Museum, the Surfing Hall of Fame, the Surfing Walk of Fame, Quicksilver, and my personal favorite, Jack's Surfboards. Every year, thousands gather on its beaches for the yearly U.S. Open of Surfing Contest. Although I'm not a competitor, it does not prevent me from getting up early in the morning, whenever I can, to join other surfers in the area, beyond the breakline, and hopefully catch a wave or two. Surfing adds a unique and important flavor to the local culture, and Huntington Beach has indeed earned its designation as Surf City, USA. Yes, Huntington Beach has much to be proud of. The city has so much to offer that people from every corner of the world have traveled to visit or settle in this beautiful city. And who can blame them? Huntington Beach boasts one of the most beautiful coastlines in the country, amazing weather, and friendly and innovative people. Several times, the FBI has cited the city as being one of the safest communities in the United States. Huntington Beach continues its quest for offering a great quality of life and advocating the advancement of freedom, fun, and human progress. Establishments such as Central Park, the Huntington Harbour, the Bolsa Chica Ecological Preserve, among others, are a testimony to this dedication. As this great city, Surf City, USA, celebrates its centennial, let us look to its example and work to emulate its success. I congratulate Huntington Beach on its centennial. I'm sure the next hundred will be just as grand.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the requirements of the Republican Conference of the House, I am submitting for the Record the following revised information regarding two earmarks I requested, which are included in the reported version of H.R. 1105, the Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009. Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 1105, the Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009. Name of Project: Vanguard University Academic Center for Science, Nursing, and Technology. Account: DHHS, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Vanguard University Address of Requesting Entity: 55 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92626- Description of Request: I received $238,000 for Vanguard University's Academic Center for Science, Nursing, and Technology. Vanguard University is developing an Academic Center for Science, Nursing, and technology which will help address the significant problems facing California by training teachers in science and math, and by developing a Nursing School with an accelerated RN to Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree Program to help address the nursing crisis. The center will include the development of smart classrooms, the nursing school, and research laboratories to train existing teachers and nurses, and will deliver the study of science, math, and technology that will prepare students for teaching careers in science and math. It is my understanding the University will provide the balance of funding through endowments and other major gifts. It is also my understanding funds will be used consistent with the following. Site work: $407,500 Shell & Minimal Core $4,087,00 Core & Systems $1,911,000 Basement Premium $232,500 500 SF total @ 132.66/SF Total $6,638,000 I certify that neither I nor my spouse has any financial interest in this project. Requesting Member: Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) Bill Number: H.R. 1105, the Consolidated Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009. Name of Project: Vanguard University Academic Center for Science, Nursing, and Technology. Account: Department of Education, Higher Education (FIPSE) Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Vanguard University Address of Requesting Entity: 55 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 Description of Request: I received $190,000 for Vanguard University's Academic Center for Science, Nursing, and Technology. Vanguard University is developing an Academic Center for Science, Nursing, and technology which will help address the significant problems facing California by training teachers in science and math, and by developing a Nursing School with an accelerated RN to Bachelor of Science in Nursing Degree Program to help address the nursing crisis. The center will include the development of smart classrooms, the nursing school, and research laboratories to train existing teachers and nurses, and will deliver the study of science, math, and technology that will prepare students for teaching careers in science and math. It is my understanding the University will provide the balance of funding through endowments and other major gifts. It is also my understanding funds will be used consistent with the following. Site work: $407,500 Shell & Minimal Core $4,087,00 Core & Systems $1,911,000 Basement Premium $232,500 500 SF total @ 132.66/SF Total $6,638,000 I certify that neither I nor my spouse has any financial interest in this project.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Thank you very much. And I will be amplifying on some of the points that you have made. I would just like to suggest that, as a 20-year veteran of the Science Committee, this issue has been before me, and I have been through many hearings and many actual examinations of this particular issue. Last week, President Obama pledged that during his administration he would see, and I quote, that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda, and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology. End of quote. Viewing this commitment through the lens of global warming gives us some hope that President Obama will break from the ranks of the lockstep conformity that is demanded of the politicized scientists concerning the issue of global warming. Perhaps now we can get on with discovering the truth through science, not chicken little science, but real science, and leave the political pressure out of it. Unfortunately, up to today politicians like Vice President Al Gore have done their best to silence the rational voices of scientists who have been skeptical of Mr. Gore's agenda. Let no one forget, Vice President Al Gore's first act as Vice President was to insist that Dr. William Happer be fired as chief scientist for the Department of Energy. Dr. Happer apparently had uttered words indicating that he was open-minded to the issue of global warming. So: Off with his head. Out the door. They wanted someone who was going to provide grants only to scientists whose would verify this man-made global warming theory. Dr. Happer was relieved in 1993, the first year of the Clinton-Gore administration. So for over a decade all we have heard is a one-sided drumbeat. Dr. William Gray, now emeritus professor of atmospheric science at the Colorado State University, and a fellow of the American Meteorological Society, verified this. Quote: I had NOAA money for 30 years, Gray recounted. And when the Clinton administration came in and Gore started directing some of that environmental stuff, I was cut off. I couldn't get any money from NOAA. They turned me down 13 straight proposals. End of quote. This man is one of the most prominent hurricane experts in the world who before received grants for study and scientific grants, but after Clinton-Gore he was turned down 13 straight times. This gross intimidation of other scientists was done to lay the foundation; because if it could happen to this prominent scientist, it was going to happen to them. But it was done to lay down a foundation for a radical agenda that would change our life. The first thing he had to do was to have hand-picked scientists create fear that the planet was in jeopardy. Then these hand-picked scientists had to lie about everybody agreeing to that type of prediction. Unfortunately, for all those scientists who went along with this scheme, now over a decade later, there is a big problem. The claim that the science is clear and there is a consensus that humans are directly responsible for global warming is now as clearly wrong as it is dishonest. Why is it clearly wrong? Because it has not been getting warmer for the last 8 years. It is harder for everybody to ignore that fact, especially as more and more scientists are stepping up and pointing it out. It is not getting any warmer. In fact, it hasn't been getting warmer for 8 years. In January, a U.S. Senate minority report stated over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe challenged manmade global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as disagreeing with former Vice President Al Gore. The esteemed scientists being referred to come from a wide range of disciplines. Several are Nobel Prize winners. And many work at the most respected scientific institutions in the world. They totally disagree with the theory. They call it into question, this manmade global theory claim. Finally, just last year the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine released the names of some 31,478 scientists who signed a petition rejecting the claims of human-caused global warming. Of those 31,000, 9,029 have Ph.D.s. Many currently work in climatology, meteorology, atmospheric, environmental and geophysical studies, as well as astronomical studies, as well as the biological fields that directly relate to the climate change controversy. So, there is no consensus. Thousands of scientists are disagreeing with what has been foisted upon us. Yet, we are bombarded by radical environmentalists and the media hype with the common refrain, ``case closed, the global warming is real.'' It is repeated over and over again. ``Case closed, global warming is real.'' Well, it is repeated as if it were a mantra by religious zealots. It was pounded into the public consciousness over the airwaves, in print and even in congressional hearings. Case closed. Well, this was obviously a brazen attempt to end open discussion and to silence differing views, dismissing the need to explore legitimate contrary arguments on both sides of the issue. Again, there are hundreds of prominent scientists and meteorologists and heads of science departments at major universities, Nobel Prize winners and others who are highly skeptical and highly critical of this manmade global warming theory. But case closed. We shouldn't even listen to their arguments. There is Dr. Richard Lindzen, for example, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been adamant in his opposition, as has Dr. William Gray, whom I mentioned a moment ago, a world-renowned hurricane expert and fellow at the American Meteorological Society. He recently pointed out that the 15-year prediction by global warming activists that the Earth would by now be suffering many more and much more severe hurricanes, that that prediction was dead wrong. It doesn't come from me. It comes from Dr. William Gray, one of the most renowned hurricane experts in the world, who could not get a research grant during the Clinton-Gore administration. So, let us note, the planet is not getting warmer. Hurricanes are at a 30-year low. But these views, and the views of so many more prominent scholars and scientists who also agree with these views, their views don't matter. The debate is over. Al Gore has his Nobel Prize, and the film ``An Inconvenient Truth'' has its Academy Award. So shut up and get your mind in lockstep with the politically correct prevailing wisdom, or at least what the media tells us is the prevailing wisdom. And no questions, please. The case is closed. We have heard this dozens and dozens of times. Don't people who are advocating global warming, who are honest people, doesn't that cause them reason to pause and think, why are people trying to shut down the discussion? Okay, the science has been skewed by heavy-handed intervention in the awarding of research grants. It is clear now, evidenced by a propaganda barrage that would make George Orwell blush. This propaganda barrage has been aimed at the American people. So what is this theory that is now so accepted that grants were denied, the debate is deliberately stifled and that a barrage of propaganda is aimed at the American people to get them just to accept it? The manmade global warming theory is presented as scientific truism. So, let's see, is it really? It is, let's say, specifically, it is a disturbing theory that the Earth began warming, a warming cycle 150 years ago. This was a warming cycle that differed greatly from all the other warming and cooling cycles that had gone on on this planet for millenniums. For as long as the Earth has a geologic history, there have been warmings and coolings. But this warming cycle of 150 years ago, we keep being told, is not like all the other cycles. This one is tied directly to mankind's use of fossil fuels, basically coal and oil. These so-called fossil fuels that have powered our industries and made civilization possible are, we have been told, causing a global-warming catastrophe. The weather is changing. It is getting hotter and hotter. After all, former Vice President Al Gore now said that, and I quote, ``humanity is sitting on a time bomb. The vast majority of the world's scientists are right. We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet's climate system into a tailspin of epic destruction, involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced, a catastrophe of our own making.'' Al said that, not acknowledging that when his statement was made, the world temperature had already ceased to climb in the previous 5 years. But he should be excused because he was so sure, really sure, that global warming would come back and then validate his warnings. Why was he so sure? Because fossil fuels, people like Al tell us, put an ever-increasing level of so-called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The most prevalent is carbon dioxide, CO2. This increase in CO2, we are told, causes the warming that we are supposedly experiencing. Of course, we know that ended 8 years ago, but supposedly we are still experiencing it. We will just ignore that it hasn't been getting warmer for these last 8 years. This manmade warming cycle, according to the theory, is rapidly approaching a tipping point, as we have just heard from Al, when the world's temperature will abruptly jump and accelerate with dire and perhaps apocalyptic consequences for the entire planet. If one accepts this as fact, then manmade global warming is overwhelming our planet even as we speak. If we believed that, then we would be expected to accept controls, regulation, taxation, international planning and enforcement, mandated lifestyle changes, lower expectations, limits on consumer choice, as well as personal and family sacrifices. All of this we would be expected to accept as necessary to save our planet from-- well, from us. What are the costs of these controls? According to the Wharton Economic Forecasting report, complying with the Kyoto treaty alone would reduce our country's national output by $300 billion annually and would result in the loss of 2.4 million jobs. The cap-and-trade legislation, now being considered in Washington, would cost American industry $600 billion. This, of course, will simply be passed on to consumers in the price of the goods that we purchase. By the way, when President Obama said there will be no new taxes for anyone with less than a $250,000 annual income, did he include all of this money that was going to be added to the price of the goods that we are paying by federal regulations that are trying to deal with global warming? I wonder who is going to pay that $600 billion. Is it just the people who make over $250,000 a year? Well, promise or no, this economically oppressive medicine will be shoved down our throats at a time of incredible hardship and economic chaos in our country. We can't afford to lose millions of jobs. To charge the American taxpayer billions more in the price of the goods they buy, which is little more than a thinly disguised tax, is unconscionable. We can't afford to increase the electric costs as much as 129 percent, which is predicted. And significantly, they would like to raise the price of gasoline once more. They want it to stay at $4 a gallon. It really takes a lot to frighten people into accepting such economically destructive and personally restrictive mandates that would result from the implementing of a global warming-based agenda. That is why the debate has been stifled. The case is closed. The phony claims of consensus. That is why the proponents of this theory have been so heavy-handed, heavy-handed enough to interfere with the unbiased issuances of research grants. How else, except for dishonest tactics, can they frighten people to accept the huge changes in their lives that they will be required to make by the global warming community? And these are not changes that are being made, changes for the better in their lives, otherwise they would make them gladly and voluntarily. Inexpensive air travel, for example, the global warming alarmists believe that jet aircraft should be considered among the worst CO2 polluters. Jet travel, therefore, must be restricted. People are expected to give up the freedom to use cheap air fares. So how many people are aware of that? If the global warming fanatics have their way, there will be no more discounted airline tickets, which of course means fewer visits to see our loved ones and fewer visits to explore the world. Better known, however, is the global warming movement's commitment to severely restrict the use of private automobiles. The rich will still have their limos and of course their private jets. Carbon offsets will see to that. Certainly Al and the others will be let off the hook because of these carbon offsets which, of course, Al will also profit from by organizing them in the private sector. The rest of us will not be able to travel by plane and will be stuck sitting at home or sitting next to a gang member on public transportation. If we are just staying at home, what does that leave us? Is that a better life? Outlandish global warming predictions, then, are designed to strike fear into the hearts of those malcontents who just won't be willing to accept giving up those low-priced air fares and will not accept government mandates in their lifestyle. They just won't stay at home. Those changes, we are told, are needed to save the planet. Well, if proponents have their way, people are just going to have to accept things like higher food prices and, importantly, less meat in their diet. That's right. They want to wean us away from meat. A 2006 report entitled ``Livestock's Long Shadow'' to the United Nations mentions livestock emissions and grazing, and it places part of the blame for global warming squarely on the hind parts of cows. Cows are to be added to the list of greenhouse-emitting machines. So, not only are we going to be forced to cut our personal air travel and our ground transportation, as I say, which keeps us at home, but then when we stay home, we can't even have a barbecue. And heck, they won't even let us have a hamburger. I point out that before the introduction of cattle to the United States, millions upon millions of buffalo dominated the Great Plains of America. They were so thick you could not see where one herd began and the other ended. One can only assume that the anti-meat manmade global warming crowd must believe that buffalo farts have some redeeming value that is better than the flatulence emitted by cattle. Underscoring this dishonesty of the global warming fanatics, in my attempt to make light of the argument that cattle production is an evil element of our world, I once suggested, in jest, that perhaps dinosaurs' flatulence changed the climate in those days which may have ended the time of the dinosaurs. Well, it was widely reported that I was serious when I said that. Anyone who could suggest that I was serious and not making light of the other person, and I say respectfully making light of the other person's argument, anybody who reports that I was serious, that I really believed that dinosaurs were extinct because of flatulence is intentionally portraying something that they know not to be true, or they are just ignorant. But I believe we are not talking about ignorant people, we are talking about people who are portraying things that they know not to be true as if it were true. What we have here is steely-eye fanaticism by those on the other side of the global warming debate; people clearly blinded by fanaticism and, thus, are unable to grasp nuance, unable to grasp a bit of humor added to a debate, and certainly unable to honestly examine an opposing argument. But let's look at the proof these zealots give us to back up their claim of global warming that is threatening our planet. Let's be honest enough to be open minded to what they are presenting us. First, let's note that the baseline used to prove global warming is 1850. I have been through hearing after hearing in the Science Committee. And 1850, by the way, is the year in which they judge whether the planet is getting warmer or cooler. And 1850 also marks something else: it marks the end, the bottom end, the final end of a 500-year decline in the Earth's temperatures called the Mini Ice Age. Yes, it was a cycle trending down for about 500 years, and it all got down to about 1850 when it started trending up. So 1850 is the baseline for judging warming of our planet? Does that make any sense? They are making comparisons against a temperature that was the bottom end of a 500-year decline in temperature. I pointed that out at numerous hearing and in numerous debates, and the issue continues to be ignored. So if anyone out there is listening and is honest, please give us an answer: Isn't 1850 a dishonest date to use as a baseline to prove that the Earth is getting warmer? Isn't the statistical base clearly flawed when you start at a low point? Then there are, of course, the predictions that we have heard. In testimony before Congress 20 years ago, NASA's James Hansen predicted CO2 would shoot up and global temperatures would shoot up by more than one-third of a degree Celsius during the 1990s, and the trend would then escalate. A rise in temperature was predicted, and it would lead to what: rising sea levels, cities underwater, droughts and famines and an increase in tropical diseases; yes, tropical diseases. Sometimes it is difficult for me when radical environmentalists use that as an example considering that tropical diseases, especially malaria, have killed millions of children in the Third World because radical environmentalists have been successful in banning DDT; but that is another issue. It has been awhile since the apocalyptic predictions by global warming fanatics were made. Were these predictions correct? Mr. Hansen said the temperature would rise by a third of a degree just a little over a decade ago, and the answer is that the predictions turned out to be dramatically wrong. Temperatures during that decade rose only one- third of what was predicted by Mr. Hansen, a modest increase to the point that it would alarm nobody and would be of little difference than any of the other many cycle changes that we have seen on our planet over our planet's millions of years of history. Again, over the past 8 years there hasn't even been a modest rise of temperature, again as differentiated from what Mr. Hansen predicted. We shouldn't be surprised. Climate modeling, which is the basis of almost all alarmist predictions, is not an exact science. No weather or climate model has ever been accurate to the point the alarmists would have us believe. This was stunningly clear when Dr. Hansen called for an anti-global warming protest here in Washington 2 weeks ago that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) just talked about. The day the demonstrators arrived coincided with the worst snowstorm in a year and the coldest March 2 in more than a decade. So let's look at the other predictions. He was dead wrong to try to call a global warming demonstration on the coldest day of the year because he didn't think it would be cold. Numerous and powerful other hurricanes were forecast by the National Hurricane Center for NOAA and others. Okay, that is what we were going to have. The last decade, the global warming people said we would have more and more hurricanes. Well, for the last 8 years it hasn't been getting warmer, and we haven't seen more hurricanes. Yes, as I stated earlier, the number of hurricanes is at a 30-year low. During the Clinton administration, scientists produced a study and then another study and another study predicting the horrific impact of the unstoppable onslaught of manmade global warming: droughts, fires, polar ice caps melting, mass extinctions, all of this, report after report, what I call Chicken Little science. We were led to believe this nightmare would be overwhelming us by now. Of course, if there was even a hint that the conclusion wouldn't back up this global warming theory, the scientists who applied wouldn't have seen one red cent of Federal research money. And just recently Tom Knutsen, research meteorologist for NOAA, the ones who ended up not being able to give Dr. Gray any research grants, this gentleman, Mr. Knutsen, now says that he has reviewed the evidence and totally changed his mind and now admits that he was wrong about global warming and the increase of hurricane activities. So here is a scientist with integrity. Such scientific integrity did not always rise to the occasion. Contrary to what all of those scientists living on their Federal research grants predicted, the world hasn't been getting warmer. In fact, in the last 8 years there has been no warming at all. Global snowfall is at record levels, and there are fewer, not more hurricanes. And yes, there is some melting in the Arctic. We hear about it over and over again. In fact, NBC did a special on the melting of the Arctic and how bad it is, showing penguins sitting on diminished pieces of ice in the Arctic. The problem is that penguins don't live in the Arctic. There are no penguins in the Arctic. They live in the Antarctic. So NBC had it wrong. Somebody must have told them that the penguins from the Arctic were being victimized by global warming. In fact, the Antarctic where the penguins live, there is a buildup of ice going on. It is getting colder in the Antarctic. In the Arctic, of course, we recognize there has been some rise in temperatures; that due, which many experts tell us, to ocean currents that have changed in the last few years. But emphatically, it is not due to CO2 that comes from somebody's SUV. The Arctic is in fact returning to the temperature levels of the 1940s. And what about the disappearing polar bears? Are the polar bears really disappearing? Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Department of Environmental Studies under the Canadian territory of Nunavut, and other experts suggest that all but two types of polar bears are flourishing. So yes, two types of polar bears out of 13 different types, two of those types are in decline. The rest of the polar bears, the population is expanding. So there are more polar bears. Let me say that again: more polar bears. But here we are, understanding there are more polar bears in the world, we are treated with a spectacle of polar bears being put onto the endangered species list with a caveat that they really aren't endangered now, but with global warming, they are expected to dwindle. Never mind that the global warming trend stopped 8 years ago. Unfortunately, the debate on this case is not closed. So emerging obvious differences between reality and theory needs to be addressed by people who have been advocating the global warming theory. Even without going outside and checking the thermometer, it is easy to tell that the predictions of manmade global warming were wrong. How can you tell they were wrong? Because they don't even use the words ``global warming'' anymore. The words ``climate change'' have now replaced the words ``global warming.'' Get that? Every time you hear the words ``climate change,'' it is evidence of error that they were wrong to begin with, or of deceit on the part of radical environmentalists. So no matter what happens from now on, climate change has replaced global warming, and whether it is hotter or cooler, it can be presented as further indication that humans have caused the change that is taking place. No, there have been changes in our weather forever. You have always had adjustments up and down, trends and cycles. We just need to ask ourselves, if a salesman gives a strong pitch and makes claims about something that is later to be found out to be wrong, totally wrong, when do you stop trusting the salesman? Then if he starts playing word games and changing the actual words he is using about the same product, and rather than just admitting that he was wrong, he just changes the words he is using but he is talking about the same product, isn't it reasonable to stop trusting this person? Yes, Al Gore and company, we have noticed that you are now saying climate change rather than global warming. They tried to slip it in, but we have noticed. So, why the alteration? Why are they doing that? That is because the world has not been getting warmer in the last 8 years as predicted, and everybody is beginning to notice it. So we actually see a beehive of activity because of this. Those federally funded scientists who were sucked into this are now trying to save themselves some modicum of credibility, this even as more and more scientists speak up and publicly disassociate themselves with the scientific claims of global warming that have been foisted upon us. To understand all of this nonsense, you have to go back and look at the basic scientific assumptions that are being used by the global warming alarmists. They claim that excessive amounts of manmade CO2 are being deposited in the air which causes a greenhouse effect that warms the atmosphere. They call this increase in CO2 mankind's carbon footprint. The global warming analysts want us to judge everything by its carbon footprint. What that means is how much CO2 is being released as a result of that specific activity is a carbon footprint. They adamantly believe that it is CO2 that causes our planet to warm and that more CO2, the hotter it will get, and an increasing CO2 problem. And why is CO2 increasing, according to these folks, that is due to us. And although mankind is responsible for significantly less than 10 percent of all CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere, we are told climate change is our fault. Can one huge volcano spew more CO2 into the atmosphere than all of the people of the world? Yes, but that is still our fault. Can one huge fire, like the one we had recently in Australia, throw just as much CO2 into the air? Yes, but it is still our fault. Rotting trees in the Amazon and the by-product of rot and termites may cause even more CO2 than what people put into the air, all of the people on the planet? Well, yes, but again, it is our fault that CO2 is rising. This concept, just like the extrapolations from their computers is wrong, dead wrong. Andrei Kapitsa, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher, slammed the U.N. IPCC, and this is the report that has been used to justify all of this monstrous and very dangerous global warming agenda, well this Russian ice core researcher suggests it is ``the biggest scientific fraud'' in 2008. ``The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way around.'' Furthermore, he went on to point out, ``A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N. Conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact. We found out that the level of CO2 had fluctuated greatly over the period, but at any given time increases in air temperature preceded higher concentrations of CO2.'' This is exactly opposite from what is the basis of the whole global warming argument. So this is the challenge; many prominent scientists including the head of the Russian Academy of Science--who I recently met with, I might add, talking about this issue--are now confirming that the rise in CO2 comes after global temperatures increase, not before. This has been observed in ice cores, yet this has been again ignored by those who were screaming their warnings at us. Please, give us an answer to this challenge. Why ignore it? How can the American people just accept the validity of the argument that's being presented to us when they just ignore challenges to the validity of their argument? If the increase in CO2 is not the cause of any warming cycle the world may experience, how can there be any validity at all to any of the demands made upon us? We have had many warming cycles in the past, but what these scientists are telling us is CO2 increase did not cause those warming cycles. In fact, Dr. Claude Allegre, the scientist who first postulated the theory that CO2 increase was spiking the world's temperature, has now changed his mind. Officially, he says he was wrong. He told Al Gore he was wrong. Al Gore won't listen. So what is the cause of the world's warming and cooling cycles? If it's not CO2, if the global warming crowd refuses to deal with that issue and look at that specifically and deal with that challenge, okay, well, I assume they're wrong. But what is it that we really believe causes these changes that have gone on for millenniums in the Earth's temperature? It's called sun spots. Yes, solar activity. That explains why one sees similar temperature cycles on Mars and Jupiter to the cycles that are happening on this planet. That's why icecaps on those planets, like on ours, expand and contract. It's the sun, stupid. So take note that the very argument upon which global warming is built has proven to be false, and that manmade global warming activists will not address this issue. This is the most supreme arrogance that I have witnessed in my 30 years in Washington. After all, the case is closed. We don't need to discuss any more details. Yet, expert after expert keep pointing to the flaws in their central argument. And Mr. Gore's mumbo-jumbo notwithstanding, the predictions have been wrong. And the CO2 premise is wrong. The methodology that has been used has been wrong. The observations have been wrong. The attempt to shut up those people who disagree with them has been wrong. Now, I remember when I chaired the Subcommittee on Research and Science in the House back when the Republicans controlled this body. I insisted that both sides be present and that expert witnesses be expected to address each other's points and contentions. This methodology led Al Gore to refer to me as a ``Stalinist.'' I would suggest that the propaganda campaign of the manmade global warming alarmists has much more in common with Stalinism than does insisting that both sides of an issue be heard at a congressional hearing. One has to really believe that he or she has a corner on the truth to make such a complaint that Stalinism is having both sides presented and addressing each other's points. Of course, Al Gore's documentary, ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' suggests by its title that what he says should be taken as truth. Well, I won't go into the numerous debatable points and outright errors in that film, but there is something far worse in that film. This pseudoscientific documentary--what I call Chicken Little science--presented numerous film segments of climate and environmental incidents similar to those footages that you would see from National Geographic. This added to the credibility of the points being made. Specifically, the film portrays a dramatic cracking and breaking away of a huge portion of the polar icecap. The scene is awesome and somewhat overwhelming, and leaves the audience with the feeling that they have witnessed a massive historic occurrence. Unfortunately, it's all a fake. This is not grand, firsthand photographic evidence. It's not National Geographic footage of a huge breaking away of a portion of the icecap. Instead, what the audience is looking at is a deceptive use of special effects. It's not the icecaps, it's Styrofoam. That's right, Styrofoam special effects trying to fool us into thinking we're observing an occurrence by nature. By the way, isn't Styrofoam an oil- based product or something? Isn't there some sort of carbon footprint with Styrofoam? Well, Mr. Gore has not commented on this depiction. Maybe it is ``inconvenient'' for him to comment because it may hurt his credibility. After all, it's not getting warmer, as he predicted; so maybe his, let's say, theories that are based on Styrofoam are inaccurate as well. The first time I met Al Gore was in my first term in Congress back in 1989 and `90. Al Gore was then a United States Senator, and he marched into the science room, followed by a platoon of cameras and reporters. He sat in front of our committee demanding that President Bush--that's George W.'s father--declare an ozone emergency. He waved a report in his hand as evidence that there was an ozone hole opening up right over the northeast of the United States. A few days later, the report touted by Senator Gore was found to have been based on faulty data, data collected by one so-called researcher flying a single-engine Piper cub with limited technology and no experience. The emergency declaration the Senator called for would have had severe negative consequences on the people who live in the northeast part of the United States. Now, does anybody detect a pattern here? Such a scare tactic--as I say, Chicken Little-ism--based on false information? Well, it isn't new. We have had many examples, not just of Al Gore, but of others playing this sort of tactic in order to get their way. In 1957, the FDA recalled 3 million pounds of cranberries. A few years later, the FDA admitted it was a total mistake. Sorry. Of course, there was a tremendous price to be paid; a large number of our farmers went out of business. They went broke because nobody had their cranberries for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then, of course, there was the scare over cyclamate, used in everyday items like sodas, jams, ice cream. It was very sweet and extremely low in calories. In the early 1970s, the FDA banned cyclamate as a cancer hazard. Well, come to find out, the rats in their study had been force- fed the equivalent of 350 cans of soda a day, and only eight of the 240 rats that they had crammed all this soda in actually got sick. It was a faulty test. And eventually, years later, the truth finally prevailed, and it was officially recognized that cyclamate does not cause cancer. Canada, by the way, never banned cyclamate. Our northern buddies, I guess, just couldn't get themselves to force-feed those rats. Well, the FDA did take back its negative finding. It came up with the truth, finally. However, great damage was done. This episode had serious consequences. It was the cyclamate ban that led to the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup, with the obesity and health problems that have come with high-fructose corn syrup. So, yes, another scare tactic, another American industry--cyclamate--decimated, another rotten theory with unintended consequences foisted upon us. The next example of fearmongering with pseudoscience came in February of 1989. On the evening of February 26, Americans tuned in to ``60 Minutes'' and heard Ed Bradley say, ``The most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply is a substance sprayed on apples to keep them on the tree.'' He went on to warn that children were being put at risk by eating Alar-dusted apples. The story snowballed out of control, climaxing with actress Meryl Streep's testimony before Congress. Frantic parents tossed apples out the window, schools removed apple sauce from the cafeteria and replaced those apples and that apple sauce with more safe and nutritious substances, like ice cream and pudding. Well, there is only one small problem; Alar, which is what was on the apples, didn't cause cancer. A study later found out that that was wrong. Twenty thousand apple growers in the United States suffered enormous harm. Then, of course, there was Three Mile Island; another fake, another situation where people were stampeded. And what we ended up with that, no one was hurt at Three Mile Island, but instead, what it did was it created a political momentum that destroyed our ability to utilize nuclear energy in the United States. Instead, we are still dependent on coal and other fuels. We are dependent on oil and other fuels that we now have to buy from people overseas. Jane Fonda's movie, ``China Syndrome,'' helped create the scare. It has had an enormously negative impact. Ironically, today radical environmentalists still make attempts to stop the expansion of nuclear energy for producing electricity, even as we remain dependent on foreign oil and continue to use coal-fired plants. Then we know about the ozone hole in Latin America, which was supposed to be around for decades, and then mysteriously it just naturally closed up after just a few years. Again, another cycle of nature presented to us as if there was some major problem with human activity. Of course, what we've got is an example of--and we have already been presented this by my colleague--where people, just a few years ago, were talking about global cooling in the same way that they now talk about global warming. Then there was, of course, acid rain. Ronald Reagan, thank God, stood firm. Instead of putting controls on our economy to stop so-called ``acid rain,'' he insisted on long-term scientific research. And when that research came out, it verified that acid rain was not caused by people, and it was not the problem that it was being portrayed as. So we have seen these tactics over and over again. What we should be doing, when we hear people trying to scare us into accepting controls, accepting higher taxes, what we need to do is make sure that their science is challenged, and that we do so with an open mind. Our goal should not be to end global warming because it doesn't exist. We should be focusing on global pollution, not CO2, but the pollutants that will hurt our people. One of the great damages that the global warming people are doing to us today is focusing our attention on CO2 when we should be focusing our attention on the other pollutants that threaten the health of our people. We don't need to save the planet by utilizing certain energy, we need to save the human beings on this planet. And the CO2 focus of the global warming crowd is causing the great damage to the well-being of our people by focusing us on the wrong enemy. I would ask that the rest of my statement be made part of the Record. Then there's the so-called nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island. This incident put an end to expanding the use of nuclear energy for the production of America's electricity. It is the prime example of how devastating pseudo-science scare tactics can be. In this case, our country ended up heavily dependent on foreign oil, while France has developed a thriving nuclear infrastructure. The French learned how to reprocess uranium. We learned how to buy more energy from abroad. Three Mile Island also left us dependent on coal fired power plants and their pollution. Was this really better than the ``risk'' associated with nuclear power? An operational mishap at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant was portrayed as a deadly accident putting millions of people in jeopardy. Well, no one has yet to show me that one person's life was shortened by the Three Mile Island incident. Because the media hype was coupled with Jane Fonda's movie called ``The China Syndrome,'' which had just been released, the Three Mile Island incident ``became'' in the public's mind a major disaster. The only kind of disaster that really happened was a major public relations disaster. The American people were terrified into rejecting nuclear energy as a means of producing clean, reliable, domestically fueled electric energy. Ironically, nuclear power is probably the most effective means of producing power with no carbon footprint, no CO2. Yet the radical environmentalists to this day still block attempts to expand the use of nuclear energy, even as we expand our dependency on foreign oil, and continue to use coal fired plants. Again, it was a total con job and has had a horrible impact on our lives. And what about that ozone hole over the Antarctic? We were told it would continue to grow and grow and it would take decades to get it under control. Boyce Rensberger, director of the Knight Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now points to evidence that the ozone concentration is a cyclical event, expanding and contracting the ozone throughout the eons of time. It's just part of a natural cycle according to this scientist from MIT. So here is a scientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology telling us the current ozone depletion is simply part of a recurring cycle, not the result of chlorofluorocarbons, as we were told. In layman terms, he's telling us that the gigantic expense of shifting away from aerosol was a waste for America. We're talking about billions of dollars here. The ozone hole closed on its own. It was just part of a cycle. If it wasn't, it would be much different than it is today. Then there is acid rain. Who can forget the frightening threats that acid rain posed to us just 20 years ago? Acid rain was supposed to decimate our forests, destroy fresh water bodies, and erode our buildings and sidewalks. Well, what ever happened to acid rain? Well, that theory, too, proved to be an extreme stretch. President Reagan was pummeled without mercy for his unwillingness to take monstrously costly action aimed at thwarting acid rain. He insisted on waiting for an in-depth study to be completed, and he was vilified for his insistence on legitimate scientific verification. Well, a 10-year study by the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Project was submitted to Congress in 1990. It minimized the human impact of acidity of water in the northwest and the northeast of the United States. The issue then died quickly and quietly, and no one ever apologized to Ronald Reagan. We haven't heard about acid rain. If they were right, we should have been hearing about it all this time. Instead, of course we've been hearing about something else which is much easier to scare people with, global warming. And of course, the last one before global warming that I'd like to mention is the most pitiful of all. Yes, an alarmist scheme which made the cover of Time magazine 30 years ago. Just 3 decades ago, scientists and politicians were frantic about global cooling. We were told the Earth was entering a new ice age. Unfortunately for the scaremongers, the temperature did not plummet and the oceans did not freeze. In fact, it was getting a bit warmer during the 1980s and 1990s. It was part of the Earth's on-going up-and-down cycles, as has always been the case. Well, some of those people, some of those scientists, and others who were talking about global cooling, changed their words, and, you guessed it, global cooling became global warming. Almost overnight global cooling was rejected, and then global warming was in vogue. And now, of course, global warming is changing to climate change. So, scare tactics are nothing new; it's a tried and true method. Those pushing an agenda know people can be frightened and stampeded; and then policies can be foisted on a hysterical public. Unfortunately, this time around, the long-term consequences will be very, very damaging for the next generation. I often ask students visiting from my southern California district whether they think that 45 years ago, when I went to high school in southern California, whether the air was cleaner or dirtier than it is now. A huge percentage believe that the air quality 45 years ago in southern California was dramatically better than it is today. When I tell them that what they believe is 100 percent wrong, that the air is dramatically cleaner today in southern California, you can see the frustration in their eyes; they have been lied to in a big way. The big lie their generation has been fed is that the environment is going the wrong way and that they have to give up their freedom, and that they have to give up their expectations of certain things in their life because the future is bleak. They are told the lie that we have to give up our national sovereignty, because it's a global crisis-- everything about the environment--the air, the water, the land--is all getting worse. In fact, there's been tremendous progress in cleaning up the pollution that not that long ago was found in our air, water and soil. And let me tip my hat to the environmentalists. This progress has been as a result of government regulations, often pushed by liberal Democrats. For anyone not to admit that would be disingenuous. But the fact is that our children are now being told that this man- made global warming will devastate our whole planet. Dr. John Christy, a professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, has a different perspective, ``I remember as a college student at the first Earth Day being told it was a certainty that by the year 2000 the world would be starving and out of energy.'' Dr. Christy goes on to say, ``Similar pronouncements made today about catastrophes due to human-induced climate change sound all too familiar and are all too exaggerated for me, as someone who actually produces and analyzes climate information.'' So, we are told that polar bears are dying, but they aren't. We are told that the polar ice caps are melting, but now we know that in the Antarctic, ice is actually growing. Hurricane Katrina, we were told would only be the first of many horrendous hurricanes to hit the United States in the next few years but, of course, there has been no significant rise in the number or strength of hurricanes. Recently it was pointed out that a hurricane just as strong as Katrina hit the United States 100 years earlier, long before the effects of ``global warming.'' Katherine Richardson, one of the organizers of the Copenhagen Conference, an ``emergency summit'' established to forward the next Kyoto Protocol, advertised the event not as ``a regular scientific conference. This is a deliberate attempt to influence policy.'' It was, she admitted, ``Explicitly designed to stoke up the fear of global warming to an unprecedented pitch.''

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I would yield.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Reclaiming my time, let me just note that I do believe there is an alternative that should be looked at seriously. And whatever happens to this legislation, I would hope that this other alternative which would permit the people of the District of Columbia to vote for not only a Representative but also two United States Senators is given some serious thought. With that, tonight I rise, Mr. Speaker, in remembrance of a champion of freedom who recently passed away, a great man who influenced the world in which we live, but left the world with little notice of his passing. His name was Dr. Fred Schwarz. He died in his native Australia on January 24, 2009, at age 96. Dr. Schwarz was a medical doctor, a brilliant thinker, with the most disciplined thought process and intellectual honesty than any other person I have ever met. And that is saying a lot. At an early age, Dr. Schwarz was able to identify the philosophy of communism--Marxism and Leninism--as the major threat of that day to the human race. He spent decades of his life exploring and exposing the basic ideas of Marx and Lenin and other communist thinkers. He was sounding the alarm as to the logical consequences of those ideas. Most anti-communists in the United States at that time never got in greater depth than that of a cliche. They were opposed to communism. ``The dirty rotten commies.'' But even though they were using these cliches, they didn't have an inkling as to what the actual philosophy and tenets of communism were all about. Dr. Schwarz saw communism as an evil religion that corrupted the human sole to the point that idealistic people all over the world, humane people, were turned into murderers and mass slaughter was taking place. People were executed. And yet, even thoughtful people in our own society whose thought patterns were corrupted by Leninism and Marxism ignored this mass slaughter that was going on in the communist world, and sometimes even excused it. From Lenin to Stalin, from Castro to Pol Pot, it was no freak accident that every regime led by people who believed in communism ended up with mass killing and the debasement of civilized and human values. And yes, ended up with having people who flirted with this Marxism and Leninism, were affected in some way by the philosophy, ignoring that torturous existence that the people who lived under communism had to endure. Dr. Schwarz took it upon himself to educate as many people as he could, especially opinion makers and future leaders, not only about the evil doings associated with communism, but also with the ideology itself that resulted in these evil consequences. In fact, one of the Dr. Schwarz's favorite quotes was ``ideas have consequences.'' Thus, it was vital in the Cold War years that the basic ideas and concepts of this evil theory that threatened the world and threaten to bring upon the human race death and misery wherever it happened, it was vital that we understood the basis of this philosophy and what was causing these evil things to happen in the world. In those days, communism could propagandize about creating a more peaceful world and benevolent society, even as they turned whole countries into concentration camps and murdered anyone who resisted their power, and murdered anyone who was related to anyone who resisted. Dr. Schwarz was an Australian, but when he realized that the Cold War would be won or lost by the strength and conviction of the American people, he moved here and became a major educational force teaching young and old alike about the inherent danger that lurked in Marxist- Leninist philosophy. He was a disciplined intellectual, and had no fear in engaging in direct confrontations and disagreements. He was always seeking the truth. He would never put up with faulty logic or inaccuracy of fact on our side or on their side. Now somewhat forgotten, perhaps ignored, the fact is he had a major impact. He had a major impact on the American conservative movement, giving substance and depth to anti-communist activists that were such an important part of that movement. He thus equipped the intellectual soldiers who eventually won the Cold War. He equipped them with what they needed to understand in order to understand the Cold War. I owe so much to Dr. Schwarz. The education he gave me was invaluable. From the time I went to Saigon in 1967 during the height of the Vietnam War in search of young political leaders to enlist in the anti-communist cause, to the time I marched arm in arm with anti-Soviet activists in the streets of Prague in 1968, what he taught me could be very well seen in those locations in that day of the evils of communism. And what he taught me helped me all the way through the time I was a journalist, all of the time I spent in the 1980s writing hard- hitting, anti-communist speeches in the White House for President Ronald Reagan. Of course, over these last 20 years as a Member of Congress, what Dr. Schwarz taught me has served me well and helped equip me to serve my country and to serve the cause of freedom. Speaking of President Reagan, it is significant that President Ronald Reagan was the master of ceremonies, before he was President, of course, at several rallies conducted by Dr. Fred Schwarz during the 1960s. Dr. Schwarz's Christian anti-communist crusade drew thousands to rallies and seminars. And I have no doubt that Ronald Reagan's anti- communist attitude, as well as his understanding, were to a great degree shaped by Dr. Fred Schwarz. Early on as a union leader, Ronald Reagan knew that he was anti-communist. But after Dr. Schwarz, Ronald Reagan knew why he was an anti-communist. I was not the only Ronald Reagan speech writer who subscribed to Dr. Schwarz. Tony Dolan, Ronald Reagan's chief speech writer who worked with Ronald Reagan on the Evil Empire speech and other historic utterances, was a devotee of Dr. Schwarz. Dr. Schwarz gave us the intellectual ammunition to relegate communism to the dust bin of history. All of us who he equipped to do battle remember him and are grateful to him. He has been laid to rest now in his native Australia, and I pay tribute to him, along with the other Cold War warriors, for the contributions that he made to us as individuals and to the cause to which we were all so dedicated. And yes, we as a global coalition of free men and women defeated the Soviet Union without an all-out war with Russia because we defeated their ideas and understood their ideas and fought them at that level as well as with weapons. One of the factors that helped us win was that we understood and defeated the ideology behind that communist tyranny. Thank you, Dr. Schwarz, for helping us learn what we needed to learn and to know what we needed to know and then to do what we needed to do. I will submit for the Record an obituary of Dr. Schwarz to give a small background on Dr. Schwarz. [From the Christian Today, Australia, Jan. 30, 2009] Fred Schwarz, RIP (By Bill Muehlenberg) Jesus once said that a prophet is without honour, except in his own country. One of the greatest Australian prophets of the past century has just passed away, and nothing that I am aware of about his passing can be found in the Australian mainstream media. While Australia has many heroes--especially sporting figures and movie stars--perhaps the greatest hero to arise from Australia in recent times has been totally overlooked by our secular, leftist media. I refer to Dr Fred Schwarz, who died earlier this week at age 96. Schwarz was a successful medical doctor originally from Brisbane. He left a successful medical practice in Sydney, although with a young family, to devote his whole attention to warning people about the dangers of atheistic communism. Born in 1913, he accepted Christ as his personal saviour in 1934. In the mid 1940s he began his medical work. He combined this with active Christian work, and also became aware of the threat of Communism during this period. He soon was reading everything he could find on the topic, especially the source materials. Each night he devoured the works of the founders of Communism. Thus his wife Lillian would quip that she often found four men in her bed: Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Fred. He soon was debating leading Australian Communists. He became aware that most Christians were clueless as to the menace of totalitarian Marxism, and he dedicated his life to educating the public, and the church, about these dangers. He was invited to speak in America in 1950. He was urged to form an organisation dedicated to instructing people about the Communist threat, and how it is the polar opposite of Biblical Christianity. In 1953 he established the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade (CACC). He closed his Sydney medical practice in 1955 and devoted the rest of his life to this project, moving to America to fully engage in the work. In 1960 his best-selling book was published, You Can Trust The Communists (to be Communists). I picked up a secondhand copy of this book in Madison, Wisconsin in the mid-80s. He said this in the book, ``In the battle against Communism, there is no substitute for accurate, specific knowledge. Ignorance is evil and paralytic.'' This book and this ministry were profoundly influential. They influenced a generation of Americans who would do battle against the Communist foe. These include such luminaries as Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, Jack Kemp, James Jobson and James Kennedy. Schwarz had countless debates with Communists, gave countless speeches and talks on the subject, and wrote countless articles, booklets and books on the topic. His life was energetic, passionate, and committed to standing up for biblical Christianity, and warning against the Marxist evils. When asked which was more dangerous, the external or internal threat of Communism, Fred would reply, ``If you were on a ship that was sinking, which would be the greatest danger, the water outside or the water inside? I was illustrating that the external and internal forces were manifestations of the same danger.'' And the dangers were very real indeed. In one of his first pamphlets Schwarz argued that Communism is a disease: ``Communism has already killed many millions of people and proposes to kill many millions more. Therefore, by definition, it is a disease. It is a threefold disease. It is a disease of the body, because it kills; it is a disease of the mind, because it is associated with systemized delusions not susceptible to rational argument; and it is a disease of the spirit, because it denies God, materializes man, robs him of spirit and soul, and, in the last analysis, even of the mind itself, and reduces him to the level of a beast of the field.'' And even though atheistic, Schwarz could clearly see that it was a religion, albeit a false religion, and the main contender against Christianity. He noted that many ex- Communists have spoken of the religious nature of Communism. When people charged Schwarz with bias, he confessed: ``I plead guilty. We are biased in favour of truth, freedom, and life; we are against deceit, slavery, and unnecessary death. We believe that Communism leads to classicide through the liquidation of the bourgeoisie, that it leads to the justification and practice of mass murder.'' But, critics will complain, what about the good of Communism? ``In rebuttal I explained that a pathologist is a specialist in the characteristics of a disease, not health, and that a mixture of good and evil is often more deadly than an undiluted evil.'' The complete and incredible story of this modern prophet is told in his autobiography, Beating the Unbeatable Foe (Regnery, 1996). This 600-page story is an inspiring read, and shows us the dedication, zeal and perseverance of this one amazing individual. It tells of the waves of opposition, not just from the Communists and the Soviet Union, but from leftist, liberal allies and ``useful idiots,'' to use Lenin's phrase. The lies, deceit, slander, and malicious attacks on Dr. Schwarz were relentless and are mind-boggling to read about. Yet despite all this incessant opposition and attack, he remained steadfast to his calling. The book also speaks about how the Christian churches were especially targeted by the Communists. Internal subversion was an important tactic of the Communists. And many churchmen of course were completely taken in by the Communist propaganda. One notable thing that struck me as I read this book was that a very similar battle is being waged today, and there is a similar need for accurate information to withstand a vicious enemy. I refer to militant Islam, and the war it is waging against the free West. The parallels between its internal and external attacks are so close to what we found in the Communist offensive. And in the same way today many Christians are completely ignorant of the threat to the Christian church, or are being duped by various ``peace'' initiatives and interfaith endeavours. In the same way that many believers were hoodwinked by the Communists last century, many believers today are being deceived by the Islamists and their interfaith supporters. Dr. Schwarz eventually returned to Sydney where he has now finally received his eternal reward. This man was a modern- day saint, a genuine prophet, and a tireless worker for Christ and his Kingdom. He achieved more in his lifetime than most people ever will. Yet incredibly I still cannot find any news of his death, or any obituaries or eulogies about this remarkable man. Like Jesus, he was certainly a prophet without honour in his own land. But his life and work deserve to be widely heralded. And if no one else will, I most certainly will. God bless you richly Fred Schwarz. I would also like now to rise in honor of another heroic champion of freedom, a distinguished scholar, a Cold War strategist, a man who, yes, like Dr. Schwarz did not get all of the recognition that he deserved, but those of us who were involved in the final days of the Cold War and the implementation of an anti-communist strategy that worked, we remember Constantine Menges. Constantine Menges passed away in 2004. Again, like Dr. Schwarz, there was not a great deal of attention that was paid to his passing, yet he had been a powerful force in shaping the world in which we live. He was a profound thinker. Constantine Menges had a Ph.D. He was someone who thought things out in the long run, and had tremendous historical perspectives which he shared with us. He was the one who put together the strategies and the maneuvers that would end the Cold War with the defeat of the Soviet Union while minimizing the chances of all-out war between the Soviet Union and the United States. Although it wasn't called it then at the time, the Reagan Doctrine-- that strategy of confronting Soviet expansionism without confronting the Soviet Army itself with American troops--this idea flowed from a basic strategy laid forward originally, as far as my first contact with it, from Constantine Menges, who was, at that time, a senior National Intelligence Officer for Latin America at the Central Intelligence Agency under William Casey--of course that was during Ronald Reagan's administration. I remember him showing me that plan. I also remember that basic plan later when Dr. Jack Wheeler stepped forward and said, I'm going to go out and meet the various people of these anti-Soviet insurgencies and anti-Soviet movements throughout the world so that we can put a face to that strategy. And then of course we had Oliver North, who was then working in the White House to help that insurgency in Nicaragua that helped turn the tide there. Constantine Menges was the man who strategized these moves, the man who then, after working in the CIA--and serving CIA Director Bill Casey very well--was brought to the White House. And there in the White House he fought the internal battles that made sure that strategy worked. President Reagan had signed on to that strategy--the Reagan Doctrine-- of defeating the Soviet Union by supporting those folks in various parts of the world who themselves were resisting Soviet expansionism. But you would think, well, that just speaks for itself, of course we should have done that. Well, in the 1980s, that was not something that was just taken for granted. The fact is that there were people within the Reagan administration itself who were constantly trying to undermine that strategy. For example, I just mentioned Oliver North, who was actually in the National Security Council, along with others--by the way, for only 1 year, with our help to the insurgents who were trying to fight the Sandinista dictatorship in Nicaragua, only for 1 year was that not a legal operation. And the years before we gave hundreds of millions of dollars, and the years after that hundreds of millions of dollars were given to support that resistance movement. But constantly there was this effort by people within the Reagan administration--and also from without, I might add, people here in Congress--who were trying to undermine our support for those who were trying to force democracy and democratic elections on the Sandinista dictatorship. And what was one of the major issues? It was whether or not we should cease our support for these insurgents before or after the Sandinista permitted free elections. And there were those who were trying to pressure Ronald Reagan, people within the administration--and I might say, I believe that our Secretary of State Schultz supported this position--of actually cutting off our arms to the anti-Sandinista insurgency before the Sandinista dictatorship actually permitted the elections to take place. With Constantine Menges constantly at Reagan's side reminding him that, no, what would work is only after the elections we will pledge, no matter how the elections come out, that we will withdraw our military support for those people in that insurgency, without that, we would have withdrawn our support and the Sandinistas would never have permitted a democratic election because they were committed to the same type of philosophy that you have in Cuba and in other communist countries; they were Marxist-Leninists. As Dr. Schwarz would say, you can trust the communists to be a communist. And Marxist-Leninists don't believe in democracy. And unless we were forcing them to, they would not have permitted free elections. And once those elections happened in Nicaragua--which was a tribute not only to the championship and to the courage of those people who fought that insurgency, but also a tribute to the Ollie Norths and the Constantine Mengeses who were fighting the inside fight. If we would not have done that, there would never have been those free elections. And with those elections, the Sandinistas were soundly defeated. By an American standard, that election was a landslide against them. So what happened? There was a solid move to democracy in that region because what we had done is we had thwarted the Soviet Union's strategy of their own to catch the United States by surprise and undermine our security by supporting those pro-communist elements in Latin America, supporting the guerrilla movements in Latin America. And that base of operations was going to be in Nicaragua. We put the Nicaraguan communists on the defensive, and by doing so, we permitted Central America to have a chance for freedom. And sure enough, the countries in Central America have been stalwarts for democracy in the years since the end of the Cold War. They have benefited by the Constantine Mengeses, who worked their hearts out inside the White House and outside the White House to make sure that they had the political support and the strategic support they needed to establish democracies there. Constantine Menges wrote book after book. His last book that I remember dealt with the emerging threat of China, but he was also very focused on Latin America and warned us about potential inroads being made in Venezuela, for example. So tonight we remember Constantine. And we are grateful to Dr. Fred Schwarz, we're grateful to Ollie North, we're grateful to Dr. Jack Wheeler, we're grateful to Constantine Menges. These are individuals whose names most people don't know. Without them, freedom wouldn't have had a chance during the Cold War. But yet, we won the Cold War without actual warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States and, again, democracy was secured in Central America. Unfortunately, now in Latin America we see an ominous trend, a very ominous trend, when we see the rise of a left-wing, semi-Marxist Cedillo in Venezuela, this Chavez, this boisterous anti-American, we see him aligning himself with communist Cuba, one of the last communist dictatorships in the world. And again, we see this in Bolivia. But yet, we see ominous trends. For example, in Nicaragua itself, the pro- democratic elements of that society were split, and they ended up with the Sandinista, the thugs from the old Sandinista Marxist regime returning to power even though they only had 40 percent of the vote. The 60 percent of the vote that was anticommunist was split, and that in itself is an ominous trend. And then of course we have the elections that will be coming up this weekend in El Salvador. And from what I understand, it is within a margin of error now, it's neck in neck, who will be elected to be the government of that country. El Salvador has had a solid and a stable democracy all of these years since the end of the Cold War, since Ronald Reagan determined we would be supporting not right-wing dictators to defeat communism, but instead, we would solidly support democratic elements. Otto Reich, one of the champions during the Reagan years, testified just yesterday that when Ronald Reagan became President of the United States, 90 percent of Latin America was under right-wing military dictators. When Ronald Reagan left, 90 percent of Latin America was under democratic rule and governed by people who had been elected in free elections. What a tremendous, tremendous legacy. But now that legacy is a threat because the people of these countries have learned to take that democracy for granted and to forget the basic nature of those Marxists and Leninists who tried to implement, tried to impose communist dictatorship on those countries back in the 1980s. Well, now the FMLN--which was a terrorist organization, basically a Marxist-Leninist military arm back in the 1980s which tried, by force, to become the government of El Salvador--since then they have been operating within the democratic process; but this same group that would have imposed a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship now has a chance of winning the elections in El Salvador. Free people should be alarmed, especially the people of El Salvador. They have learned to take for granted the stability, the progress, the democratic rights that they have. The FMLN is made up of people who have allied themselves with al Qaeda, Iran, Cuba, and other state sponsors of terrorism. For example, the current vice presidential candidate of the FMLN, that candidate, a few days after 9/11, celebrated the attack on the United States with a demonstration in El Salvador and burned American flags and claimed that America had brought 9/11 upon ourselves. That's the kind of leadership, that's the kind of belligerence represented by the FMLN. Now, the people of El Salvador have every right to elect whoever they want to head their government, whether it's the FMLN, or anyone else-- certainly no one is suggesting otherwise, but obviously there are consequences that need to be considered when choosing who your leader will be. In this case, all of the cooperation, all of the economic cooperation, all of the stability that we've had, the friendship that we've had could be destroyed if the FMLN, a political party in El Salvador that is hostile to the United States--they hate the United States. And if you elect someone who hates the United States, then the people of El Salvador cannot expect that there will be a good relationship between our countries. Now, if the people of El Salvador want to have a bad relationship with the United States, they don't want to have the same type of economic policies, fine, they should elect the Marxist FMLN. But if they want to be friends of the United States, they should understand that you can't elect people who celebrate 9/11 and say good things about al Qaeda and ally themselves with Marxist dictatorships and think that they're going to have the same positive relationship with us. In this case, we have had very positive economic policies for which we bestowed upon the Government of El Salvador because it was democratic and because it was friendly to the United States. Those economic policies will not stand up if the Government of El Salvador is hostile to us or hates us, or is anti-democratic, or starts--as the tough guy in Nicaragua has done, he has already started to repress his own people and to use a heavy hand in place of a democratic process in that country. So the people of El Salvador need to think about what relationship do you want to have? What will it cost us if we have an anti-American government? Well, today there are over $4 billion that come from El Salvadorians who are in the United States in remittances, $4 billion from these people who are here, who are El Salvadorians, flow into El Salvador. Now, they're called remittances. Well, we do not need to permit those remittances; we do this as a favor to that country and to try to help its economy. But if we have an anti-American government there, that issue will be hotly debated in the United States Congress. If you have a country that is run by people who burn American flags and congratulate al Qaeda terrorists for flying planes into our buildings and killing thousands of Americans, yes, we will have an honest debate about whether or not we should restrict the billions of dollars that now flow in remittances from the United States to El Salvador. If people want to vote for that there, they have every right, and we respect that. That's democracy. But we, too, will respond. And we, too, will have things that we have to do to protect our interests if we have a country that is allying themselves with the people who slaughtered our American citizens on 9/11. We can't expect to permit the free flow of billions of dollars to continue if that's the case. That shall be solidly debated if the FMLN is brought to power. So we need to make sure that good people who support democracy throughout this hemisphere, who we helped during the wars in the 1980s, that they do not then become complacent and take all of the democracy and progress that has happened there for granted. There was tremendous chaos in the seventies and eighties in Latin America and Central America. People don't need that anymore. They don't need the hatred and the vitriol that was down there and all of the anti-Americanism--and the outside interference, I might add, that came in when the Soviet Union pumped a billion dollars worth of military equipment into Nicaragua thinking they were going to roll up Latin America. Well, brave people in Latin America stood against Marxism- Leninism then. They should continue to do so because, in the end, all of us, what kind of country we live in is in our hands. We wish the people of El Salvador well; we do, we wish them well. We wish them a successful election. We hope that they will remain friends of the United States. Unfortunately, I know there is a large number of Members of Congress who signed on to a letter suggesting whatever happens in the election, it's not going to make any difference in American policy. Well, those Members of Congress, and many of them are my friends, they have a more liberal left outlook in life than I do, and I can say that they're misguided in presenting that to the people of El Salvador. The fact is that what happens in this election will have impact on our relations, and it is not just something that the people can elect an anti-American government and expect everything to stay the same. So I hope we remain friends. I hope the people of El Salvador vote to be friends. But if they don't, that is their right to do so. I think it would be much more beneficial for the people of El Salvador and other Latin American countries to remain good friends of the United States rather than attaching their future to the likes of Hugo Chavez and other despots and bellicose Cedilloses. These military strongmen who are in the right wing that dominated Latin America back in the 1960s, that was a tragedy for the people of Latin America, and that was a tragedy that the United States did not oppose that type of authoritarian rule as much as we should have. And it was Ronald Reagan that turned that around, and I am very proud that during Ronald Reagan's administration that we stood for democracy, not just anti-communism; and that with Constantine Menges there to help us strategize, we turned back the tide of communism in Latin America and throughout the world, and we created a better world without having the kind of nuclear exchange or massive military fight with the Soviet army that was predicted so often back in the 1950s and 1960s. So tonight we look back on the heroes, the heroes of the Cold War who brought about a more peaceful and a more democratic world. And we reach out to those people now in Latin America who are making decisions, making the decisions as to whether or not they're going to take for granted what was accomplished during this pro-democratic revolution that took place under Ronald Reagan and took place at great risk and great hardship for the people in Central America. Now is not the time to go back to Marxism-Leninism with another face. Let's again go back to Dr. Fred Schwarz. Dr. Schwarz told us that if you really read what the communists and the Leninists believe, you will see that they believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat. You will see they believe in the centralization of power, the arrogant ``we know what's best for everyone'' notion that results in dictatorship every time but also results in poverty and results in a decline in the standard of living and results in conflict with other peoples. Latin America nor anywhere else in the world needs the conflict, needs the repression that will come with a resurgence of Marxist-Leninists who now put on a democratic face and say, no, we're actually different now. Well, maybe they aren't using guns, but putting them in power in any way will not make this a better world or a better country. That is for people of each country to decide for themselves. We wish all of those people, whether in El Salvador or elsewhere, free elections, open discussion, open debate. I hope that my words today will be seen as part of the debate here as to what we should do if indeed a change in policy happens and a change in leadership happens in El Salvador so that we will know what policies will change if indeed the FMLN, which was a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group back in the 1960s and 1970s, whether or not, if that group comes to power, what changes will be brought about. With that said, Mr. Speaker, I would also put into the Record at this point an obituary about Mr. Constantine Menges, dated July 14, 2004. [From the Washington Post, July 14, 2004] Constantine Menges; National Security Aide (By Joe Holley) Constantine Menges, 64, a national security aide for Latin America during the Reagan administration who had a central role in planning the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983, and who focused on the continuing threat of communism in books and numerous articles, died of cancer July 11 at Sibley Memorial Hospital. He lived in the District. At the time of his death, Dr. Menges was a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a public policy think tank. His recent work had focused on the threat to the United States of a growing pro-Castro alliance throughout Latin America; state- sponsored terrorism, including what he considered Iran's subversion of Iraq; and the rise of China as a superpower. Dr. Menges had just completed the manuscript for a book titled ``China, the Gathering Threat: The Strategic Challenge of China and Russia.'' He also was the author of a memoir, ``Inside the National Security Council,'' several other books, and numerous articles. Dr. Menges was born in Ankara, Turkey, the son of political refugees from Nazi Germany. The Menges family, fearing that Turkey would enter the war as an ally of the Axis powers, moved from place to place through war-torn Europe. The family arrived in the United States in 1943. Dr. Menges received a bachelor's degree in physics from Columbia College and a doctorate in political science from Columbia University. He taught political science at the University of Wisconsin before joining the Rand Corp. He entered government service in the late 1970s, first as assistant director for civil rights, then as deputy assistant secretary for education in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. From 1981 to 1983, he was a national intelligence officer for Latin American affairs at the Central Intelligence Agency under Director William Casey. From 1983 to 1986, he worked for the National Security Council as a special assistant to the president, specializing in Latin America. In ``President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime,'' author Lou Cannon described Dr. Menges as one of a cadre of National Security Council aides who believed, as did Casey, ``that the West should be mobilized to fight Communists with their own methods.'' Cannon described Dr. Menges ``as one of the most forceful of these polemicists'' and ``a principled conservative.'' White House and State Department pragmatists, according to Cannon, dubbed him ``Constant Menace,'' a play on his name, for his ardent support of action, covert and otherwise, against Nicaraguan Sandinistas and Salvadoran rebels. Deeply involved in White House support for the Nicaraguan contras, Dr. Menges also argued that an American strategy for combating communism in Latin America should include suppression of right-wing death squads and promotion of land reform. ``He believed that the United States should compete with the Soviets in sponsorship of `national liberation movements' in Third World nations,'' Cannon wrote. Dr. Menges contended that the invasion of Grenada helped avert a possible Grenada nuclear deployment crisis and strengthened President Ronald Reagan's hand in deploying intermediate-range missiles in Europe in late 1983. From 1990 to 2000, Dr. Menges was a professor at George Washington University, where he founded and directed the program on Transitions to Democracy. His work on democratic transitions included the post-communist states, Iraq, Iran and the Americas. He also began a project on U.S. relations with Russia and China and the new Russia-China alignment. In articles that appeared regularly in The Washington Post, the Washington Times, the New York Times, the New Republic and other publications, Dr. Menges continued to warn that the communist threat persisted. In a Washington Post opinion article in 2001, he wrote that ``Russia and China are using mostly political and covert means to oppose the United States on security issues and to divide America from its allies.'' As a college student, Dr. Menges helped individuals escape communist East Berlin in 1961, and in 1963, he worked in Mississippi as a volunteer for equal voting rights. Survivors include his wife of 29 years, Nancy Menges, and a son, Christopher, both of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that in this country we have demonstrated to the world something really important, and that is that we have had a shift in power in the United States. And I hope people see that the Republicans and the Democrats stood there and applauded as our new President was sworn in. We wish this country success, and we wish this President success. We may have a difference of opinion on how to achieve success, but we all are rooting for people who fundamentally believe that democratic dialogue like the one I'm talking about and democratic process is the answer to the future.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. I appreciate the very sincere presentation we have just had about a serious issue. Although my talk tonight will be focused on some other issues, I would like to have a slight commentary. Those of us who are conservative Republicans share the concern that has been expressed that the American citizens who reside in the District of Columbia have not been permitted to have the voting rights that people who live in other parts of the United States have. That was taken care of in terms of the Presidential elections by specifically permitting the people involved, and right now as we know the people from the District of Columbia participate in Presidential elections and have Presidential electors, et cetera. I would suggest that people who are listening do understand there is an alternative to what is being presented which I believe is very serious which is not being considered but should be looked at because I believe that the current path that we just heard being advocated has a chance of being declared unconstitutional. Several scholars testified to that in the hearings. One method that we know would be constitutional would be to permit the people of the District of Columbia to vote for Federal representation as part of the State of Maryland. That would not only permit the people of the District of Columbia to vote for a representative that would then have every right of every other Representative, but also the right to vote for two United States Senators. They would be the Senators as part of the voting population of Maryland. They would be able to vote for the two Senators that come from Maryland. This alternative has been somewhat ignored by those people who are pushing for the alternative that you have just heard outlined. But I would suggest as we move forward, I would hope in the spirit of compromise and in the spirit of really trying to get this job done, because I agree with the assessment that there is taxation without representation. One of my colleagues suggested, well, then let's eliminate Federal taxation for the people of the District of Columbia. I would support that. But I think it would be better for us to approach a situation where the people of the District of Columbia could vote as part of the voting system in Maryland, the Federal voting system; and thus, they would have a chance to vote for a Member of Congress and two United States Senators. That would be an alternative that I would hope would be looked at and given very serious consideration.

Mr. ROHRABACHER

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.