Sheldon Whitehouse

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, a persistent argument of my climate talks is how corrupt climate denial is. The premise of that argument is that the fossil fuel industry denial apparatus is wrong about climate change and knows it is wrong. That is my case. The fossil fuel industry denial apparatus knows it is wrong about climate change. Well, it is a beautiful world, and every once in a while, along comes something that proves my case. Last week, on the afternoon of Black Friday, the Trump administration released its National Climate Assessment by 13 Federal agencies describing the monumental damage the United States is facing from climate change. In more than 1,000 pages, the report contradicted nearly every fake assertion Trump and his fossil fuel flunky Cabinet have made about climate change. Trump's pro-polluter policies are predicated on the lies and nonsense of this fossil fuel industry denial apparatus, and this report is devastating to those policies and to those lies. So how did the fossil fuel apparatus respond? What did they do to rebut the National Climate Assessment? They did nothing. They did nothing. There was all that big talk from Scott Pruitt about how they were going to ``red team'' climate science. Well here comes the climate science. Where is your red team? Nothing. Instead of engaging with this devastating report by the U.S. Government's leading scientists, they tried to bury it, timing its release for a day of the year when it would be least likely to get public attention. Consider for a moment the environment in which they backed down from this challenge--no red team, no nothing. They just whimpered and ran away and tried to bury the report on Black Friday. At a time when their industry populates the Trump administration, at a time when the President is in their pocket, at a time when both Houses of Congress are under fossil fuel industry control, their phony climate denial front groups wield more influence than ever. This should have been their moment. The tell here is that even in this environment, the fossil fuel industry and its bevy of stooges in the Trump administration got this report and did nothing. Why? Why nothing? There is only one answer. Because they know they are wrong. They know the real science is right. They know their science denial campaign is phony, so they backed down. They folded like a cardboard suitcase in a rainstorm. That, my friends, is an admission. It is an admission by inaction. It is an admission that even the fossil fuel industry knows the climate science is irrefutable. Interestingly, ``irrefutable'' is just what President Trump and his family said about climate science in this full-page advertisement they signed in the New York Times in 2009, saying that science of climate was ``irrefutable'' and that there will be ``catastrophic and irreversible'' consequences of climate change. The new National Climate Assessment plus the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report are both very clear. The irrefutable science that these two reports disclose couldn't be more clear: Damage from climate change is already occurring; there is no credible natural explanation for it; human activity is the dominant cause; future damage from further warming will be worse than we previously thought; economies will suffer; and we are almost out of time to prevent the worst consequences of climate change. The Bank of England report on this--they are the biggest financial regulator in the UK, and they said: The financial risks are far- reaching in their breadth and magnitude, have uncertain and extended time horizons, are foreseeable, but these risk factors will be minimized if there is an orderly transition to a carbon economy, but the window for an orderly transition is finite and closing. We are almost out of time. These two reports are tough stuff. As the Trump administration summary states, the ``Earth's climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities. The impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future,'' which makes sense, since in the history of human civilization, the Earth has never seen atmospheric CO2 concentrations like we have today. Many scientists have said warming of around 3 degrees centigrade is now likely. What does that mean? Heating the planet well beyond 2 degrees centigrade would create a ``totally different world,'' says Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University. He says: It would be indescribable, it would turn the world upside down in terms of its climate. There would be nothing like it in the history of civilization. Here is what the Trump climate assessment chronicles: From our Ocean State, we are concerned about sea levels, ocean acidification, and warming. We note sea levels are rising, as oceans warm and upland ice melts. If fossil fuels are not constrained, the reports says, ``many coastal communities will be transformed by the latter part of this century.'' For my coastal State, that is a pretty ominous warning. Along coasts, fisheries, tourism, human health, even public safety are being ``transformed, degraded or lost due in part to climate change impacts, particularly sea level rise and higher numbers of extreme weather events.'' You get the sea level coming up, and that extreme weather event-- which is stronger to begin with now--has a lot more ocean to throw at our shores. Out West, ``more frequent and larger wildfires, combined with increasing development at the wildland-urban interface portend increasing risks to property and human life,'' the report says. By the way, from 2000 to 2016, wildfires have burned at least 3.7 million acres of the United States in every single year except for 3. From 2000 to 2016, more than 3.7 million acres burned in all years but 3. California still smolders as I speak. More than 100 million people in the United States live with poor air quality, and climate change will ``worsen existing air pollution levels.'' Increased wildfire smoke heightens respiratory and cardiovascular problems. With higher temperatures from global warming, asthma and hay fever rise. Groundwater supplies have declined over the last century, and the decrease is accelerating. ``Significant changes in water quantity and quality are evident across the country,'' the report finds. Midwest farmers take a big hit: warmer, wetter, and more humid conditions from climate change; greater incidence of crop disease and more pests; worsened conditions for stored grain. During the growing season, the Midwest will see temperatures climb more than any other region of the United States, the report says. Crop yields will suffer-- a warning that is echoed by grain giants like Cargill. To sum it all up, the report says climate change will ``disrupt many areas of life,'' hurting the U.S. economy, affecting trade, exacerbating overseas conflicts for our military. Costs will be high: ``With continued growth in emissions at historic rates, annual losses in some economic sectors are projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century--more than the current gross domestic product of many U.S. States.'' Danger warnings already flash in some economic sectors. Freddie Mac has warned of a coastal property value crash, saying: ``The economic losses and social disruption may happen gradually, but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.'' From a coastal State, that is an ominous warning. The insurance industry agrees. Trade publication Risk and Insurance has warned: ``Continually rising seas will damage coastal residential and commercial property values to the point that property owners will flee those markets in droves, thus precipitating a mortgage value collapse that could equal or exceed the mortgage crisis that rocked the global economy in 2008.'' By the way, the leading edge of this may already be upon us as coastal property values are beginning to lag inland property values, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Separate from the coastal property values threat is another warning about a carbon bubble in fossil fuel markets. Fossil fuel reserves, now claimed as assets, that are not developable in a 2-degrees-Centigrade world become what they call stranded assets. A recent economic publication estimated that collapse of the ``carbon bubble'' would wipe out ``around 82 percent of global coal reserves, 49 percent of global gas reserves, and 33 percent of global oil reserves.'' A separate economic review warns that $12 trillion of fossil fuel industry financial value ``could vanish off their balance sheets globally in the form of stranded assets.'' Twelve trillion dollars is over 15 percent of global GDP, which is why the Bank of England--which I quoted earlier as a financial regulator--is warning of this carbon asset bubble as a systemic economic risk. That may be the blandest set of words in the English language that convey the worst threat. If you were to graph ``blandness of language'' and ``seriousness of threat,'' you would probably come up with systemic economic risk. It basically means economic meltdown. Well, that is what we are looking at. This level of collapse could cascade beyond the fossil fuel companies. It is not just a question of their shareholders getting wiped out. It is such a crash that it cascades out into the global economy--a crash like that, unfortunately, hits the United States particularly hard because lower cost producers can hold on and unload fossil fuel reserves into the collapsing market at fire sale prices. When they do, the economists warn, ``regions with higher marginal costs''--like the United States--``lose almost their entire oil and gas industry.'' The solution is to decarbonize, to invest in more renewables, to broaden our energy portfolio away from this asset collapse risk. One paper concludes that ``the United States is worse off if it continues to promote fossil fuel production and consumption.'' Another paper concludes--this is the good news: If climate policies are implemented early on and in a stable and credible framework, market participants are able to smoothly anticipate the effects. In this case there would not be any large shock in asset prices and there would be no systemic risk. So how do we get to eliminating this hazard of no systemic risk? How do we get to no systemic risk? We do what works for us anyway: move to renewables. As this graph shows, we have to make a big move to avoid this hazard. A carbon price--which is the remedy the fossil fuel industry pretends to support, while sending its political forces out to oppose exactly the laws it pretends to support--would allow this big move to happen, all while generating revenues that could be cycled back to States and citizens and help the hardest hit areas of transition. The smart move we need to take to make this happen does not have to be painful. We avoid a lot of pain if we make the move, but that doesn't mean the move itself has to be painful. Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz says it is a win economically. He has testified: Retrofitting the global economy for climate change would help to restore aggregate demand and growth. Climate policies, if well designed and implemented, are consistent with growth, development, and poverty reduction. The transition to a low-carbon economy is potentially a powerful, attractive, and sustainable growth story, marked by higher resilience, more innovation, more livable cities, robust agriculture, and stronger ecosystems. We could do it the hard way--do nothing; get hit with those dire economic consequences because the status quo is not safe. Fortune magazine summed up the Trump administration's climate report quite beautifully, so I will quote them at some length: ``The report catalogs the observed damage and accelerating financial losses projected from a climate now unmoored from a 12,000-year period of relative stability.'' What a phrase that is. The Earth's climate, which we inhabit, is unmoored from a 12,000-year period of relative stability. It goes on: The result is that much of what humans have built, and many of the things they are building now, are unsuited to the world as it exists. And as time goes on, the added cost of living in that world could total hundreds of billions of dollars--annually. Which way we now go depends on the Congress of the United States--on whether Congress can put the interests of our people ahead of the interests of the fossil fuel industry. The record is not good. I will concede that. Since the Citizens United decision, the politics of climate change have turned into a tale of industry capture and control. So far, despite the fossil fuel industry's obvious conflict of interest, could there be a more obvious conflict of interest, indeed? Despite their provable pattern of deception and despite clear warnings from, well, virtually everywhere now, the Republican Party has proven itself incapable of telling the fossil fuel industry: No, we tried our best for you. We held in for you as long as we could, and we did everything we could think of, but we are not going to wreck our economy, our climate, our oceans, our country for you. So it doesn't look good, but the climate report does say we still have time if we act fast. I ask unanimous consent that an article by Max Boot, titled, ``I was wrong on climate change. Why can't other conservatives admit it, too?'' be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks. It concludes: Why haven't other Conservatives owned up to this danger? They are captives, first and foremost, of the fossil fuel industry. . . . It is a tragedy for the entire planet that the United States' governing party is impervious to science and reason. I will close with a reference to ``The Gathering Storm,'' which is Winston Churchill's legendary book about a previous failure to heed warnings. Churchill quoted a poem of a train bound for destruction, rushing through the night, with the engineer asleep at the controls as disaster looms: Who is in charge of the clattering train? The axles creak, and the couplings strain. . . . the pace is hot, and the points are near, [but] Sleep hath deadened the driver's ear; And signals flash through the night in vain. Death is in charge of the clattering train! I contend that we are now that sleeping driver, that the signals are flashing at us, so far, in vain, and that it is decidedly time to wake up.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I note that my distinguished colleague from Massachusetts has arrived. We have an order in place in which the Senator from Massachusetts is to be recognized at the conclusion of my remarks and that the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire, Mrs. Shaheen, is to be recognized at the conclusion of Senator Markey's remarks. With that, I yield the floor to the coauthor of the Waxman-Markey legislation, the person who had done the most successful work to try to solve this climate problem at a time when the situation was slightly less desperate.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes as in morning business; further, that at the conclusion of my remarks, the Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Markey, be recognized; that we have permission to engage in a colloquy; and that at the conclusion of Senator Markey's remarks, Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire be recognized.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me begin by thanking my senior Senator, Jack Reed, for calling us to the floor to reflect and memorialize a truly splendid Senator who represented the State of Rhode Island, our friend and a great Rhode Islander, Claiborne Pell. I think my senior colleague has done an exemplary job of following in Senator Pell's footsteps of decency, civility, and quiet determination in the seat that Senator Pell once held. I cannot claim to hold the seat the Senator once held, but I can claim to have the desk at which Senator Pell once sat. If you look here right under where it says ``Pastore''--a Rhode Island Senator--in carved letters, you see in very small letters ``P-e-l-l'' and then ``R.I.''--like anybody needed to know that Claiborne Pell was from Rhode Island. Claiborne Pell was very important in my political life. He spent years--in fact, decades--refusing to get involved in primaries. ``It is up to the party,'' he would say. When I ran for attorney general the first time I ran for elected office, I was in a three-way primary, and Claiborne Pell, for the first time in his career, endorsed me in that primary. He more than endorsed me; we went to a little park near his house in Newport, and he allowed me to film myself walking with him and conversing with him for my first commercial. Well, you can imagine, in a State like Rhode Island, when a legend like Claiborne Pell in the Democratic Party suddenly appears in your commercial in a primary--let me just say it was not a good day for my primary opponents. It was incredibly generous of Claiborne Pell to break a multidecade tradition on primaries in order to launch my first political effort, and I hope I have conducted myself since then in such a way that I never gave him or his family cause to regret it. As Senator Reed pointed out, one of the significant lessons from Claiborne Pell's career here in the Senate--and it is one that I think of all the time--was that he looked beyond the scrum of the moment. There is always something going on here in the Senate. There is always some fight or some issue that is on the front page of the Washington Post and on the news channels. That is always, always, always going on, and that bright, shiny object very often attracts an enormous amount of attention in this body. I suspect that Senator Pell paid less attention to that daily scrum than almost anybody who has served in the Senate. He had a much more patient soul and steadily and quietly and modestly worked away at his priorities. He used to make fun of himself for his interest in ``choo-choos.'' He would say ``choo-choo.'' Well, we have Amtrak in large part because of Senator Claiborne Pell's work. The Pell grant is named after him because of persistent leadership making sure that such a grant existed. Over years of work, he finally got it done. It was ultimately named for him, and it remains today an important part of how many young people here in the United States actually get to college and move toward their dreams. He fought for years to create the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, and those institutions still exist. They are still doing great work today. In Rhode Island, we are very proud of Sea Grant. Sea Grant has programs in all of our coastal States. Sea Grant was the invention of Claiborne Pell and Dean John Knauss, later dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. When you look back and think of who the Senators were at the time that Claiborne Pell served, you can go through all these desk drawers that I showed you, and there are lots of names of Senators. Many of them are ones you never heard of. They were certainly important in their day, but their day is done and their names are no longer remembered. Senator Pell is remembered. He left lasting legacies like those, and he did it by quietly and patiently sticking with his priorities, which he knew were Rhode Island's priorities and America's priorities. He might not have been on the talk shows as much as other Senators. He might not have been quoted on the front page of the Washington Post as much as other Senators. He was not as attentive to the daily scrum of Washington conflict. But, my goodness, when you look back at the legacy that he left that still operates today, it is hard to find somebody of his era whose footprint is larger than that of this shy, quiet, patient, civil, and persistent man. I would add to Senator Reed's comments about Claiborne Pell's philosophy a statement that he made to me that he made quite often. He said: One of the things that you must learn in politics, Sheldon, is how to let the other fellow have it your way. Always let the other fellow have it your way. What does it mean to always let the other fellow have it your way? What I take from that is that it means you have to stand by your principles. You have to achieve the goals you have set out for yourself and for your constituents, but on the way to getting there, if you can give others credit, if you can let other ideas join yours, if you can let other people have it your way, you are more likely to succeed. To this day, I still repeat that quote to new hires in my office. The picture of Claiborne Pell that he signed for me is still right there on my bookcase, and I see it every time I sit in the chair in my office. He was a remarkable and special individual. He was not your standard-issue U.S. Senator. The particular way he chose to go about his duties has left a larger footprint than most of his colleagues were able to leave. I will end with a story about one of my final memories. Senator Pell was out of the Senate. His illness had caught up with him to the point where he was barely able to speak any longer. His friend Ted Kennedy, who sat in this space right here--at a different desk but right here at this spot on the Senate floor--was sailing through Rhode Island, and he called up Senator Pell, and he said: I would like to take you out on my boat. So it was arranged that Senator Pell would go out on his sailboat. That required getting a wheelchair onto a sailboat, over the tippy docks that Senator Kennedy's boat pulled up to. Sure enough, we all grabbed a piece of the wheelchair and hoisted it up and stepped over into the boat and set his wheelchair down in the cockpit of the boat. Senator Kennedy started up the motor and drove it off down into Newport Harbor and then shut off the motor and put up the sails. As the wind caught the sails, the boat heeled over, and this old coastguardsman, Claiborne Pell, smiled a smile that I will never forget as the wind took the boat and we began to move out into Narragansett Bay. The only other thing that was really fun about that was, because Senator Pell could barely speak any longer, he was actually a perfect fit for Senator Kennedy, who could basically not stop talking. There was this wonderful conversation with Teddy Kennedy and Claiborne Pell wherein Teddy Kennedy did all the talking for the both of them, and they both had a lovely time. They reflected on decades of friendship and service here. It was a real privilege to have a chance as a very new Senator to share that moment with those two very different but mutually beloved lions of the Senate. I particularly thank my distinguished senior colleague for organizing our chance to come here and reflect on our friend Claiborne Pell. I think nobody better than he carries on the Pell tradition. I thank Senator Reed. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is hard, particularly for those of us from coastal States, to overstate the importance of the Earth's oceans as a storehouse of our food, as a regulator of our climate, as a highway for our travel and trade, and as a source of wonder, joy, and recreation. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, oceans contributed $1.5 trillion to the global economy in 2010. But climate change is putting this all at risk. I have spoken frequently here on the floor about the threat climate change poses to our oceans and of the warning signals blaring around the world. One of the most overlooked of those signals is the enormous amount of heat accumulating in the oceans. As CBS News reported last week, ``recent revelations have been particularly alarming'' and ``deserv[ing] of a big neon sign on Broadway.'' My humble floor speeches may not be a big neon sign on Broadway, but I do hope they shine a little light on the plight of our oceans, which ultimately is our human plight. We know that more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by our greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the oceans--no dispute, not even by the Trump administration. The Federal Government's ``2017 Climate Science Special Report,'' a multiagency report by experts from NOAA, NASA, and the Department of Energy, labeled as ``the United States' most definitive statement on climate change science'' by the New York Times, found that the oceans absorbed more than 9 zettajoules of heat energy per year. What is a zettajoule? A zettajoule is a billion trillion joules. A joule is a measure of heat energy, J-O-U-L-E. So 9 zettajoules is 9 billion trillion joules. That is more than 12 times the total energy that human beings use globally each year, just to put a scale on what 9 billion trillion joules is. To get another measure of how much energy that is, visualize the power of a detonated Hiroshima-style atomic bomb. Imagine its classic mushroom cloud erupting into the sky. Imagine all of that energy from a Hiroshima-style atomic bomb captured as heat--pure heat. Now imagine four Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs exploded every second-- every second. That is the equivalent of the excess heat going into our oceans because of climate change, because of our carbon emissions. More than four atomic bombs' worth of excess heat energy is being absorbed by the oceans every second of every day of every year. That is a massive amount of heat energy, and adding it to the oceans has consequences. The most direct consequence of all that energy being pumped into the seas obviously is increased water temperatures. Global average ocean surface temperature is up around 0.8 degrees Celsius, or 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit, since preindustrial times. That is enough to throw off the delicate balance of ocean conditions that marine creatures rely on to survive. Within that global ocean warming are extreme ocean temperature spikes around the world. These marine heat waves in the ocean were first identified and characterized in 2011. This is a newly described phenomenon that climate change has brought to our seas. Although marine heat waves were first identified and characterized in 2011, they have already caused permanent damage in our oceans. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef in the world. It stretches for 1,400 miles off Northeastern Australia, and it is one of the seven natural wonders of the world. It is made up of corals--corals that can become heat stressed and evict the tiny algae that support corals and give corals their bright colors. Without the algae, the corals appear white, so these events are called coral bleaching. In the summer of 2016, the Great Barrier Reef was hit by the most severe marine heat wave on record. It caused the longest and worst mass coral bleaching event in history. Then another heat wave and bleaching occurred the next year, in 2017. These unprecedented back-to-back bleaching events killed half of all corals in the Great Barrier Reef. If there is a wonder of the world, if there is a majestic feature of God's creation, it is the Great Barrier Reef, and we are busily wrecking it in this generation through carbon emissions. The prognosis for the rest of the world's coral reefs is grim. The U.N. International Panel on Climate Change released a report last month, finding that coral reefs will all but disappear from Earth if we warm by 2 degrees Celsius--which, by the way, is the goal we are trying to stay under through the Paris accord. Even if we stay under that goal, corals will suffer immensely. Without any changes to our fossil fuel consumption, we are on track to blow by 2 degrees and hit 3 degrees Celsius of global warming by 2100, making corals virtually extinct. Warming oceans are wreaking havoc on the world's fisheries. Fish feed the world and power coastal economies. The World Health Organization says that fish are the main source of protein for around 1 billion people worldwide. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 60 million people are employed in fisheries and agriculture. Across the globe and here at home we are seeing dangerous shifts affecting the fishing industry. Rhode Island once had a booming lobster industry. But the lobster population is shifting north as our waters warm, leaving Rhode Island lobster traps empty. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports, ``The lobster industry in New York and southern New England has nearly collapsed.'' Maine, as Senator Angus King has pointed out, is temporarily benefiting from the northern movement of lobster, but the lobster will keep moving north into Canada as the oceans continue to warm. Rhode Islanders and other New England fishermen are also looking worriedly at declining shellfish populations. Total landings for eastern oysters, northern quahogs, softshell clams, and northern bay scallops declined 85 percent between 1980 and 2010. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration identified warming ocean temperatures as the key driver for that decline. On the other side of that decline, of course, are the livelihoods of all the men and women in that industry. The accumulating heat energy in our seas is also causing them to rise. As water warms, it expands. This thermal expansion is responsible for around one-third of the rise we have measured in sea levels. The rest comes mostly from melting ice, again, thanks to climate change. Global sea level has already risen over eight inches on average in the past 100 years--more in certain locations--and the rate of increase is accelerating. Warming and expanding waters eat away at the large ice sheets in the Antarctic. As the edges melt away, the glaciers behind them melt more quickly, adding additional water to the ocean. The IPCC warns that as the world reaches warming levels of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius--again, what we are trying to stay at; this is our target. This isn't if it is worse. At that 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, ice sheet melt could trigger multiple meters of sea level rise over time--meters, not inches. We are already 1 degree Celsius above preindustrial times, so there is not much room for maneuver between where we are and 1.5 to 2 degrees. Warmer seas also supercharge storms. Hurricanes gain strength from heat energy in the oceans below them. Warmer oceans also evaporate more water to the atmosphere, generating more rainfall. Stronger and wetter storms then ride ashore on higher sea levels, pushing larger storm surges ahead of them into our coastal States. Many of us remember the devastation Superstorm Sandy brought to the mid-Atlantic and southern New England States in 2012. Here is what Dr. Michael Mann, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said about that storm: Sea level rise adds to the storm surge of every single storm that makes landfall. In the case of Superstorm Sandy, in 2012, it added a foot to that 13-foot storm surge. One foot . . . meant 25 more square miles of coastal flooding. It meant several billion dollars worth of additional damage. At one point during this year's hurricane season, our tropics faced nine active tropical storms. The hallmarks of these warm, ocean-fueled storms can be seen in powerful hurricanes that hit United States territories in recent years. Hurricane Harvey hit Houston; Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands; Super Typhoon Yutu hit the Northern Marianas, Hurricane Florence hit in the Carolinas, and Hurricane Michael hit in Florida. No one storm can be blamed wholly on climate change, but scientists are increasingly able to link the increasingly dangerous level of storm damage to climate change, and we have had an eerie streak of record- setting storms in the past few years. Hurricane Harvey was the single greatest downpour in U.S. history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It dumped over 50 inches of rain on Houston and over 30 trillion gallons of water over Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky. How much is 30 trillion gallons of water? For comparison, the Chesapeake Bay holds around 18 trillion gallons of water. Basically, it dumped nearly two Chesapeake Bays onto those States. Harvey's deluge was fueled by record warm temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, found that Hurricane Harvey was over three times more likely to have occurred due to climate change and that its rainfall was increased by around 38 percent due to climate change. Hurricane Florence intensified over water 1 to 2 degrees Celsius above average and dumped record rainfall and flooding on the Carolinas in September. Preliminary analysis suggests that Florence's rainfall was more than 50 percent higher due to climate change. When Hurricane Michael hit Florida just last month, it passed over water 2 to 3 degrees Celsius warmer than average. As it passed over these waters, Michael's winds increased by 80 miles per hour in just 48 hours, a phenomenon scientists refer to as ``rapid intensification.'' It became the strongest storm ever to make an October landfall in the United States. The direct link between sea temperature and hurricane intensification is well established: Each degree Celsius of ocean warming causes a 7- percent increase in maximum wind speed, and a storm's destructive potential increases by three times the wind speed increase. So how does that play through? To quote Professor Mann again: A 7 percent increase in wind speed is a 21 percent increase in the destructive potential of the storm. That is with one degree Celsius ocean warming. With Hurricane Michael, those temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures. If you do the math, that means it was probably twice as destructive as it would have been in the absence of human-caused warming. The result of the destructive power of Hurricane Michael was the almost complete demolition of the town of Mexico Beach, FL. Michael hit with 155 mile per hour winds and a storm surge of around 9 feet, completely demolishing 70 percent of homes and severely damaging many more. The degree of damage and the imposing costs of rebuilding mean that many Floridians simply will leave, and that is playing out across coastal properties. A falloff of coastal property values will spread, many sources anticipate, as people see more events like the destruction of Mexico Beach. Insurance companies, banks, and institutional property investors are already showing signs of anxiety in coastal communities. Freddie Mac has described the effect of this property value crash on America's coastal regions as follows. Freddie Mac--the great housing powerhouse--has said: ``The economic losses and social disruption may happen gradually, but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.'' Any of us who lived through the 2008 mortgage meltdown should take that warning deadly seriously. It is not just Freddie Mac. Moody's now rates coastal municipalities' bonds for this risk--Moody's, Freddie Mac, Union of Concerned Scientists, the experience of coastal communities. It is all piling up, and yet we do nothing. I haven't even talked about acidification. That is a separate speech--the chemical changes happening in the ocean, in addition to the physical changes of warming and rising. Set that aside, but it is just as dangerous. Despite these warnings just about ocean warming, Republican heads in Congress and in the White House seem determined to remain buried in the sand. I don't know how many more storms need to hit us before we are willing to take meaningful action. Americans who live and work along our shores--Rhode Islanders and people who live in other coastal States--are the ones who are suffering the most from all of this, and they are the ones who will have to explain our delay. Those Americans are entitled to a voice, not just the lobbyists of the fossil fuel industry. We must protect our coasts for when the next storms batter their way ashore. This is getting worse, not better. We must take responsibility for the changes we are causing in the world's oceans. We will not be forgiven for our indolence and disregard just because there is a big industry behind our indolence and disregard. Our oceans are warning us loudly, and they are warning us clearly: It is time to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the passage of the bipartisan America's Water Infrastructure Act, more commonly called the 2018 WRDA bill, is celebrated by a wide spectrum of supporters, including environmental organizations, national associations representing cities and counties, and water and coastal business associations. I would like to commend the chairman, the ranking member, and the staff of the Environment and Public Works Committee for their hard work on this bill. I appreciate their consideration of my requests and their willingness to work with my staff in ensuring Rhode Island's needs are well represented in the final WRDA bill. In particular, the American Water Infrastructure Act includes my provision directing the Army Corps of Engineers to study the resiliency of harbors of refuge and hurricane barriers in the North Atlantic, like the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier in Providence, that are under threat from rising sea levels and stronger storm surge. Though they may be able to endure current conditions, extra feet of sea level rise coupled with stronger storm surges will overpower the capabilities of many of these structures. We need to get ahead of these consequences of climate change and protect our coastal communities, instead of waiting for these barriers to fail and imperil coastal homes and businesses. As oceans overtake our coastal infrastructure, we will also need to look to new and innovative building materials and techniques that can endure corrosive saltwater and other harsh environmental conditions. This WRDA bill also includes my provision requiring the Corps to submit a report to Congress summarizing its research and investments in innovative materials, like Rhode Island-created composites, in-water infrastructure projects, and recommend in which Army Corps projects those materials could be used. This year's WRDA bill also instructs the Corps to study the extent to which it has made use of its authority to clean up waterways littered with marine debris, like the deteriorating wooden pilings in the Providence River. It also expedites the completion of important projects and studies in Rhode Island, like the Providence River dredging project, Pawcatuck coastal risk management study, and the Rhode Island historical structure flood hazard vulnerability assessment that will bolster Rhode Island's coastal economy and prepare it for future conditions. Overall, the bill does well to give special consideration to coastal communities, also requiring the Corps to consider natural infrastructure solutions to flood and storm damage risk reduction projects, prioritize coastal erosion mitigation projects in New England, and assess coastal resiliency needs for the Great Lakes. Though only 17 percent of total land area, the United States' coastal counties are home to over half of the U.S. population and were responsible for 48 percent of the country's GDP in 2017. Investing in our coasts is an investment in the well-being of the entire country's economy. I am also grateful this bill includes a focus on our water infrastructure. In addition to reauthorizing the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and WIFIA programs, it also creates a new water financing opportunity that will better support water infrastructure projects in small-and medium-sized communities. I am, proud to be a cosponsor of the SRF WIN Act which creates this new program and thank Senators Boozman and Booker for their leadership on this issue. I look forward to working with my colleagues, the Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Rhode Islanders as we move towards implementing this important infrastructure bill.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks, the Senator from New Hampshire, Senator Shaheen, be recognized. She will be picking up at the end of my remarks.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is a real pleasure to be joined here today on the Senate floor by Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. Senator Shaheen has been a tireless advocate for clean energy and is the Senate's bipartisan champion on energy efficiency, alongside Senator Portman. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a major warning last week. Ninety-one authors and editors from 40 countries reviewed more than 6,000 scientific papers to assess what it would take to hold global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. The report says that we will need to invest roughly five times what we do now in low- carbon energy and energy efficiency by 2050. The Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency legislation would help move us toward that target. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy says that the bill would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 650 million metric tons over a 15-year period. The cumulative net savings from the bill would reach nearly $100 billion. My State of Rhode Island is a national leader in promoting energy efficiency, so we know how good programs like the Shaheen-Portman reforms are for consumers, for businesses, and for the environment. Rhode Island has consistently ranked among the top States for energy efficiency. This year, we are in the top three on the State Energy Efficiency Scorecard. To keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the IPCC tells us we need renewables to grow to about half of the world's energy mix by 2030 and to perhaps 80 percent of the world's energy mix by midcentury. Coal in the global electricity mix needs to be mostly phased out by 2050. The fossil fuel industry's front groups, of which there is a considerable legion, tell us that this will raise costs on consumers, but renewables are now beating fossil fuel power on cost, and renewable costs are still falling. In a recent report on global energy trends, Deloitte notes: Solar and wind power recently crossed a new threshold. . . . Already among the cheapest energy sources globally, solar and wind have much further to go. The Deloitte report shows the top solar States here in yellow, the top wind States here in blue, and these two--Texas and California--are in green because they are leaders in both wind and solar. If you look at the top 20 U.S. solar and wind States, three-quarters of those States have electricity prices below the national average, so clearly renewables don't hurt energy costs. By the way, these States include some of the reddest politically, including Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Iowa, and Texas. The cost transition with renewables coming down through the price of fossil fuel is showing up in U.S. solar projects' purchased-power agreements. You can see in this chart from Greentech Media that over time, solar generation costs have come down in line with new-built natural gas generation. That is what this band is. This is the price for new-built natural gas generation. This dot here represents a new project by NextEra Energy to sell power to the southern Arizona utility, Tucson Electric Power, from a 100-megawatt solar array with an accompanying 30-megawatt energy storage system for $45 per megawatt hour, right in line with new natural gas plants. One industry analyst suggested that this facility effectively took the place of a peak-demand gas plant. Defenders of old, dirty energy sources paint renewables as unreliable, as intermittent, but Deloitte's report finds that renewables have actually proven ``to strengthen grid resilience and reliability.'' Integrating renewable capacity into the grid has gone well in practice, and FERC analyses predict increased renewable uses to improve grid security and resiliency. The grid operator in Iowa, the most heavily wind-powered State, figured out a while ago the algorithms to treat wind across its grid as baseload. When you pair wind or solar projects with battery storage, like that NextEra project, then individual renewable projects become baseload power sources. You don't have to aggregate and run algorithms; that is a new baseload source. The transition involves batteries, and batteries are booming. Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables projects worldwide storage capacity currently around 6 gigawatt hours to grow tenfold, to at least 65 gigawatt hours by 2022; 2022 is right around the corner--a tenfold growth. Costs are falling fast. Lithium-ion batteries are down in price 80 percent since 2010, just in these 7 years. That is an 80-percent drop in price. Regulators are adapting. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission just finalized a new rule--a unanimous and bipartisan new rule--for energy storage on America's electric grids. One study has predicted the rule could spur 50 gigawatts of additional energy storage across the United States, enough to power roughly 35 million homes. Energy storage is actually coming to market already. The Colorado State Public Utility Commission just unanimously approved an Xcel Energy Program to build $2.5 billion in renewable energy and battery storage, to retire 660 megawatts of coal-fired power, shutting down ongoing plants for cheaper, new renewable battery combinations. The request for bids didn't just smoke out this one bid; it brought out a flood of renewable energy proposals at costs that beat out existing coal and natural gas facilities. The IPCC warning was particularly serious and specific about the urgent choices before us, and we, too, need to be serious about a new direction to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Renewable energy and energy efficiency are our pathways in that direction, along with a new technology--trapping carbon emissions to use or store them, even pulling carbon dioxide straight from the air. These carbon-captured technologies have been starved without revenue because of a failure in energy market economics, which is that there is no revenue proposition for capturing carbon pollution. Which brings me to the Nobel Prize in economics just won by William D. Nordhaus of Yale University. Nordhaus aligns with the well-established market economics that polluters should pay for damage to the environment and to public health. That is econ 101. Without that, the price signal, which is at the heart of market economics, is off, and subsidies result. The market fails. And when the International Monetary Fund estimates the fossil fuel subsidy at $700 billion per year just in the United States, that is a massive market failure. Nordhaus recommends that we correct the enormous market failure which the fossil fuel industry now so busily protects politically. ``There is basically no alternative to a market solution,'' Nordhaus said in response to the Nobel Prize award. ``The incentives,'' he said, ``are market prices--to raise the price of goods and services that are carbon intensive and lower the ones that are less carbon intensive.'' The science on this, as I think most of us understand, is firmly established, and the economics are widely understood. It is the politics that keep getting in the way--the fossil fuel industry dark money politics. ``This is the last frontier of climate change,'' said Nordhaus. ``I think we understand the science,'' he said. ``I think we understand the economics of abatement,'' he said. He said: ``We understand pretty much the damages. But we don't understand how to bring countries together. That is where the real frontier work is going on today.'' America should be leading at this frontier, not lagging. Lost in our fossil fuel politics, we are failing in leadership. History will not be kind with our failure. It is well past time for Congress to wake up. Mr. President, I yield the floor to my distinguished colleague from New Hampshire, saluting her once again for the leadership that I remarked on at the beginning of my remarks in working with Senator Portman to be the Senate's bipartisan leader on energy efficiency.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Ryan Edwards and Kim Binsted, AAAS fellows in my office, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of this Congress.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, as a U.S. Senator and a member of the Judiciary Committee, giving careful consideration to Supreme Court nominations is among my most important responsibilities. These lifetime appointments can change not only the course of the Nation but the course of lives. I began with deep concerns about Judge Kavanaugh: his unfettered views of executive power, effectively believing that the President is beyond the law; his refusal to commit to well-established precedents on critical issues, like women's constitutional rights regarding abortion; his affinity for unlimited and dark political money and his studious blindness to its harm to our democracy; and his very selection and support by big special interest groups. I had significant concerns about his truthfulness and temperament--concerns proven more than justified over the course of these hearings. Another warning sign was flashing. Senate Republicans were stopping at nothing to get this nominee through. Why, it made we wonder. Why? Behind all of the shattered norms and traditions of the Senate, behind all of the hidden documents and unanswered questions, stands the looming question: Why? In my opening comments in the committee, I chronicled a pattern under Chief Justice Roberts, an unpleasant pattern of 5-to-4 partisan rulings for the big corporate and special interests that are the lifeblood of the Republican Party--not 3 or 4 times, not even a dozen or two dozen times, but 73 times--73 times and all 5-to-4 partisan decisions, all wins for the big corporate and special interests that are the lifeblood of the Republican party--73 times. The pattern is clear in these 5-to-4 partisan decisions. Every time big corporate and Republican special interests are involved, the big interest wins--every time, 73 to 0. On its way to delivering these Republican special interest victories, the Roberts Court--or I should say the five of them who do this; call it the ``Roberts Five''--leaves a trail--a trail of wrecked precedents, a trail of sketchy, nonfactual fact-finding, a trail of longstanding statutes ignored or rewritten, and a trail of supposedly conservative judicial principles, like modesty, deference, originalism, and stare decisis, all violated. The pattern of these 73 partisan ``Roberts Five'' decisions explains why. It explains why big Republican interests want Kavanaugh on the Court so badly and why Republicans shredded so much Senate precedent to shove him through. The big Republican interests want to be able to pull 5-to-4 wins out of the U.S. Supreme Court as if it were a legislature they controlled. What are the areas of law where the big Republican corporate and special interests have a stake where the Roberts Five delivered for those big Republican Party stakeholders? Well, first, they helped Republicans to gerrymander elections in Vieth v. Jubelirer, 5 to 4. This was a big deal. It let Republicans gerrymander their way to control of Congress, to control of the House of Representatives, in a year Republicans lost by a million votes. They lost the House by a million votes and won it by gerrymandering. The Roberts Five has helped Republicans to keep minority voters away from the polls: Shelby County, 5 to 4; Bartlett v. Strickland, 5 to 4; Abbott v. Perez, 5 to 4. Making it harder to vote--harder for minorities or poor people or the elderly--is a Republican electioneering tactic, and Republican State legislatures went right to work, passing voter suppression laws right after these partisan decisions. The Roberts Five also helped to unleash big-money political influence, giving big interests unlimited power to buy elections and threaten and bully Congress. McCutcheon and Bullock and the infamous, grotesque 5-to-4 Citizens United decision were their tools. This is the sockdolager, the really big deal, by the way. There is a very small world of very big interests that have unlimited money to spend and a business strategy to spend it to influence politics. It is not a big group, but it is a powerful group, and it is the heart of the Republican funding machine. These few but big Republican interests were given unprecedented political artillery by the Roberts Five, at least unprecedented since Teddy Roosevelt cleaned house over a century ago. Our politics since Citizens United has been contorted and corrupted, but those big influences are, oh, so happy. What else do the big influencers want to get out of courtrooms? Big special interests that can muscle their way around Congress and capture executive agencies hate courtrooms. There is this annoying thing in courtrooms of being treated equally with regular people. There is this annoying thing in courtrooms about having to turn over your actual documents. There is this really annoying thing in courtrooms about having to tell the truth. So, bingo, the Roberts Five protected corporations from group class-action lawsuits--Walmart v. Dukes, 5 to 4; Comcast, 5 to 4; Epic Systems, 5 to 4--and helped corporations to steer customers and workers away from courtrooms and into corporate friendly mandatory arbitration--Concepcion, Italian Colors, and Rent-a- Center, all 5 to 4 at the hands of the Roberts Five. What else? Of course, to bust unions, a perennial Big Business special interest classic, kind of a golden oldie for big Republican influencers: Harris v. Quinn, 5 to 4; Janus v. AFSCME, 5 to 4. And, of course, to protect polluters. Big polluters pour big money into the Republican Party. They do this, they will tell you, to protect your freedom. They talk a lot about freedom. It turns out that it is your freedom to breath dirty air, drink dirty water, smell the river going by, eat chemicals with your food, and have climate havoc and acid oceans. It is all about freedom--indeed, the freedom for big polluters to pollute for free and get away with it. Right with them there is the Roberts Five over and over, for the polluters, even stopping the Nation's Clean Power Plan 5 to 4 for the coal industry. The list goes on. It totals 73 partisan 5-to-4 decisions under Chief Justice Roberts, each giving big wins to big Republican interests. It is an indelible pattern. Although the American people might not be keeping exact score--they might not know that the number is 73--they feel the Court is rigged, and the Court is flying all the warning flags of a captured agency, dancing to special interest tunes and rampaging through precedent and principle to get there. This pattern is a disaster for the Court, and I know Kavanaugh will contribute to that disaster. How do I know this? I know this because Kavanaugh's record tells me. That is why he is the nominee, after all. That is the why. He has been signaling the big influencers with over 50 speeches to the Federalist Society. I think he has the human record for speeches to the Federalist Society, signaling that he is their guy. And he has been signaling with his record as a judge on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals in the most controversial and salient civil cases, those decided by bare 2-to-1 majorities. When Kavanaugh was in the majority with another Republican-appointed judge, he voted to advance the far-right and corporate interests a striking 91 percent of the time. That is almost a perfect match for the Roberts Five majority rulings in 5-to-4 cases where these conservative groups show up. The Roberts Five gives conservative groups a 92-percent win rate. Kavanaugh gives conservative groups a 91-percent win rate. No wonder he is their guy. Ninety-one percent--remember that number. Kavanaugh reliably voted for polluters and for dark money and for corporate interests with a healthy dollop of anti-choice, pro-gun, religious-right politics thrown in. Ninety-one percent is how he campaigned for this job. Big special interests have a habit of turning up regularly in appellate courtrooms like the DC Circuit. Their tool of influence is one of the worst policed tools of special-interest influence in America--the so-called amicus brief, where big special interests fund front groups to file these amicus briefs to instruct courts how they want the courts to rule. They are called amicus briefs because they are supposedly appearing as a friend of the court, but this has nothing to do with friendship. It is a scandal of secrecy, deception, and manipulation. How does this involve Kavanaugh? In cases where conservative groups weighed in with these amicus briefs before him, Judge Kavanaugh sided with them--wait for it--91 percent of the time--again, 91 percent. Call him ``Judge 91 percent,'' and you understand why those big interests want him so badly on the Supreme Court and why the Republican Party drove like drunk kids over the curbs and across the lawns, smashing mailboxes of procedure and propriety to get him there. The overlap between the groups in Kavanaugh's 91-percent club and the groups who fund Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society architect of Kavanaugh's nomination, is telling. The multimillion-dollar scorched- earth ad campaign by groups like the Judicial Crisis Network is funded by big dark money interests. The NRA poured its own millions into campaigning for Kavanaugh. They promised NRA members that Kavanaugh would break the tie. They are 91 percent sure. In the face of all this, Kavanaugh feigned impartiality, but then came the ``tell.'' When Kavanaugh returned to the Judiciary Committee to defend himself against accusations of a sex assault, his veneer of impartiality was pulled away, and we saw--America saw--the fierce and rabid conspiracy-mongering partisan within. His performance was recently described by a right-of-center columnist as his ``partisan, unhinged diatribe and nonjudicial demeanor.'' Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article from which I am quoting be appended to the end of my remarks. (Mr. LANKFORD assumed the Chair.) He even blamed Bill and Hillary Clinton--seriously. It shows where we are in this country that this display was not by itself disqualifying. But for the big special interests behind ``Judge 91 Percent,'' this was not at all disqualifying. This was reassuring. This was great stuff. It just confirmed what they knew: Judge 91 Percent would be their boy. The Roberts Five would get back in the saddle, and they would get 73 more 5-to-4 partisan victories. But that moment gave the rest of the country the opportunity to take true measure of a man who claims he is impartial--a man who asks the Senate to grant him a lifetime seat in judgment of others and claims he will judge fairly--fat chance. One longtime observer of the judiciary who was an early supporter of Kavanaugh recently withdrew his support. He wrote in the Atlantic magazine: I cannot condone the partisanship which was raw, undisguised, naked, and conspiratorial from someone who asks for public faith as a dispassionate and impartial judicial actor. His performance was wholly inconsistent with the conduct we should expect from a member of the judiciary. Extraordinarily, even former Supreme Court Justice Stevens has warned against Kavanaugh for the same reasons. Kavanaugh's raw, undisguised, naked, and conspiratorial partisan screed may have excited the donors, but it did nothing to address the concerns that had prompted the hearing in the first place. So in addition to an epic fail of any reasonable test of impartiality, Judge Kavanaugh still bears credible allegations of sexual assault levied against him. I will confess, I believe Dr. Blasey Ford. We have a big dispute here, but I do hope that in this Senate we at least can agree on one thing. If Dr. Blasey Ford's testimony was true, I hope we can all agree that Kavanaugh has no business on the Court. Well, I believed her then, and I believe her now, and I did not find him credible at all. I found him belligerent and aggressive--just as his Yale drinking buddies said he was while drunk in college--and evasive and nonresponsive. Dr. Ford's allegations were credible enough to get her here before the Senate. Her testimony here was quiet, open, and powerful. She was calm, composed, and utterly believable. Even President Trump called her testimony ``credible'' and ``compelling.'' So did many of my Republican colleagues. But then came the smear campaign to discredit and demean her, led by the President's sickening taunts and mockery in Mississippi. Then came the majority leader's criticisms. He knew it wouldn't do to say outright that she lied, but his every accusation fell to pieces if she was telling the truth. His attacks were a bank shot--a relentless, indirect bank-shot smear of Dr. Ford's credibility. One element of the smear of Dr. Blasey Ford was to describe her testimony as ``uncorroborated.'' We have heard that over and over. The majority leader said that again just this morning on the floor-- uncorroborated. Well, first, that just isn't true. Prior consistent statements are a well-known form of corroboration, and Dr. Ford's prior consistent statements are abundant. It is ironic to have Republicans complain about a lack of corroboration when Republicans did everything possible to prevent corroborating evidence from coming forward. It is deeply unfair to Dr. Ford to disallow, prevent, and freeze out corroborating evidence and then call her testimony uncorroborated, which bring us to the, to put it politely, abridged FBI investigation. First, the FBI background investigation was closed to this new evidence in an unprecedented break from the entire history of background investigations. Then, the investigation was limited by secret orders from the White House we still have not seen. What do we see? We see the dozens of credible, percipient, and corroborating witnesses who came forward to say that they couldn't get an interview from the FBI, who were never contacted when they made themselves known to the FBI. I ask unanimous consent that that two letters from the representatives of Ms. Ramirez and Dr. Ford explaining this be added at the end of my remarks. Mr. President, many witnesses were fobbed off into a black hole of a tip line--a tip line from which no tip appears ever to have been pursued, a tip line that was just a dumping ground for unwelcome evidence. As a U.S. attorney, had I received the set of witness summaries we saw, I would have sent the package back for more investigation. A sincere and thorough investigation designed to get at the truth would have broadly interviewed Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford's known contemporaries to probe their recollections. An investigation to get at the truth would have interviewed the witnesses who corroborated Dr. Blasey Ford's prior consistent statements. An investigation designed to get at the truth would have tested Kavanaugh's calendar and yearbook entries with contemporaneous witnesses. An investigation designed to get at the truth would have done interviews of witnesses who corroborate the incident alleged by Ms. Ramirez, like the classmate ``100 percent sure'' he was told at the time that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to Ramirez. An investigation designed to get at the truth would have interviewed people who recalled Kavanaugh's propensity to drink to excess and his behavior when drunk relevant to these incidents. An investigation designed to get at the truth would have certainly sought to interview the alleged victims, like Christine Blasey Ford and the accused perpetrator, Brett Kavanaugh. From public reporting, we know that none of this happened. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that like everything else in this nomination, such as hiding 90 percent of the records from the Bush White House days, putting bogus ``Executive Privilege'' cover over other documents, and claiming documents are ``committee confidential'' through a nonexistent process that was partisan from start to finish--like everything else, it is hard to escape the conclusion that this investigation was designed not to get at the truth, but to step carefully around it. I am a huge fan of the FBI. I admire that organization immensely. It must have killed the agents to do such a half-baked and incomplete job because of marching orders from the White House. My heart goes out to the experienced FBI professionals hamstrung by the Trump White House through this investigation. They know better than anyone the holes in what they did, but in this matter they don't have the independence of a criminal investigation. The White House is the client. They must do what they are told. This was yet another Trump abuse of a proud American institution. So here we are. A defendant in a criminal prosecution enjoys a presumption of innocence until proven guilty. A defendant in a civil trial must be found culpable by a preponderance of the evidence. An executive agency must make decisions based on substantial evidence. But the question before us is none of those. The question before us is whether Brett Kavanaugh is a man with the character, credibility, impartiality, and temperament to sit in judgment on America's highest Court. We now know Brett Kavanaugh is not that. He is not close, and Americans know it. But the big Republican interest groups don't care because they see that 91 percent, and they yearn for 73 more 5-to-4 partisan victories. Service to the law has at its heart an earnest pursuit of the truth. In Kavanaugh's pursuit of office, truth has too often not been his goal but his casualty. The history of falsehoods is well chronicled: denying that he worked on the nomination of the controversial Judge Pryor, denying that he knew of documents stolen from Judiciary Committee Democrats when he was at the Bush White House, denying that he was involved in questions about the knowledge of the secret detention program or the warrantless wiretapping program, denying what he himself said about Presidential immunity from investigation, and complicit in the coverup of millions of documents we should have seen, and on and on. Once Dr. Blasey Ford and then Ms. Ramirez came forward with sexual assault allegations, the lies came fast and furiously--that he knew nothing about the Ramirez allegations until the ``New Yorker'' story was published; that he had no alcohol problem and never drank to the point of impairment of his memory; that he had unique definitions of phrases in common parlance he related to binge drinking and sex; that he ``always treated women with dignity and respect''; and that claiming himself as a girl's ``Alumnius'' was a sign of affection. As the woman herself retorted: ``There is nothing affectionate or respectful in bragging about making sexual conquests that never happened.'' On they came, little lies and big lies about not having connections to get into Yale, about honoring grand jury secrecy while helping the Ken Starr investigation--none perhaps individually fatal but together adding up to a pattern of dissembling and prevarication. Even before Kavanaugh was nominated, Leader McConnell smelled trouble and urged the President not to nominate someone he knew was a badly flawed nominee with a lengthy paper trail that would likely disclose how extreme and partisan Judge Kavanaugh truly is. So much has been left by the wayside in the mad rush to jam this nomination through--documents, facts, Senate rules and traditions, real investigation, simple respect for truth--all smashed-up wreckage in the wake of this nomination. But as my fellow New Englander John Adams said, ``Facts are stubborn things.'' The truth has a way of coming out. The millions of hidden pages of Kavanaugh's White House records will come out. The nonassertion assertion of Executive privilege will fall or yield to time. The unheard witnesses will ultimately be heard, and others may come forward, which brings me back to the question I began with: Why all the wreckage? Why all the rush? Why all the damage? Why all the violation? The answer is in the numbers: 5 to 4, 73, and 91 percent. At the end of the day, we go back to a Supreme Court far too often dancing to the tune of a handful of big Republican special interests. The record of this--the pattern of this--is undeniable. As I said, it will be a disaster for the Court, and Kavanaugh will eagerly contribute to that disaster. This whole mess has been a dark episode for the U.S. Senate, for the Supreme Court, for our image around the world, for our democracy. But there is one bright jewel that can be picked in the midst of all the filth and wreckage and lies; that is that something very special is happening out there. The testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford of her assault at the hands of Brett Kavanaugh, though studiously ignored by so many Republicans and mocked by the President of the United States, has lit a fire. Just in my small State of Rhode Island, at least 10 women have written to me to share their own personal stories of survival of sexual assault. Like all of us, I get mail everyday about various policies that are being debated here in the Senate. I am coming up on 12 years, and I have never, never had mail like this. These women have come forward from widely different ages and backgrounds--college students and grandmothers--to tell their stories. Some have held these secrets close for years, even for decades. Several of these women gave me permission to share their words--words they have allowed me to free on the Senate floor after years of silence. What a privilege it is. What an honor for me to be trusted in this way by these remarkable women. Some were moved to tell their stories because they see their own fears reflected in Dr. Blasey Ford's brave testimony--the fear of not being believed, the fear of losing the respect of family or of friends. But they knew that Dr. Blasey Ford's memories were real, and they told me they wanted me to trust that Dr. Blasey Ford's memories were real because they knew that their own memories were real, because their own memories of their assaults were seared into their minds. One told me: ``I am Dr. Ford.'' A woman wrote to me: I am sure my rapist hasn't thought of me since that night 21 years ago either. In fact, he, like Kavanaugh, would likely deny anything had ever happened. But here's the thing about rape--the victims never forget. The coverage of Dr. Blasey Ford's appearance before the Senate for some stirred deep and disquieting emotions. As one woman wrote: The past few weeks have been doubly difficult with Dr. Ford coming forward and all of the constant news threads and social media threads. I have been triggered with nightmares, fear of being alone, and emotionally wrecked. PTSD and triggers are real. No matter how much therapy and time goes by, one small statement or physical interaction can trigger someone who has experienced a traumatic assault. One letter read: As a rape survivor (I was 19 years old--I am now 66 years old), I want you to know that that experience does color the rest of a person's life, informing decisions that you make, where and how you go somewhere, how you raise your children and relate to your husband and all other people. Sometimes through the decades, you think about it consciously and on purpose, and sometimes outside events can bring it back without your willing it to be so. Dr. Blasey Ford's quietly compelling testimony has forced our Nation to face up to the tough questions about how women have been treated. The redemption, if there is one, for this foul nomination process is for us to grasp the power of this moment, for our country to act on the power of this moment. This is about far more than a troubled and troubling nominee. Something big is happening. Women across the country, like these extraordinary women in Rhode Island, are reconciling with their truth, fighting through a long and deeply unfair legacy of shame, fear, and stigma. They are stepping up. They are coming forward, determined, as one wrote to me to leave a different world for their daughters and granddaughters than the world that silenced them for years, for decades. For me, it is a true personal honor to share this moment with them, to be trusted with these long-held stories, to have the chance to help end that bitterly unfair legacy, and to support them toward that new and better world for their daughters and granddaughters.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I believe it was Tom Friedman, the very well-known author, who first wrote comprehensively about the connection between the unprecedented drought in Syria driving farmers and herdsmen away from their former farms and herds--the farms dried up and the herds died off--and into the city, into that conflict, and into that crucible that led to the initial conflict and now to the complete collapse of Syrian society and into an international boxing match of forces. I yield my time. I thank Senator Merkley for joining me and for the longstanding passion that he has exhibited for the oceans, the coasts, the forests, and the well-being of the people of Oregon. We are very proud of our State of Rhode Island, but Oregon has a great deal in terms of natural assets to be proud of, and there is no stronger voice for them than the Senator from Oregon. I yield. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. One of the touching features of the Senator's presentation was the summary of the effects on God's creatures--the sea lion pups, the fish, the sea birds, just from this particular episode. You may not have a big heart for an oyster spat, but these are all God's creatures. It is frustrating when people who wear their Christianity on their sleeve show so little interest for the protection of God's creatures. The other angle on that is that we are taught in the Bible to look out for the least among us. One thing I have noticed is that climate change harms don't fall evenly across the population, that storms and floods are harder for some than for others, and that wealth and poverty dramatically affect the experience of climate change by different people. I wonder if the Senator would comment on that from his experience.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am grateful to be joined by my wonderful colleague from Oregon, Senator Merkley, for my 222nd ``Time to Wake Up'' climate speech. Although there are thousands of miles between us--on the west and east coasts--Oregon and Rhode Island share a common connection; that is, our oceans. Fisheries and coastal tourism are major drivers of our economies. Our coastlines are vibrant with homes, families, and businesses. We are ocean States. So we are here to talk about the challenges of human-driven climate change for our oceans and coasts: sea level rise, ocean acidification, deoxygenation, warming, and increased storm surge. Our local agencies and officials and our coastal residents understand the changes that are coming at them. Not all States are prepared, however, and in the aftermath of severe storms like Hurricane Florence and last year's hurricanes, powered up by higher seas and superheated ocean water, we are seeing the consequences of this failure. Last month was the 80th anniversary of the Great Hurricane of 1938. The storm barreled through southern New England, destroying roads and ports and businesses and homes. This is a photograph of downtown Providence. That is the roof of a car, and they built cars pretty tall back in 1938. Over 560 people lost their lives in this storm. The National Weather Service now estimates that Providence experienced a storm surge of around 20 feet, which put it 14 feet under water in the downtown area and sustained winds above 100 miles per hour--not gusts, sustained winds. If this storm were to hit Rhode Island now, it would carry ashore at least an additional 10 inches of ocean, thanks to sea level rise since the 1930s. It would probably carry ashore a lot more than that because that 10 inches of water would pile up in the storm surge as it hit. If we continue to do nothing to slow climate change, by the end of the century, sea level rise will be on the scale of additional feet, not inches. Hurricane Florence just brought feet of rain, high winds, and massive storm surge to the Carolinas. At around 500 miles wide, it was bigger than Hurricane Katrina, and it dumped more rain than Hurricane Harvey. Sadly, nearly 50 people have lost their lives from the effects of Hurricane Florence, and flooding recovery is still ongoing. The condolences of Rhode Islanders go out to the Carolinas and Virginia. As Hurricane Florence was building strength and making its approach, researchers were connecting its power to climate change. A team of researchers estimated climate change made Florence's rainfall 50 percent worse than it would have been without the known effects of humankind on the climate. Hurricanes are powered by warmer oceans. One of the study's authors estimated that for every degree Celsius of ocean temperature increase, ``extreme precipitation events can increase by over 60 percent.'' The oceans are warmer. Oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by our greenhouse gas emissions. It is several nuclear explosions worth of heat per second that the oceans are absorbing. By doing that, they spare our land from worse climate catastrophe, but it wreaks havoc in our oceans. Marine heat waves are a new phenomenon--so new that they were first identified and characterized in 2011, but they have already left a permanent scar in our oceans. Starting in 2014, the northeast Pacific Ocean has experienced inordinately warm temperatures--``the Blob,'' it was called--a mass of warm water around the size of Canada. As the Blob spread toward Alaska, a trail of millions of dead sea birds followed. The warm water drove their prey to cooler waters; unable to adapt to the sudden shift, the birds starved. Starving sea lion pups and toxic algae blooms that poisoned whales were also attributed to the Blob of warm water. The recent massive coral die-off in the Great Barrier Reef that left half the reef dead was driven by abnormal water temperatures. Dr. Terry Hughes, one of the world's leading coral reef researchers, was quoted in The Atlantic as saying the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem ``has collapsed . . . transformed into a completely new system that looks differently, and behaves differently, and functions differently, than how it was three years ago.'' Marine heat waves are becoming warmer and more frequent, to the point that there is a movement now within the scientific community to start naming and categorizing Marine heat waves much as we do hurricanes. Warming seas rise, and this will hit coastal properties. The Union of Concerned Scientists recently released a report that estimated by 2100, ``nearly 2.5 million residential and commercial properties, collectively valued at [over $1] trillion today, will be at risk of chronic flooding.'' These numbers are based on sea level rise alone; storm surge and rain-driven flooding only amplify these risks. Long before your house is actually flooded, long before you are walking through your kitchen in rubber boots, the value of your house can crash if the house becomes uninsurable or unmortgageable for the next buyer. Freddie Mac has warned of this property value crash in America's coastal regions. Here is what Freddie Mac said: ``The economic losses and social disruption may happen gradually, but they are likely to be greater in total than those experienced in the housing crisis and Great Recession.'' The insurance industry trade publication Risk & Insurance had this to say: ``Continually rising seas will damage coastal residential and commercial property values to the point that property owners will flee those markets in droves, thus precipitating a mortgage value collapse that could equal or exceed the mortgage crisis that rocked the global economy in 2008.'' Despite this warning, the Federal Government has failed to prepare for these coming changes and build coastal resiliency. Congress is used to investing in our coasts only after a disaster. We have let our National Flood Insurance Program fall into billions of dollars of debt. We have let FEMA provide inaccurate and incomplete flood risk maps. And the Trump administration is purposefully blind to climate science, ocean changes, and flood mitigation requirements that would help us get ahead of the changes coming along our coasts. We are not out of time yet. We still have a chance to avoid the worst consequences of climate change and prepare America's coastal infrastructure for the rising tides. But we have to move past futile and false denial and into action. It is time, Republicans and Democrats alike, west coasters and east coasters together, to wake up. I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks, Senator Merkley be recognized for associated remarks, followed by a brief colloquy between the two of us.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, what I want to talk about is a new form of political weapon that has emerged onto the political battlefield in America, and it is a political weapon for which the American system is not very well prepared yet. The new political weapon we see is systematic and deliberate misinformation, what you might call weaponized fake news. Vladimir Putin's regime, in Russia, uses weaponized fake news all the time for political influence in the former Soviet Union and the modern European Union. Our intelligence agencies caught them using misinformation to help Trump win the 2016 American election. Some also is homegrown. In America, the original weaponized fake news was climate denial, spun up by the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry used systematic, deliberate disinformation to propagandize our politics and fend off accountability for its pollution of our atmosphere and oceans. So, for both national security and political integrity reasons, we need to better understand this misinformation weaponry. Guess what. Science is on the case. A comprehensive array of peer-reviewed articles appeared last year in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition and, I am sure, is on the Acting President pro tempore's bedside table for light reading. Dozens of scientists contributed to this report, and I list their names in an appendix to the speech. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my appendix be added at the end of my speech. What they found is interesting. One piece--tellingly subtitled ``Understanding and Coping with the `Post-Truth' Era''--describes how ``the World Economic Forum ranked the spread of misinformation online as one of the 10 most significant issues facing the world''--the top 10. ``An obvious hallmark of a post-truth world is that it empowers people to choose their own reality, where facts and objective evidence are trumped by existing beliefs and prejudices,'' concludes one article--not a good thing. This is not your grandfather's misinformation. This is not ``JFK and Marilyn Monroe's Love Child Found in Utah Salt Mine.'' This is not ``Aliens Abducted My Cat.'' This is not fun and entertainment. This is also not people just being wrong. Indeed, ``misinformation in the post- truth era can no longer be considered solely an isolated failure of individual cognition that can be corrected with appropriate communications tools,'' they write. In plain English, this isn't just errors; there is something bigger going on. Scientists from Duke University agreed. ``Rather than a series of isolated falsehoods, we are confronted with a growing ecosystem of misinformation.'' In this ecosystem, misinformation is put to use by determined factions. ``The melange of anti-intellectual appeals, conspiratorial thinking, pseudoscientific claims, and sheer propaganda circulating within American society seems unrelenting,'' write Aaron M. McCright of Michigan State and Riley E. Dunlap of Oklahoma State. They note: ``Those who seek to promote systemic lies'' are ``backed by influential economic interests or powerful state actors, both domestic and foreign.'' Let me highlight those key phrases--``systemic lies . . . backed by influential economic interests.'' Like I said, it is not your grandfather's misinformation. An author from Ohio State writes that this creates artificial polarization in our politics that is not explained by our tribal social media habits. His subtitle, too, is telling: ``Disinformation Campaigns are the Problem, Not Audience Fragmentation.'' He notes these disinformation campaigns ``are used by political strategists, private interests, and foreign powers to manipulate people for political gain.'' ``Strategically deployed falsehoods have played an important role in shaping Americans' attitudes toward a variety of high-profile political issues,'' reads another article. In a nutshell, Americans are the subjects of propaganda warfare by powerful economic interests. So how is all of this misinformation deployed? ``The insidious fallouts from misinformation are particularly pronounced when the misinformation is packaged as a conspiracy theory,'' they tell us--insidious, indeed. By wrapping deliberate misinformation in conspiracy theory, the propagandist degrades the target's defenses against correction by legitimate information. Conspiracy theories, the articles notes, ``tend to be particularly prevalent in times of economic and political crises.'' Pulling emotional strings is another technique. Emotionally weaponized fake news is reflected in ``the prevalence of outraged discourse on political blogs, talk radio, and cable news.'' These powerful interests also take advantage of ``the institutionalization of `false equivalence' in so-called mainstream media.'' They sophisticatedly leverage media conventions to their private advantage. Another tactical observation: To be effective, the misinformation campaign does not have to convince you. It can simply barrage, confuse, and stun you. One of these articles related the Bangor Daily News assessment of falsehoods coming from the Trump White House: ``The idea isn't to convince people of untrue things, it is to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political province entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.'' This, of course, is a well-known political propaganda strategy. What the Bangor Daily News saw, the researchers note, is ``mirrored by analysts of Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns.'' McCright and Dunlap describe how weaponized fake news--what they call ``the intentional promotion of misinformation''--is made into systematic propaganda by amplification of what they call the ``powerful conservative echo chamber.'' It is systematic, it is deliberate, and it is supported by a purposeful private apparatus. This brings us back to what the authors call the ``utility of misinformation . . . to powerful political and economic interests.'' What they conclude, basically, is that the weaponization of fake news is done for profit and with purpose. It has an apparatus of amplification. It needn't convince but simply stun or confuse. Like an insidious virus, it can carry its own conspiracy theory and emotional payload countermeasures against the ordinary antibodies that ordinarily protect us from being misled. The scientists urge that we must examine these systematic campaigns of false misinformation ``through the lens of political drivers that have created an alternative epistemology that does not conform to conventional standards of evidentiary support.'' Let's unpack that language for a minute. Let's begin with the fact that it is ``political drivers'' that are behind the scheme. This is a tool in a larger battle for political supremacy. To help win this battle, political actors have ``created an alternative epistemology,'' a separate way of looking at the world; obviously, a way of looking at the world that aligns with their economic interests. That ``alternative epistemology'' is untethered from the truth. It ``does not conform to conventional standards of evidentiary support.'' It stands on falsehood, on prejudice, and on emotion, not on fact. What the authors call ``post-truth politics'' has motive and purpose. They write: It is ``a rational strategy that is deployed in pursuit of political objectives.'' In these propaganda campaigns by powerful economic interests, some stuff right now happens a lot more on one political side. Scientists track an uneven distribution of emotion-ridden fake news and misinformation. They say: ``The prevalence of outraged discourse on political blogs, talk radio, and cable news is 50% greater on the political right than the political left.'' Other authors write ``if the political context were to change, we might expect the distribution of misperceptions across the political spectrum to change as well,'' but for now, the weaponized fake news virus predominantly infects the political rightwing and modern conservative politics. McCright and Dunlap writes: ``The Right seems especially adept at using Orwellian language to promote their ideological and material interests via what we would argue are systemic lies.'' So who does this? Weaponized fake news is not cheap. It is not cheap to test. It is not cheap to manufacture, and it is not cheap to distribute. It is also not cheap to maintain a network to put weaponized fake news out there in a way that masks the identity of the economic forces behind the network. This takes money, motive, and persistence, and that means big industrial players. What authors call the ``800-pound gorilla in the room'' is ``a political system that is driven by the interests of economic elites rather than the people.'' That is big economic elites playing a game of masquerade and manipulation in our politics. The scheme may look like populism. Indeed, part of the masquerade is, it is designed to look like populism, but that is what is going on. The disinformation campaign is ``largely independent of the public's wishes but serves the interests of economic elites.'' The populist masquerade is part of the disinformation exercise. These economic elites take methods developed decades ago by one industry to use for another industry today. We see this in the fossil fuel industry-weaponized fake news about climate change--climate denial we call it. The stakes are very high, with the International Monetary Fund calculating that fossil fuel exacts a subsidy from the American people of $700 billion per year. To protect an annual subsidy of $700 billion per year, you can cook up a lot of mischief. Where did the fossil fuel climate denial mischief begin? It began in the tobacco industry's fraudulent schemes to deny the health risks of tobacco. Did Big Oil shy away from those tobacco tactics, knowing those tactics were actually found in court to be fraud? No. Indeed, to quote an article: ``The oil industry has worked to promote doubt about climate change science using tactics pioneered by cigarette manufacturers in the 1960s.'' To protect a $700 billion annual subsidy, you can build a bigger denial scheme even than Big Tobacco, and they did. McCright and Dunlap call this the ``climate change denial countermovement.'' They say its message ``may be the most successful systemic lies of the last few decades.'' They continue: Briefly, this countermovement uses money and resources from industry and conservative foundations to mobilize an array of conservative think tanks, lobbying organizations, media outlets, front groups, and Republican politicians to ignore, suppress, obfuscate, and cherry-pick scientists and their research to deny the reality and seriousness of climate change. Other authors write that ``the current polarization of the climate debate is the result of a decades-long concerted effort by conservative political operatives and think tanks to cast doubt on the overwhelming scientific consensus that the earth is warming from human greenhouse gas emissions.'' ``To cast doubt'' is the key phrase in that last quote. The authors emphasize that ``climate science denial does not present a coherent alternative explanation of climate change. On the contrary, the arguments offered by climate denial are intrinsically incoherent. Climate-science denial is therefore best understood not as an alternative knowledge claim but as a political operation aimed at generating uncertainty in the public's mind in order to preserve the status quo.'' How did that play out in Republican policymaking? ``[W]hile climate change used to be a bipartisan issue in the 1980s, the Republican party has arguably moved from evidence-based concern to industry-funded denial.'' Let's be clear. Climate denial is not a search for truth. As the evidence piled up that early climate change warnings were accurate, the climate denial campaign did not relent in the face of those facts. Indeed, the scientists relate, ``the amount of misinformation on climate change has increased in proportion to the strength of scientific evidence that human greenhouse gas emissions are altering the Earth's climate.'' It is a fossil fuel upgrade of the fraudulent Big Tobacco strategy. One example is the so-called Oregon Petition, a bogus petition urging the U.S. Government to reject the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming. One article points out that ``the Oregon Petition is an example of the so-called `fake-experts' strategy that was pioneered by the tobacco industry in the 1970s and 1980s.'' Of course, since this scheme isn't real science, it doesn't use real scientific outlets. ``[M]uch of the opposition to mainstream climate science, like any other form of science denial, involves non-scientific outlets such as blogs.'' Another article notes that this is done on ``websites that obfuscate their sponsor by mimicking the trappings of nonprofits and other more trusted sites.'' Again, masquerade--even camouflage--is part of the problem. I think it goes without saying that in real science it is not necessary to mask the real proponent. Another signal of the scheme is repetition of falsehood. ``Dozens of studies document an illusory truth effect whereby repeated statements are judged truer than new ones.'' In real science, when someone realizes what they are saying is wrong, they stop saying it. In the weaponized disinformation scheme, you just keep saying it. You maybe even say it more to capitalize on this ``illusory truth effect.'' This, of course, recalls the infamous Big Tobacco declaration: ``Doubt is our product.'' That is a quote from a tobacco memo. The heart of the fossil fuel industry's scheme is to undermine legitimate science with false doubts. To chip away at the scientific consensus on climate change, they chip away at the foundations of truth itself. One author sees this as ``the willingness of political actors to promote doubt as to whether truth is ultimately knowable''--think of the President's lawyer, Giuliani, saying ``truth isn't truth''--or ``whether empirical evidence is important''--think of climate denial trying to drown out the truth through repetition of false statements-- third, ``and whether the fourth estate has value''--think of the President attacking the legitimate media as ``fake news'' and the ``enemy of the people.'' The scientific paper concludes: ``Undermining public confidence in the institutions that produce and disseminate knowledge is a threat to which scientists must respond.'' Sadly, real science is poorly adapted to defending itself against weaponized disinformation in the public arena. Let me conclude with what one article calls a case study in the spread of misinformation. Last year's ``Unite the Right'' rally in Charlottesville, VA, which led to the murder of Heather Heyer, killed by a White supremacist speeding into a crowd, a witness recorded on film the car plowing into that crowd of people. The authors wrote: ``Within hours, conspiracy theories began floating around the internet among people associated with the alt-right,'' attempting to undermine and discredit the witness. Social media posts then appeared ``suggesting [the driver] staged the attack, was trained by the CIA, and funded by either George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or the global Jewish mafia. . . . [T]hose conspiracy theories migrated into more mainstream media. Variations appeared on info wars and Shawn Hannity's show on Fox.'' FOX News, by the way, is a common venue for fake news. Here is what the scientists chronicle as the ``Fox News effect'': It has repeatedly been shown that people who report that they source their news from public broadcasters become better informed the more attention they report paying to the news, whereas, the reverse is true for self-reported consumers of FOX News. . . . [F]or self-reporting viewers of Fox News . . . increasing frequency of news consumption is often associated with an increased likelihood that they are misinformed about various issues. In a nutshell, the more you watch real news, the more you know; the more you watch FOX News, the less you know--great for the elite merchants of doubt. The effects of misinformation become measurable by looking at provable falsehoods that people are made to believe. [A] 2011 poll showed that 51 percent of Republican primary voters thought that then-president Obama had been born abroad. . . . [Twenty percent] of respondents in a representative U.S. sample have been found to endorse the proposition that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by corrupt scientists. The idea that the Democratic Party was running a child sex ring was at one point believed or accepted as being possibly true by nearly one-third of Americans and nearly one-half of Trump voters. All provably false. All propagated until significant numbers of people believed. So how do we fight back? The researchers offer an array of approaches. ``Russian propaganda can be `digitally contained' by supporting media literacy and source criticism,'' says one. ``Our recommendation,'' wrote another, ``is to begin by generating a list of the skills required to be a critical consumer of information.'' In essence, we have to adapt new citizenship skills to protect ourselves from weaponized fake news. Another recommendation is to teach people about the tactic of sewing doubt through disinformation. Where ``typical cues for credibility have been hijacked,'' understanding the tactics will help inoculate people against being taken in by the scheme. The researchers reported: Participants read about how the tobacco industry in the 1970s used ``fake experts''--people with no scientific background, or doctors and scientists with beliefs unrepresentative of the rest of the scientific community--to create the illusion of an ongoing debate about smoking's negative health consequences. Participants who read about the ``fake experts'' type of argument were less affected when later reading a passage on climate change that quoted a scientist who referred to ``climate change . . . [as] still hotly debated among scientists.'' Other authors argued that a comprehensive approach will be needed to debunk climate denial. They note that ``climate denial typically masquerades as `pro-science' skepticism and paints the actual science of climate change as being `corrupt' or `post-moderate.' It is possible that those carefully crafted forms of misinformation will require continued human debunking as well as increased media literacy.'' Last, there is a role for the media. ``At present,'' authors point out, ``many representatives of think tanks and corporate front groups appear in the media without revealing their affiliations and conflicts of interest. This practice must be tightened, and rigorous disclosure of all affiliations and interests must take center stage in media reporting.'' Again, once you out the participants and show the scheme, people can figure it out for themselves. Recommended media reforms include a ``counter fake news editor [to] highlight disinformation'' or a ``[r]ating system for disinformation'' or ``a Disinformation Charter.'' Science itself is beginning to examine the growing threat of misinformation in American society, which is appropriate since science is so often the target of weaponized misinformation campaigns. More and more, real science must face up to the fact that a new predator roams its territory and adapt new defenses against this predator. The predators may not want to defeat all science. They probably still wants to use their iPhones and drive cars and live in safe buildings and enjoy products and services that science gives us. But they do seek to defeat whatever science challenges the economic interests that fund them. As I said at the start, the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition is not exactly grocery-store checkout-line reading. Few Americans have read this volume. I am probably the only one in Congress. But its message is important, and that is why I came to the floor to share it today. Campaigns of lies are dangerous things, like an evil virus in the body politic, and if we want to be a healthy country, we will have to defeat the weaponized disinformation virus. Curing our body politic of the ongoing fraud of climate denial would be a very good start. I note the deputy majority leader is here on the floor. I apologize for continuing my speech while he is here. I appreciate his productive role in the happy events that I described at the beginning of these remarks. Before the Senator from Texas takes the floor, I ask unanimous consent that the appendix I referenced be printed in the Record.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. WHITEHOUSE

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here for my customary ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, but before I get into it, given the events of the day, I just want to express my satisfaction with the turn of events in the Judiciary Committee. As the Acting President pro tempore may know, yesterday was a rather bitter day in the Judiciary Committee, with there being a lot of anger and tribal belligerence and a nominee who was full of partisanship and conspiracy theory and invective. It really was not a good day. Yet this is a funny place, and sometimes, right after we have been at our worst, something breaks that turns things in the right direction. Something happened in the Judiciary Committee today, much due to the concerns and the fortitude of Senator Flake, so I want to give him primary credit. I understand the Republican leadership has agreed there will be a weeklong delay in the Kavanaugh vote on the floor and that the FBI will be given a chance to do its job and take a look at the allegations that are out there about his conduct. This is not only a good thing for the Senate--because I think it releases a lot of pent-up pressure and anxiety and hostility--but it is also a really good thing for the process because the worst possible outcome would be that we would push this candidate through, that he would then get on the Supreme Court, and it would be subsequently shown that these allegations would have been, in fact, true and that he would not have been truthful with us about it and would have lied to the Senate. To clear as much of that cloud off of him as possible, I think, is good for us, good for the Court, good for the country--good for all. So, after a grim and battering day yesterday, I think we had a productive day today. I feel I earned my pay in the Senate over in the Judiciary Committee.