Nomination Of Martha N. Johnson To Be Administrator, General Services Administration

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, there has been significant attention given to efforts by the United Nations to establish a global climate change agreement. The effort has been based, in large part, on information contained in reports prepared by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Supporters repeatedly cite figures and conclusions in the U.N. reports to justify a complete overhaul of the world economy. Supporters have been steadfast in claiming the report is conclusive, in claiming the scientific data is solid, and in claiming the integrity of the findings are above reproach. Any mistakes identified and pointed out are minimized and ignored.

They have been singing this song for years. The U.N.'s top climate official is Dr. R.K. Pachauri, and the chorus of defenders of the U.N. reports have grown louder in recent months as the house of cards they have built is falling apart.

There have been disclosures of e-mails that show scientists manipulated the sciences; there have been nonscientific materials utilized to reach scientific conclusions; there has been scientific conclusions that are not properly peer reviewed. Each week, the list of errors grows. The excuses from Dr. Pachauri, the man in charge of the U.N. climate change reports, well, they have been wearing thin.

I come to the floor as a Senator who serves on both the Energy Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee. I come to the floor to tell you and our Nation the United Nations' scientists are manipulating data to further political goals--political goals of passing a climate change accord that will cost the world billions.

This is not my accusation. The person making the charge is the person who verified the false conclusion.

It is better to hear it in the person's own words:

His name is Dr. Murari Lal. Dr. Lal is a retired Indian academic, now a consultant. He was one of the four lead authors of the Asia chapter of the U.N. report.

He is also behind the bogus claim in United Nations climate change reports that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035.

He admitted that this scientific ``fact'' as climate change supporters like to state, was included in the report ``purely to put political pressure on world leaders.''

Let me repeat--he said this so called ``fact'' was included in the United Nations report ``purely to put political pressure on world leaders.''

According to Dr. Lal, ``It related to several countries in this region and their water sources.''

``We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.''

The so called ``fact'' in the report is just not true.

On January 21, the Economist stated that when informed about the error the United Nations ``did nothing'' and the claims were ``airily dismissed by Rajendra Pachauri.''

The Times of the U.K. reports a second factually inaccurate conclusion. It reports that the United Nations wrongly linked global warming to natural disasters.

In an article written by Jonathan Leake, he stated that: The United Nations climate panel faces new controversy for wrongly linking global warming to an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

The original link between climate change and natural disasters was based on an unpublished report. According to the Times the report ``had not been subjected to routine scientific scrutiny''--and ignored warnings from scientific advisers that the evidence supporting the link was ``too weak.''

Despite the warnings once again, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change included the fiction in its report.

Today the claim by the U.N. that global warming is already affecting the severity and frequency of natural disasters is a large part of the political debate across this country.

How many politicians made the claim that Hurricane Katrina was the result of climate change? Well now they know the inconvenient truth.

According to the Times of the U.K., the actual authors of the claim on natural disasters withdrew the claim--but the United Nations did not.

Every day new scandals emerge about the so called ``facts'' in the U.N. reports.

Claims that ice is disappearing from the world's mountain tops were apparently based on a student dissertation and an article in a mountaineering magazine.

It was revealed that green activists with little scientific experience were the source for unsubstantiated claims that global warming might wipe out 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest.

These revelations are in addition to the released e-mails by the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University. These are the e-mails that first raised serious questions about the conduct of U.N. and even U.S. scientists.

These e-mails demonstrate a coordinated effort by trusted climate scientists to suppress dissenting views and manipulate data and methods to skew the U.N. reports to reach a politically correct view of the impact of climate change.

Scientists at the Climatic Research Unit said that they ``admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.''

The lack of any raw data prevents other scientists from checking their work and raises additional questions about the accuracy of the data used in the U.N. reports.

The actions by scientists and others to suppress data that contradicts their conclusions is misleading, unethical and unacceptable.

Their conduct needs to be investigated.

Senator Inhofe and I have written U.N. Secretary Moon to have the U.N. conduct an independent investigation into the original climate gate revelations.

That request has not been acted upon.

Revelations of ongoing scientific fraud at the United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change is disturbing.

Concrete action by world leaders is needed.

The integrity of the data and the integrity of the science has been compromised.

Today, I call for government delegations of the U.N.'s general assembly and U.N. Secretary Moon to pressure Dr. Rajendra Pachauri to step down as head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It is time to conduct an independent investigation into the conduct of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Dr. Pachauri should be removed from any involvement with the investigation.

Recent reports over the weekend raise questions about whether or not Dr. Pachauri knew of the false information in the U.N. report months prior to the disclosure.

These claims, first reported in the Times of the U.K., stated that:

Pachauri was told that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment that glaciers would disappear by 2035 was wrong, but he waited two months to correct it.

If proved true, this would mean that Pachauri failed to alert the world to this mistake before the December Copenhagen conference.

Investor's Business Daily in an editorial stated:

If we're serious about restoring science to its rightful place, the head of the UN's panel on climate change should step down. Evidence shows he quarterbacked a deliberate and premeditated fraud.

Walter Russell Read, project director for Religion and Foreign Policy at the Pew Forum was quoted in Investor's Business Daily Tuesday February 2 as saying:

After years in which global warming activists had lectured everyone about the overwhelming nature of the scientific evidence, it turned out that the most prestigious agencies in the global warming movement were breaking laws, hiding data and making inflated, bogus claims resting on, in some cases, no scientific basis at all.

President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and U.N. Ambassador Rice need to apply all the necessary pressure to ensure that Dr. Pachauri is removed.

I also call on President Obama to direct his cabinet to stop supporting any policies that relied in whole and in part on the fraudulent United Nations reports.

It is time to have the scientific data behind such policies independently verified.

Administration policies relating to climate change will cost millions of Americans their jobs.

We need to get this right.

To continue to rely on these corrupted U.N. reports is an endorsement of fraudulent behavior.

It is a signal to the American people that ideology is more important than their jobs.

I yield the floor.

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