March 5, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 39 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S1652-S1654]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLOTURE MOTION

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination 
     of Chad A. Readler, of Ohio, to be United States Circuit 
     Judge for the Sixth Circuit.
         Mitch McConnell, David Perdue, Roy Blunt, John Cornyn, 
           Joni Ernst, Lindsey Graham, John Boozman, Mike Rounds, 
           Thom Tillis, Steve Daines, James E. Risch, John Hoeven, 
           Mike Crapo, Shelley Moore Capito, John Thune, Pat 
           Roberts, Jerry Moran.


[[Page S1653]]


  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
nomination of Chad A. Readler, of Ohio, to be United States Circuit 
Judge for the Sixth Circuit, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) 
and the Senator from Arizona (Ms. Sinema) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 53, nays 45, as follows:

                       [Rollcall Vote No. 36 Ex.]

                                YEAS--53

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Braun
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     McConnell
     McSally
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Romney
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--45

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Harris
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Jones
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Peters
     Reed
     Rosen
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Sanders
     Sinema
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
  The bill clerk read the nomination of Chad A. Readler, of Ohio, to be 
United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.


                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, in California, several counties and 
cities are suing the big oil companies to hold them liable for the 
damages that climate change is causing to the infrastructure out there. 
As judges consider these cases, one thing they will be asked to keep in 
mind is Big Oil's history of deception and lies.
  A group of scientific experts filed this friend-of-the-court brief 
out in the Ninth Circuit, carefully charting that history, that pattern 
of deception and lies. The group of scholars and scientists chronicled 
how the fossil fuel companies had actual knowledge of the risks of 
their products and had taken ``proactive steps to conceal their 
knowledge and discredit climate science'' while at the same time taking 
steps based on that science to protect their own assets from the 
impacts of climate change.
  It is a 51-page document, so let me cut to the chase. Big Oil knew 
for a very long time that the production and burning of fossil fuels 
would be disastrous for the planet. Yet they did everything in their 
power to confuse the public, undermine the scientific evidence of the 
dangers, and prevent action to stave off this worldwide problem. The 
brief makes a fascinating read. Here are some highlights.
  Way back in 1959, when I was a kid and Dwight Eisenhower was 
President, Columbia University held a symposium attended by oil 
industry executives to mark the 100th anniversary of the petroleum 
industry. At that event, the legendary Dr. Edward Teller, a physicist, 
warned the industry about global warming. He said:

       [A] temperature rise corresponding to a 10 percent increase 
     in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and 
     submerge New York. . . . [T]his chemical contamination is 
     more serious than most people tend to believe.

  In 1959. A few years later, in 1965, at the American Petroleum 
Institute's annual meeting, API president Frank Ikard briefed the Big 
Oil trade group on a report from President Johnson's Science Advisory 
Committee that predicted significant global warming by the end of the 
century, caused by fossil fuels, and warned that ``there is still time 
to save the world's peoples from the catastrophic consequence of 
pollution, but time is running out.'' The American Petroleum Institute, 
1965.
  API then commissioned a Stanford Research Institute report on the 
climate problem which was made available to its membership in 1968. The 
report said:

       [R]ising levels of CO2 would likely result in 
     rising global temperatures. . . . [T]he result could be 
     melting ice caps, rising sea levels, warming oceans, and 
     serious environmental damage on a global scale.

  Then, in 1969, Stanford produced a supplemental report for the 
American Petroleum Institute. As the authors of this brief tell the 
Ninth Circuit, ``The report projected that . . . atmospheric 
CO2 concentrations would reach 370 [parts per million] by 
2000--exactly what it turned out to be.'' That was 1968 and 1969, very 
clear warnings that have come to pass.
  Big Oil did not just rely on the American Petroleum Institute to do 
its research on climate change. Ed Garvey was an Exxon scientist at the 
time. Mr. Garvey said:

       By the late 1970s, global warming was no longer 
     speculative.

  Did you get that? ``By the late 1970s, global warming was no longer 
speculative,'' said the Exxon scientist.
  The issue was not were we going to have a problem, the issue was 
simply how soon and how fast and how bad was it going to be. Not if.
  Indeed, Exxon did a lot of climate research, and they understood the 
science well. A 1979 internal Exxon study found that:

       [The] increase [in CO2 concentration] is due to 
     fossil fuel combustion . . . and the present trend of fossil 
     fuel consumption will cause dramatic environmental effects 
     before the year 2050.

  Meanwhile--back to the American Petroleum Institute--they had put 
together a task force on what they called the CO2 problem. 
In 1980, Dr. John Laurman told this API task force that ``foreseeable 
temperature increases could have major economic consequences [and] 
globally catastrophic effects.'' The American Petroleum Institute, 
1980.
  Back at Exxon, Roger Cohen, the director of Exxon's Theoretical and 
Mathematical Sciences Laboratory, warned in 1981--the next year--about 
the magnitude of this problem.

       [I]t is distinctly possible that [Exxon's planning] 
     scenario will later produce effects which will indeed be 
     catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the 
     earth's population).

  In 1982, Roger Cohen reiterated his warning:

       Over the past several years a clear scientific consensus 
     has emerged regarding--

  This is 1982--

     the expected climatic effects of increased atmospheric 
     CO2.

  He continues:

       [There is] unanimous agreement in the scientific community 
     that a temperature increase of this magnitude would bring 
     about significant changes in the earth's climate.

  Unanimous agreement in the scientific community.
  In 1982, Exxon's own scientist said this, but almost four decades 
later, the Trump administration pretends that we just don't know. Well, 
we do know.
  Back to the brief. In 1982, an internal Exxon corporate primer said 
that, in order to mitigate the effects of global warming, ``[there is a 
need for] major reductions in fossil fuel combustion. . . . [T]here are 
some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered. . . . 
[O]nce the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible.''
  So on into the late seventies and the early eighties, they knew.
  This is from a 1998 report by Shell Oil's Greenhouse Effect Working 
Group:

       Man-made carbon dioxide, released into and accumulated in 
     the atmosphere, is believed to warm the earth through the so-
     called greenhouse effect. . . . [B]y the time the global 
     warming becomes detectible it could be too late to take 
     effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to 
     stabilise the situation.

  So, long story short, Big Oil knew, API knew, Exxon knew, Shell knew. 
They knew, but Big Oil also realized that understanding climate change 
meant limiting carbon emissions, and that meant less oil sales. So they

[[Page S1654]]

began to tell something very different than what they knew to the 
public.
  A 1998 Exxon internal memo acknowledged that the ``greenhouse effect 
may be one of the most significant environmental issues for the 
1990s,'' but Exxon's position would be to try to ``[e]mphasize the 
uncertainty in scientific conclusions regarding the potential enhanced 
Greenhouse effect,'' and that became the drumbeat of the industry: 
minimize the danger--the one they knew--that the greenhouse effect may 
be one of the most significant environmental issues for the 1990s but, 
instead, undermine the science.
  So the industry set up front groups with innocuous-sounding names 
like the Global Climate Coalition or the Information Council on the 
Environment to do this PR work for it. The scientific brief notes this 
bit of industry propaganda from 1996 from the so-called Global Climate 
Coalition: ``If there is an anthropogenic component to this observed 
warming, the GCC believes that it must be very small.''
  Well, here is what an earlier draft of the same document said: 
``[The] scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential 
impacts of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 
on climate is well established and cannot be denied.''
  They just weren't telling the truth. They knew, and they said things 
they knew were not true.
  Money poured from the oil industry into these denialist groups. In 
1991, the so-called Information Council on the Environment launched a 
nationwide campaign with one goal, to ``reposition global warming as 
theory (not fact).'' This thing they said was well established and 
cannot be denied, they decided to reposition as theory, not fact.
  The polluters kept this up all the way through the 1990s. A 1998 
American Petroleum Institute strategy memo tells what they wanted 
people to believe, even though they knew it wasn't true. They said: 
``[It is] not known for sure whether (a) climate change is actually 
occurring, or (b) if it is, whether humans really have any influence on 
it.''
  Again, well established, cannot be denied on the one hand and not 
sure whether it is occurring or whether humans have anything to do with 
it on the other hand.
  Here is Martin Hoffert, who was an Exxon scientist for 20 years. He 
said:

       Even though we--

  ``We,'' meaning the Exxon scientists.

       Even though we were writing all these papers . . . [saying] 
     that climate change from CO2 emissions was going 
     to change the climate of the earth . . . the front office--

  The front office said otherwise.

     . . . the front office which was concerned with promoting the 
     products of the company was also supporting people that we 
     call climate change deniers.

  So even as they spun this massive fraud out to the public, Big Oil 
internally took the evidence of climate change seriously. They took the 
evidence of climate change seriously enough to factor it into their own 
planet. So while they were telling the public ``This isn't for real, 
and we don't have anything to do it with, and the science isn't 
secure,'' they were doing their own planning based on that very 
science.
  For instance, in designing and building the Sable gas field project 
off the shores of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Mobil, Shell, and Imperial Oil 
explicitly told their own engineers about sea level rise. They said 
that ``[a]n estimated rise . . . due to global warming, of 0.5 meters 
may be assumed.''
  Big Oil protected its own assets against predicted sea level rise 
based on this science, while, at the same time, funding a massive 
campaign of deception to fool the public and policymakers about this 
science. They protected themselves, and they connived to prevent the 
public from taking steps to protect itself.
  There are some unsung heroes in this climate battle. Among them 
number the dedicated and assiduous group of scholars and scientists who 
track this climate denial apparatus that this industry built. Many of 
them are the authors of this brief, such as Robert Brule, Justin 
Farrell, Benjamin Franta, Stephan Lewandowsky, Naomi Oreskes, and 
Geoffrey Supran. They are just a few. There are many, many others who 
are watching, examining, reporting, and subject to a peer review 
chronicling the climate denial apparatus set up by the oil industry to 
fool the public. They patiently and thoroughly assembled in their brief 
a record of industry malfeasance, and they are helping to make sure 
that the long history of industry deception is part of the court's 
official record.
  I thank them for their work.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. McSally). The majority leader.


                           Order of Business

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that all 
postcloture time on the Readler nomination expire at 4 p.m. on 
Wednesday, March 6; further, that if confirmed, the motion to 
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President 
be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________