Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
by Don Fuqua of Florida, James Scheuer of New York, Harold Volkmer of
Missouri, George Brown of California, and Al Gore of Tennessee, Demo-
crats focused on three main problems with Reagan's plan to restructure the
Department of Energy and cut the agency's funding. First, they sought to
demonstrate that dismantling the DOE would not save taxpayers money,
as the administration claimed. By the Democrats' accounting, destroying
the agency would actually cost the government money in the long run.
Second, they went to great lengths to show how a breakup of the DOE
would leave the government utterly unable to oversee, regulate, conduct
research on, or even effectively monitor the production and consumption
of energy in the United States. Finally, Gore, Brown, and Scheuer took the
lead in emphasizing the potential environmental, economic, and national
defense consequences of dismantling the DOE's research and development
budget. It was in this context that Gore and his colleagues reintroduced
the issue of CO
2
-induced global warming.
A year earlier, in April of 1980 (when CO
2
had been just under 341 ppm),
Brown, Scheuer, and Tsongas had held hearings before the House Com-
mittee on Energy and Natural Resources about CO
2
buildup in the atmo-
sphere.
36
The hearings—which included NRDC cofounder and former
CEQ chair James Gustave Speth, biologist George M. Woodwell of the
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Wally Broecker of the Lamont Observa-
tory, NCAR's William Kellogg (from the supersonic transport debate and
SCEP and SMIC reports), and former CEQ member Gordon MacDonald,
then of the Mitre Corporation— provided a sneak peek into the climatic
conclusions of the forthcoming
Global 2000 Report
. Politically, Brown,
Scheuer, and Tsongas hoped to use CO
2
-induced warming as an example
of the long-term environmental consequences of a Carter energy policy
then tilting away from conservation and renewables and toward coal and
synthetic fuels.
37
But for the most part, the hearings were soft on politics
and proceeded amicably, the only tension a product of an ongoing scientific
controversy between Woodwell and Broecker.
When Gore and Scheuer convened hearings on CO
2
and climate before
the House Committee on Science and Technology in 1981, however, the
tone of the discussion took what one scientist later described as an “ugly
turn.”
38
The hearings began benignly enough, with relatively uncontrover-
sial testimony from Roger Revelle, Joseph Smagorinsky, Stephen Schnei-
der, and Lester Lave, each of whom described the potential dangers of
