Political Quotes

“Mr. President, it is my great honor and pleasure to be joined on the floor today by my senior Senator from Rhode Island, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed. We are here today on the Senate floor to speak about the perils that climate change poses to America's national security. I am going to frame my remarks around a fact and a proposition. The fact, as reported in the 2017 climate science report, is that the oceans of the world are absorbing more than 9 zettajoules of heat energy each year. The proposition is one that I think most of us agree with--that America is and remains the world's indispensable Nation, exceptional and exemplary. Let's unpack that fact a little bit. More than 9 zettajoules of heat energy go into the ocean every year. First, what is a zettajoule? A zettajoule is sextillion joules, or 10 to the 21st power joules. That is a lot of zeros. More practically, 9 zettajoules is around a dozen times humankind's total annual energy consumption. More kinetically speaking, the added heat in our oceans is equivalent to four Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs exploding in the oceans every second--every second. So every minute, 240 Hiroshima blasts in the ocean--in the time of my remarks, probably 3,000 Hiroshima explosions-- with the oceans capturing all of that heat energy. Let's go back to the proposition that America is the world's indispensable and exemplary Nation.…”