governor and lieutenant governor of nevada. >> host: what year was that? >> guest: 1970. he was such a friend. he appointed me the chairman of the gaming commission even though i lost a senate race that i should have won. but he always took care of me. i lost that race by 520 votes. it was -- and then without belaboring the point, he was such a religious man. he was a devout catholic. he went to church every day and he didn't wear his religion on his sleeve at all, but he lived the religion of being just an honest man. ..

>> release a great career. we were the only two freshmen elected from that state legislature and we ran but we should not have we were running against the nine incumbents. and there reapportionment had not been completed so 18 in the primary and nine in the general but we were kids.

we had no money, nothing except a lot of energy and i guess my mother pushing me all the time saying you are as good as any of the rest so we were elected and we had a wonderful time than the nevada state legislature called us the gold dust twins richard had more hair and my hair was more golden. i tell you, we have had good times together but difficult times. richard and i we just had a lot of fun. >>host: and richard bryan of course, his living back in nevada i assume you see him from time to time? >> yes. he is leading a good life. >>host: i've of love to talk to you about more of your professional life from the

time you left searchlight to the time that you came to the senate but i do want to talk about the time that we have i am afraid we will run out of time, i want to move if i can to life in the senate the circumstances we face today that challenges that the said it faces as it attempts to govern first and provide party leadership in the caucus and congress and country it is a multifaceted job made harder than ever before by circumstances that did not exist for the five or 30 years ago. but tell us what it is to be today and the challenges you face howl challenging or rewarding it this? >> you were the democratic leader for 10 years? right? >> correct. >>host: i have been the

leader four years. a big difference but it is a job with great satisfaction from a great rewards because you can look on a stage work on a personal basis with a lot of people but there are real challenges the procedures in the senate are arcade it will not change so you have to be patient. but it has been a difficult time during the bush years you spent part of your time and i have spent part of my time i have done half and you have done half. high and a student of history. our country will take all long time to live down the last eight years but that is what i face because when i first came to congress republicans in the

senate had a lot of moderates you could work on a bipartisan basis to get things done but any more there are no moderates we have one left, olympia snowe that is all there is out of 49 republicans we have no moderates. we have a couple that we do not need them with this and that has made it very difficult and people look at this at is a partisan congress. when you set out to maintain the status quo as obviously republicans have done to maintain what bush has tried to do, it is easy to do that so it has been a difficult time in the history of our country to get things done. >>host: of all the challenges you face could you cite the hardest part of the job today? >> the hardest part of the job

came to my mind the day i learned i would be the new democratic leader president bush was just reelected he said he had a mandate. what was the number thing? privatize social security with all of the problems in america that was his number one goal that was so difficult to turnaround it was the right thing to do so the most difficult thing i have found is trying to work on a bipartisan basis to accomplish things. you can i do think is on a bipartisan basis if you have a president who does not want to and eight republicans and senate who goes along with anything he once and that has been extremely difficult to do provide try in this little c-span interview to be partisan but the american people deserve to know how

difficult it has been these past years with the bush administration. ronald reagan is a pleasure to work with. i was not a leader but we watched, here is a man who had set ideas but when the country was in trouble they turned to tip o'neill and they say this will securities for 25 years but we don't have that same thing now. >>host: you have been characteristically candid but uncharacteristically blunt as you talk about george bush, president bush. you use the word liar a couple of times. what was the context? is that the indication of strength of feeling you have of george bush as president of the united states? >>guest: i try not to use a lot of bad words, but when people don't tell the

truth, what is the right word to say? on two separate locations he did not tell the truth to not only be but the people of our country one dealt with yet the mountain a controversial issue he simply misled the people to get elected and in a matter of couple months turnaround i said you lied to us and a member to you remember how the nuclear option got started i talked to him at the breakfast with the white house mr. president this is an issue that we need to get resolved you should help us get this resolved it will change our country fervor if you make the senate like the house of representatives he said i will not get involved but in three days he has cheney to give a speech he did not tell the

truth. i found this administration to me i have been very clear. there were 50 some on presidential scholars -- scholars gathered to list the top five presidents and they wavered back and forth between both roosevelt, lincoln, washington , who are the worst? the worst named every one of them so it is not just me so that is why i am concerned about this election and coming up i have fixed ideas of john mccain and i have my own ideas about him. >>host: talking about the nuclear option it describes the circumstances of the nuclear option. just so the viewers can better

idea what is the option and what is the likelihood we have to face nuclear option and questions again? >> what the republicans came up with was a way to change our country forever. they made a decision if they did not get every judge they wanted we would have a unicameral legislature where a simple majority would determine whatever happens in the house of representatives today, nancy pelosi is the leader would ever they wanted they get done the rules allow that. the senate was set up to be different that is the genius, the vision of the founding fathers that the bicameral legislature which was unique had two different duties one is to pour the coffee into the saucer and a lead it cool off. that is why you have the ability to filibuster and terminate a filibuster they

wanted to get rid of that and that is what that was about. >>host: is there any likelihood we will face circumstances like that again? >>guest: as long as i am the leader, the answer is no. we should forget that it is a black chapter in the history of the senate i hope we never ever get to that again because i do believe it will ruin our country price said in all of my years of government but was the most important thing i ever worked on. >>host: i give you great credit for the way you handled it and the extraordinary it repercussions your characterization is exactly right to cut their change the character of the son of a river. i had the opportunity to work with senator dole, senator lott and senator frist you have now also worked with senator mcconnell. describe your relationship to a one i have had the good fortune to work with you, i

have worked with mitchell, bird -- senator burr and also the three that you mentioned and i think we would agree george mitchell was just nav of his own who could better extemporaneous speech? i don't know he did such a great job and he speaks for himself but i did not have a lot of dealings with leader dole but he was always good to me. but trent lott i have a lot of dealings with him. you gave me complete freedom on the floor so i made a lot of compromises with senator lott that i would take to you for approval i found him to be a joy to work with. a card carrying conservative

and pragmatic and wanted to get things done. now i am working with senator mcconnell, senator frist i talk about and in some detail in my book. the doctor is a wonderful man but did not have the experience to be the leader. the first time in history that president bush said you will be the leader it never happened before and he was not ready frankly all of those before were experienced legislators a great family and wonderful human being by told you about his shortcomings. working with mitch mcconnell now he is a very nice man but i think the book is still out on him i am anxious for the new congress to come to see if we can accomplish more. bush is gone not taking directions from him i hope the next two years will be better than the next two and that is

enough to say. >>host: what is the prospects of the election as we look to the future? conventional wisdom is we will pick up seats. >>guest: we will pick up at least three or four i do not know how many. we are competitive and 11 seats so we could get lucky but for me, the reason it is so important because i know barack obama, i have served with the man i know his intellect, intelligence, abili ty to make good decisions. when he was a brand-new senator we would do the most sweeping ethics of lobby reform this young man i said he will be a person and that will do this and he did it well. john mccain i have been with 26 years he does not have the temperament to be president. he is wrong on the war, the economy, and votes with bush

95% of the time. >>host: we are out of time i cannot believe that you close your book on page 288 by this very simple and dain to a wonderful story. my outlook on life my fate this summarize by and inscription in a german at cellar that says i believe in the sun even though it is not shining probably been of even when not feeling it probably been god even when he is silent. fed could fight. thank you harry reid for sharing that could fight story with us today and let's continue to believe

>> the first named hurricane of this season has been named but hurt her 10 bill is still not a threat to land congress recently held a hearing looking a hurricane preparedness and economic effect of the storm is part of this is two hours

[inaudible conversations] >> good morning welcome to the commerce committee and on this panel we are joined by a distinguished group of experts, the assistant administrator for oceanic and atmospheric research dr. richard spinrad leaves the office at the national oceanic and atmospheric administration and dr. richard spinrad will discuss the efforts to improve research were predicting and forecasting hurricanes and the agency's work with coastal states to assess vulnerability to hurricanes and to try to create something that we all desire which is a disaster resistant community.

and dr. kelvin droegemeier the associate vice president for research and reset -- regents professor for meteorology at the university of oklahoma. dr. kelvin droegemeier is testifying today on behalf of the international science board task force on hurricane the science and engineering and he will discuss the task force findings in their report from a hurricane warning that critical need for a national hurricane research initiative and dr. gordon wells a research associate in the center for space research at the university of texas at austin. he has welt -- worked on synthesizing energy and a gps

signals and the best hurricane and distort -- storm's surge models with evacuation and he will address the current status science and the data needs and stakeholders as well as future needs to improve research to predict and forecasting hurricanes. and ms. leslie chapman-henderson is the president and ceo of the federal alliance for save homes and national nonprofit dedicated to strengthening homes and safeguarding family is from disaster. heard testimony will address how building codes can improve the resiliency of structures and reduce the economic cost of post store recovery efforts and a lot of her experience comes from the experience that

florida suffered after the me negative hurricane of hurricane andrew in 1992. and mr. franklin nutter is the presidents of this stage president of reinsurance association and serves on the board of the international hurricane research center from the meter logical society and the board of the university's center for atmospheric research he well address the economic impacts of planning, damage coming recovery on global community is. that is why we think you all and dr. droegemeier i want to especially thank you know, that you left your vacation early to come back to testify today. thank you for a much.

i could say all of the obvious things about the destructive force of hurricanes and the fact that we have this extraordinarily vulnerable coast line that most of the population of america is along the coast certainly that is the case with regard to my state of florida. and we can see that this is an enormous cost not only to insurance companies but to people and the state's but also to the united states government and therefore the people of this country. it is also deadly. 2,000 deaths in the united states since 2003 account for

approximately 66% of the insured losses due to an account for 66% of the insured losses due to natural hazards. the hurricanes and other tropical cyclones and you think about it, it was the hurricane of 1920 a that killed, drowned coming to thousand people around lake okeechobee and what a turning point* in our history that was and we are experiencing a similar kind of thing with regard to the number of deaths since 2003. images like that hurricane charley was a category three, it covered virtually the entire state of florida and by the way that was the first of four and 2004 and

within six weeks for hurricanes hit florida which virtually hit every part of the state within the six week period. of course, that is a typical kind of destruction. i will insert the rest of the introductory comments and i will call on senator better ranking member of our subcommittee. >> thank you very much mr. chairman i want to think all of our witnesses i am very much looking forward to the testimony i am here for the obvious reason a natural interest in these phenomenon representing louisiana. the best known example of a hurricane to hit louisiana recently is katrina which caused enormous devastation with the death of 1800 people still like florida and

louisiana has experienced multiple hurricanes in the last few years alone right after katrina we had hurricane rita which was very, very serious, that particularly hits louisiana and southeast texas and hurricane gustav and a hurricane hike since then i will not go through the devastation but particularly in places like the gulf coast but also other co-star reformable as well i think there is a clear need for increased research and many areas like understanding and predicting hurricanes and reducing the uncertainty associated with where and when hurricanes make landfall understanding interaction predicting the storm surge rainfall and improved

observation. also and the broad category i think we need to understand even better the interaction of hurricanes with engineers structure the economic and social impact of hurricane and mitigation members, measures with the natural ecosystems. the third category is in response measures and we have a lot of additional work to do assessing and improving the resilience of the improved and fire met with disaster response and recovery and certainly i am working hard with many members regarding a much more streamlined bureaucracy of fema the evacuation planning and that is absolutely critical particularly to mitigate any impact on and the humans and the possibility of human death so i look forward to all of

your comments in these and other areas and look forward to continuing on the track of significant and aggressive research and all of these areas use the resources that across the federal government. >> so with my colleague and co-sponsor. >> i thank you called the march 10 the. >> not all. >> we are so glad to have this hearing on something that is so important to the gulf states but really to the whole country my time in the senate i have been focused on this problem and working with my close friend and colleague as well as others to look for ways that we can get more

expertise, more research and get some of the brightest and best in the science and government and the private sector to better understand hurricanes from the science board through 2007 hurricanes cost 180 billion in losses according 14 billion and earthquakes pay act israel the date -- not nashville a targeted program like the hurricane program the storm cell killed over 2,000 people the majority of the population lives near the coast of this critical we began to have more coordinated and targeted strategy to do with the hurricanes no doubt in my mind in a state like florida this is very much connected to the future of our state as we look at the economic damage that can occur but the problem with insurance that i know we will be addressing today that as a

neighbor to central america and the caribbean basin and so much damage and devastation has occurred in the region the last several years and it does seasonally because it is prone to these events. the kinds of research we can do not only be of great benefit to our country and as we do more mitigation of millions of dollars and after a storm crossed also of some real help to our neighbors who have a lot less wherewithal to do with these problems themselves i look forward to your testimony. >> gracias. [laughter] >> touche. >> as we discussed we will not read the statements that people just read, i want to have a conversation, a dialogue and i want you to bring it out.

i ask a couple of questions we will not have a time limit and i will throw it to you to senator bitter and senator martinez. dr. droegemeier, tellme, from 1987 from 2,006 hurricanes caused 187 billion in insured losses were as earthquakes cause 19 billion in losses yet hurricanes receive substantially less money in research funding and earthquakes kid you share with us why this might be? >> in fact, let me thank you for holding this hearing for your tremendous support to recognize the importance you nicely have laid out the challenges we face the societal impact the tremendous

loss of life so i thank you for that but two our question, that is one of the things that motivated the national science board why we don't have a concerted focused effort on hurricanes? not in the fact to compete with the earthquake community but we look at them as a role model to say they have done a great job to mobilize assets coming capitalize on the talent and we said hurricanes are very devastating huge losses so why do we not have the? we set upon a course to put together a thoughtful planned a focus plan or balanced approach for addressing their hurricane problem which has been the case for a long time and appropriately so. at the hurricane is say whether driven a social science ever structure policy problem in many dimensions from putting sensors in the field to collect data and take

those into predictive models and predicting when hurricanes will inform the intensity and uncertainty estimates and looking at evacuating mobilizing people 483 disaster preparation so it is a problem that is unique and it is different than the earthquake problem because of its fatality of what it encompasses two sensors to human response behavior. the science board recognize that fact so we put together this plan for a national initiative. it would look to the earthquake -- earthquake community as a role model but take in the context of hurricanes to say what research do we need? what is the key challenges and what are the priorities and what needs to come first? one thing you may be interested in knowing that has some similarity, how

predictable or hurricanes? fundamentally how predictable? the reason that is important because of freer 90% of the way to predicting hurricanes which i don't think we are the last 10% is an enormous costs but if we know we're quite a distance and we have progress to be made then we ought to be investing and it is clear we are not near the limit of predictability but the is an important question that vexes the community and we address that to look at putting on track bayberry sustained, focused several hurricanes not just as a weather problem with social and behavioral sciences, engineering, wind engineering, a complete the and a integrated way these folks talk and communicate and looking at predicting the

hurricane as a complete total problem for society not just as a weather problem. >> all of your written statements will be entered into the record so we have that basis of information. franklin nutter? mekhi 12 had to what dr. droegemeier said the insurance studies of worldwide if i could to provide for the record a chart showing exactly what has been mentioned which is a relatively steady geophysical the events like earthquakes and a dramatic rise which are realize you cannot see from that distance and climatological events. it seems to me what should drive the agenda is the population and values times have increased an extraordinary about in the hurricane prone area if we were not providing enough money in the past we have

every reason to do so now as the population has shifted into areas of greater risk and there is data to support the ensured values were they have risen to be. >> your chart will be entered into the record. >> senator martinez? >> . >> maybe i should have you give us a quick opening then we will give you some questions for you to get your thoughts or ideas then we will come back? >> you might discuss whether not you think we're making progress on reducing hurricane impact. >> mr. chairman alan light to follow up on a particular aspect of what dr. droegemeier alluded to that the hurricane

forecaster prediction capability is a comprehensive set of solutions with fined noaa which includes the national weather service we have responsibilities with improved capability on the front end especially on the prediction and forecast to provide warnings and information that emergency managers, local managers can use. we do that extraordinary capabilities i found it fascinating the image the you shall of hurricane charley shows the culmination of capabilities with satellite support, enhanced models and observations come in terms of our abilities to work with other organizations and of course, the research to provide the improve forecast we have made dramatic improvements over the last several decades where will it

to make landfall? not as dramatic in the intensity forecast and a consequent is the emergency managers will, through a precautionary approach take a forecast with respect to intensity and make assumptions about increased intensity because too often many of these hurricanes rapidly intensify as they make landfall i have a personal experience of flying through hurricane hike last year as a pass from cuba to the short and intensified over a very short period of time into a category two hurricane wind is a do that? we have recognized that in order to do our part in the comprehensive forecast and response capabilities that dr. droegemeier of the two we have to enhance research investments specifically to the improved the intensity

forecast and most notably for the rapid the intensifying storms. as a result with an emergency appropriation of supplemental appropriation we could dramatically increase the investment on the productive capabilities this year with our budget we have increased our risk so we can develop high-resolution models, work with our partners which is a fundamental aspect of the research initiative that you have put forward so we work closely with the national science foundation and the u.s. navy and nasa, and closely with the minerals management service and the department of homeland security to develop new techniques to enhance the forecasted about one month next year we will deploy high altitude a blow -- balloons, lots of them in the spawning area to see if the information that we get to

before the hurricane develops even as they are a tropical depressions can that help us to improve forecast especially for the intensity? that coupled with increased investments especially in agreement with the national science foundation and social sciences have as one interpret it? we may have the best forecast ever we will use hurricane katrina as one of the best it is one of the best provided but we know the devastation why do people respond the way they do? how can we help people manage and uncertainty and improved products and services? his physical science and the social science associated with the interpretation and that is the noaa responsibility embedded in the comprehensive enterprise. >> i would say that it seems

like when the forecast get into the hands you then and up with a forecast that does not meet the expectations so we got ready for a big storm and there was nothing than another warning and a big nothing so as the story of the third one you are not prepared because we ride them out and it was going to be a number four and then it was a number two and people develop a sense particularly like and florida it is no big deal. with the enhancement part i remember laying with senator bill sen the damage was mild but as we came across the everglades and to fort lauderdale that intensified after evade and fall as it went over the everglades.

it was remarkable. >> hurricane will the hit the on urbanized part of the state where the counterclockwise wind hit the coast it was down at the 10,000 islands where there is no civilization bare except a man growth. but that is right, it kept up speed by the time i came to miami and fort lauderdale had real damage. >> willow was a record setter with that intensification which is exactly why we have emphasized to focus on the wrapper of the expanding storms three also need to work hard to make sure the public understands. for example, for the two and a three day forecast they are no as good as the one day

forecast to say decades ago and we have seen people have enhance confidence in the 24 alert contest but i just want to interpret the forecast a social with the forecast and dawes all the members of the committee and tuesday and we include a code of uncertainty it is not good enough to put that out we need to develop the tools so people understand how to interpret the of. >> dr. wells the works for mecca would read is very important to trouble of a buy to say with our taxes experience we dealt with two hurricanes with hurricane rita and hurricane ike in which the crack was not a forecast until the last 24 hours or 36 hours before landfall and let me give you a concrete example of the impact that has.

be a agreed this the necessary to evacuate homebound citizens or nursing homes that have disabilities that live in the area affected by storm surge and we can do this in a couple of different scenarios. we can wait until the last of the winds reached the coast and at that time we have reasonably good track prediction but if we do that if we have the over evacuation that we do with hurricane rita they could be trapped in traffic we could have flooding which also could have caused them to be trapped or there will have a long and tiring evacuation, or we can do as they do in texas they can take that period 48 hours before landfall.

now when we leave them behind in the cases of these storms with word tract conditions we replace them with these fragile citizens that if we had as good of a forecast that we now have 24 hours out of we have that 72 hours we would have a solution but right now there is no good solution. >> it is amazing how much better than attracting and has been or how it has progressed but interestingly you use dr. spinrad the example of charlie. i flew above charlie in your noaa g4 and that was down when it was still self of cuba in the caribbean. by the time it got to the peninsula of florida it was

headed straight for tampa bay and all of a sudden all of our predictions we had no idea. it suddenly came been with a left hook and it turned sharply to the right and it went right across the harbor heading straight on and people have evacuated from tampa bay and had come to the holiday and here and they were ground zero than it kept up the spine of the state the rupaul county, orlando and came out just north of the kennedy space center. all of our predictions and by the way because of your g4 refigure you have a 15% better accuracy. is that correct? wreck the accuracy over the last decade is higher

attributable in part to the g4 but also largely achievable to other observational techniques and probably mostly because of the improvement in the model. >> what will you do with this g4 is down for maintenance or an accident? >> first and foremost relying on our strong relationship with the year force they have agreed to supply the gap filler capability. >> it cannot guess i. >> it cannot we have worked with the department of homeland security with flight altitude shows we can have similar observations from those raised from zero-- plans we can also increase the drop observations and that is the activity from the g4 we can increase the drop on density.

we have a series of steps i replied doubt the additional capability we're testing this year i am convinced will provide those enhanced observations. >> you are not worried over there with the max altitude of this c-130 or that the three witches in the range of 30,533,000 feet you'll miss that there at the top of a hurricane which is 45,000 down to the 303,000? >> that is why we're trying techniques using the balloons why some modeling capabilities should allow us to do extrapolation from the profiles as well but i cannot tell you what the consequences of not having the full set of observations will be absent

from the observations we get from the balloon. >> i'm very interested in the litigation i wondered if that was not a part of somebody being able to share information and? >> i think integration is the key word the notion to have a system where we connect the dots between social, behavioral, forecastin g, all of the difference sciences to protect the communities is music to our ears. building codes help us with a new home, homes rebuilt after katrina, which survey, we let guess something to help with the unfortunate problem we can go home to our family is. bay have lost but we have

pockets of success with florida although i would point* out it had a very big loophole until -- 2007 we have mitigation programs florida, south carolina and mississippi have put programs in place to harden existing pre-code older homes the activities are things like attachments, highway shingles, protecting windows and doors and grudges bless fortunately just as they got the money they're desperate for funding, having to make their case very hard now they find themselves competing with our weatherization so in a 100 partners strong of news real appealing how to get the end result and we need to forecast

and track but in the end if we could get to the point* where the structure is sound that is minimal because we can save the shelter families outside the floods alone can do what they do with places like bermuda they can save the sell they do not have to evacuator go to shelters to be fed or cared for. when we look at things like the new mitigation programs we see we would love to have a national model it has been calculated three /1 south carolina has been getting 23 percent on average savings come a 29% on energy so with the focus on weatherization o 1/2 to stop doing you cannot

loaded against disaster for example, with weatherization you are talking about the activities like attics, windows, doors, walls, those are the same things you look at four wind resistant if we it go to postal foldable communities or replacing the windows but also put in the impact resistant so the dollars four weatherization for those that are remaining potable are not swept away the building code is excellent in terms of creating model code but not fast enough building coats could help to resolve some of the debate that occurs unnecessarily simple things like additional nails and often leave a difference

between a home that is destroyed and one that is not but that is done and researches destroyed and communities are destroyed so our focus is incredibly encouraging to hear the put forth a program that would integrate of cost because the key is information negative sharing or engineering or the state that physically get hit they're doing phenomenal work but they are discovering things like a simple handful of nails and other affordable wales to strengthen homes. but we have to get them into a system lynch research behind that information i think it has succeeded when you talk about the investment is earthquakes research made up of a lot of debate from specific building practices because it is truly what we have to do so we can get the

car we feel the building code will protection and the growth loner. >> the developer from the citizens who does that even though to ask his extraordinary and that is why we've this community. >> i will never forget in the aftermath of hurricane andrew in 1982 in which although the habitat for humanity homes survived when so many of the other seven divisions were blown away. that people would come up to the head of habitat because he had a habitat sticker and say thank you think you and the press would ask him, why did the habitat survive? his answer blends and

experience and they would say what do you mean? we do with volunteers and instead of driving to nails they would drive 10 nails. [laughter] >> i was going to ask you about another type of housing which to rely on which is mobile homes are manufactured homes by now we need to do work to improve the national coach of prefabricated homes and they have had good results but the a tornado last week, but a number of homes were lost and inevitably there were more homes and obviously a the older ones are not survivable a wonder if you can comment on that? is a time when affordability is a big deal and it is an affordable way. >> this is another way for

research penn it is the traditional old agents that you have to evacuate part of the structure itself of the new manufactured home is so much better but we would still ask those folks to evacuate because they not can not tackle that issue really is held up the mobile home as the affordable option but there are others there is modular and other things that can be done that can owe per time but this is another place that is rife with confusion and lack of them permission about what works and what does that when it comes down to which we need to be confident that where we 12 is here to stay and our rule of favorite -- thumb if you did not know which

building code for manufacturing how can you possibly make a decision that could be life or death? with respect to the manufacturer housing we're very decentralize the we do not have that information so until you turn that to the foundation it does not have to be a tornado but it brings consistently death and injury and that is unacceptable. >> along with property loss a huge amount even if people evacuate several of the mitigation part not only about life and limb but property. >> that is right in my longer version of the commentary i have a 22 state analysis of the eight economic impact and it is clear they think i have pulled texas out but we aren't seeing the annual insured

losses are around 1 million it did you put in moderate building because you could imagine in the reduced which is some of the things that are absent from the code today you can reduce that 200 million per year third taken the insured losses from 1 billion down at 200 million it becomes very clear you can remove them over time. that analysis is very compelling and you have done a long way. >> senator vitter? >> specifically what research gathering tools and programs would you put at the top of

less to help them achieve the goals from the hurricane they are worthwhile and helpful but what tools and programs we can put on the top of the list as far as positive impact? >> senator would start to answer by saying we think of the categories of research investment that will continue to improve forecast and modeling and data at assimilation getting the observation into the model so for example, on the observational side characterize saying the nature of the heat content in the notion as the storms come across the ocean improving hour ways of finding the total he did and how much is in the ocean is one observational

technique. also low-level winds we have high level, upper level wins the right around the store but for years we have not been able to make observations of the lowest level and there are indications those could be influential in howell the hurricane was structured so what we did was get a small aircraft and areas we would not want to put it c-130 is orgy force and we have had some success on the modeling side you talk to the not -- modeler -- bringing the size of the model grid down at five kilometers or maybe even one kilometer and that demand much more wars power so we

have spent a lot of resources of late investing in high performance computing and on the data assimilation side this is where we work closely with academic researchers to have improved the capability to absorber the observations including radar from the p3 aircraft and in realtime into the models with a lag of less than one hour or two we can have the observations going into the supercomputer such as the one from texas to the national hurricane center to improve the forecast by events. . .

forecast on the track accuracy just last year by using the supercomputer in texas we were able to bring the track down on one or two storms we were studying significantly. i would say that extending when the forecast of and by itself is directly doable right now. the real or apparent supply aspect of that is extending the

forecast with some accuracy. so, we will make immediate improvements on track. in fact we already saw that last year. we have started to make improvements on intensity. we have the goal in the hurricane improvement project rather high a high bar to reach to improve the track and intensity forecast by 50% over how the ten year period what we call the hurricane forecast project but i am convinced we will reach all of those goals within the tenure period probably on the track we will reach it sooner. >> okay. and then for dr. wells, dissimulation see have run, what do they suggest about the relative effectiveness in terms of protective coastal infrastructure of softer options like wetlands restoration verses harder options like structures

and how those interact and build on each other. >> we happen to be using the same super computer that noah is using for its forecast in the hurricane models. we are using it at a hydro dramatic model called adcerc and that allows us to increase the model space resolution of the great dome to anywhere from 50 to 20 meters if necessary so that you can represent the bulk infrastructure on the surface. what we have done recently, the team that is led by professor went paulson and his assistant, jennifer profit at the university of texas, they have taken hurricane ike, all of the observational data from that especially from the wind fields and have run the stipulations of the land fall as the storm occurred historic plea. and the of taken the concept called the ike dike from texas

a&m galveston, which is ac barrier that would be built along about a 60-mile segment of the texas coast line, of galveston island all the way to the high island on peninsula and they've run both of the simulations with and without the dike. they've also taken ike and created a mighty ike, category iv and run the same simulation say you can see on the part option side of using things like dikes and the storm gate with the consequences might be. there's also the stock options wetlands restoration and restrictions on potential land use and development on the coast line. these are usually seen as categorically the opposites you have to pick one or the other but what we can do with super computer modeling is see what best combination will work for different areas of the coast

line. there may be, nations that would work for one particular way and fall scenario that would fail or create even greater problems for another landfall scenario. wonderful thing about the super computer modeling is that we can -- we can simulate hundreds of storms coming years historical storms, storms that are purely our design and we can test these different protective measures that can be taken in both build infrastructure as well as natural restoration process tease and see what works best. >> also for dr. wells, you mentioned in terms of forecasting storm surge to help with rescue operations that in addition to natural geographic data a full database should contain what you turned social geographic data to help with that in particular. from your experiences with ike in particular, what -- give some

examples of that would be particularly useful, how it would be useful on the social geographic data site. >> yes, senator. i should first say that i and my team work in the state operation center. we work with state elected leadership with the governor with chief of emergency management jack cali. we are constantly interpreting the model forecast and taking a runs from the super computer the texas said fenced computer center and looking at the impact geography. now, what we see in the physical side, the high magnitude impacts are not necessarily the areas where you want the first responders to go. i will give you a concrete example. if we had ground zero being in the east beach galveston island we have an area that is developed with half million-dollar beach houses which were second homes, very

high event condominiums, areas that are not primary dwellings, areas where the residents would have the means to self evacuate that might well be the area you anticipate to have the highest magnitude impact. 6 miles away in the interior of the city of dolph destin you have a number of social factors. you have elderly in neighborhoods who are living in older housing stock. you have single-parent low income wage earners who may not be able to leave the island because of their job requirements. you have people that are again they have a medical special need. you have a number of factors that our social factors and you need to be able to overlay the impact from the physical impact that particular geography with the distribution of these

populations within the community that have special risks. we need to be able to evaluate and compile as a distribution of the population because where the two overlaps, social and physical risk that is the threat geography. that is where we need to be able to do a search of nuclear operations before impact and it is where you want to be able to get into the very earliest moment when you can safely enter the region with your first responders to check those neighborhoods to see those people are safe. >> that is all i have right now mr. chairman. >> mr. nutter, we haven't forgotten you. i want you to comment on how better construction methods and the stronger building codes that mrs. chapman-henderson mentioned can save lives and property and reduce the economic losses and since you were in the

reinsurance business and how does this improved forecasting and modeling also bring down the economic loss? >> there is no question as has been mentioned by several people improved forecasting where people can be out of harm's way is going to save lives that will not necessarily save property damage unless we do something to mitigate these properties. let me cite a statistic. losses from hurricane andrew in '92 as you mentioned cost about $20 billion in today's dollars of insured losses that would have been reduced by 50% for residential property and 40% for commercial property if it destroyed damaged structures had been built in compliance with florida's 2004 building code to ms. chapman-henderson's point that we know how to do this there are ways to do it and it has value we cite another

statistic helms bill to the modern florida building code experienced a 60% reduction in frequency actual losses and 42% reduction of loss severity meaning dollar amount of insurance claims during hurricane charley in 2004. i don't think there is any question that improved research is important but improved research needs to be tied with societal impact of hurricanes not just the physical characteristics of the hurricanes that the interaction both with the built environment as we are saying and the natural environment. dr. wells point about the ability to evaluate natural habitat as buffers as well as built the first is an interesting way to look at this and research focus on that would be immense value to the people who live in these areas. >> i need recall also a huge part of economic loss that we had gotten better at preventing

is an after the hurricane has come through and people have holes in their ruth fema being ready so it can get a plastic in their so people can cover up law whole that you can save an enormous amount of economic damage because if there is a hole in your roof the rain comes after the hurricane is gone and then of course that causes all of the insurance loss inside the home. you want to comment about that and then i want ms. chapman-henderson to comment. >> that is a clear value to the immediate response and preparation for the immediate response. the government has not always been fairly prepared or maybe even fairly criticized for its response to the reality is those who might come to help mitigate those damages in those areas

which include debris removal and communications capabilities so anything that would focus on first responders or prioritize first responding areas would be great value reducing these losses. >> dr. spinrad i am going to test your forecasting ability. [laughter] now, we have had juan demuro, the cool pacific waters, and what needed a week or so ago says that el niño is a riding and el nino is the warming of the pacific waters which tends to lessen the activity in the atlantic hurricane. thus far we have not had any activity in the atlantic on hurricanes. so, of any significance. so tell us what is going to happen in the atlantic. [laughter]

>> first i would point out that my meteorologist friends in the weather service are fine to point out there in charge of marketing, not production. [laughter] with that in light i will add i am an oceanographer, that is a qualified statement. the outlook we provide every here at the start of the hurricane season from which the information you have got comes this year it did take into account what we thought was the emergence of an el nino and of course that was developed several months ago. now we have better information about the emergence of all mean yo so the first place that did include that. the second is the mid season now look will come out on august 6th which would presumably take into account the enhanced observations and more accurate characterization of felmy new. you were absolutely right that the statistical indications from el nino are that in fact

actually increases in the upper level wind and as a result if you will, knocks off one, shears off the developing storms therefore diminishes number and intensity of them so based on the physics one would assume you would see reduced the probability. as you know this year's outlook effectively said 50% probability of 9-14 named storms. on august 6th we will identify how that has changed. i would simply point out that the possibility of named storms does not of and by itself give any indication what the season will look like. i remind you of course hurricane andrew there for the first named storm occurred in late august. the latest named storm that is to say first hurricane occurred august 30 if that was hurricane or ween and historic lee

especially in florida you will see august and september are the most intense months for hurricanes so i think we can simply say that since we have seen an emerging and stronger amine yo this year we therefore can conclude that we are safe and i would also point out that obviously from our standpoint one sevier storm is catastrophic and we are more concerned with nailing the forecast with respect to those individual storms than with the statistical average outlook might be. but i think in some sense you tested my forecast capability we will see on august 6th and outlook that accommodates the consequences of what is now clearly in el nino signal. >> that being the case would it be reasonable to expect that the lead hurricane season of which you pointed out, andrew, was

late august, that because of amine yo appearing that it lessened the likelihood of the atlantic ferocious storms? since it shears off the top. >> statistically, yes, sir. but as i pointed out and in fact i did have to look back at the record there have been a number of strong storms during el nino years as well. >> walz al meen yo present in any of those years you mentioned and through? >> it was. i believe there was a wheat el niño and 92 during andrew. so that just disproves the whole theory. [laughter] >> to the extent statistics are desirable, yes. statistically of course it is still hold. >> in other words we take no,

comfort in the fact that amine yo is there. that is right for the climatologist there may be comfort in fitting curbs in the future but clearly i would not want to go to the citizens of florida, louisiana, texas and say since it is an el nino year the statistics are such you might have a slightly reduced probability of severe storms. that is not consultation in my opinion. >> is noah working with hud and other agencies to time the science and coastal management and the community preparations together? >> noah is working with a variety of different agencies. i would also point out of course since we are in the department of commerce we work closely with the national institute -- >> senator martinez, i wanted before you left and i really appreciate you being here -- i know you do, and i just want -- since you and i introduced this package of bills, do you all

generally support these -- this six pack that we put together? [inaudible] [laughter] >> basically the legislation is a lot about what we have been talking about here. anybody that doesn't? >> senator, as you know the reinsurance sector has always had an ongoing dialogue with you, senator martinez and the state of florida about the value of the private sector role in financing risk and the role that government can or should play with so with that caveat we are strongly supportive of the bill you and senator martinez increased research in fact we think the funding is more modest than it should be it should be increased. >> so it is fair to say that the reinsurance industry would not support the bills we have

introduced with regard to the federal government giving a loan guarantee to the states for their hurricane catastrophe funds? >> the loan guarantees without some conditions with regard to the underlining insurance markets and in germans being risk-based would be important conditions with regard to that to make sure its responsibly the insurance markets are irresponsibly being priced and that the people are paying based upon the risk they have. >> you know what i don't understand is when the big one hits and the big one is a category four or five hitting a dense part of the urbanized coast line there is plenty more business than you can shake a stick at and you are going to have to have the state's strengthened in their reinsurance funds, their catastrophe funds in order to accommodate that kind of

economic loss. and rather than your industry looking at that as competition from the government it seems like we ought to be able to marry the two going in the same direction. would you comment? >> i would be happy to comment. the private reinsurance sector i would be happy to speak for wants to write catastrophe risk in florida and other states. it is a business that in fact is driven by the demand by insurance companies for the reinsurance and we want to provide that market to the extent the state of florida has a catastrophe fund that precludes or pre-empts companies from buying private reinsurance it is an unfair advantage we would say for the government programs to do that, so we would love to find a compromise that works but i would say that the private sector cannot easily compete with the public sector

providing free insurance as it is being done in the state of florida. >> thank you, senator martinez for being here and i would say that interestingly this insurance industry is split on this issue on what we are talking about. the reinsurance industry doesn't support federal guarantees for a state catastrophe fund whereas generally the insurance companies do. and i just wanted the record to show that. thank you. >> thank you, senator vitter. may i continue with regard to once we know that a storm is going to hate, a lot if you have talked about the preparations people need to make to move to safety. dr. wells for rexene the, you

all had such a horrendous tied up on your interstate in which rahim to evacuate. that's happened in florida as well and everyone gets smart and figures out a way with highway patrol to make the interstate one way so people can get out. what is your experience with other states doing what the texas and florida have done packs >> i will risk no arguing with you just a little bit here. my background is an hydrodynamics and i can say that for hurricane rita you only have so much available on which to put vehicles. if you have an over evacuation that occurs as did during hurricane retek we have to .7 million people over very short time spans to decide they will get on the roads in houston. there is basically no solution to that. you can start with 20 lanes of traffic heading outbound

20 miles down the road there will be six lanes. where do you want to choke flow, that were the city where you have resources to take care of people in that situation or do you just let them go out into the countryside and sit there for several hours? again, without the built infrastructure to take care of that in terms of transportation contraflow i don't think it's you out of the particular instances. were you need of course is the phased evacuation where the people in greatest jeopardy have the opportunity to get out first in galveston county and island have the opportunity to get ahead of the traffic stream than you do not want to evacuate certain areas of harris county subject to devastating high wind or flooding of the kind that would put life in jeopardy.

>> ms. chapman-henderson, you want to comment on that? >> i do i am only familiar with the building code or mitigation aspect to the legislation so i can hardly endorse those aspects. and our partnership of more than 100 is divided on other insurance issues as well. with respect to the evacuation i think the way we would like to look at it is an an ideal cents worth. differentiating between those that reside in a flood zone or not is step one. we always urge citizens live throughout this uniform that if you live in a flood zone he have to leave because there are too many variables and the life safety being a challenge their but beyond that, the home owner or the business owner or anyone who is seeking to take shelter from a storm that is coming they have knowledge of what their house can do, a performance

forecast for example they can confidently make decisions about evacuation and take themselves out of the over evacuation problems of the way i think you are talking about for florida where the east coast of florida ended up heading west and causing all types of problems. people spent the night in parking lots and were more vulnerable because we've really don't know ultimately exactly where the storm will make land fall so when we work with consumers which is our primary interaction and we have as you know and experience right now at epcot at disney world where we bring guests through more than half have come through virtual storms and engaging in a game played to do decision making around good decisions for structure and different aspects of this whole question of hurricane safety and when we do that we find is people do not know there are differences in

building codes with respect to how things are built. their expectation is a would be built probably in the first place. a very common question we received either the notion of the roof shape could be more aerodynamic but they could be braced. people come everyday and say why and do we build a house that isn't aerodynamic shape on the roof if we are in the windel and? why would we do that in first place so the public expectation is we would do it right but they don't understand the building code and its best form is designed to be a minimum legal standard. they don't know there are different historical strengths and the modern codes are becker said they don't really possess the information to make sound evacuation decisions and as a result they leave and i think if we could get to a place people understand what they have and what it can do how they can be safe they could stay put,

shelter and please, stay off the roads and leave them available to the responders and others that need to be there and need to be mobile post storm and they can become, they can rebuild themselves from the definition of catastrophe and we have received thousands calls when almost it is too late. people call on a member who during is about people from maryland calling singing and on and the flood zone? so we have a great amount of work to do with respect to bridging the gaps and equipping people with information about first and foremost. >> with the amount they are having to pay for homeowners insurance now you are in a coastal leary had you would think people would be asking about those things when they buy

a house. >> absolutely, senator. one of the things very promising as i mentioned before in florida and south carolina and soon mississippi is programs to harden homes and there is a very definite link between the hardening of retrofitting activities that addressed strengths of roofs windows and doors and insurance incentives that discount. for those areas like southeastern florida that have the highest insurance rates although they do compete with texas for high homeowner rates they are looking often at up to 50 per cent insurance discount or credit on the insurance went portion of insurance premium so there are those that report the average savings in florida from the hardening program is $773 per year but in southeast florida is closer to $2,000 per year and that is a tremendous incentive as you could imagine for people with older homes to

purchase shoppers tested and approved and to invest in high wind shingles and in practice dustin guerard stores and that's why the program has been successful because the financial incentive, the safety value and the information people can shelter in place. there is a lot of letters from people who reside in miami one in particular came from the program and elderly citizen who described her experience of being psychologically traumatized for all of hurricane season each and every year following andrew but because she was able to receive a matching grant from the program, she could rest easily. she had taken all the steps necessary to harden her home. >> senator hutchison. >> thank you mr. chairman. because i think what you and senator martinez are doing is very important for states like yours and mine that are

hurricane prone, and i also have maybe a more far reaching and not yet proven suggestion and a bill that came out of the commerce committee a month or so ago to look at not only ways that we are able to better predict the impact and the course of the hurricanes which you all are doing but also are there ways we might consider through research mitigating the effects of those hurricanes with some kind of intervention? russell i hope my bill passes and your bill passes and i want to put my statement in the record, my opening statement in the record but let me just -- i have tried to ask my staff here

what has already been covered so i am going to duplicate but i do want to ask dr. wells because i had a personal information while we were watching ike by the minute. i was amazed at the accuracy of where it would hit, when it would hit, intensity that durham ranger computer was able to model and sharing with all of the federal agencies, the weather service, the local and state emergency services. it was the best i have ever seen and so i want to ask you what did you who durham from what you were able to get? is their something more that can be done that we should explore or is their something new you think should be added for this year's hurricane season?

because the ability to track the we you did and what was amazing is to look at it after the fact that everything you predicted was exactly where and when you had predicted would happen so now my question is we are going into a hurricane season and what more should we be doing and can we be doing and what is this ranger capability going to do for the rest of the states that are so vulnerable? >> i think dr. spinrad also talked about their success at noah and running a forecast model on ranger. we were running the the storm forecast they were running the actual track intensity forecast with a different model. we were sharing the resources. there are 60,000 processors to share. "the new york times" had a nice graphic that showed the ranger and relationship to all the other supercomputers a couple of months ago and it was the sixth

to largest in all of the other supercomputers shown in the graphic were at national laboratories or are similar federal large facilities. this is a university resource that is shared all through the nsf with many other investigators researching a wide variety of problems. it is a highly adaptive computing resources we can use for our hydraulic models as well as direct and forecasters. >> and i know that you were sharing with noah. is their anything more that would be able to come between noah and the technology that you have that would get any better or more helpful information to the people on the ground or trying to prepare? >> exactly. i was about to say probably the area we haven't explored to the degree that we need to so that we can visualize the outcome of

the model and put it into a context where individuals, where the public can assess their personal risk. i think there are lots of model output that we see that our apps, various other ways of displaying these results but they just don't always capture the imagination of the public in general and they can all see themselves in their homes as being vulnerable to this attempt. we understand that and we can actually place first responders in the field and i can provide information to the mayor thomas in galveston saying here's what you're coming and he is going to look like tomorrow but i am afraid that we are not doing as effective of a job as changing the attitudes and personal comprehension of risk that citizens have and i think that modeling visualization, and this can be cinematic three-dimensional really

dramatic ways of presenting that kind of information both on storm surge and wind damage and inland flooding where people see their neighborhoods and even had residences as affected by the event. that's the future of this. we can get to that level of demonstrating what the impact is going to be a pity you always hear these people after the yvette saying on a new this was going to be a very bad hurricane. it's going to be as bad as carla i lived through that but i just didn't think in my part of town or in my neighborhood or my house it was going to be as bad as it was. >> one of the things about hurricane ike was the flooding, not just heavy flooding, it's not a tsunami, but it is that forceful flooding i flew over the area on the other side of

galveston over the peninsula, not ellen the olver peninsula. i've been there many times and i was flying over it thinking gosh, this must be a new construction area because there's nothing here. it wasn't a new construction area. >> that is why use of sticks in the ground, there were no turnover refrigerators, there was no debris, there was nothing. so i thought its new construction and i realized no, i'm in the heart of the peninsula were all the houses are and yet there was no debris. it had gone 10 miles up and that's what people are not prepared for. i grew up in galveston county. so i lived through carless and camille and had never seen anything like that in my life so that is what you're talking

about. people can to visualize they are going to come back and see sticks in the ground and not a broken air conditioner, not a broken sank, nothing. it was unbelievable. is that what you mean when you are saying people are not prepared for what is going to happen in their immediate neighborhood? >> they just have a general concept this is going to be a bad invent but cannot personalize it and see it in terms of their own geography where they live and i think that we have now and certainly will have better in the future means of doing the modeling that predicts that impact and the means of delivering that information more effectively. we probably need to study how people respond to different kinds of information that is given to them. i don't think that there is enough research to show how people can conceptualize their personal risk in this kind of event. it's probably the center of

earthquakes and other natural disasters. i think we need to take a careful look at that because we could have the greatest science and the best knowledge of the physical dimensions of the impending event but we cannot communicate it isn't going to make a difference. >> let me just ask another line of questioning to anyone who would wish to respond. in the bill i am putting forward, it is time to study the present and past to see if there is any future in whether a modification. in other words as an example, i don't know if this is possible, but i think we ought to be looking at it if you see a certain type of hurricane 100 miles out in the atlantic is their something that could be done that wouldn't stop the but might make it less powerful when it comes into florida or

mississippi or louisiana or texas or alabama? is their something that we haven't looked at from the past that would give an indication of medium a mitigation of the impact because the damages are so much higher than they have ever been because of the intensity. so, my question is to anyone. yes? >> senator hatch's and it's a very important question you ask and one as your bill states got a lot of looking at in the 70's but there is the nh route so to speak of whether mitigation activities. i would like to make four points with regard to modification i think number one is we need good medical forecasting models to weather modification especially hurricanes because you need to know that the modification you are going to try to impute to the hurricane will have the

intended effect and so that is a challenge in and of itself and it really requires the best research and best forecast technology you could possibly have and, you know, we have run simulations of dramatic thunderstorms and hurricanes and we know for simulations in fact there is no question you can change the course of a hurricane, you can kill off, you can kill off a thunderstorm before it produces a thunderstorm that that is how then implement that change and that is an engineering problem and there have been some far ranging you might say approaches proposed all the way from launching ballistic missiles in a thunderstorm to doing all kind of things in space for hurricanes. that is a real challenge of how did you actually deliver the disruptive influence that will change the course. we know in a simulation models will not say how we are doing it reaches quote the ocean surface temperature and sure enough the hurricane

so the third point is one of the unintended consequences so the first one this relates to ethics and legal issues and i know the you run into this in texas and we do in oklahoma and kansas where do are doing rainfall enhancement studies and spending a lot of money doing that on the private sector and somebody in the texas says to bled all of kobach turk in the panhandle in texas gets upset as it brings challenges us to cross state lines and geopolitical barriers and things like that. and i do think and i read your bill and it is time for the nation to get serious again about whether a modification and as rebel pointed out as a national research council study showed there is no compelling evidence that this works but we have much more powerful observing systems which we need mobile radar, ground-based radar, things like that, aircraft and especially numerical models so i think the scientific community is well

placed to address the important challenge to bring across so i applaud you for introducing it. there are interesting on significant ethical and legal issues as well so the other point i would make inclosing here is in fact when you study modifications of the letter the kind of questions you ask have great relevance to some of the other issues we deal with in terms of predictability of the atmosphere in general and how you do indeed assimilations asked dr. spinrad mentioned so we might think that this hurricane modification or doing advertent weather modification there's a lot we can learn scientifically in other areas and challenges in whether forecasting when we are studying whether modifications it has a double barrel positive effect i would say on studying the issue of whether a modification and all the other things it relates to we could get a great benefit as well from that. >> and i want to go to dr. spinrad but that is the purpose of the bill it is not only to see what might have an affect but what are the unintended consequences, and i

think even today when you have cloud seeding in one area we need to know if it affects whether in another area at firstly and i think that is something because we did take a pass on getting data many years ago we need to now no more. dr. spinrad. >> i would like to add two points of interest to dr. droegemeier's comment. first before we modify a system we have to know what the system is comprised of and if we look for example to hurricanes it is only in the last several years we have begun to understand the role of the phenomena such as el nino, millennia on hurricane development and some the merchant right now is we are discovering dry air mass coming off the sahara, very strong influence on whether hurricanes will form or not. five years ago we had no idea of

spasso i would say the research that goes into understanding the system and the development of any weather phenomenon would have to be addressed with it is to improve the forecast or engage in any kind of modification. my second point is an emphasis on on the intended consequences and i hope we would include some understanding of the consequences to the ecosystem itself. there are some indications for example the because hurricanes have a major strength effect they reintroduce nutrients into the environment and the gulf flexible there are potentially beneficial consequences of hurricanes to the productivity of that environment so it's the physical consequences, the societal consequences but also the ecosystem as well. >> i think all of those points are absolutely well taken and would be part of any kind of study basically what i want to do is start getting the data and then from that know if we do modify or don't modify that's

when you start getting into the consequences. but it just seems like not knowing is not very enlightened so hopefully we can do something about it. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator hutchinson. earlier dr. speed, you were talking about the importance of measuring the wind up at the surface of the ocean as a means of trying to predict the direction and intensity of hurricanes and we used to have a satellite that measured that, but that satellite is either on the brink or about to go out beyond its designed life. and there was an attempt to get another one in their called a scab barometer and the short

name was quite skat. what since we don't have that capability how do you fill the gap and what are noah's plans for the next generation of a quick skat? >> surface winds are important. i think there has been some debate as to the full value of those days donner in terms of a program of the forecast but nevertheless i think most of our scientists and forecasters would say having the surface when this is of value. get in fact is laudable and fuel to run through 2011 if all things go well. we are in discussion with nasa about the development of the next generation ocean surface factor wind sensor which would fulfill the same data requirements as quick as gatt. we also have ongoing discussions for data availability from a

scatter of matter being developed by the european media logical satellite system and that would be called a scat. finally i would add as i mentioned earlier there are some additional approaches we are testing one of which is the use of unmanned aerial systems which we can actually fly into the hurricane and directly acquire the surface winds and the other is a new piece of equipment we have installed on aircraft in the air force aircraft and that is called the step frequency microwave radiometer which allows us to view the ocean surface and extrapolate from that what the winds are so there are a variety of different approaches at hand we believe with the viability of? that currently we have time to develop the solutions so that we can in fact get the surface winds. >> earlier you all testified about these computer models and

supercomputer with regard to intensity and direction. what about the hurricane models that bottle what is going to be economic loss for the insurance industry? ms. chapman-henderson mcconaghy you think that since the insurance companies have their own hurricane computer models that we ought to have a public domain computer model? >> i think it's fair to say that there are when it comes to the models it is more is probably better and having private sector models and having that information and finding from those models available is essential. as far as having a public model, i think it is like in the model as long as the data and assumptions and everything that go into the models are accurate and correct your going to get a

good product from them. one of the things i have heard and i am not a modeler but what i have heard in the work that we do is it is important for us to not overt rely on models. they are predictor's like anything else of economic loss. i think what's very constructive and i think that mr. nutter could probably add a lot of value to the conversation as well is that when we look at the models performance after a storm there are some excellent track records in terms of, you know, this was anticipated, this amount of economic impact was forecast and that is indeed what occurred and often their are more conservative than what actually happens because of the duration after the impact of the storms and costs that are not anticipated. ironically it seems like we come away and i think this is true on

the other side, engineering side, economic side we get this sense in the human nature that we've learned things after a storm and we develop a set of beliefs for example in hurricane andrew wheeler and that shipshape ropes prefer better than gable's, gable's collapse and we were going to do better. what happens is we were under those beliefs and that's good but we were not something new each time with respect you talked earlier about hurricane wilma. the rules all i think we find comfort as a society in having a set of conclusions so what has always been said is a storm makes landfall you can expect to lose a category, it comes in as a force and will go down to a three and two but taken wilma after all those years telling homeowners or citizens okay it's coming in as a for but by the time it gets believes because they give comfort but they are not always true. wilma came as what is a weak one

or two but then increased and came out on the east side and caused more damage on the east side and the west so i guess the way i look at models is as long as the information goes and its excellent we can be guided by them and certainly on economic impact that has been proven but we have to keep an open mind because every major catastrophe, and i have been in and around them for 25 years we learned something altogether different about what the outcomes are going i don't know if mr. nutter wanted to add to that or not. >> senator nelson, i have been proud to serve on the advisory board for the hurricane research center which is affiliated with florida international university for some years and that's where the public model in florida was developed. ford also has an interesting approach to evaluate these models and having a commission that's i think chaired by or

staffed by academics from the community. it is a responsible approach to understand the dynamics of the models it seems that one of the values of the public model is the lead to over emphasis ought to be placed is on what the public values are here so by that i mean what mitigation might benefit from an analysis using the public model, what evacuation systems, hardman systems, those kind things public model has not focused on as much as it could and should and would be very valuable in doing so so there is great utility in a public model that would really look at the kind of impact these storms have and help everyone understand what the impacts may be but more importantly what he can do to minimize the impacts. >> as florida have a public model today? >> for the does the public model developed in florida national university funded by ravee insurance department.

>> to what degree do the insurance companies and three insurance companies use to the public model to determine loss and to determine what the premiums are? >> i don't think the public model is used by insurance or the reinsurance companies. there are private models that are used and those models have to go through and accreditation process that the commission in the state of florida said to the extent they are private and have proprietary information they are still subject to review under the jurisdiction of the state of florida to see what the assumptions that are made as models. i think the public model is used primarily by the insurance department as a guideline if you will, guidepost looking at what the insurance company's final and what reliance they place on the public models on the private models. >> do you recall about either you or chapman-henderson milledge year the public model was developed by florida

international university? >> i think i would say four years ago it may have been a couple of years of development but i think it has been in place for four years. i could be wrong on that, i will check and submit more accurate statement for the record. >> okay. >> dr. droegemeier, what is the relationship if any between climate change and hurricanes? >> it's a very good question, senator. in fact we tend to think about climate durham of hurricanes for example the intensity and frequency and so long but it is a two-way street in fact perkins themselves can impact climate so we have to remember first and foremost it's a two-way street. recent studies have suggested with the climate changing as we believe is and records indicate we are seeing a shift more than the total number of storms but keeping the number constant but

more intense hurricanes and smaller number of less intense so we see the shift in the atlantic based on records of a few decades. there is also some sense of the hurricane power of the hurricane being greater in the last several decades than it had been prior to that so those are some evidence we are seeing that it is a challenge to draw definitive conclusions so the work needs to be ongoing. flipping the claim around looking at the impact of hurricanes on the climate system we are seeing some things in the last few years especially as dr. spinrad mentioned these new discoveries surprising in fact the role of hurricanes changing the balance of current in the ocean because they bring a lot of cold water from beneath when you have a lot of hurricanes and progression as we saw several years ago was four or five in the atlantic lined up after one another that has a longer term impact on the climate system so called conveyor belts of

moisture and rather of heat and energy in the ocean and that has an impact on the large global climate system said its largest the climate changing the hurricane but the hurricane intact and the climate system and that is something we have not been able to study because climate models have not been able to resolve hurricanes so without the hurricane you are missing an important piece but that is changing now with the more powerful computers getting to the resolutions dr. spinrad mengin understanding what the trade-offs are so i would say overall the notion how hurricanes are impacted by climate and impact of hurricanes on climate system is in its infancy where we are seeing some early results that are rather compelling and certainly a lot more work needs to be done. >> senator, could i add something to that? i agree wholeheartedly with dr. droegemeier and it is seen in the legislation you have introduced to find additional research there are references to climate change and there from looking at the value to the

extent those climate models can be more regionalized that the resolution can be more tailored to local areas it would be greater value to local officials and other private and public sector officials in addressing issues associated with climate change. >> well, let's say we have an increase of 1 foot and in the sea level. now, what does your professional opinion tell you is going to happen to the storm surge level and inland flooding? yes, sir, dr. wells. >> i wanted to jump in the last conversation to say you're 1 foot estimate might be quite conservative. one of the things we do at the center for space research as we are the lead principal investigator for the gravity recovery climate experiment.

the two satellite missions that is looking probably the greatest detail at the loss of water from greenland and antarctica it is showing a biting observations are also showing the rate of relative sea level rise is increasing more dramatically than some of our previous modeling would have shown two or three years ago and that estimate they may only lies a foot or so by the end of the century may be off by a factor of 50% we could see considerably larger rise in that. i think this has tremendous impact what we want to do in the future as we think about what sort of mckeithen steps we are going to take because it is a moving target now. i have friends who are studying barrier systems returned geologists who have looked at everything that has formed since the last and they are seeing evidence sea level is rising faster than it has in 7,500

years if this trend continues. well, barrier islands did not texas along the texas and louisiana coast at bat pogo in fact there was a question whether they could exist under those conditions. we are getting into a pro quo of instability as this increases and if we are going to have large built infrastructure of like an ike dikes place in these areas we have to ask the questions if these trends continue what are the counter measures we can take complex these are tremendous impact on the coast line and i don't think we have comprehended at this stage what the future holds as it unfolds. certainly the modeling is going to help determine that. >> mr. chairman if i can add there is an important component that has to be introduced in the discussion as well in addition to the climate change impacts we also recognize that there are periods of several decades when

we see increased and decreased frequency and intensity of hurricanes and multi decade oscillation and the question is occurring is how much of that is continuing to happen? so as we have the discussion with regard to climate change impact we have also got to look at what we believe are the naturally occurring multi decade patterns that mother nature introduces herself. ..

to be put up and the launch schedule and i believe that we can't afford to compromise that schedule. i think we should have a more rigorous debate and discussionnq

so i think increasingly, we just put language in the department of defense authorization act that the air force is going to study this and i think this might be a way that we can kill two birds with one stone. let me ask mr. nutter, how it is the insurance industry

addressing climate change? clearly, it has an enormous impact on the insurance industry because of all the property that you insure on the coast. >> it is an excellent question and at times i am proud of the industry and other times disappointed in their commitment to this. a number of free insurers have for a long time funded research, a private research as well as talk publicly about the need to address the climate change, swiss reinsurance and munich reinsurance stand out as companies that have always been a paragon of being progressive about looking at this. increasingly we shuren epping-- including working with people such as on this panel. the will's insurance group which is an insurance brokerage funds academic research through a willis research network. the institute for business and home safety, which is a companion organization to flash,

ms. chapman-henderson's organization as i mentioned in my statement is funding a research facility to look at this. i would help our industry in the united states would commit more to research and looking at climate change because there is no question the implications of climate change for insurance companies that more and partly their policyholders is pretty critical to understand, so i closed the relationship between our industry and the community of government and private research as pretty critical. >> a decade ago, european insurance companies were getting more interested in dfx upon their economic activities then were the american insurance companies. our european company still taking the lead? >> no question about it. aliance, minnick reed, swiss re, renaissance which is a bermuda based company have all stepped forward to fund research as well

as to promote a better understanding of this and by that i mean by public research made available to others and funding research looking at both the health and property like exposures related to climate change. the industry and the united states historically has the business model that tends to be it retrospective one. they look at actuarial data and trend it forward. i would say the europeans continue to be more progressive than the u.s. industry and trying to understand future events and the impact upon themselves as well as their policyholders. >> i want to conclude by asking anybody who would like to respond, one of the problems that we have had here in the senate is the fact that senators from states that are not coastal states tend to think that's

hurricanes are not their problem. and, if they don't come from california, they think that earthquakes are not their problem. now, we are focusing on hurricanes here but that is just a fact of life, and that is human nature. you all want to suggest for the record, on a hurricane bill that senator martinez and i have proffered, that seems to meet with widespread support, bats-- what is it that he would recommend to us as to how we go about getting the attention of these senators who were not from coastal areas that are threatened by hurricanes to support it?

ms. chapman-henderson? >> senator nelson i thank first and foremost, as taxpayers, we all need to be concerned about the impacts of hurricanes because of the significant economic impact to all of us but on a more practical level and think you can go state-by-state and identify impacts that surprised some. one in particular that springs to mind is from hurricane ike and the flooding that occurred in ohio. more than $1 billion in insurance losses happened in ohio because of floods. similarly in pennsylvania after hurricane ike and west virginia after different storms, the hurricanes did not come to the coast and as you know stop. they move through and they cause damage throughout the united states and they think it is again one of those things were sometimes looking back at that instead of thinking forward, but i believe we can provide a very detailed analysis in case of an economic and societal

disruptions that follows hurricanes well inland to places that are not traditionally thought of, ohio's brings to mind again because of last year. >> senator their national disruptions to the consequences of hurricane landfall in particular areas. we need to look of the high proportion of all the petrochemical and refining activity that occurs on the texas and louisiana coast and we have not have the event that would create true distortion and disruption of that system. that is the kind of hurricane that would go up the houston ship channel for instance. >> mr. chairman we have talked mostly about landfall. we talked about impacts on the coast. i would remind you that greater than 95% of the imports and exports we enjoy in this country traveled by sea, saying that hurricane has saved returned to see is not quite appropriate when i talk about the impact on that maritime commerce. everything we buy, almost everything we buy and sell

disadvantage of that. their excellent studies that have shown the effects of adverse weather on the goods and products, wherever we buy them in the united states. >> senator nelson i think it is a very important point and in fact it is why it is such a big integrated research approach is needed to understand some of these linkages and some of them are very long term. is the pride chain, resupply, thinks that the forest industry, some of these are decadal impact that require massive rebuilding and reallocation of wealth that you will for some part of the country to another and sustaining it affects a very long term and we really don't understand that nearly as much as we should. we can get excellent examples as you look for but the interactions of all the different components of our society are something that are very complicated and something we really don't have a havilland's of the research your talking about i think by its nature would build upon these stories and give credibility and a deeper understanding of their

impact on our society. >> senator if i may add, this is the country of shared vallese and two of the values we talked about repeatedly here are mitigation come a ways to reduce damage to property and loss of life and certainly research in this area is going to have an extra effect on other kinds of properties and non-hurricane areas. >> other shared value would be our responsiveness to people who have had faced that in the government has generous in dealing with temporary housing and disaster assistance in response. >> and i would just add that come in direct answer in addition to the exelon, is that you will have made to this question of why should senators from non-coastal states be interested, interested in the damage of hurricanes, it is also the fact that most of the cost is borne by the american

taxpayer. whereever that taxpayer happens to live. because, clearly we have seen in the case of hurricane katrina almost half of the economic loss of that hurricane was borne by the federal government in its efforts to try to bring that part of the united states back to life, so i want to thank you all. this has been an extensive and very thorough discussion of the issue you have eliminated this issue and normally-- enormously. the record is quite a fall and that is thanks to your expertise as presented here today so thank you and with that, the meeting is adjourned.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

>> in its next term the supreme court will hear two cases that challenge was sentencing miners to life in prison without parole. next, a discussion on a report examining juvenile crime and the effect of life without parole sentences. this is an hour and a half. >> good morning. i am the coordinator for the washington seminar foundation. is my privilege to welcome our guests to the douglas and sarah allison auditorium as well as joining us via the heritage dud or web site and c-span lech. in of the viewers questions can

be submitted via e-mail to speaker at heritage that shortcome is the correct heritage.org. if you would please turn off all your cell phones and other electronic devices at a news will interfere with the recording. this program will be posted within 24 hours at the heritage.org web site. hawes stinner program is edwin meese. mr. meese serves as the ronald reagan distinguished bellow and public policy and chairman of the center for legal and judicial studies for the heritage foundation for the mr. meese with the 75th attorney general of the united states and among president ronald reagan's most trusted advisers. mr. meese. >> thank you. i join in welcoming you on behalf of the heritage foundation and the center for legal and judicial studies, which is an important part of this organization. we have a program on crime control and public safety, which deals with the kinds of issues such as we are discussing this

morning. today's topic is very timely. this october term, which will begin in just a few months now, the united states supreme court will hear two cases from florida that are brought by convicts serving life terms without parole for crimes that they committed as juvenile speak the luff horse defines juveniles as those persons below the age of 18. the coalition that persuaded some years ago the court to discover a new limitation on capital punishment, which took place in 2005 in the case of rover against simmons is now seeking to achieve a constitution and run around 43 state legislatures, the district of columbia and the federal government. each of come has authorized the sentence of life without parole for the worst juvenile offenders. as we all know and as the supreme court has stated repeatedly that is different.

and that is why that coalition was able to prevail on the changing what had been the historic two centuries of law on relating to capital punishment for juveniles. yet, if this coalition succeeds in a non-death penalty line of cases, it would be a major step towards objecting of criminal sentences that the federal and state level to the kind of eighth amendment jurisprudence and scrutiny that the court has previously applied in capital cases. where, as former justice sandra day o'connor, has observed the court has frequently usurped the legislative function. to date, this important public policy debate has been shaped by a carefully crafted campaign of misinformation. legislatures, the courts, the public and the media have all been misled on crucial points concerning this particular subject. until know that is, said today

we are delighted to present the results of a study that is taken place over year and a half in which, in which the results of that work has been brought together in a form of a book that is entitled, adult time for adult crime. the book, which has been spearheaded by the heritage foundation and particularly our senior fellow cully stimson who is a member of our panel today was a collaborative effort involving prosecutors, defense attorneys, human-rights advocates, the victims' rights advocates, law enforcement officials, international law scholars and many others. the book aims to set straight the record on this subject and to educate the public, legislators, the courts and others about the facts of the crimes, the sentences and the law that relates to this topic. the conclusions are simple.

first, juvenile life without possibility of birol is reasonable, constitutional and appropriately rare. secondly, contrary to what many had contended, the united states has no international obligation to ban the life without parole sentence for serious juvenile criminals. joining us today to discuss this issue are three distinguished attorneys. each believes that the juvenile justice system in our country should handle the vast majority of crimes committed by juveniles. beach believes also in the rehabilatative potential for most juvenile criminals but each also believes that life without parole for some small percentage of juvenile killers and violent teens is appropriate. ours speakers include paul ief prosecutor

for newcastle county, he has been head of the felony trial sex crimes, white collar crimes, career criminal and misdemeanor units within that office. he has acted as the for the delaware attorney general and has authored numerous state criminal laws. he has argued numerous cases before the state supreme court and federal trial and appellate courts on behalf of the state of delaware. another one of our panelist is daniel horowitz. he has been a renowned california criminal defense attorney for the last 29 years. he appears often as a legal commentator on cnn's nancy grace

show, on msnbc and fox news and another television programs. he has tried over 200 cases, the jury trials as a defense attorney. he has been a member of the and a lecturer for the two main california defense attorney organizations in that state. he has taught at the california death penalty college for defense attorneys and he is hammell 27 death penalty cases, eight of which went to trial and two were dismissed. only when added 27 receive the death penalty. unfortunately on the 15th of october in the year 2005, his beautiful wife, pamela, was murdered by a 17-year-old juvenile. the juvenile was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. our finals the cure is cully stimson. he is the senior legal fellow here the heritage foundation. prior to joining care taji was a deputy assistant secretary of defense under the presidency of

george w. bush. he has been a local, state and federal military prosecutor and is also been a defense attorney. he is a former instructor of the naval justice school an adjunct professor of law at the george mason university school of law. he has tried over 100 jury trials as both a prosecutor and defense attorney. and he is the co-author of the book, adult time for adult crimes. as he can see we have an expert panel to deal with this subject and so we will present our first speaker, who is paul wallace will be here for speaker this morning and present the initial topic to you. paul. >> general ms. i think i would like to just welcome everybody here. thank you for your very kind framing of the issue and introductions and i thought it would be helpful, instead of me jumping in and talking about the

large report on a small book, first better to have historical perspective of a commitment jurisdiction in non-lyerly terms from paul wallace wallace tried these cases, argued these cases before the delaware supreme court and then we will move to the findings that we have had in the book and then turn finally to dan horowitz, understanding that we want to leave time for your questions and that is why we have our trustee timekeeper and assistant here who will be flashing some cards to tell us one to be quiet, so paul. >> thank you. there is no statement in any public policy discussion that can show that discussion more quickly then when someone, especially a lawyer, says it is unconstitutional to do whatever irv, fill in the blank. i sought both as a trial attorney and as an appellate attorney but also as a legislative attorney for 15

years in delaware. in the current discussion about life without parole for a juvenile offender, violent juvenile offenders basically that comes down to two claims. one, the juvenile can never constitutionally be given life without parole. or two, that in fact, the constitution requires that a court take into consideration use before it can be constitutionally imposed. it is just not true. the lots is not say that. it is never said it in history. the united states constitution or in any state. here is why. you have to first go back to what the beginning of the eighth amendment jurisprudence is and that is common law of. common law basically whitaker is that anyone who had the mental ability to be criminally

responsible wasn't considered an adult and could be punished as an adult. that grew into basically the roll out of infancy in english law and imported into the united states. someone who was under seven is deemed to be not competent. they cannot be treated as an adult. they cannot be held criminally responsible and there was what is called a rebuttal presumption, that when one was between seven and 14 years old, that in fact they were deemed not to be, but they may be, depending on the individual characteristics of a person than what the court finds. and then for those who were 14 and over there was the rebuttable presumption that in fact, they were criminally responsible and in those circumstances be treated as adults and receive the adult punishment. as we moved to the history of the united states and crime and

punishment particularly in the eighth amendment, because it is always frame that this is a cruel and unusual punishment and in fact is those words have always been defined by the united states supreme court and by the vast majority of courts in the united states is neither. curlin unusual punishment clause started to basically ensure that there wasn't torture. it meant to talk about the method of punishment. to ensure the united states did not import into our jurisprudence things like drawing and quartering, those types of things. and for a century and a half until the early 1900's, that particular amendment was never looked at to discuss incarceration. it was never looked at to determine the length of the sentence and then in 1910, in a case called williams versus united states the supreme court

first looked at it, first looked at the length of the sentence but what was very important, and it was explained 50 years later by the united states supreme court, was not the length of sentence a much but the fact that it was disproportionate to the crime that was committed. there was a falsification of public records, basically what we would call nowadays white-collar crime and for its, the defendant received 12 years hard and painful labor in irons. you can see a bit of the tortured aspect of such a sentence and why the supreme court would be concerned. but the supreme court made a pretty broad pronouncement in saying that it will look at excess of sentences or disproportionate sentences, and then for the next 50 years did not find any sentence to be that, and in fact outside the death penalty context, has never

found a sentence of incarceration to be disproportionate, the matter what. it has found other types of punishments. in the 1960's it had looked at a case where someone was made an expatriate. in other words they were stripped of their citizenship and left as a person without, it was an american born person, left without a country. so, that is unusual. in fact other countries did not do that. and effective united states could never done that. and so, it had determined that when looking at a sentence it should look at what it set are the standards of decency, but those standards of decency it is always said that are applicable and as sense always said are applicable in the death penalty context. it moves as to the '60s and where we are coming into what was one of the biggest crime

waves, unfortunately, in the united states history and one which many states and coley will talk about the trends in legislation, but where states have decided in fact that they were going to get tougher on crime in certain ways. one of the ways was insuring that adult sentences may be applicable to juvenile offenders, particularly violent juvenile offenders and overwhelmingly made the sentences available. at the same time, we had the death penalty being reinstituted in the united states. there was a period in the mid-70s by the early '80s, many states have the death penalty back again as a possible punishment. when it did so, there began to be questions as to how the death penalty would be applied. and what came out of the united states supreme court's

jurisprudence was basically the sense that the death penalty has to be individualized. it has to be proportionate to the crime, murder, and that any court, it and need law has to allow individual factors to play a part in whether or not someone should receive the ultimate penalty. what happened then is there was a turn from that individualized capital sentencing idea to determine whether or not it should be applied to these new sentences. for instance three strikes your out law. something that may put someone in jail for the rest of their life for a crime that they normally would not do based on their criminal past. and their the supreme court kept the line and has kept the line between death penalty cases and incarceration, even life without

parole incarceration. the disturbing part in the current discussion is this. that certain people want to blur that line. they want to take down that wall between their sentences. the importance of that wall is this. the united states supreme court has always said that you don't even look at the eight amendments, and less, in fact, it is the sentence is grossly disproportionate and grossly disproportionate to the crime. that is the importance in the discussion we have today because the crimes we are speaking of overwhelmingly in the juvenile context are murdered but are also other crimes for which someone may get life imprisonment. rape, kidnapping, those few crimes where life is an option and that is what this is about, whether or not life without

parole can remain an option. in the constitutional context, the united states supreme court has always said that for those crimes, for the specific offenses, it is an option both for adults and for juveniles and that is why over all legislators have endorsed the use of that sentence, at least as the possibility. as i was introduced, i have been a prosecutor for 20 years. i fully believe in the juvenile justice system. i fully believe that you have to have a spectrum of treatment for juvenile offenders, those who were less, who don't deserve that type of punishment because of their crime. they should be in the juvenile system but unfortunately i have also seen what can happen with certain youthful murderers.

their crimes are no different than adults. there is no gross this proportionality in the crime that they commit and the sentence that they receive and therefore just as the constitution says, when need to look no further comment least in the constitutional arguments as to whether or not the eighth of amendment permits these types of sentences. it is also important to note that, although every breath thinking prosecutor and i think every right thinking criminal lawyer believes there is a place for the juvenile system. even courts have said, there is no constitutional right to even be treated as a juvenile and in these circumstances no matter what so we are not even close to the line that any court would be concerned about. the blurring of that line has real implications. if we do not say that we keep the test that we have no, that

it has to be some great disproportion between the crime committed and the sentence received, then what we do is we basically open the door to second-guessing every type of sentencing, every type of legislative act, because in the constitutional sense merely relieving life without parole won't make sense to what those folks, who might believe this change made sense. what would have to happen would be that federal courts, state courts would have to start to set some arbitrary rules as to when in fact a juvenile who has killed as to get a parole hearing. it would have to make it as of

right. v-8 the men myths simply does not require that. all it requires our proportionate sentences. the use of the death penalty and specifically some of the findings in rover makes it quite difficult and actually makes it difficult for the other side. because, in that theory case, the united states supreme court said one of the reasons it was striking the death penalty for juveniles was because life without parole was there and that that was then a appropriate sentence, and a proportionate sentenced to what they had done. it would make absolutely no sense for the united states supreme court to say you are striking the death penalty because we have this option. that option must be there. it is used rarely. it is used in the most serious of cases that there is nothing constitutionally that prohibits it from being there.

as general meese had introduced me earlier and cully, i've actually prosecuted these cases. i have defended them, their sentences on appeal. head to within the last year. there are to some disturbing aspects to have their litigated. one, that i have party talked about, the application of death penalty law to non-death cases, these are not death sentences. in fact, as other courts have found in addition to the united states supreme court, the united states supreme court when it struck the death penalty said that it was concerned that the offenders have an opportunity to learn about the crime that they committed, that they wanted them to mature and have a mature understanding of the damage they had done and did not believe they could do that if put to death. a life without parole sentence does exactly that.

it does give them that opportunity. it also gives the opportunity for victims to have peace of mind that this person is made to pay for the crime that they committed and this safely away from others in society. one of the cases that i've tried-- i did not try but i had heard on appeal and i litigated on appeal was torres versus state. in that case a 14-year-old was, became friends with a family. they became friends with the family because what happened was he threw a rock through the windshield of the fathers carper guo the father actually reported it to the police. he said i had a rough childhood myself. let me make him work to pay back. he actually to cam fishing over the next month or so and made friends with him. when the young man tried to teach his three and half-year-old son how to light

matches, he scolded him for it. a few days later when donald torres did was broken to that house. he spread kerosene all over the bottom floor, including at the stairwell. he later said he knew what he was doing. he knew the family was there and then he let it on fire. he watched as the father came out and then watched him go back in screaming for his children and his wife. they were the god's family in delaware. he was found trying to shield his wife in the flames. his wife died also and their three and half-year-old and 1-year-old died in that fire. now, apply, if you try to apply what is asked for by the other side in this discussion, you would say that no matter what, at some point we have to say that donald torres kit safer roll here. the problem is, it would turn

our sentencing scheme upside down because in delaware we have consecutive sentences and not only did we have consecutive sentences, but your parole eligibility is also consecutive so what it would say is instead of waiting the 60 years that he has to wait for parole, in order for them to get what they wish on the other side of this litigation in this case the court would have to set some arbitrary number. three of those killings are free basically. he gets some volume of discount for violence. that doesn't make sense and it is certainly not constitutionally required. donald torres' cason some of the other cases are how i became part of this discussion today. i certainly am willing and able to answer any questions that you have when it is time to do this and when it is time to answer those questions. but what i suggest is this.

the united states supreme court has had a very hands off approach on cases other than death penalty cases. and for good reason. it wants to allow the several states to decide what is best for them. in delaware for instance we have decided consecutive sentences and in life without parole for murder and first-degree is appropriate, even for someone who is 14. if they have made that decision and by the way in torres idid of truett amenability and a judge looking at the facts of the case decided he will stay in adult court. individual states need to have that ability. and, the united states supreme court has never set constitutionally that is prohibited. in fact it said exactly the opposite. states should be able to make those types of decisions for

themselves, that there is absolutely no constitution and under the there is no constitutional requirement that every but he be the same, that everybody have a certain parole eligibility, that everybody even treat each crime exactly the same in sentencing. >> thank you paul. the issue of how civilized and just society treats a criminal defendant is really a bellwether to the other countries on how just that society is and it is an important topic. it is especially important in the context of how we as a society outreach juvenile who make bad decisions like adult criminals and in the issue of juveniles who murder and rape, how we deal with them is important. to date, this debate has been

driven by a misleading lobbying campaign in the form of self published studies, which i will go into, disingenuous lobbying campaigns before state legislatures, aggressive litigation for the courts, which is appropriate, but what is inappropriate is the misleading statistics and a false reading of supreme court precedence and these scurrilous accusation that this country is in violation of international law by having a life without parole sentences for juvenile killers and violent scenes in the first place or not. that is why we are exceptionally pleased today to begin a new debate, a debate that is framed by a fourth right, honest and

direct discussion of the actual facts. and the facts are these. most juveniles deserve to be treated in the juvenile justice system. everyone up here agrees with that. a very few percentage of juveniles need to be treated within the adult courts if this date so recognize the ability of juveniles to be waived up to dold court. in a very, a very small percentage of the worst juvenile offenders, the one that we highlight in this book in our 16 case digest, deserve a fair trial, got a fair trial and were justly sentenced of the constitutional sentence of life without parole. to date we haven't had this type of debate. we haven't had the ability to take a holistic view of what is happening in the country and that is why i launched this

study about a year and a half ago after attending a symposium in monterey, california where learned that california was the tempting, through some state legislatures, to abolish the sentence of life without parole for juvenile offenders, abolish it. now, understand this, and these are the facts. 43 states, through their elected representatives, the voice of the people have bought the rights live without the possibility of parole for juvenile killers and violent teens. that is well over 90% of the population of this country. the district of columbia, where we are today, has authorized life without parole for juvenile killers and the federal government indeed has a long-- a lot in the books that authorizes life without parole for juvenile killers. so, our government, 43 states and arguably one of the most liberal districts in the country here in d.c. has authorized that

sentence. those are facts. yet, when you listen to anti-incarceration activist, you would think that this society is really not there and that is not where this country is. they are wrong. furthermore, every state supreme court who has looked at life without the possibility of parole for juvenile killers and beilin teens has done it to be constitutional. every federal court who has looked at this broad question of whether life without the possibility of parole for juvenile killers then violence teens has found that it is constitutional. that is not force the disproportionate to the crime and notice when paul was talking, he wasn't talking about rose the disproportionate to this particular criminal. that is what you do in death penalty cases. it is talking about what the

courts talk about, is whether or not this punishment is grossly disproportionate to the crime committed by this person as authorized by state law. now, you wouldn't notice if you had been paying attention to or following the anti-incarceration act of these reports of the last ten years. you would notice if you read their briefs before state supreme courts like in the torres case or even before the u.s. supreme court in the petition for certiorari, which was granted this spring in the graham and sullivan cases which are coming out of florida. the question before the court in those cases, and they take their cases wisely, they picked to people who did not commit murder but committed horrible crimes before they were 18, is whether the sentence which they justly received after a fair trial, life without the possibility of can-- pearl is constitutional.

they fail to commend state legislatures to abolish these sentences for good they have failed to convince state supreme courts define the sentences unconstitutional. they have failed to get federal judges are around the country to find these sentences on constitutional and so they are trying to make it constitutional and run around the represented some of the people and all the other judges and justices who look at this to discover a new right, a rise which-- and the use quotations, a right which will jeopardize all non-capital sentences. it will essentially allowed judges taken to its logical extreme to engage in a jump ball on every sentencing of every individual before them. the court has never allowed that and the court should not allow that and i predict they won't allow that in this case.

one of the, i did not believe my friend in california when she told me that the anti-incarceration activists had published reports depicting pictures of eight and 9-year-old on the front covers of their reports because i knew as a criminal defense attorney and prosecutor and now a sitting judge in the military that nobody, no state sentences eight or nine ewald's tigers coutts essentially, we's, the let's without parole for any crimes they commit. they go to the juvenile justice system and even if they for one reason or another would go to an adult court if they were ten or so they are not going to get life without parole so much to my surprise, i looked at a few of the reports she was talking

about and this is what spurred me to conduct a comprehensive research project. here is a picture, clearly of a little boy-- if i took a poll of this room would probably say he was six, seven, eight years old. he is an actor. he is not a defendant. yet this on the front cover of one of the leed reports that the anti-incarceration activists have up there suggesting to legislators and judges etc. that this poor little fellow, this child committed a crime and is serving life without parole. no, he is not. and look at all of the other reports out there. this is one by the equal justice initiative, which is down in the think it is alabama. here is a picture of an actor, a

boy who probably plays in his little league baseball squad and probably just ended up playing marbles a few weeks before, but there are numerous pictures throughout these reports of child actors, which are there to collect your heart strings. they are in these reports to lead people who aren't going to think about it, like some people who have the is he calendar, a busy schedule, a busy legislative agenda that this is typically the type of kid he was sentenced to life without parole. it gets better. the rover decision is a death penalty decision, and broke for himself thought about his crime before he committed it, the liberated before he committed it and he committed it in the supreme court found his death

sentence was unconstitutional. what the anti-incarceration activists have done it is imported out of these specific arena and into the non-death penalty arena of life without parole. and they used almost laughable language, like sentencing our children to die in prison. it is not the death penalty case. it is a life without parole case. if you look there is a very unsubtle coordination between the small get well-funded movement, suggesting that they never used the word juvenile, which all of us use in our practices, all the judges, all the criminal defense attorneys use it. they used child because they wanted to think that their children. they are not, they are teenagers.

the united states has the worst crime problem in the western world. we do. if you look at my report i look at the u.n. statistics and the w.h.o. statistics to show that we lead the western world in juvenile crime and done so for decades. jubah nuss commit murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and serious crimes in numbers that dwarf those of international peers. you see the campaign so far is essentially wrapped in to these principles. all the countries are the same around the world, the u.s. has life without parole, other countries don't, we are in violation of international norms, all countries are essentially the same. these are children, were mean and by the way we are in violation of treaties, all of which are demonstrably false and we go through it page by page, chapter by chapter in this

report in a highly ft voted report and unlike the reports of the other side, we traced back to our original sources and tell you everything we consulted in every single footnote in a report. between 1980 and 2005, 43,621 juveniles were arrested for murder in the united states. in the picture is just as bleak with respect to rape, 109,563, robbery 818,278, and aggravated assault, 1,240,199. that is uncontrovert it. yet when you compare the statistics with us against the rest of the world, you see that

we dwarf western europe and the rest of the world in terms of our crime statistics. we have a big problem and we could debate and discuss what those problems are and what the roots of it are and how we should address those and i think that is an ongoing, worth the debate but the facts are the facts. let me give you an example. this is in chapter 3 of the paper. in 1998 alone, 24,537,600

reported crimes were committed in the united states. that means of the 72 countries that supported their statistics to the u.n. that year and that yours the different than any other years, we ranked first in reported crimes. in fact, of united states reported more crimes than the next six countries, germany, england, wales, france, south africa and canada combined. and the picture is just as bleak with respect to juvenile crime, and so it should come as no surprise to any of us in this room, i hope, that states over the years have responded to this explosion in juvenile crime making some laws applicable to juveniles and over the years, making it possible for the government and the states to

waive or push juveniles from juvenile court to adult court for certain specific heinous crimes like murder, rape, aggravated robbery, aggravated assault, kidnapping, extortion, bomb making, threats and those types. for a very small percentage of those, you have the possibility of life without parole for juvenile killers. the other thing that you see, have seen to date is this notion put out by the anderson international human-rights report, which is the lead reporter in this area, that there are 2,225 juveniles in the united states serving life without parole. folks, that number is a fallacy. it is a manufactured statistic. we go through their very own

reports, including their footnotes and showed the methodological flaws in their report. first off, it is true as they note, that there is no one repository within the department of justice or in each of the 50 states or the district of columbia that keeps the statistics of how many juveniles are serving life without the possibility of parole. there is a division of the department of justice that keeps that for 23 states, but not all states. so instead of excepting those statistics which is in little over 1100 or so juveniles serving life without the possibility of parole in those 43 states, they manufacture assumptions. the assume crenson fenech takes the round two years between the time of arrest and the time of someone gets into joe when we know from our analysis that oftentimes it takes much less time, in fact monsoor weeks. many of the juveniles who commit these crimes get caught quickly

and take a sentence or a trial quickly and they are sent to jail. yet, what you see is this number picked up by the liberal media, pushed the four state legislators when they are trying to abolish the sentencing for state legislators and put in court documents, in fact in the brief before the supreme court right now they baldly asserts like the did in the torres case before the delaware supreme court that there 2,025 juveniles serving life without the possibility of parole. it is the manufactured statistic. and let me turn finally to this suggestion that we are in violation of international law. and that can be found on page 41 of the report. many of the opponents of life without the possibility of parole for juvenile killers and