>> when you mention of the copies now that floating around, what do you make of the response that we've seen so far from the u.s. and other governments and private industry? for is the u.s. prepared of someone were to try to attack some of our critical infrastructure is private industry prepared at this point? have the not responded now that we all know that that threat is at least what is the response? >> it has been minimal. when the first big espionage attacks were reported by time magazine the response of the government was to claim it didn't happen and then when they couldn't prove it didn't happen to classify it so nobody could talk about it anymore because it didn't exist stick your head in the sand when you don't know the solution is the main government response in the critical infrastructure if. there's a concept for a tax

called the kilcher and where you follow every single step along the attack cheney and put in the defense of every steps they get past three of them can't get back to the fourth one. we are not doing that. we are writing reports about the voter devotees and the utilities without even looking at how the network is done. islamic the one thing people need to face up to is that we cannot protect ourselves against the high end attacks. no more than we can protect ourselves always against missile or aircraft or terrorist group. so the people who are at the top of the game are going to be able to get through and we need to think of other ways, resiliency, deterrence, military doctrine, along with the hardening of the critical infrastructure. there is always an opportunity because a lot of this depends on trekking one person, and i can tell you now that for every 1,000 people can trick at least one. >> catherine litronate, you mentioned earlier the state players. is china if ret and is the

chinese government in your view directing some of these cyberattack? >> in terms of the reporting and what has been discussed publicly already, there is pretty good indication that at least the two states that if not explicitly conducting them at least backing them through other parties proxy's. that is a sycophant problem dealing with complicates attribution when policymakers actually want to make decisions as to what the proper response would be from the u.s. and it's gone beyond the major concern right now as intellectual property theft which is a problem for national security but we are moving beyond that that it's not limited to just dealing with the country's secrets or technological advancing. so, with china, russia and its

proxies', we need to have our doctrine prepared, our policies in line with the international law that what our response would be in the case of the state using proxies' to attack us. and what would be ever defense if eight defense is not perfect, one might then as a more traditional kind in the cold war with the soviets have to think of the more aggressive move or what would be considered as offensive whether kinetic or cyber and the dot said in their strategy there is the right to respond to a cyberattack with kinetic force. it may be wise to respond to the kinetic force and it may not. we still have the cyber options, but it's the offense needs to be connected to any discussion on the security side. >> just to take the proxy a little further to make it clear for a sample in a china, every

pla district because every has a competition in the spring where they pick up people who vote to capture through those and hacking into other people's systems and they put them in these competitions going in for 30 day workshops where they learn advanced techniques but they don't go into the government. they are kind of outside the government but accessible to them and a couple of them have done deep penetration into the defense department, and yet they run the contest but they were not on the military pillar. that is just of what catherine was talking about. >> there are students in china but for instance to get an a your to exhibit and demonstrate how you can break into one of the most supposedly secure systems. if i were that student and that was the goal of the class, i would pick something like nsa, see if i can begin to nsa. now whether the government encourages that through the universities and backs it up and

is just a recipient of whatever goods come from that, or they don't necessarily have to work for the government said there are different levels of the proxy's. but the key to that is leveraging through diplomacy, hopefully before any military engagement with the states to get an understanding of what is acceptable behavior from the state whether it is from the student body private companies or indigenous what is acceptable in the state's responsibility to make sure no other territory or state is harmed. >> while we are doing the diplomacy, we need to remember that in the part of the warfare for the economic competition the weapons in the next and we are we behind. the colleges aren't teaching people how to defend computers

or new techniques, they aren't teaching the basics, middle schools aren't teaching programming. we are so far off the path we do have what is called the u.s. cyber challenge which is a national competition thousands of kids engaged dhaka not the kind of negative pressure but we are way behind and we need to ratchet that up at a very fast rate. >> one thing to think about the was that we can split up different categories. the chinese are the espionage and because the u.s. doesn't do economic espionage the russians are the best the financial crime and have an advantage because the u.s. doesn't permit or engage in financial crime. but the u.s. has both the traditional collection and we do that against them so when we talk about things like aggressive responses you might not want to set that precedent because some people might say

what are you talking about? you are tromping all over the networks and are just as guilty as im and that isn't true but on everybody's playing this game and every solution has to take into account. >> you mentioned earlier that in addition to just basic protective measures the need to be policy measures such as deterrents to create a bunch of different lawyers from cyber defense. what is your assessment of how far along the u.s. is on deciding on its policies of what is deterrence in cyberspace and active war in cyberspace, some of these things that probably need to be cleared if you are going to make use of the policy tools? >> dewaal at fenestration has made a lot of good progress and so i think that we are further along than sometimes might be the public appearance and then deterrence, pretty good idea we have something called the cross domain deterrence which is if you do cyber and i do a missile that is a good idea. the issue with deterrence is that there is something that is

not the trouble to the military force and that gets into the definition. since the launch of a crime don't usually justify the military response. we are really good at deterring the military or espionage or crime and that is because the definition people are revolving around hasn't been fully accepted but where we are coming out is this is just like any other kind of military conflict. the laws of the conflict now apply but it's not an attack if there is a physical damage or casualties. a little bit of a gray area but people are moving in that direction. i just don't want to talk too much with the area of the greatest dispute is our foreign friends are making the argument that you need to expand the attack to include information warfare and that's because they say that ideas of the information are for security officials once told me twitter

is an american plot to destabilize foreign governments. the believe that and that is because they fear ideas but for me an idea is not a weapon. telling someone through force or the threat of force is an act that falls under the armed conflict. telling someone a different idea to try to persuade them that isn't warfare. we will have big fights over that in the future. >> i'm wondering what sort of examples of cyber attacks would actually fall in the category of the warfare as opposed to espionage and crime and other things we tolerate? >> that is one of the most important topics to get the states to stop specifically discussing under their view and interpretation in the cyber context what would constitute a use of force versus an armed attack which triggers the provisions of the charters. as of espionage known as one of

the oldest professions or done since the creation of states espionage is not criminalize under the international law. the treaty that prohibits and downfalls spawning, clandestine collection of information the use of force or the threat of the use of force against the political independence for the integrity of the state is prohibited under the charter. designing and understanding the baton to the context of what would be the force and we can't forget it is against political dependence, sovereign integrity so not all uses of the force are triggered but there are exceptions under the charter. if you have a bomb attack the state can actually add one of the strongest exceptions under article 51. what amounts to the attack under the cyber is what we have to start getting agreement on. some of that is the attack

against a critical infrastructure is automatically considered an armed attack under the u.n. charter and would trigger the legitimate self-defense mechanisms of the state in the military as well. do you agree with that assessment? >> possibly to be dicey we start with that and recognize that some states may view that and let's look back at our critical infrastructure and what that would mean. that's what we need people to focus on. the use of force is lower than the armed attack. you can have and some have opined that espionage may rise to the level of the use of force. the option typically is accepted as a use of force but espionage, not. so you need the expectation which there's a lot going on which we build in other states

do from what would be an armed attack. if we get agreement from at least the key state actors that have the capability this is what we would precede an armed attack. therefore we don't want to go there. say somebody unleashed an attack on the u.s.. does that constitute an attack? so it is interesting because you have to look at facts around what was the justification or the legitimacy to allow for that? arguably one might propose that it was a self-defense move. that against the nuclear facility. now even if we have justification under the u.n. charter for self-defense argument, you still need to make sure that your actions are proportionate to the threat and that we get back to consequences after you have conducted in cyber, how do we know what the

consequences are. savitt has to be proportionate even if you have got justification. so if you did something without legitimate justification under self-defense, then it can be viewed as an unlawful use of force and could be arguably rising to a level of an armed attack depending on how they interpret that. >> welcome okay, say in this example it is deemed an armed attack. and you are inclined or approved to take some sort of defensive action. who do you go after in self-defense in this example? i mean, at this point we don't know who did it. there has been speculation -- >> you could argue that it is an attack. there's still a decision that has to be made by the president about whether this is an act of war that justifies the response. normally we don't respond until we think of the towers for the

beirut bombing. we know who did that and we know which state was behind and we took no overt military action against them. the same thing is going to happen. the president will have to decide do i want to pick a fight this week to my to busy with all my other war? how we deal with it? >> doing is sort of secret attack back -- but i'm wondering the example here because nobody has been able to say with certainty so what you do in that circumstance? >> i would like to leave those questions to catherine. >> so you are asking if it is the natural vision problem. >> what do you do, say that there is something that has been deemed to be an armed attack where the self-defense, some self-defense of action is justified whether this covert or overt. what do you do when you can't pinpoint?

>> i was actually going with the net itself which is a legitimate self-defense move. the question as relevant in terms of retribution, but he would have to know the facts of what your target was and whether in taking those actions that could rise to the level of the use of force in an armed attack and even the word active war is irrelevant. the domestic purposes, constitutional separation of powers but under an analysis of the international law the word war is not even used in the constitutive the relevant provisions of the charter. if she suffered an armed attack, to have the authority if one chooses. of course you're not compelled to have to respond. often the towers that he was a skull it often depends if you have enough information in which to base because under the international law you clearly have to the perpetrator was before you take action against

an innocent party. so the attribution will be a problem but i would actually think that if one could argue that it was a legitimate self-defense move in and of itself. now you do worry about the tit-for-tat not going on. >> that's the other -- you probably know this and it's probably good for the audience to know the ability of the u.s. to attribute an attack using intelligence means is extremely high. attribution is not a problem. okay? the problem is making a decision due of one to start a war with china now or do i want to get it right. but attributions as a problem is routinely overstated because people are unaware of the classified. >> what you are saying is this isn't just a technical question you can use human forces or other types of intelligence to figure out just like with any sort of attack they're trying to cover their tracks of who did it.

>> i would like to take just -- with a sort of freedom, not written off but we are looking at the welfare and the st knowledge because it's been going on for ever and normally you can do that but in this particular case the espionage also has a massive economic effect on the united states, so it's not, it is military information and it's terrible that we are losing that every time that you as an industry are doing business with another nation in asia, your computers and lawyers computers are being taken over in your document stolen so when you're negotiating with them you will not get as good a deal because they know more about your playbook than you do, and you have heard about the google attack. that was one of the companies whose intellectual property it is current products, future products, engineering works and products and other people want to compete with us don't have to do all that r&d. so it's not just espionage in the old sense of espionage, and

it's having an asset economic impact as well as the military. >> it was in that long ago and that in the 80's you were worried about the japanese and that they were getting the technology and leading ahead of china as well to our intellectual property. it is a national security concern, but under the policy and the legal decisions how one response to espionage versus the use of force or non-attack is different. there are different rules at play as to what one does using law enforcement efforts possibly verses internationally recognized authority to use force. >> some people say they stole intellectual property from britain and that's part of what it does grow and should not criticize the chinese for doing

this and my answer is always that we should tell the chinese to steal as many books as you liked and that is not as allen said is going on. it's the ability to download massive information. the antiyour plans and it's also really hard if you ever read a book and try, how to build your own f-16 you make a lot of mistakes if you can get the electronic version is much simpler. >> we are almost out of time that i want to ask as we are coming up on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, could a mine 11 size attack occurred via cyber warfare? >> if your question is could people by based on a nuclear accident, that was facilitated through not caused by the facility did truce. >> catherine litronate? >> maybe i'm a little more optimistic or on the hope we are

not there yet the university is very close. i hope that still the biggest threat especially on an anniversary like this is similar to 9/11 conventional terrorist attacks. >> so there is a classified example of a cyberattack that resulted in multiple deaths and what we know from that we can start to assess the effectiveness as a weapon and it's not that powerful. you can hurt a few people, that's about of course, but i don't think that you can get at 9/11. you can have more fun doing something else and mess up the financial system and turn off the electrical power but the casualties in of the thousands would be difficult to achieve using cyberattack. >> we are out of time unfortunately. a jury quickly, jim lewis is the director of the technology public policy program at the csis. he got his ph.d. at the

university of chicago. also joining today, ms. catherine litronate, the director of the cyber secure a project of georgetown university, ph.d. from georgetown university, law degree from new york university and alan paller founder and research director of the institute, degree from cornell and mit. very quickly what is the institute and how did you get involved in this type of work? >> it is the maintenance organization which ran 20,000 people a year and the techniques to defend computers and export computers and i got involved because i set free software company and another company that was in the security area and learned it that way. >> you train a lot of government folks? >> more commercial and the defense industrial base with a small number of government folks into law enforcement in the intelligence community. >> catherine litronate, how did you get involved in working in

the general counsel's office, the cia and in cybersecurity? >> my background started actually at the cia when i was given the information warfare accounts back in 1997 as a lawyer and so just part of the corner and from georgetown eventually outside the government where i could bring in what i think it's necessarily a multi disciplinary approach the topic. we have technical sciences to try to deal with some of the problems. >> i would have to learn how to write computer programs, so i thought about dropping out, and eventually got through it and a few years later clark was walking down whole and he said to me you know how to program computers, don't you? i should have said note. instead he said i want you to go to the nsa and talk to them so

that we got involved. >> also joining us she covers national security type of issues for the "wall street journal." thank you all for being on the communicators. >> thank you.

all of the problems of the iran you could get from him and why we couldn't he liked him is the same reason they went to war. they couldn't be resolved to the estimate he had the misfortune of learning against the great military hero, dwight eisenhower. and so, i don't really think that there is any way that at least even some could have won. >> if you think of al smith in 1928, lost and leader herbert hoover, but paved the way for franklin roosevelt. there are 14 people in the series any of who i guarantee the viewers may never have heard

of and all of whom i can pretty much guarantee they will find interesting and fascinating and certainly surprising. >> history professor gene baker, politics at measure carvel khanna and presidential historian richard norton smith talked about the 14 men who ran for president and lost it tonight at 8 p.m. eastern and pacific is a preview for the contenders, a 14 week series on c-span beginning friday, september 9th. washington journal this week has been looking at whether issues. we wrapped up the series today with a discussion on the role of the national weather service read this is about 35 minutes. >> host: today we want to conclude our series looking at weather-related factors.

remember we looked at disaster relief and preparedness onur . dnesday climatology yesterday we learned about the role of the national oceanic and atmospheric administration did today, the national weather service. its director is jack hayes. some background on the service. it takes -- it dates back to 87, when ulysses grant authorized the establishment of the national weather service. dr. hayes, that you for being with us. what is the mission at the national weather service? guest: every year, 10,000 severe thunderstorms, 11 tropical storms that become hurricanes, 5000 floods. our job is to detect these extreme weather events in time to alert americans so they can

take action to protect life and property. host: how long have you been with the national weather service? guest: since the year 2000. i retired from the air force in 1998, did two years in the private sector, and then joined noaa in summer 2000. host: let's look at what happened with her caurricane ire as it went up the east coast. as we see from these crabs, it is pretty much right on, because it affected the. you expected to hit. guest: our job is to other americans that as far in advance as we can. preparing for a hurricane is not something you do in an hour or two. our job is to to board up windows. with regard to a ring, we get

the track pretty much stop on-- with regard to irene. it headed north into new york city. we made good progress in track forecasting over the past 10 to 15 years. it is not have the same effect on the intensity of the storm s. host: the weather channel uses your information. we get some much from outside sources. guest: we work in partnership with private sector companies like the weather channel. national weather service collects the information with a fleet of geostationary and polar orbiting satellites, with airplanes that fly into a storms. we have sophisticated models on

high performance computing. they help us and we do need the private sector in alerting americans. one thing the weather service does is to work with emergency management community to prepare communities to take necessary action. the private sector and public sector are required to better protect americans. host: if you have a question about how you get your weather information, our guest is dr. jack hayes who is the director of the national weather service. our phone lines are open. out west, -- these of the phone numbers. nine national centers for environmental protection.

host: break those numbers down. guest:122 forecast offices. these are well trained meteorologist who understand the local a fax that typography, the density, the population. they form populates -- partnerships. you have to have those partnerships and you have to have the understand to convert the knowledge te s. or into forecastin so that would be our forecast officers. we have 13 forecast centers that are aligned with river basins across the united states. i do not think i am saying much to you or to the public about the threat that floods have had.

having a river forecast center in your local region has helped us with the floods that we saw in north dakota, but the lower mississippi, >> guest: certainly last weekend with hurricane irene and the devastation that it did in vermont. our national centers are specialized in very precised or focus science. our strong prediction center specialized on thunderstorms and tornadoes. the hurricane center that people know about focuses on hurricane and tropical cyclones. we have a space weather prediction. many americans might think the sun being 93 million miles a way doesn't effect us. we are finding that our technology, gps satellite, smart power grid distribution, the disturbances on the sun can have a devastating effect on the lives of americans. we had an outbreak back in the

1950s, where telegraph operators in the northeast were actually shocked by currents that originated from the sun. >> we'll get to your phone calls. wayne from new york with dr. jack hayes of the national weather service. good morning. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i wanted to say that national weather service to me is is in the top three, cdc, epa, and y'all come third. without the national weather service, i would here during the irene hurricane. and when you gave us that warning between 3:30 and 4:15, possible tornado, if me not watching the weather channel and getting that report from y'all, me and my would not having prepared. i wanted to thank you for that. the other question -- the question that i have is this morning there was an earthquake in alaska. there was supposed to recorded tsunami. i don't see it on the news or anybody talking about it. can you give us any information

or national weather service when it comes to situations like that? >> guest: thank you, wayne. thank you for the compliment. ly say it's good to get that kind of feedback. we work hard to protect americans. it's nice to get a measure of appreciation. thank you. with regard to the earthquake, within a matter of minutes of the geological survey deconnecting the seismic event, we had put an alarm and warned americans in -- along the coast of alaska, pacific northwest, it didn't take us very much longer with the array of buoys off of the alaska coast to use our miles to determine that the threat wasn't there of a tsunami. we canceled that warning. i don't know the precise numbers, within a matter of tens of minutes. but we did have a warning out. so my guess is you didn't see it on the news, because from the time the event occurred to the time we determined there was no

threat, there wasn't enough time to get it to the news media. >> edward is joining us here on washington, d.c. good morning. >> caller: dr. jack hayes, good morning. >> host: good morning. >> caller: yes, i often wonder when they have difficulty predicting the intensity of these storms. i'm a scientist and i was just wondering are they extracting enough information from the thermal energy that these storms are picking up, generally from the oceans that strike a lot of energy from the oceans? are we tracking those systems real time in the satellite? i know it's a satellite tracking right now. how do you feel about that? >> guest: you know more about what we do than the average person. because you are right on the mark with your concerns. the problems that we have with intensity are related to what's going on at ocean surface, and what's going on in the cloud in the tropical storm or the hurricane eye.

and how do get information out of center of the storm? in fact, what we have is a program within noaa today, hurricane improvement forecast, we are using data and satellite data that fly airplanes into storms like irene with radars and sophisticated measuring systems to collect information on the structure of the eye wall itself, we drop these drums called drop sons, that measure pressure, temperature, and wind down to the surface. in some cases, we will drop censors, sample or measure the ocean temperature and other thing that is we use in our research programs. first to understand what's going on, and to take that understanding and translate it into a model that our forecasters can use. >> host: jewels from california from the national weather service. >> caller: good morning.

i'm with everybody on the weather. i think it's a great thing that we have all of this reporting. because you can pretty much plan your day by it. there's something i've been concerned about. every since i first saw the windows up in the northern california, which has been quite a few years back, a while back, i heard something about the air controllers were having trouble. because these wind mills putting out false weather patterns. i don't think they are false weather patterns. i think the more wind mills we get, i think you are going to see a big change in the weather. >> do these wind mills affect the forecast? >> i'll answer -- maybe i could answer jewels first point. and that's our ability to detect severe weather. a challenge that we face with the wind mills is we have a national network of radars. the way it works, it sends out a

pulse of energy that reflects off of a storm. it also would reflect off of a flock of birds. we've had that challenge. it will reflect off of the spinning turbine. so i will tell you we are work, communities and the private sector that put the wind milling out there as a way to generate renewable energy, to make sure they don't have a negative impact on our ability to detect threatening weather. in terms of do they cause threatening weather? i'm sure that the presence of a wind mill might alter in the immediate vicinity of the turbine itself, the wind flow patterns. my sense is that is not a major threat to the community. >> the web site is nws.gov, if you want to track the weather. rosalynn from california, on the line to democrats. good morning to you. >> good morning. thank you for having this program. i have two quick questions, for your guests, one is that noaa

has released a public list of weather modification programs on going in the western states about 66 of them on the current list. i was wondering why the national weather service was not letting people know that these weather modifications for rain and snow enhancement programs were ongoing in the western states. that was the first question. and the second one that i have is that patrick of nasa has been noting that persist studies are changing the climate and exacerbating global warming. i was wardening why the national weather service was not noting the aviation impacts from the increase from aviation in their weather reports. >> thanks, can you address either or both? >> okay. well, i guess i will talk to the second one first and then maybe

rosalynn, if you could give me a refresher on your first question. i know the first. let me go to the first question first. we're in operational agency and our focus is taking the information that we collect and translating it into a forecast and a warning that it can better protection americans and their property. there are research entities, both within noaa, within the federal government, within the academic community, and i know that the federal government had some interest in weather modification back in the 1960s, but to my knowledge, we've not really embarked on any weather modification program. i think that would explain why you are not seeing things from our web site. again, our focus is on the forever and the warnings to protect americans. and in terms of con tells, your question really is better posed to a climate researcher.

i think -- you hear different opinions, some say that the presence of them will reflect more sunlight back to space and have a cooling effect. others say the presence of humidity in the upper part of the troposphere tends to trap more heat. it was operational agency. i tend to focus on the forecast and warnings, and that's where our expertise is. >> host: can you find historical weather data? >> guest: yes. our national center ncbc, national climatic data center is a storage place and weather.gov, you can fairly quickly find where to get that information on historical data goes back oh jeez, decades if not over 100 years. >> host: tracey joining us, the director of weather service. >> caller: good morning. i wanted your person opinion about the areas that seem

hopeless because of what we've done on the environment, and how we've cut back things to protect the areas. doesn't it seem foolish we spend so much redoing and correcting me the false and trying to put so many people out of different homes. of course, i'm thinking new orleans specifically, but it's going to happen all the time. should those people be living in that area? >> guest: yeah, i think as a citizen of the united states, anything that noaa can do, the federal government can do to better plan communities to avoid the impact that extreme weather that we can't prevent would have is value added. >> as we listen to tracey, or sandra, let's read to you what the mission statement is for the national weather service? nws provides weather, hydrologic

and climate forecast as well as warnings in the u.s. -- >> host: sandra, thanks for waiting. good morning. >> guest: good morning. >> caller: i would like to say we just went through tropical storm irene, which was downgraded, of course. but devastated the whole east coast, mostly, people in the vermont, people in right from my area have gone without, gone without, and we were ill prepared, ill prepared. and the national grid they turned around and they weren't there when they should have been. and the agencies weren't there when they should have been, yet they want the people to be there when they should be. do something about it. get together. put your voices together and your actions in the right places. we can't do it, you can. you get paid for it, do it. do your jobs, please.

that's what we need done. we almost -- i have handicaps in my house. we need your help. >> host: do you have a generator for backup? >> caller: yeah, we had alator, and it cost us $1 an hour. with the gas happened, it's try to get it -- well, there was gas out there, there was one service station open, we were in the total darkness towards the end. we finally got after four days of electricity in our house, which some people right now have to go to sunday or more without water. >> senator, thanks for the call. we've been seeing the stories of towns in vermont isolated. 13 communities, there are places in maryland and new jersey, and in connecticut without power. some may not get it until late into the weekend. your job is to forecast the weather, not the power grid. what are the lessons we can take

away with hurricane irene and in terms of the basic needs? >> guest: every time we have a high impact weather event that hits the united states, we do our best to forecast and warn so that people can prepare. i want to assure irene and everyone out in the audience that we're going to do a national service assessment on what we did. we're going to do that in partnership with fema, the army corps of engineers, there are things that we did very well with irene, there are things that i know we can improve, and our commitment each and every time that we have a high impact weather event hit the united states we go through this. what did we do well, what did we do well, and our effort is to improve. i mentioned earlier a hurricane forecast improvement program, we would like to be able to tell americans seven days in advance that there's a threat. that gives them time, that gives the power companies time to put in place the materials that they would need to restore power quickly. it gives communities, emergency

managers, time to preposition storage in partnership with fema. so i will tell you, irene -- i'm sorry, i will tell you that i don't feel good when i hear stories like this. i would say your situation is certainly not unique. we are here to do our best for you. >> hurricanes are relatively easy to predict. tornadoes are difficult to predict. especially with any type until they are about to hit. what have we learned in forecasting deadly tornadoes? >> i got into the business in the early 1970s. and i can remember a time when we were unable to provide a warning until virtually we saw the tornado. so americans have seconds, maybe minutes to prepare with an investment in the national radar system, the doppler system, investment in models, and some additional science training, our forecasters. our average lead time on a tornado warning is now 14

minutes across the united states. till not enough time. during the alabama outbreak, we had 25-30 minutes warning on some of those tornadoes. i feel very good at the end of the day, i'm thinking to january 2008 in mississippi where there was 2,000 teachers and school children where we got a warning to that school 40 minutes before an f-3 tornadoer to the roof off. they were able to get the children and teachers into the basement. the substance, three minor years. we feel good when we have those kinds of days. on the other hand, i was down in alabama and saw the devastation that those f-5 tornadoes did in huntsville, birmingham, surrounding areas. a lot of people lost their lives. i don't feel good, and i wouldn't unless we had warnings in partnership with the private sector, emergency managers, not one lives lost. recall the st. louis tornado,

right through a populated area, right north of the arizona field. not one life loss. i'd like to do that for every tornado outbreak. we have an aggressive program to try to attack that. and it's not unique to the weather service, it's says let's involve emergency managers, communities, so that people understand the threat, understanding the warning, and take the appropriate action. >> the web site is weather.gov. joe is joining us from west virginia. go ahead, please. >> caller: yes, steve, my first question would be to c-span. i would like and like to know why the c-span hasn't aired a show on mountain top removal mining that's occurring in the especially southern west virginia and eastern kentucky. and because of the climatology and effect that it has on the change and the climate and the hot royalty. i guess my question to the gentleman is with over a million

acres mountains removed up to 800 feet in height, and with the change in the way this effects the weather in the appalachian mountains, is there any opinion that you have that this creates a problem for the economy just like part of the weather service is to protect the economy. i would like to know your opinion, what can be done, and i would like to do a program on mountain top removal and let the people of america knows what's happening to west virginia in order just to keep the lights on for people in places like washington, d.c. i love c-span. thank you very much. >> host: joe, from our per spect of, thanks for call. and thanks for the suggestion. we'll look into that and get a response. i appreciate it. >> guest: i think, joe, the changing the dynamic or the topography in west virginia does have an effect on local wind flow patterns, could also have

an impact on precipitation rates. in some cases, i could give you examples of where that would actually reduce the impact in other cases, where it would actually enhance or make worse the impact. so from our perspective, that's a very small scale effect. it doesn't -- it doesn't, i think, emphasize the need to have a community presence so that we understand what the local effects are on communities so that we can best predict the weather and provide very targeted specific warnings. >> host: jan is joining us in los angeles. good morning. >> caller: thank you. it's been known for some time climate scientists have predicted an increase in storm intensity and or frequency. is it the increase in intensity of storms that's predict or frequency or both? and what is your role in

predicting the increase and helping our nation to deal with this increase? >> well, jan, the nature of the question really is a climate research question. i think our role in climate and climate prediction we have a network of upper soundings where we collect temperature, pressure, humidity, and we provide that to climate researchers ensuring high quality observation that they will use to detect federal climate trends. in terms of our role in predicting, we have in the weather service a -- one of our national centers, the climate prediction center who's mission is to predict seasonal to interannual variations and this is where your hurricane outlook comes from, where the winter season outlook comes from, the summer season outlook comes

from. so we in general the limits of skill that we see is in the seasonal range. it's really statistical measures that go out, 60-90 days. i think this is an area where climate research will equip us with tools to hone some of those in much of the same fashion that we have hone the shorter range skills and improved our tornado and hurricane warnings. i look for that in the decade ahead. >> background on the guest. dr. jack hayes spent 30 years in the u.s. navy, graduate of bowling green, and studied at the u.s. naval academy, and now director of national weather service. jim frye wanted to follow up on the callers point. we are talking about a changing jet stream. is that a factor? are we seeing jet streams that have changed? >> host: i would say our focus on prediction, i can't say that i've seen that myself. that's, i think, a subtle

question that i would look to the researcher. every year we see a variation from the previous year where you have patterns where the jet stream will dip further south, bringing colder weather into the southern part of the country and alternative years, you'll see it further north and warmer than normal. it's difficult for me to say that. steve, i do have to say and correct you on navy. my air force friends would give me a hard time. >> host: i apologize. u.s. air force. i misread that. studied at the u.s. naval academy. u.s. air force for 30 years. thank you for ya correction. my fault. jack hayes, 28 years in the u.s. air force. >> caller: yes, first of all, i'd like to thank you for the early warnings that we did get by wednesday or thursday. i knew enough to get my fuel ahead for my generator, i always have a year supply of food in the house, we have walk in coolers in the cellar, but is

there any way that when a storm is is predictioned like this, they could put telephone numbers. i don't have a computer, i don't know how to use one, i'm a disabled naval veteran. and i had to call the airlines to try to get some type of information on the intensity of the storm, what we were supposed to receive for rainfall, and there was no way to call anyone. web site has a everybody. we need telephone numbers on the screen. we don't all have computers. thank you. >> guest: so your question is on the screen of the television. and if you could let us know what part of the nation you are from, i didn't catch that in your remarks. >> host: upstate new york. >> guest: upstate new york. i can reach out to the forecast office, have them work with the local television station, because that's a concern that we have. there are a large number of americans have cell phones,

other americans have computers, but there's still a significant part that has neither. our job is to get to all americans. >> host: can anybody issue a weather warning, or solely from the national weather service? >> guest: solely from the national weather service. i think this makes sense up. don't want to have various people putting out a warning, then you have conflicting information. so we take great -- make great effort to ensure that we accurately communicate, by modern technology with media so they understand the true nature, the private sector, emergency managers, we use whatever technology that we can to ensure a consistent message goes out, because that confusion can costs lives. it's important for us to recognize that the importance of doing that. >> host: kevin it joining us. willington, north carolina, good morning. >> guest: good morning, gentleman. i have a quick comment for the

show and question for the director. comment being your project you had earlier in the week. i would love to revisit that. but this time with the positive use. somebody on there who's prekey phone. my question for the director is i was fortunate enough to stumble on the program in calgary about planes going up and dropping some kind of pellet to change the physical makeup of the storm, downsize the hail, and this was -- this was being funded by insurance companies. and i was wondering if we had any knowledge about whether that stands today or any other program in the making for the ability to change. thank you. >> host: thanks, kevin. >> guest: well, with regard to kevin's question, there have been theories that you can pop late a thunderstorm with things like silver iodine, and they

will attract the moisture in the cloud and spread it out, reduce the ability to form hail, reduce the ability to be an intense thunderstorm. i think the research results of weather modification are mixed. from our perspective, and we don't engage in weather modification, there's a downside to that as well. and that i don't think research can prove convincingly if we are not engaged that you might not make, potentially make a storm worse. i think that's a concern that i would have a meteorologist. >> host: charles is joining us in new jersey. good morning. charles, are you with us? >> caller: yes, sir. >> host: yes. please go ahead. >> caller: how are you doing? yes, sir, how are you doing, mr. hayes? >> guest: just fine, thanks. >> caller: my question is

about about -- >> host: we're getting feedback. let me get one more point, how do you share information with other countries. >> guest: it's free and open sharing. that's been a u.s. policy for decades. it's important that we push that. and i'll just give a fairly simple example. when you are forecasting weather 24 hours in advance, you are not really concerned with what goes on in china or russia. when you are trying to push the envelope to the forecast out, whether that originated in asia is going to come across at the pacific ocean. that free and open exchange of weather observations and information that we use in our global models to better predict or create longer lead time on our forecast. >> host: very quickly, one quick twitter question on the hurricane season and the names of these storms. who comes up with the names? >> guest: the hurricane center develops the names.

i'm not sure of the coordination process that they use. but it's done years in advance. >> host: jack hayes, thank you for being with us. >> guest: steve, thank you for having me. >> he's a partisan guy that wants to unite people. all of the problems of the era you could get from this guy, and why we couldn't elect him is the

same reason that we went to war. they couldn't be resolved. >> he had the misfortune of running against a great military hero, dwight eisenhower. and so i don't really think that there's any way that adlai stevenson could have won. >> you think of al smith in 1928, lost to herbert hoover. but paved the way for franklin roosevelt. there are 14 people in the series. many of whom i guarantee viewers may never have heard of. all of whom i can pretty much guarantee they will find interesting and fascinating and certainly surprising. >> history professor gene baker, carl cannon, and presidential historian talk about the 14 men that ran for p