>> tonight on the communicators, it's amazing the pushback like our closest allies in the uk but germany, other countries in europe, other countries around the world that are basically saying you have not given us, you have not given us of wrongdoing by huawei. >> huawei and security concerns about u.s. convincing other countries not to use equipment, joined by technology reporter. >> i was going to be able to be and have been advocate for safer american sovereign space. i'm not defender of huawei, look, we need the best technology, we need to be able to compete and critically important that we address the risks. i've never been told what to say or what i can't say and frankly when you look at the bigger picture huawei, we don't speak

through the china government and they don't speak for us. >> watch the communicators tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. >> director for the center for climate and security here to talk about the national security impact of climate change, first, what is your group? >> my group is small think tank and we are focused solely on drawing attention to the national security implications of climate and trying to get people to take action in order to address those. >> you worked at the pentagon worked on this issue, explain what you were doing tathere? >> sure, when i worked in the pentagon i had oversight over all installations, environmental policies and so as part of my duties there and sort of overseeing all, the implications of climate change was one of the issues we had to deal with so ie had responsibility within the

context. >> what were you doing? >> so we did some planning, we did strategy in the context of climate change, we started pulling together guidance on how one would deal with it and how you will deal with natural resources, that sort of thing. >> so what do you think given your experience is the most pressing issue of climate change for national security? >> well, i think that if i had to put it into a couple of categories climate change for how the dod does its job today, what are the flooding issues that have operational impacts, what are the extreme weatherem impacts, right now the largest impact that we have seen from climate change are when you get stronger hurricanes or wetter hurricanes or abnormal weather in such a way that it completes kicks it offline for a number of days, that has serious readiness implications an cost

implications. >> give us an example. >> last fall hurricane michael, incredibly strong hurricane and essentially overstatement but they are coming back online now but it did over $3 billion worth of damage, still that were some that were not in condition to fly and those were advantage of base and the point is that kind of a story when we see more and more of these with more and more impact, that has more implications, that has examples, north carolina took damage from hurricane florence, 3 billion plus worth of damage. record floods in missouri river and that was another billion.

>> how long did it take for the bases to get back up and running? >> well, it's hard to say that they're even all completely up and running. >> they are back except for the primary aircraft mission, f-22's aren't all of the time. i think 3 and a half billion of damage but it's a much larger base and they have operations that they are going on already, they will need the money, marine corps is smaller service and financial hit is bigger for them proportionately. >> we want to get viewers in the conversation. independents 202-748-8002 and also active military, immaterial i want to hear from you (202)748-8003. what about the larger impact of climate change causing conflict and strife around the world.

what are the the national secury implications of that? >> if you take a step back, you have the sort how it impacts today's job, what jobs you will have in the future, we can talk about that in a little bit. then there's the whole view of political situation, as you have stresses around the war, shortages of water, shortages of food, sea level rise, pushing people away from where they used to live, all of those impacts create stress on a country and if you have a country that has limited governance capacity, they have either government that is less confidence, less able to deal with these kinds of problem, that can sometimes -- >> how has the trump administration treated this issue of climate change and impact on military?

>> it's really interesting, the current administration gets a bad rap a lot of the time for how it deals with climate change but i would say military has continue today look at the problem and take it seriously and that's because the military looks at climate change as ourw mission, their first job in primary job is going to be accomplishment of their mission, national defense mission and whatever pieces of puzzle they are talking about, planning for conflict around the world, they are going to look at it all in context of mission and so continues to do that. i think you'll see that the military looks at it asry resilience issue, how do i deal with this problem when it hohappens rather than how do you stop it and so that's a mind set that is -- that the administration is more comfortable with and military -- >> let's go to david who is inn maryland, republican, hi, david.

>> caller: good morning, thank you for having me on. >> good morning. >> caller: you probable you familiar with ipcc and they're the experts supposed on global warming and we are told that the science is that this is man-made global warming and it's man-made production of carbon dioxide that's causing all of this, well, in- have in front of me a chart from ipcc which ahdcrut data set, instead of global warming confirms global cooling for the past 17 years but the interesting thing that brings the whole question about the scientists, this global cooling is going on at the same time the increase in co2, so we are told the science says c02 and science go hand in hand, no, it's the way around, we have global cooling going on right now in

17-year time while we have increase in c02, we are told that we have to make massive changes in lifestyle, whether we drive cars, where we live, all the things have to change and so-called subtle science disagrees with what the evidence is being supported here. >> i love that you have drawn out ipc report and i think they'll be glad to hear that somebody is reading their data. but i don't know that it's helpful for nonscientists to talk to nonscientists in hopes to some to some sort of scientific revelation. the national climate assessment put together by the federal government, by this administration and its scientists have basically said that, yes, in fact, it issa settled that the preponderance of the evidence shows there's more carbons and caused by humans and causing global

warming, it's a con complex system. sea level is rising. talking about how you will change your life and carbon emissions is not what the military is dealing with, they are dealing how they see things happening today. go to naval and see sea level rise and they are concerned howg they will deal today's problems and the navy is looking at how changes operation and how do they plan as ice is receding even now and russia and china are moving forces north, china has more ice breakers than we do and so they are looking at these geopolitical implications that they see today.

>> alex in brooklyn, new york, comments. >> hi, it seems like, well, first of all, climate change is one to have greatest stress to future and national security, i feel like, it seems that more work and effort has to be done to find persuasive message that climate change from national security and free market perspective. seem like that might unify more of the nation around the science which obviously is complex, but undoubtedly points to what -- undoubted points to grave costs and security concerns to the country. >> so we certainly see the costs coming forward and those implications and i can talk about the impact of extreme weather, i'm looking more weather events and so it is starting to think about how do i

make my bases more resilient and as co2 arises, has operation impact to bases. i don't know that the military needs to be convinced anymore. they are continuing their budget reflects this, their policies and their guidance reflect this already, they've just taken this into account as they move forward. >> democrat. >> yes, hi, good morning. this is all a hoax, it's all a mess, i mean, i work for the department of defense, i have been for 20 years now, i was at pentagon, i was here in virginia, i was at various installations all over the country. you know, bad weather is going to happen in the political panhandle and east coast and north carolina periodically and it's just going to happen, it's been that way for centuries.

it's not going to stop because we are using electric cars. i mean, the whole thing is just a mess. >> let's hear reaction to that, john conger. >> i worked at the pentagon too. >> what years did you work at the pentagon? >> from 2009 to 2017 and in the 90's as well. so i understand your perspective, yeah, there's bad weather, what we are seeing though, increase precedence of water impact storms, larger dollar storms and what we are also noting is that with waters you get more energy and storm can be higher wind for more water and when you have record storms over and over again, you start torm wonder if there's something different going on. that's fine. i don't think it takes a scientist to agree that the ice

is melting and more trade going through the arctic along russian coast, the rish ains are reacting to that and chinese are reacting to that and we have too be prepared to do that too. the navy is seeing that the sea level is rising and they have to something about it. this year and this year's budget alone they are asking for $49 million for walls, it's open to the air and open to the sea, if they get a big storm that overwhelms flood walls that will do damage to multibillion dollar piece of equipment, and so they are expecting that to happen and they're planning for it and they are looking to protect themselves. this is about resilience and not about electric cars or your omissions or anything like that. how do you tale with the impacts that are happening today and how

are they going to be able to be resilient to the impacts that will happen in near term. >> john, active military, are you active or retired? >> active. >> okay. okay, what are your thoughts? >> well, you do not have to believe in science at all because the laws of science will dictate what happens whether people believewh that the sea levels are rising, they'll rise, flood places, people will die, enough people die in the world over time, the carbon emissions will be lower, it'll home, equilibrium if you will, whether you believe or not it's going to rappen. >> i think that's fair enough. what we see is starting to prepare for this sort ofyi thing whether it involves getting their bases ready to deal with

flooding or more extreme weather events. if it means they are making investments in the right places so i will give you an example, the strategic headquarters in air force base, just flooded and had lots of buildings, they built their new billion dollar strategic headquarter up on a hill and so it didn't take the same damage, that's just smart planning. you know, some of it is how do you not -- how do you take the money you're already going to spend and spend it in such a way that you don't lose your investment? >> bob in pennsylvania, democrat. >> good morning, john. i have a question, i'm a nurse and when i studied, produces c

c02. transform it into oxygen. okay. d w, how do the lungs take c02 and transform that into oxygen? is there something that we could learn in cutting down pollution by studying thank you for taking the call? >> any thoughts on that? >> thanks for the question. innovation and scientists clearly part of the formula that we will be dealing as we go forward. i'm talking mostly about problems that the military sees today but obviously ifng you're going to stop the pattern from happening, you will think about how do i have cleaner emissions, you will have to innovate out of this problem. projections and the path we are on, relatively unsustainable when you think about what the

results are going to be in the long run. >> i want to get your reaction, senator elizabeth warren in armed services committee hearing questioning outgoing secretary wilson about how prepared that branch is for climate change. >> and how would you rate air force installations in terms of climate resilience? >> senator, there's a lot lot. i couldn't give you a red or yellow chart at this point. infrastructure structures challenges overall but number of factors. >> i see that the air force is requesting nearly $5 billion in emergency fund to rebuild air force spaces in florida and nebraska, alone that was damagea by natural disasters, so i think it's very important that the air force and military services continue to incorporate climate

change in the planning so when disaster strikes impact is minimal. this clearly is already an issue so thank you for your work onthr that. >> t'john. >> i think that's absolutelyy right. secretary wilson was characterizing correctly. so how do you make sure that the impacts are minimized, the air force has a very smart strategy when a hurricane is coming, they fly their planes out, unfortunately during recent events when hurricane struck, they could only fly 60% of, if-22's were in condition to fly and so they had to store the other 40% in hangers and most of them were damaged and so that's a challenge that they will run into and think about how they can for future events minimize damage for infrastructure.

>> bipartisan legislation to protecting military basis, senators schaff and miran, what would other legislations would do? >> it would tell the military to base by base assess vulnerability to climate change. there's not one problem and one answer, everybody has different elevation, different vulnerability to flooding, coast, to the rivers, different rivers with drought, wild fire, they have to think about it and now what do we have to do. the example was the navy at the shipyard is an example when they -- right now asking for money to lift flood walls up, that is a local project based on local vulnerability.it

you're going to have projects like that at various phases and the goal to make more resilience and more protective from the impacts. >> remind viewers what the trump administration's presidential committee on climate security is doing? >> that doesn't exist yet. it was proposal inside the national security council. they wanted to take adversarial review of dod and intelligence community assessments of the implications of climate change, washington post reported that there was pushback on that, now they are talking about assessing the national climate assessment, we've got concerns about political drivers towards undermining the science that dos is use to go make assessments. in general, if you want to change where the peer review science is you should do more peer review science is and add it to body of knowledge. i think that's helpful but i don't know that this committee

will accomplish that. >> kevin, independent. >> yes, this is kevin, so my thing is basically supported climate change is a serious issue for not only the military but the general population as well, i view it as existential issue that should have top priority in political circles and it's just going back to the gentleman that called a few calls ago saying he works for dod and pentagon, i work for dod and for pentagon as well and for him to say that it's a hoax or anything like that, we can all have our political views but there's a lot of science to back up the fact that climate change is a real thing and impacts the military and the military is taking it very seriously whether or not -- >> we will leave the last few minutes of discussion taking you live on c-span2 to the international center in washington, d.c.,