knuckleheads i call them who wanted all or nothing. they wanted all their way or no way at all. which frustrated me to no end. i detail in my book the challenges of the 2011 grand bargain with president obama, outlined the challenges with immigration or the fact that a member of the united states senate wasn't a member of the republican house, stirred up enough of my members in 2013 to cause a government shutdown, thank you, ted cruz. >> you can watch the full conversation online, booktv.org, use the search box to look for john boehner or the title of his book on the house. >> welcome to the latest in the manhattan institute's stream events. today i have the pleasure of hosting the event with stephen,

an eminent scientist, steven koonin, not a famous scientist, for some and infamous scientists, professor at new york university nyu, formerly head of the department of energy research portfolio under the secretary of energy, a senate approved post under president obama. he was chief scientist at bp, for those who may remember, that used to mean british petroleum, then it went beyond petroleum and it went back to bp. we will talk about that and part of that, professor and provo caltech which is i will confess i am jealous because it was my first choice where i tend to go to school, i went to queens university as you know, i like to think of it as a good business school, it is the genuine mothership so in short he is the scientist of some consequence. he's not a dilettante. we will talk about his book, if you're joining us you know why we are talking about the book

titled "unsettled?: what climate science tells us, what it doesn't, and why it matters," steve is on the circuit, i know what that is like. could be fun, could be annoying but you write a book it is a lot of work, you hope people will read it. we will talk about the book, the science of the planet's climate, talk about the nature of the debate, not just this debate but this issue of talking about science in the public space and the idea of changing civilization's energy and how we get energy, we need energy to survive, no energy no life, will stop and full disclosure, i reviewed the book. i've not known him before. i've gotten to know him. i thought i would like him when i read the book. i reviewed the book for the wall street journal very favorably. caused a bit of a flap which if you haven't followed it you can

go to the website and see the facebook cancellation which was good. i guess you could say cynically publicity helps people focus on why the book was written. as a fellow physicist of less note than steve i should point out humanity has known the earth has had an atmosphere for 400 years. scientists figured this out a while ago. carbon dioxide was discovered 250 years ago. a scottish chemist discovered it. the scots invented everything. electricity, you name it. i am not scottish but they did a lot. 200 years ago, almost exactly. a couple years to the anniversary the idea of the greenhouse effect, the words were created, invented and identified by a mathematician which is kind of fun. really a transforms, anybody who has been in math or science

note he transformed, he was a mathematician for napoleon and figured out the earth was kept warmer than it otherwise would be the atmosphere function like a greenhouse. if it didn't there would be no life on earth so humans have been interested in climate science for a long time. also interested in the weather which is related but different phenomena and because we care about the weather. it affect our lives. nature has been trying to kill humans with the weather forever. understanding the climate and the weather matters because it is consequential and it is interesting. that is my bias, while interested in books like what steven koonin has written. let's start with the title. typically you will find people have nothing better to ask you, why did you title the book "unsettled?: what climate science tells us, what it

doesn't, and why it matters"? enough about me. steven koonin, why the title? it gets to what we talk about, why did you write the book? >> the -- it is a pleasure to be talking with you this afternoon. i think we will have a great conversation the title is a double and. it refers to the science itself, there are still important things about the earth's climate and human influences on it that we don't understand but also refers to my state of mind when i found out the science was not as solid as i had previously believed. >> host: the point you wrote about, you write when that happened and how it happened,

the epiphany that the science wasn't as subtle as you thought occurred because you were looking into the science, not because somebody -- somebody paid you to do that, you are the under secretary of energy but nobody paid you in the ad hominem world we live in when it comes to climate issues nobody paid you to disassemble the narrative that we have a solid view of climate science. >> about 2005 when i joined bp up until the time i left the government i was working to develop and demonstrate emission technologies of various kinds but in 2013 i was asked by the american physical society, the professional

society that represents 50,000 physicists to do a refresh of their statement on climate change. in 2007 they issued a statement to great controversy among the membership because it used the word incontrovertible and if you're a physicist that is a red flag so 2013, to look again at the statement and i thought rather than like many professional societies, rubberstamping with the un ipcc says, as physicists we should have a deeper look at the issue so i convened a workshop, five physicists who were not climate experts that and listened to three consensus scientists, all of them ipcc authors in one way or another and three credentialed skeptical scientists. there were presentations and we talked for a day or so and i

came away with the sense there is a lot here we don't understand and some of it very important to know that we didn't know. i was also surprised by how i had not heard about those shortfalls in the time i was studying the matter. it was a revelation about the substance of the science and how clearly it had been communicated to the public. >> your epiphany was similar to mine some years earlier on a different subject on nuclear energy which we will come back to. i spent the week of the accident at 3 mile island when i came to the united states, as a documented immigrant from canada and i am an american citizen, proud to be. despite our trials and tribulations still proud to be here. though it is challenging these days. i was thrown into the debate

around nuclear energy because of the accident and was immersed in the hearings that looked at nonproliferation issues for nuclear energy primarily and the safety issues, he did a spectacular job doing what you just described, that it is too unsafe to operate, we should abandon it, government set up the kennedy commission to examine the science and engineering, what we know, what we don't know, what is uncertain, how dangerous can they be, great experience but what i learned to your point is this profound difference between what people thought they knew in the public space and policymakers and scientists thought they knew and what they debated about was a big chasm and the people across the chasm

were a minority. a lot of scientists don't want to get into it and then i can tell you i tried to get a lot of scientists in your community to join me in the debate about the safety of nuclear energy. we were being told the world would end, prominent scientists at the union of concerned scientists to name names and other places like that. the day we almost lost pennsylvania, 3 mile island, all these things are going to happen. scientists did not want to join me. i got a bunch to join, they didn't want to join the public debate for a variety of reasons on that subject and that, i would say felt like where we are now but now it is on steroids. you learned there is something to debate, there was a bit of a blowback on that when you wrote

a piece in the wall street journal five years ago. >> 2014. if you remember. were you surprised? i guess i wasn't surprised the blowback i felt because i had been in the middle of it, there was a trigger event that caused hyperbolic media coverage, blowing up a billion-dollar reactor, melting down a billion-dollar reactor and blowing up the investment was a consequential event that was a trigger so you saw a lot of emotion but this was different. >> the climate discussion compared to nuclear energy, full disclosure, i am a nuclear physicist by a vocation. the difference with the climate is two things. one is we have now and allegedly authoritative set of documents that are in fact the

un reports, the us government reports and they allegedly define the science. the second thing we have is this has been building for quite a while but i think it is getting more serious now as you see governments proposing actions that will in fact affect people's lives more directly in terms of reliability of energy, cost of energy and even their behavioral patterns. there is a much greater desire now to be looking at the allegedly authoritative science that was say 5 years ago or thereabouts. >> host: i do want to get to one thing you wrote in your book that i thought you handled extremely well and it is the language of the debate, those who argue about the science,

quote, deniers, this construct that was created which i was offended with when it happened and it was created. you wrote eloquently, briefly but right up front it is important that every venue, this issue of being labeled a denier when you try to talk about the science of climate. >> let me say were i into micro-aggression i would be really offended. i have been call a denier pretty recently in some of the media. 200 of my extended family died in camps in world war ii from the nazis. where i into micro-aggressions i would get really mad. but this is about science, we should take the emotion out of it. when i wrote the book i was very careful to quote almost

entirely from the official assessment reports of the un and us governments was so if someone takes issue with what is in the book we can then have a conversation about who is denying what because in fact some of the people criticizing me wrote the report to themselves. >> like you, what i write in the public space, this is just the nature of the space we are in whatever the subject is, energy and climate science one tends to use research that others have done because no individual can do all the research so you go to the primary sources and look at what they said and do your best to accurately reflect what they said, can't do it perfectly and you write your own synthesis. this particular debate, science debate about climate, this is what struck me early on, 20 years ago, that if you read the

literature you find as a friend of mine who you know, i am paraphrasing, dick is often saying in the public space to colleagues who follow the camp of debating the science, not skeptics, don't keep saying -- the science and the scientists are very good. the vast majority of the research is honest, solid, important to the extent dick can get angry he gets borderline angry when people label the science as bunk. the translation of what is there into public discussion, some by scientists but not all by scientists, the media, this is not, there is no answer to

the question but i phrase it this way. in science and public policy they merge, public policy support science or not like it is a bad future. it is a difficult one. the process of science in reaching a consensus is an important one to understand and understanding the difference in the continuum of consensus from knowing the earth is round to knowing the temperature of the planet will be in two centuries are different parts of the continuum. you undertook this examination based on that simple premise. how do you bridge that divide when people say it is a consensus, so many scientists, you are cherry picking, you are cherry picking the consensus is we have a problem. what do you say? >> you have to distinguish

between what the science says from what you're anybody thinks we should do about it. i tried to be careful about that. we can discuss that but let's talk about the science. there is this long game of telephone that starts with the research papers the goes into the assessment reports to the summaries for policymakers and those assessment reports which are heavily influenced by government before we get to the media and the politicians and so many opportunities to distort the message. as i wrote the book i tried very hard to stick with summary statements in the reports and so circumvent that chain of distortion and give the public some insight into what the science actually says. i often quote the line from the movie the princess bride, you

keep using that word. i don't think the science says what you think it says. a lot of people are surprised when i say no human influence is detected in hurricanes or the economic impact of warming will be minimal etc. etc.. there are some real surprises but the process has varied and i tried to elucidate them but somebody thinks i am cherry picking, show me the other part of the tree. >> you date yourself by enjoying one of the great movies of all time, the princess bride and the great line when he says i don't think that word means what you think it means. >> we could go back and look it up. >> i think this is more important, settling this now. when they were following them. anyway. look. you put your finger on

something really important especially in the public policy space. you went to great pains in your book to use primary sources, to reach a different conclusion than people using the same primary sources, a reasonable form of deliberation. >> i don't reach a different conclusion. ipcc conclusions, sometimes they are not put in proper context of they truncate the history or don't give a sense of scale and so on so i've done that. >> that is right. the precision in language is difficult in soundbites on tv. if you are lucky, you get 3 to 4 minutes of airtime and usually the host once an impact thing like it is a hoax or obama was wrong or biden did

this or trump did that. you get hammered for that. you need to come back with an answer, you can't equivocate, you have to reach a conclusion and in 3 minutes it is hard. >> this science in particular is so complicated and nuanced that it does not adapt well at all. >> after i published my review which i can share with the audience. i will tell those were listening if you haven't read it, and your carefully explaining what happened, where we are, what the data mean,

where they come from, i look at the sea level rise graph and it oscillates. it accelerated and decelerated. what you don't see is a signal saying there is a clear trend of the last 2 centuries, and in the rate. there is a clear trend towards the level rising for the last 10,000 years. >> 20,000 years. >> we know about the level rise because humans.at the sea and measure it carefully. >> a couple of millennia. >> it is pretty solid, a lot of other historic measures, not temperatures, sloppy measurement, the thermometers

that they value. you distill that in the soundbite, and simplistically, the level is accelerating for so long, sealevel rise is accelerated for the last few decades, what does that tell you, maybe we don't make that much sense about what the factors are. >> people who are up to date on that subject, human influences were a quarter of what they are today and less than that.

and the challenge we have to the iconic one which is temperature. we used to call it global warming. the nomenclature changed to climate change, we will speculate on why. seemed like a better description than talking about warming only and now, and it was a climate crisis rather than climate change so you have this nomenclature problem which is pushing it towards catastrophize doing what is going on and attaching as we should get to this, and to atmospheric planetary events, they are related but different and it is important to explain

we may have experts in the audience but it is important to explain how they are related. >> the weather is what happens every day, a second day whereas climate is defined as the long-term average of the weather, typically through years and sometimes people talk about 20 years. if you tell me the last 3 or 4 years have been unusually dry that is the weather. you say it last for decades and then you talk about climate and i have this wonderful graph in the book, my data but it is the height of the nile -- the nile river over 800 years measured in cairo. it has long-term trends, it is the ups and downs every year,

and there was some egyptian who got really worried they were entering the droughts. you don't have anything to do with human influences because of this before the large-scale use of fossil fuels. >> that's one of the most luscious graphs in the book and i am sure you have this experience with graphs and books in a public space. get the graphs out of the book, it scares them away. that is an illustration, information, picture is worth 1000 words. it is provocative, it speaks volumes to that. >> >> put the book together, a big

debate, put the graphs in or not like 70 graphs that is part unusual. the graphs are the way you talk about data, and you can't talk about it in any other way although some non-trends, you can perfectly do that without looking at the graphs. >> i like when you are qualified -- i am just -- >> the graphs are no more complicated. it is like every other skill, with financial reports to look

at it and smell a couple. i was amazed, the investment fund, they would look at the financial page and the numbers, they could just tell. i feel the same way that i was trained but you are right, you explain the graphs and the narrative. and just stipulate, those think we shouldn't be in a hurry to change the energy system of the world and at least the western world is trying hard to change the energy system. you have to change. the world gets 3% of its energy

and 10% from other non-combustion sources and otherwise it is 80% burning oil and gas, 84% 20 years ago so here we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, already spent in the last two decades somewhere between one and $2 trillion and some point, non-hydrocarbon energy sources where hydrocarbons dominate, you work for bp in the height of whatever reason they had in the public relations side to signal a long transition to a post-petroleum world again. let me ask you to talk about energy, fusion and this question that i get all the time. so you're a scientist, you

study this stuff. you got to put a marker down, 2035, forecasting 2035 based on what you know about the physics of energy, economics of energy, advice everybody by saying that. 2035, is the world getting a lot of oil? supertankers worth of oil? is oil still the dominant mode of transportation? >> energy systems are recalcitrant. they change slowly and there are very good reasons they change, two of the most important are the need to be reliable and you don't make changes in a system that delivers activity with reliability or fuel supply that needs to be there every day. the second is there are large capital investments involved, you put down a nuclear power plant or gas plant, we expect it to last many decades so it is still there, still running. it takes a long time.

to force the system to do something unnatural. i like to say changing the system by orthodontia not to the extraction. to make the radical changes that are being proposed without detailed plans i think we could be headed for trouble domestically in the economy and in our geopolitical house. >> i couldn't agree more. for me, i have taken this publicly and it is not a tough one to take, we are going to build more nonhydrocarbon machinery that is locked into the system. a lot of that is good and normal because the machines are better than they ever were. we need lots of energy but accelerating and enforcing it through subsidies doesn't create new machines easily. it takes a long time.

the geopolitical part, in the department of energy, one thing i know you learned and i learned this when i was much younger, a young man in the reagan white house, i date myself with that, you with the obama administration, i was in diapers at the reagan administration, i was very young, the geopolitics of energy mattered enormously because wars have been fought over energy. to distill it to what we have today the world will use a lot of oil. hydrocarbon's cousin but given who produces the orioles, two big players, the 2 or 3 players, going back to one or

2, we shrank and the rest of the world imports oil, the three exporting regions are russia and saudi arabia. i think not just frightening but a formula -- >> the administration seems to be headed for slowly strangling the domestic oil and gas industry, employs 10.5 million people and accounts for 8% of gdp and it doesn't produce 12% of the world's oil or something like that but if we shook that down, we still need oil and other countries are going to need oil and we will be ceding the geopolitical leverage to the countries you talked about, russia and the middle east. that seems to be a pretty silly thing to do.

we amount to 15% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and that fraction is declining as the rest of the world uses more energy to develop. but influence on the climate, we will be putting our economy in turbulence. >> reporter: i will add the obvious. by not domestically producing, we are self-sufficient net net. not domestically producing but importing hydrocarbons or alternative machines. we damage 8% of gdp and require importation of 8% of gdp at least so it is a net net 16% hit which is an astronomically big hit to our economy. >> there's another aspect. i don't want to jump too much on the administration because they are doing a number of good

things but this notion that you are going to create jobs and boost the economy by moving to clean energy. i remind people technology that is just invented is different than where it is manufactured and where it gets deployed the whether you use solar or wind as an example you see that playing out in real time so even if we invent something here it is not obvious we will leap for it. >> quintessential example is electricity, they were invented here, developed here, first deployed here. we import 90% of solar panels manufactured largely in china and asia broadly. i would like to say because it turns out as brilliant as the invention was and it is can incredible phenomenology it is easy to make solar cells.

they are not complicated things. hydraulic fracturing oil getting it out of rock making a rock yield hydrocarbons, that is hard work, the chinese are net importers. i don't think it is an accident they are the biggest exporters. >> geometry and geography and also the geology, the fact they haven't built a gas transport system that says they are not going to produce gas. >> host: you are a real physicist. i was a physicist for a while. i quit graduate school as my colleagues no not because it was too hard but because i did to work in microprocessors where i was building stuff and in those days you didn't get to build stuffing university. >> jim languor, a wonderful material scientist said to be

in physics is a license to poke your nose into anybody's business. >> i used that adage my whole life but my family will attest. let's take a turn before we go to q and a to physicists favorite energy sources, the nuclear phenomenology. i like to call it atomic phenomenology because i get to implode solar energy, the only new phenomenology in the history of humanity other than things that move that are atomic, electron layers being excited by photons and tinkering with the nucleus so we have nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. as i said earlier i was branded in the intellectual sense, defending nuclear energy for years. i'm a nuclear bull, there's no

phenomenology as remarkable or challenging as making nuclear energy viable, safe at low cost and easy to deploy. i'm encouraged by new class of small reactors and how interesting it is designed, they seem genuinely a breakthrough. >> i promoted getting some loans out for the modular reactors designed and see one of them moving into license. the reactors are not a new idea, dozens of them floating around the world and they run just fine. it's not the same to put a reactor in a boat as it is to put one on land but many of the same principles. when you look at the new designs we hope to build them in a factory, so you use the

attached flow to the second one, licensing should be easier so i am a fan of that and if the nation wants to decolonize its electricity system, is going to have to have that vision as an important part. >> it is nothing like the energy density of the quantity of the materials you need that are irrelevant. they disappeared with the noise from a material perspective but to get to the next stage more quickly, for those who want to have a transition faster there is nothing that would be as effective as nuclear energy. given the nature of the regulatory environment you know full well from having worked on it, if an administration were

serious about energy transition wouldn't that be the first thing to tackle? >> this administration is a little bit shy about talking about nuclear. it is part of not telling the whole truth. i think remember the private-sector is involved as well and the companies who are doing this can't get initial deployment in the us. i am sure there are many countries interested in hosting the demonstration. >> if you think about the refuel cycling reactors, they are up to three years or five years between fuelings. the idea that you could build a reactor that is small and varied next to a town and run the town for 5 years with no

fuel and every 5 years they swap the core out and go away. what a magical thing, something nobody has ever had. >> the analogy between naval reactors and civilian, they run on enriched uranium which you don't want floating around in unprotected spaces but you don't refuel them very often and that makes them wonderful. the waste, we have ways of handling the waste safely and economically. it is not a technical problem. it is a political perspective problem. >> it is so small in volume and trivially easy, radiation is easy to monitor, you could attract single atoms. there is nothing else like it.

if you want to track something hard to find, nothing radioactive. >> we don't do that because of safety issues but radiation stand up and wants to be counted is the way i like to say it. >> one way we do it is the radium that you know. >> very small amounts. >> trivial amounts. before we turn to questions, fusion. i have a good friend who is a physicist who finished his phd in fusion. he was asked by his advisor, 75, fusion reactors would be in the world in 20 or 30 years, and his answer was a couple and he was overly optimistic

because we still don't have a couple. i have ideas about fusion, the visibility to what you call the shipping port reactor. the cause of the commercial reactor. >> step back, and the infamous token back in the south of france. in 15 years if i'm not mistaken and the demonstration plant and from there it gets more commercial. i am an interested observer, with full disclosure, i sit on the science board of a small commercial firm, in a different way and watching for more than

a decade as an advisor, they are making good progress, what we see within 6 or 7 years, with you get more energy out then you put in. and the earliest at some scale, if they are lucky, more realistically 20 to 25 years. i keep asking why do we need this? it has to not just work but work better than the old system. fusion, wind and solar. it is wonderful, but it will be an issue. >> given the timelines to get

to more out than in and take 12 to 15 years, you add 10 to 15 years after that to get to commercial beta 30 years from now and you start scaling, another 10 to 20 years and half a century before you begin to start scaling which is typical of big systems. the first question from the audience, we touched on some of it but a specific question about what could be done to accelerate the next generation of reactors, what things, pretend the administration asks you that question, they get to that, what would they propose to do. >> there is some lessons to be learned, the government can the

military need to build reactors for making nuclear weapons and submarines and in some ways the commercial effort was an offshoot from that but the government held and promoted the technology, increased reliability from reactor operators, in general it stimulated through regulation and financial help to get the industry off the ground. to do that today, the new generation of reactors it would be more difficult to do that in the present political climate, there has always been a big debate in the us about the proper relationship between the private sector and the government in stimulating and deploying new technologies. a wonderful line in the federalist papers, madison who wrote it, asked the question

what businessman would stake his business on government regulation? he is fickle and can change every four years. it has got to have intrinsic merit. to do that easing the regulation of the nrc, properly -- we can make that hurdle lower by educating the nrc better and some financial land concessions to get the first couple. >> host: not a new idea but it is an idea i'm sure you heard before, a small modular reactor, natural size for

towns, cities, military bases, it can stimulate the market, a buyer which the government itself to the defense department by buying hundreds, not one reactor, run the contest the way they run contests for aircraft, give a few the contract and build a bunch. >> when i first got to new york or back to new york i lived with the brooklyn borough president, he's no longer in office and he says i want to make brooklyn the clean energy capital of the us and i suggested to him put a small modular reactor in the navy yard and things got very quiet after that. >> new york city is a classic example of the geography where that makes sense because we

will call it the profile from nature and bad actors of getting energy into us you like new york means geography is not your friend. here is a question, getting close to wrap up time i think but i have a question. i will tell you what the question is. you can choose how to answer it. i have opinions on it. my answer in advance is usually to say i was trained in physics, not psychology. you get asked this question all the time. when you hear what you said about climate science and the study of science, reading your book if one doesn't people should, i hope they do. then more basic question of why the focus of the why, is it because the other analyses are subpar? they are not genuinely good analyses? is it because -- concerned

people and scientists or are there some other personal or political agendas animating the system? i get asked that and i'm sure you get asked that all the time. it does require a response so what say you? >> what you gave, i'm not trying to get inside people's head but you can see a confluence of interests among the various players. the media, if it bleeds it leads, blaming -- or the scientists, generally really do feel the earth is in parallels want to help but there are motivations of grants and so on. for the politicians i quote hr men can was a physicist in the early part of the twentieth century has a line i quote in

the book, can't get it exactly right but practical politics is to keep the public alarmed by a series of mostly imaginary hobgoblins so they will be led to safety. whether it is the climate or immigration or any one of a number of things i think that is also something motivating people. .. people. >> we had a question about the phrase deficiencies in the educational system in the pipeline of bringing scientists into the work and public policy debate. both of the cha >> with the system that leads to kind of the nature of the debate were it is often hated emotional and harms, not the best in human history but this particular debate seems to

really economic that. suppression is praise is that of deficiency, i would ask that was the nature of the system that we have. or is this sufficient now compared to where it used to be let's say - >> people who go into physics have different a degree of curiosity and skepticism and people who go to some other field. but i've not had directed with this level but i do teach graduate class climate and mostly engineers and mbas ultimately. it is such a joy to me to say it were not doing politics more doing technology and regulation doing business and i'm going to show you thehe science. and the department of energy the cdc reports in the ig reports in

the cdidi his open up for the students who most of whom have not noise printed all with either the climate off the enery system except for this. part of the book is to just educate and for people to persuade them but to give them a fax. there what you find in the government reports. >> i've had the same experience as you know what you get his reaction pretty get often amazement, people which is what i encourage people to do if you're really interested in the subject, during what i wrote, i put they said for the source but most people can't do that so he and of having to like a can't really, they're not capable or the busier the doing something else. as they face a certain amount of faith that you're being honest which is nature all teaching.

i get this question a lot. you must have for the last particular seven years since you broke the wall street journal case, okay if what you say is true, and accept what you're saying is probably true, seems reasonable, what is going on. the sort of this angle that, look at the trillion dollars that the defense maybe it is 7 trillion out that this administration is proposing to spend predict and although a lot of it is in the come number end of the typical corporate must just ignore that. and again he is back to the political cycle. but you can't dodge, i mean, it's hard to dodger brother that if you've actually worked for public policy like you did. so in that sphere so why, what

gives here. >> i can't and i should not try to account for the policy choices that people make. i'm got this somewhat old-fashioned attitude about science i wrote to inform the decisions that have been made involved host of other factors in which i am not particularly an expert ten in the generational equity. in the environment and so on. i don't know about that. this the political debate that's what they should be having. and if the country decides in one way or the other okay, so be it. lisa made with full understanding of what we know and what we do not know about the changing climate. right now, they are not getting that complete story in the book is an attempt to do that. >> you put your finger on the

right answer, when it comes to science advising the fact. having worked in the office of the advisor years ago, it was clear to me is that the politics do matter, one has one political opinions. but that you want the decision to be made as best he can on what the best information you have. hud collected question, big question now rated elevated by the debates around this evil is one of my grandsons calls it, the coronavirus. the destructing. so you get expert advice, does it matter whether it's about climate covid-19 or about the environment effects of something or you remember the winter ndebates. anyway, what weather. so we don't have technology assessment anymore in the present science advisories' office is an important one in my

opinion. our today. as a political office. to your point, these policies debates is in congress really blog. congress does not have an advisory body anymore. there were reasons that mta sever to say it suffered about without going into that, i'm curious about your view of resurrecting something like an ota, if you think that is a good idea. but, in human is that we have left, this debate certainly touches on the importance of how do you do that. let's look at the general framework. >> i would say that the advising world that they can do something like that. i was the national academies

counsel that we justco talked about. and they run a host of studies from government agencies in my large i think they do a very good job. i was part of the organization. i shared a couple of studies on fusion for them over the decades. i think employment, we need to refresh of the players in the academy involved. it's the same all day. cd franchise and it would be wonderful. in think tanks, mostly for the defense department but the idea and the defense analyses in the association and with brandon cna and someone so these offices with advice and they do providet to the legislature. so what here would be good to

have an organic set of analysts in congress that could be turned to foro short-term advice. >> you are correct, you know better than i do that the order of kinds of institutions that exist, science expertise in the designed to provide input are actually important and they i should be raising not but the velocity response is required the different future policymaking as you know. the science does not like to be is life god rush something. so i guess in my i mind, i would like to believe that if one were to create ann ota, let's call it an office ofof science technoloy assessment, that's a different think. what should be obvious but currently is not. anyway, that entity started with

the pentagon estate, where you have we have appellate this available to whether it's at think tank in academia, private sector that can be turned on weekly phone and on a minimal faces and surge capacity we will call it. that model strikes me as if it is packaged correctly, syllable because money distributes - but as a a practical matter can lead up to actually what you described. >> so they do function a bit like that but pretty slow. [inaudible]. [inaudible]. >> it is bound to get better. but i've been a member of the group for 30em some odd years. and it provides detailed technical advice and contrast many of these other organizations.

and turns around in the year. importantly up with policies where are providing technical input to the decision to buy a comprehensive test in the early 90s. was a very significant and pretty quickly done piece of work. >> i think it is a great example and if you close on that note, i think adjacent to the congress would be terrific and obviously this pretty low cost by today's standards. but let me come over getting a wrap-up signal. you been very generous with your knows you're crazy busy. on the book circuit so it is kind of you to do this so i really do again i tell everybody was listening, you should read the book.

steve is an excellent writer. clear explanations, i can't highly recommend it. thank you for turning me steve. >> thank you. >> my pleasure so i've got to close by paying homage to my master to the institute the commanders. this is a great institute for those of you who don't know much about it pretty you are watching and if you don't, go to the website there are lots of newsletters and i i think they'e all freight they are offering, there's lots reports and many great scholars in many areas. is obviously a nonprofit. and as i think tank that is involved of things and supporters and take a look. i'm truly could use your help. i know they support me and work like this pretty so thank you all for watching and listening and i think my new friend, brave scientists, steven koonin.

♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪♪ >> tonight, a book tv in prime time, pulitzer prize winning court and read the announcement of the end of slavery in texas on june 19th, 1865. stephen johnson looks at this have increased the human lifespan, historian thomas looks at it and reported thomas edison single attempt to build in industrialized city in tennessee river valley in the 1920s

rated and editor-in-chief alex marlowe, argues that the mainstream media has destroyed its own credibility read it all starts tonight at 6:55 p.m. eastern rated by more schedule information at booktv.org broken social program guide. neuroscientist best-selling author lisa janelle that was a guest on her weekly author interview program afterwards. she discussed the science of memory and forgetting. >> reasons in writing the intention behind this was that have been talking about alzheimer's around the world for over a decade now. that is super important work personally and i noticed you as well read i really try to help folks understand the disease and encourage earlier diagnosis and repair and research. it turns out though that every time i spoke about alzheimer's, the conversation it eventually shifted into memory and

forgetting in general. an affair that folks over the age of 40, definitely and in the 50s are already kind of stressed-out, worried, ashamed and everyday moments of normal getting but they don't know it is normal. so they think that especially after a certain age, every time i would walk into a room and can't remember why we been there or i cannot come up with names of actors in that movie that i saw last week and a karen over the name of the movie. what is sort of a note and he came home with a bunch of groceries and no milk brightest people start to worry that this is a sign of impending dementia. specially if they have a loved one with alzheimer's intention became given of to talk about in this world and if i can take this off of people's plates, like you do not have to stress about these things, this is a normal, how are human brains are designed.

it is very distinct from forgetting into alzheimer's. i just want to help people understand that this is how your brain works to remember thanks. this might normally forget. these are things that you can do to protect and improve it it and here's what you have to really worry about with respect to all summer spent most of what everybody forgets every day when they were 25 or 65, is totally normal. >> find the full interview in our website. .org click on the afterwards tab for this no previous episodes. >> good afternoon and welcome today's event. black women, black love. "black women, black love - america's war on african american marriage". glad to welcome you to the brooklyn center into what, are distinct panelists in very brief introduction. and each panelist and then we will begin our discussion. first i would like to welcome back to georgetown university, dianne stewart.