♪♪ >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual piece. every static american history tv documents american stories and sundays, book tv brings the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more. including cox. ♪♪ ♪♪ cox, along with these television companies support c-span2 as a publicic service. >> welcome to the latest series of manhattan's institute event. today up at the pleasure of hosting the event with steve. stephen is a scientist, now a

famous scientist, a professor at new york university and why you, formerly head of the department of energy's research portfolio under secretary of energy, prior to that he was a chief scientist at bp. for those of you who may remember, that used to mean there is petroleum in that it meant beyond petroleum and then it went back to bp. we will talk about that. part of that, a professor at caltechn, i am jealous because that was my first choice where i wanted to go to school, i went to university in canada, some of you know. i like to think of it as a good physics score but caltech the mothership so in short, steve is a scientist of consequence.

if you're joining us, you know why we are talking about the book entitled unsettle, what climate scientist tell us. why it matters. this could be fun, it can be annoying but you write a book, it's a lot of work so you hope people will read it. we're going to talk about the book, the size of the planet's climate, we will talk about the nature of debate, not just this debate but talking about signs in the public space and we will talk about the idea of changing civilizations energy, how we get energy, we need energy to survive, no energy, no life. full disclosure, i reviewed facebook, got to know him and i like him, i thought i'd like him when i write the book but a reviewor favorably, it caused a

flap written and as a preamble, i should say some history here, humanity has known the atmosphere for about 400 years scientists figure this out a while ago. carbon dioxide was discovered about 250 years ago, i think scottish person discovered it, stopped invented everything i think about electricity, you name it. 200 years ago, almost exactly, a couple of years of the anniversary, the idea of greenhouse effect, the words were created, identified by a mathematician which is kind of fun anybody who's been in math

or science knows about transforms. he figured out the earth was kept warmer than it otherwise would be, if it didn't function like a greenhouse, there would be no life on earth so humans have been interested in climate science for a long time. they have also been interested in the weather, a related, who will talk about different phenomena, for even longer because we care about the weather, it affects our lives, nature has been trying to kill humans with the weather. so understanding climate and weather matter because it's consequential, it matters because it's interesting so that's my bias and i'm interested in books like what stephen has been so let's start with the title because in your other circuit, typically you

will find people that have nothing better to ask you, why did you title, the book you tite that? i have a specific reason for asking. enough about me, why the title and it gets to what we are going to talk about, why did you write the book? >> it is a pleasure to bee talking with you, i think we will have a great conversation. he refers to the size itself, it's the earth climate and human influence that we don't understand. it also refers to my state of mind, when i find out signs was not as solid as i previously believed. >> there are two things that

struck me in your book, you write when that happened and how it happened, i think that is important to understand, the epiphany that the science wasn't as subtle as you thought occurred because you are looking into the science, not because somebody -- i mean, somebody paid you to do that, your secretary of energy but nobody paidid you in the ad hominem wod we live in now when it comes to crime issues, nobody paid you to disassemble the narrative we haveu not dealing with climate science. >> i have a story about that. about 2005 up until i left the government in 2012, i was working to develop and demonstrate technologies of various kinds, we can talk k abt that. the american physical society,

the professional society that represents 50000 physicists to give our refresh of the statement on climate change. in 2007, they issued a statement of great controversy among the membership because it used the word incontrovertible and you are physicists, you know that's a red flag. in 2015, it was time to look again at that statement. many societies, rubberstamping what they say, i thought we are physicists, we should have a deeper look atee this so i convened a workshop in their five 56 physicists and scientists, i think all of them might be free, credentialed skeptical scientists, presentations and we talked for

a day or so. i have theca sense that we don't understand some of it is very important to know what we didn't know. i was surprised how i had not heard about those shortfalls in the time id had been studying e matter so it was a revelation about the science but also how poorly it had been communicated to the public. >> it's funny, your epiphany some years earlier on a different subject which was nuclear energy, i haven't two spent a week on the island when i first came to the united states as an immigrant from canada and i am an american citizen now, to and proud to be. despite relations, i am so proud to be here.

anyway, enough about canada. i was thrown into the debate on nuclear energy and 79 because of this, i spent the week of the accident and was immersed, the commission hearings that look that nonproliferation issues for nuclear energy and for safety issues, the commission was a mathematician again, he did a spectacular job delivering what you describe, the acquisition was to safe to operate, we should abandon it, government set up the commission to examine science and the engineering around what we know, what is uncertain, how dangerous can they be? anyway. great experience but what i learned is this profound difference between what people thought they knew and the public

space including policymakers outside of what they thought they know and what they debated about was a big chasm and the people across the chasm for minorities. a lot of scientists just don't want to get an and they can tell you, i tried to get this in your community because i wasn't in it then to join me in the debate about the safety of energy. ... there in the subject, now it's on steroids so you learned that at the base, there's a blowback on that and i think at the wall

street journal, five years ago now. >> yes seven years ago actually. >> so, were you surprised, i guess i was surprised at the blowback that i felt because i was in the middle of an accident but agg true event caused hyperbolic media coverage and a billion-dollar reactor. and blowing out the investment with a consequential event that was a triggers and we saw a lot was different. >> i would say compared to nuclear energy and because the nuclear physicist application. i think the difference is two things, one is we have allegedly an authoritative set of documents that are in fact, the

u.s. government reports and they eventually are in a in the second thing that we have is this has been in billing for quite a while but i think it's given her real serious look now as you see it governments are proposing the actions that we in fact are affecting people's lives more directly in i terms f it this in the nuclear energy and the cost of energy and even the behavioral penalties. so i thank you so much greater desire now to be looking at this allegedly authoritative science than that we would say five years ago. >> i do want to get to the one thing that you read in the book that i thought you handle extremely t well, the language f the debate when people have

decided to call of the basin argue about the science", the deniers, this cost are created which i fan of it for what happened and it was created in a row eloquently briefly but on the front, but i think that it's important that as you can assess by others, but it's important to take on and had on this issue, the denier we try to talk about the science ofou climate. >> so first of all me just say the micro aggressions and i would be really offended and i have been called the denier pretty recently in some of these media. 200 of my extended family died in those attacks so i get really mad when i hear about micro aggressions but upon that, this adis about science and we should probably take the emotion t outf it when i wrote the book, i was

very careful to quote almost entirely from the official assessment reports in the u.s. government so if somebody takes issue with is in the book, we can have kind of a social about who said what is in fact, some of the people who are criticizing me actually wrote the reports themselves. [laughter] i havese to say - >> what i like you're in the public space, and this is just the nature of the space that we are in whatever the subject is about energy and climate science, this research that number and others have done because it's the research so you go to the direct resources" with a set end date accurate late when you have to accurately say what they said, that is what research is like but this particular debate, that the science it debate on climate,

this is what struck me early on and i would say that 20 years ago when i first started to look at doing it that if you read the literature including the fcc reports, you find that those who you know, and i'm paraphrasing and frequently say in the public space, to the colleagues who are debating the science do not keep saying that the science is wrong, they're very adamant about the science and scientists are actually very good in the vast majority of the research is honest, solid, interesting, important and they can get angry and borderline angry when people labeled the science, it is the translation of what is there into public discussion.

>> there is no answer the question what they want to put it this way, so in science and public policy, they merge and you cannot avoid it because the public policy support science and so like it is a bad effusion, is a difficult one in the process of science, and reaching it essence is, that's important to understand and understand the difference between the continuum of the consensus from the state, knowing the earth is round to the planet would be in two centuries, are very different parts of the continuum of and you undertook this examination based on the kind of simplistic premise. how do you respond to this when people decided to say, you are terry picking it, you are cherry picking and the consensus is

that we have a problem and what you say. >> so you have to distinguish what they say what you are other should do about it and i would be very careful about that and we can discuss with society might do but let's just talk about the science. and i like to say the start of thehe research papers in the assessment reports, the policymakers in the assessment reports which are heavily influenced by the government are than it to the media and the politicians although similar opportunities distorted the message and as a wrote the book i tried very hard to stick with so statements in their course and circumvent that hold this distortion and give the public the non- expert readers, some insight to what the science actually says.

encoding from the princess bride where she said that you keep using that word and i don't think what it says the same thing that what you think it says and i think am surprised when the economic impact or it would be minimal etc. etc. there are real surprises thatre the process has and if somebody thinks that i am cherry picking, showing that part of the cake sina and you going to date your self by quoting one of the great movies of all times, princess bride and the grapevine when she said i don't think that word means what you think it means. [laughter] >> we can go back and look it up. >> will go back to the clip.

[laughter] and that is when a family member well anyway, look, you put your finger in something here really important especially in the public policy space so you went to great pains in your book to use primary sources, and so we reached a different conclusion by using the same primary resources, the deliberation it. >> and actually i say i do not reject conclusion of an untried to come to consistent conclusions are the u.s. government conclusions but sometimes the proper context, and the conclusions in the history don't give us a sense of the scale and so on and so i have done that. >> you are right, and you are right to correctly on that because again is the decision in the language which is difficult in soundbites on tv as you know and if you're lucky, here you

get three or four minutes of airtime usual the host was an american thing like you know, is a hoax or obama was wrong or biden did this or trump did that and you know that. and you get hammered without them you need to come back with an answer and you can't, you have to read reach a conclusion in three minutes that is hard. >> i would say with science in particular is so complicated that there is not this limited it to soundbites, not at all. >> you and i talked about this after i published my review which i can share with the audience that is a look at your book and again, i will tell thosee of listening, if you have not read it, you should order it and read it and it is, this

lecture in a form where you carefully are l explaining it wt is happening and where they are and what the data means and where they come from. and to look at these graphs, you also have accelerated and that it decelerated and you see this graph and what you don't see is a symbol saying there is a trend over the last few centuries. >> 150 years. >> right so you do not have a straight line there, youe have this oscillation it anyway, there is actually to your point again, a decision and there is a clear trend for the sea level rising for the last what was it 10000 years. >> it was 20000 years. >> and you don't see the sea level rise because human beings as measured it carefully with a box of the sea is one of those

measurements that is really pretty solid it and a lot of other historic measurements but not temperatures are sloppy measurements because they didn't have thermometers but anyway, sealing that insane have you distinguish that. you don't see a signal of this amazing phenomenon which it simplistically, for those who say the sea levels have accelerated, for how long, it rises and accelerates for the last few decades. >> yes just a few years. >> okay decelerated it so what is a tell you, tells you that we don't know that much about what the factors are. >> i think you have to add to that foryo the people who are on debate about this is. [inaudible]. of what they are today if you go back to the 1950s so the sea level is seen ups and downs pretty much on its own having a

hard to understand the recent up. >> exactly, the challenge that it has is one other on cutting one which is temperature of the used to call it global warming and they changed it to the climate change, i'm not speculating on why but just to say seemed like a better description and and then we now, what is reported as carefully, that it would like to have called a climate crisis or rather than climate change and you have this problem which is pushing it to catastrophize it to what is going on. we should get to this because it's in your book and it's important point, touching the weather and is geographically

located to atmospheric and planetary events which are along cycle and they are related but different and i think it's important for youdi to explain d again we may have experts in the audience but it's important to be slain the differences in sameness so what happens every day in every second day, and as the long-term average of the weather and typically there sometimes people are taking it back 20 years so if you dummy are 34 years have been unusually dry, with a still pretty much the weather and if you telling the last two decades are dry, then we can start talking about climate.rt there's this wonderful graph in the book, the data in the height of the river over about a thousand or 800 years as measured in cairo in which you see is the egyptians were very

good at measuring of these things for a long time. >> they were superimposed every year and you can be sure that there were some egyptian farmers who got really really good it that during the draft when it was going down for a couple of decades, but then a change around again and had nothing to do with the human interactions with it on a large scale. and those are most delicious graphs in your book to me and i'm sure you have this experience with the graphs in the books of public space and sterry speaking editors will tl you to get the graphs out of the book because it will scare people away. and it is a real illustration and just yells of the well pictures are worth a thousand words and his troop and is very provocative and dramatic and explaining it that graph, speaks volumes to the specific and

again, these trends. >> it is interesting that you mentioned the graphs and as i started to put the book together, we had a big debate with the publisher andat the agt to put the graphs and are not i think are 70 graphs which is kind of unusual for that level of book. but the graphs are which the way that you talk about data and the data issc the language of sciene and you cant talk about it any other way for them have had some unknown but they said that you can look at the book read the book without looking at the graphs. >> and i think that anyway, i am just saying. [inaudible]. >> will look at people who work

with stocks and staff have no problems reading the graphs. >> and i have this debate with my friends that any of the scale, people are good reading balance sheets on financial reports of the just look at it as well, it of this and i was amazed when i was working and helping out investment part of it and i watched some of the guys at work with, they would just look at the financial page and they would just smell it, like the number so they could just tell an what i was trained in, but you are right, you don't have to understand them,ra you n read the book as well and let's go to the climate. let's just speculate that those who think we should not be to change any system of the world, this loss of debate hand because the world at least the rest of the western world is trying hard to change it has not changed, and you know i have written

about it you have written about it and the world gets about 3 percent of its energy from wind and solar and another roughly 10 percent from other non- combustion sources and otherwise it is 80 plus percent for coal and gas and 84 percent 20 years ago, so here we are, what is spend hundreds of millions of dollars, the last to get decades, around $2 trillion in the americans in the united states noncarbonni energy sourcs so they utterly dominate so you work for vpn the hundreds. [inaudible]. whatever reason they had the public relations side, to say there's a long transition to a i guess and let me ask you when we talk about t the energy and fusion let me ask you this question i get all of the time as well.

so your scientist and you studied the stuff and it you've got to put a marker down, it is 2035, the forecasting in 2035, based on what you know about the physics and energy in economics and energy in the inertia system. by 2035, but we have oil my domain a few cups with the super tankers and is oil still the form of transportation. >> look, they change slowly and they're very good reasons why they slip and change it slowly into the most important are they need to bemp reliable, and you don't make changes in a system that is got to deliver electricity with reliability are part of it needs to be there every day that is one for the second one is that there are large capitol investments in bold.

when you build a place, that will last decades youec expected to be there's decades so it takes a long time. and forcing the system up to something unnatural and i would like to say that taking our system, not by tooth extraction in the make the kind of adequate changes that are being proposed, detailed plans on how it will come about, i think that we could be headed for trouble both domestically in our economy but also in our geo political posture. >> yes, i know, and i have taken position publicly and look, this noncarbon energy but this walked into the system and a lot of that is very normal because the machines are better than they were, but accelerating and

enforcing it with the subsidies does not creating this easily and it takes a very long time and when you were at the department of energy and you learn this and i learned this when i was much younger, as opposed to do a guess, when i was a young man, and in the white house and in the obama administration and i wasma in diapers you were in diapers when i was in the reagan administration but the geopolitics our energy mattersrs enormously because wars have been fought for millennial for energy. and to this day, if the world will still use a lot of oil in the future, natural gases, hydrocarbon, given who produces the oil and you set and pleadings on the geopolitics i am sure, to make a play or saudi arabia in the middle east and

probably russia and there were two or three players, and go back to number one, and two, in which regular rest of the world, the three producing primarily our us, russia, and saudia arabia. i think it is not just serious challenges. >> in the administration seems to be headed slowly that the domestic oil industry here and ten a half million people and accounts for a percent of the gdp and it doesn't produce wella it's about 12 percent in the oil something like that but if we shut that down, we are still going to need oil and more, other countries are going to need oil. and we see the geopolitical leverage of the countries that you talk about, russia and the

middle east in a seems to be the thing to do. we mount to the 15 percent that the emissions and as the rest of the world uses more and more energy to develop. so the influence of the climate and i think that maybe given our economy and the turbulence if we do not do this in a thoughtful way. >> and i would add the obvious, by not domestically producing and being self sufficient, so not domestically producing it but machines, not only damaging percent of the gdp, it would require the exportation of a percent of our gdp at least, so it's a net net 16 percent hit which isn't astronomically big hit to our economy. >> i would agree, and there's another aspect and i didn't do

too much in the administrator because i think that there were ahe number of good things that i did with this notion of that you are going to create jobs and boost the economy byy moving to crude energy, i reminded people that where the technology get invented is still where it gets manufactured it and different ways and where it gets used and whether you have seen the door used as an example, you can see them play out in real time so it's not obvious for the economic benefits. >> that is a great example so the electricity, there are developed here and we import 90 percent of the solar panels installed in america, they are manufactured largely in china and asia broadly and i would like to say that because the invention was great and is incredible technology it is easy

to make solar cells, they are not collocated thanks. but rock yields of hydrocarbons with that's hard work in the chinese and are the biggest importers of the oil and i don't think it ist' an accident within the biggest exporter the easy to make stuff. >> i think about geography and geometry and geology, the fact that they have the strength of the systems and also said that they're not going to produce gas. >> and the real focus, while i was a physicist for a while equipped graduate school is my calling snow because because it was too hard, it was hard because i wanted to work in microprocessors where is billing stuff in those days, you didn't get to build anything at the university.

>> so a wonderful scientist says something, he said that that to be in physics is a licensed to pick and hope your nose in anybody'san business. and i'm done this my whole life and my family will attest to that. >> so let's go to the favorite energy source for the physicist, and although, like to call it upon phenomenon because then i get to included solar energy, and history of humanity that it could combust in the electron players are excited by his runs by electricity and then tinkering with a nucleus which is nuclearuc energy so nuclear fusion and fission. and as i said earlier i was branded in the intellectual sense of the accidents and

defending energy for years and have a nuclear boy, and i think that there is no phenomenology and it's remarkable and is challenging in making nuclear energy vital by vinyl immediate low-cost and easy to deploy. i am encouraged by this new alclass of larger reactors and really encouraged it by how interesting the designs are in general, is a true. >> so when i was at the department of energy had been promoted to get out the first modular reactors and moving them into washington. and they're generally not a new idea, dozens of heaven out around the world and also the submarines in their running fine and i was up by the same to a reactor the it is a one on planet but there are many of the same principles my love the news designs, we hope to be able to

build them effectively and much safer. and you can build wanted and then build the second one and licensing should be a lot easier so i am a great fan of that and if the notion really wants to d carbonized electricity system, i would want transportation it under electricity is welcoming and is going to have to have fission as an important part of it, no question about that. >> right and i think that to mean what is interesting is not that there is no question, and there is nothing like the energy density by the fission it, and finding materials you need are irrelevant essentially because it is noise from a geo perspective but to get to the next stage it will quickly, for those who want to have transition faster, there is nothing yet that would be as effective of that energy.

given the nature of the regulatory environment that we have and you know it's a well, if the administration were really serious about energy transition, wouldn't that be the first thing we tackle. >> i would think so and you know, this t administration has been a little bit shy about talking about nuclear as an again part of not telling the whole truth and i think that you remember the private sectors involved here as well and the companies who are doing this, and they can't get inertia in the u.s., and they will go elsewhere. and i'm sure there are many countries who are very interested in hosting a demonstration. >> and if you think about the research cycles that have made them smoke reactors and i think they are up to three years or maybe five years between feelings. >> and the idea that you could

build a reactor that small, under the next-door town run the town for five years, with no fuel showing up in every five years, trucks showed up and they swap it out and they go away. what a magical thing, this was better than anything we've ever had. >> and that analogy between those neighboring reactors and high enriched uranium but you do not want that on unprotected spaces but yes, you build them very often and that makes them wonderful and people have the race of the handling so clearly and economically and is on the technical problem. it is a political perception problem because it's solid, solid volume, and easy to monitor like my people, fairly

easy to monitor so we can track single atoms, single atoms, i mean, this is like nothing else like it so if you want to track something as you know, it is hard to find, you tag it was something radioactive. >> we don't do that. [laughter] because of social issues but yes, that would be the way i would like to say. >> but we did do it, as you know, easy to track. >> yes in very small amounts anyway, fusion. i had a good physicist friend, and he said infusions and he was asked by his advisor that probably 75, how many fusion reactors he thought my friend, would be the world in 20 years or 30 years a by the year 2000, and his answer was, well couple.

[laughter] and he was overoptimistic and because we still don't have a couple pretty i have my opinions about what fusion is and it these fascinating physics. where is your hand on the visibility to what i guess you would call shipping the pro reactors, cause a commercial reactors. >> so let's just step back and ask what is going on actually, so theso world is focused on hesacrificed and i think they expect to see the first fusion in about 15 years if i'm not mistaken and from then you've got to do a demonstration planet and from there they start to get more commercial. i'm interested in something in the form of a commercial and full disclosure, some of the science board was more

commercial permit or fusion in a different light and i've been on it for more than a decade as a manager and they are making good progress anything starring out good for the vacancy it within six or seven years, something it is not a positive rating and one of which get more energy out the new plan and from there, loneliness a difficult. so the grid from 15 years and some scale may be 12 if they are lucky, probably more 20 - 25 years. i keep asking why do we need this and remember, it's not only has to work but it's got have alternatives, better than feelings for the charges and so on.

in the commercialization will be an issue. >> and i think that i will given the time on to describe to get to the greater one, i would say 212 - 15 years. and then you add ten - 15 years to get to the commercial or data that is 30 years from now they started scale with the design looks like and another ten or 20 years oak half a century out before you can begin to start scaling which is typical of these big systems that we are talking about in the first question and questions are coming from the audience. there is a specific question about could specifically we have done to accelerate the next generation of reactors and what things, pretend this administration naturally ask you this question to getet to that, what would you propose to do if we can do it differently. >> i think there are lessons to be learned from the

commercialization of the first generation of the reactors where the government first of all i had the military means to build the reactors for weapons and on the submarines and the commercial c effort by the government hadn't promoted the ttechnologies and the reliabilities from the reactor operators. and in general, is stimulated in the ocean and unusual to get the industry at the ground and if you can doo that today, for the emerging reactors i think it would be much more difficult to do that in the present political climate and as you know, there's been a big debate about the proper relationship between the private sector and the government in the u.s., and similarly deploying new yitechnologies.

i think that it was madison who wrote who asked the question, what businessman would stick his business on the government regulation because it is fickle and a change anything. it has got who have in terms of merit so you take it down to the brass tacks, using the regulations and what i see is currently properly a little to get over but we can make that hurdle lower by educating us better and then the financial plan or concessions, you get the first couple right. >> this is not a new idea but it is an idea i'm sure you've heard before which is the small reactors of course are a natural science for towns and cities and

military bases so the potential buyer that could simulated markers of buyer which would be the government of the defense department to buying it hundreds, not one reactors and the contest of the new aircraft. and build a bunch. >> in the military bases and when i first got to new york from washington are back to new york, i was at the brooklyn bay present, he is wonderful in the office and brooklyn, clean energy capitol of the u.s. and i suggested to him, how about we put a small reactor here and things got veryin very quiet afr that. >> new york city is a classic example of the kind of geography

there were that make sense because the legal call it the trap or the profile, both from nature and bad actors in the city of new york it means that the geography is like your friend, you want an energy but anyway, here is a question and again we are getting close to ramp up time i think but i have a question back where we started. not answer this question, my answer, in advance, usually those trade-ins physics no psychology masses question if you are asked this question i'm sure you get all of the time, when you hear what you said, for climate science in the city of science, you read your book, we hope you do, then you base the question of why is it so disturbing ny because the other analyses are subpar, they are

just not genuinely good analyses or is it because concerta people and scientists, or are there some other personal or political agendas animating the system of. i get asked and i'm sure you get asked that all of the time and it does require a response. let's say you. >> so the question that you gave me, i'm not trying to get inside of people says but you can see that there is interest among the various people, the new york leads also the river and climate. and from the scientists, think some of the scientists genuinely want to help but there are medications and grandson academic prestige and so wanted and then f politicians, i would

like to quote hr lincoln, journalist they are part of the 20th century as he said is a quote of the book, it is the purpose of practical politics is to keep the public alarmed by a series of mostly imaginary goblins so that they will be kinder are easier to lead them to safety so whether it is immigration it for any number of other things that you can sign, i think that is also something that is to think about. >> and another question we came to is i think this efficiencies and they will call it the educational system in the pipeline of bringing the scientists and to the work in the public policy debate, i will expand by not asking about sufficiency per se. but the characteristics of theer system that lead to the kind of

debate, they be, often hated it, edemotional and not the best in human history for this particular debate seems to reallyha ignite that and then question is raised, is that o efficiency and i would ask or is that the nature of the system we have our deficient now compared to what i used to be let's say, when you went to school. >> i think that we would go into physics, with a different degree of curiosity. rather than people going into some other field but i have not interacting with students k - 12 level but i do teach a graduate class and climate to engineers and ultimately with climate and energy. it is such a joy for me, when dealing with politics here, were

dealing technology regulation it in business and i am going to show youou the science and the c reports in the department of energy their reports and to see the eyes open up the students who had no experience at all to either these systems except what they read in the newspapers. so my book is to educate people and inform people just give them the facts not to persuade them, and i see the facts. >> and i had experience but to get as you know, one of two reactions we get a lot of reactions, but often just amazement, which is why i encourage people that if you're interested in the subject, i write about with the cdc says or go to the source most people cannot do that so you end up having to like that nothing not capable but to realize that

there is something else so they take a certain amount of faith and that you are being honest which is the nature of all teaching it but i will tell you get this question a lot. and you must have last particular year since you wrote the wall street journal piece, okay, if what you say is true, i except what you are saying is probably true, that is a caveat, what is going on. this is like a foxtrot, look at the trillion dollars that may be 1.7 trillion now, that this administration is proposing to spend and 11 we know is not climate change, it's really a typical but just ignore that. and again against back to the political like that question but

you cannot dodge, while a target dodge rather than if you actually work like you did, so this sphere, why, what gives here. >> blanket attributed or account for the policy people make, signs advising. but the decisions that get made in both a host of other factors which are not particular expert of intergenerational equity or development versus environment and so on. i don't know about that and that is a political debate we should be having an of the world to stein's, so be at hand at least you have a full understanding of what we knowd and what we don't

know right now, we're not getting that in the book is an attempt to do that. >> right, and you put your finger on the right answer and when it comes to a science advice, and also clear to me that the politics do matter, one has political opinions and policy opinions but you want the decisions to be made as best they cannot on the best information you have a so is come back to this question, the big question elevated by the debate is one of my grandsons calls at the corrado pirates and how to disrupt people. so you get expert advice, doesn't matter if it's covid-19 or climate or environment of fact or about nuclear debate so

we don't have this anymore and the president signs advisory office is important in my opinion, that is a political office and your point, if these policy debates taketa place in congress, that is where they belong in these bodies and states in congress doesng not he an advisory body anymore and the reasons that mta, not to say that is separate but without going into that, i'm curious about your view of resurrecting something like it o ta if you think it's a good idea but then in a few minutes and we have left, with his debate, certainly touches on the importance of it, how do you do that.

>> i would say there is another part of that to the advisory group that can doo something lie that and that is the national research council, we just talk about the national academies and they were the host of things for the government agencies and by large i think they do a very good job as part of the organization as you know, for six years i've chaired a couple of studies on fusion. i think that unemployment they need a refresh of the players in the academy and it is a similar thing with kind of get pressurized would be wonderful. and then think tanks, mostly for defensive argument, which i have some association with an branded

same and so on, these are spaces that do provide input to their legislature. but it would be good to have no panic set of analysts in the congress that are organic, for short turnaround advice. >> that order of that kind of institutions that exist, the designs but by our or could be raised up a notch but required a different feature, and as you know, the science would not like to be rushed but that is life and you have to rush something so i guess my mind, i would like to believe it that if one were to create an ota, the science and technology assessment, it is a different thing which should

be raised up and apparently it is not but anyway, that educate could see with the billing on has done, and order of talent that is available in the tanks in academia and the private sector that can to be turned on quickly funded on the minimal basis and in a surge capacity we will collect, the model strikes me as that is packaged correctly, to be sellable because while it is a practical matter to actually see that as well so. >> they do function that way but they are too slow and. [inaudible]. >> i did a number of years where

providing detailed technical advice and congress of any of these other revelations with equations and then turns around the study in about a year. but importantly, the policy was provided by technical inputs to the decisions to a comprehensive test than in the '90s and the early 90s, and very significant in a good piece of work. >> i think will close that note there was a good example of anything for congress, it would be terrific and obviously it's a pretty low cost. let me get well i'm getting a wrap-up signal new been generous with your time and your crazy busy in the book circuit so it

was kind of you to do this and i really do and can and i tell everybody listening, you should read the book, steven koonin, is an excellent writer and has a clear explanation and i can't more highly recommend it and thank you for joining me steven koonin. >> thank you and i hope we can continue this t-mac it would be my pleasure i have close light, so a homage to my masters at the institute my commanders and is a great institute and for those of you who don't know much about it, if you are watching, if you go to the website, i think they're all free while i know they are all free, lots of reports and also many other areas and obviously nonprofit it to cspan and think tanks, the think tank that is involved with his supporters and if your potential supporter, take a look and they could use your help and i would appreciate it and it

would support me and the work and thank you all for watching and listening it and i think my new friend, the great scientist steven koonin. >> book tv every sunday on "c-span2" features leading authors discussing the latest on patient books, and any 35:00 p.m. eastern, bad news, and how local media is undermining democracy in this week the opinion editor, argues in journalism, blue-collar and become a radical ideas and artifacts the mainstream americans and then at 10:00 p.m. eastern the afterwards folder prize winning journalist talks about iraq american names and what happens when work interferes the impact of u.s. companies moving overseas, the working-class americans. an executive editor reporting front printed watch book tv

every sunday and "c-span2", and find your full schedule program guide watching online booktv.org. >> and new mobile video from cspan, cspan now, download it today,. ♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪♪ ♪ ♪♪ >> hi all and welcome to the festival of books, and the other q&a series, and joshua smith, san diego union tribune, today's session welcomes authors samantha montano and kim and kim is an ocean oer