>> schieffer: today on "face the nation" on this memorial day weekend, washington scandals and what's up with the weather? is it worse than usual? >> this is turning into a very destructive tornado. >> schieffer: we'll start with the latest on recovery efforts and federal help for the people of oklahoma with governor mary fallin and oklahoma senator tom coburn. plus, we'll talk to new york's charles schumer whose home state is still recovering from superstorm sandy. we'll also ask the senators about the president's new take on the war on terror. >> this war-- like all wars-- must end! >> schieffer: we'll get analysis on that and the latest chapter in the internal revenue service scandal. last week saw officials taking the fifth and being chased by cameras. >> get out of the way! >> schieffer: from former white

house insider's harvard's david gergen and "washington post" columnist in michael gerson. >> schieffer: next we'll try to figure out what is ahead in this era of violent storms, drought, fires, and floods. apparently we're just at the beginning. >> noaa predicts an above normal and possibly an extremely active hur cape season. >> schieffer: we'll talk with cbs miami affiliate wfor's chief meteorologist david bernard. climate central chief climatologist heidi cullen. "time" magazine editor at large jeff jeffrey gluger and marshall shepherd of the american meteorological society. finally in honor of memorial day we'll talk to joe p efshgsrsico author of "roosevelt's centurions." it's summer time washington and this is "face the nation." captioning sponsored by cbs

from cbs news in washington, "face the nation" with bob schieffer. >> schieffer: good morning again. we're going to start in oklahoma. the tornado that hit moore, oklahoma, last week, we now know damaged as many as 13,000 homes, took two dozen lives, among them ten children. president obama will tour the area today and governor mary fallin is joining us this morning from moore. governor, thank you so much for finding time to talk to us this morning. how's it going down there this morning? >> it's going good. i can already see people out here early this morning working and what's been remarkable is i heard so many incredible stories of people helping people. i've heard stories of people who have come to help from either across the state or out of state and they come into these areas and they pick out a family at one of their homes and they actually have pitched some tents in their yard areas so they can

be ready 24 hours a day to help the people be able to go through whatever precious belongings might still be there. there were so many volunteers out here yesterday, the streets were packed. there were a lot of people that had trailers that were moving things hand by hand. i saw one home where they had a line of people probably ten to 15 people that had buckets, they were just moving debris and, you know, person to person to person getting it to the curb side and it's just been a really remarkable experience. it's uplifted the spirits of the people that have lost so much. >> schieffer: the president is coming down there later this morning. what will you tell him you need there? >> well, i'm going to tell him that we appreciate his visit first of all but that we also need quick action as it related to fema. so far fema's done a great job. they were here immediately on the site. they have been throughout the different neighborhoods. i personally have met with them many times but there's going to come a time where there's going to be a tremendous amount of need once we begin the debris

clearing, which we already have, but really get it cleared off to where we need to start rebuilding these homes, rebuilding these businesses and we know at different "new york times" the past money hasn't always come as quickly as it should so i'm hoping that fema will be very prompt in getting the relief here. i know i have heard of families that have already received money from fema. as you know, in a disaster like this a lot of people lose their checkbooks, they lose their credit cards, they lose their driver's license, their birth certificates, their insurance papers, they lose everything and they have no cash. and some of the bank were even hit, the ate xwlaepl sooens. so people need cash to get immediate needs. the red cross, the salvation army takes care of the immediate needs but then three comes a time a month from now or whatever it might be that people start having to crank out the money to get their homes built and get the things they really need to replace things they lost. >> schieffer: we know about

these tragic deaths of children in these schools. we know a lot of these schools did not have a safe place where the children could go. are you going to -- what are you going to do about that? are you going to try to rethink how you build schools when you start to put these schools back? >> well, absolutely. and let me just say that we do have 100 schools in oklahoma that do have safe rooms and schools that have been lost in the past, many of them have rebuilt rooms of some sort as a safe room in their school and we're certainly going to encourage that. but i do think it's important to have a very vigorous discussion as to what can we do within budgetary means to be able to provide a safe place and certainly every school has drillings, they have a plan, they have things that they're supposed to do and the teachers did follow those different plans. any death is very unfortunate but it's truly incredible that we had only 24 deaths at this

site because if you look at the debris field and how wide it is, job how anybody survived this tornado. but people took precautions. they get into an inner central room, a closet or hallway and there's remarkable stories of teachers who did follow those procedures and got their children in the bathrooms and hallways and they did survive. we're going thief discussion. >> schieffer: governor, our hearts go down to you down there good luck to you and thanks so much for being with us this morning. >> thank you, bob, we can't tell the people of america how much we appreciate their thoughts and prayers, especially their help. thank you very much. >> schieffer: joining us now from their home states, oklahoma's republican senator tom coburn and new york democrat chuck schumer. senator coburn to you first. so far so good aaccording to

governor fallin in oklahoma this morning. there seems to be enough financial aid in the pipeline to take care of what's happened down there, as horrific as it is. but i want to ask you about this whole way that this emergency aid is being handled. there was a fight over the aid to superstorm sandy. you told $50 aid package an "all you can eat buffet." do you think we need to take another look at how we get this financial aid to these places that are in trouble? >> i really do, bob. it disproportionately hits the more populous states the way we do it. the economic damage indicator, the way it's calculated. so a large state like new jersey or new york is disadvantaged

under the system that we have today. then we ought to have priorities about how we fund it instead of borrowing the money and we ought to make sure the money is actually for the emergency at hand not for four or five years later and not allow bills to be loaded up with things that have nothing to do with the emergency at hand. >> schieffer: well, what is it that needs to change? >> the way we calculate damage, one. under the law it's only supposed to be when the local resources are overwhelmed. oklahoma, i think, received over 21 different disaster declarations last year where, in fact, some of those we were overwhelmed but the vast majority we were not. so we've kind of transferred the responsibility for storms and damage to the federal government instead of two the state government. oklahoma has done a great job. we have a rainy day fund. we took money for that from

this. we've had a great response through private monies being donated and just then just the public as a whole pitching in but we've created a pred kit that you don't have to be responsible for what goes on in your state and big storms like sandy, or like this tornado, there's certain things that we can't dot that we need the federal government to do. >> schieffer: well, senator schumer, what's your take on that? because folks -- your constituents are still recovering from sandy. are they going to need more help are we going about this in the wrong way? >> no, i think that sandy did a very good job for new york. obviously it was an overwhelming storm that couldn't be handled by the localities or even by these two large states. and, bob, we've always had a tradition in america. when the hand of got strikes in a very serious way, the local tease can't handle it by themselves and americans band together and say we're going to help the afflicted area.

so for generations, new yorkers have paid out to hurricane victims in florida, tornado victims in the oklahoma/missouri/alabama region to fire-damaged states in the west. and when sandy hit it took a little while, some people were against it but bottom line is america stood by us and we're using that money well and the recovery is well on its way. there is a place where we're disappointed. i'd warn tom about this, although our scale of damage was greater. it's taking a little too long for the money to flow to the homeowners and to the small businesses. and we'd like that to be a little quicker. i think we're seeing light at the end of the tunnel but it's taking a while. but as for the relief to government, as for the emergency repairs, as for building back our beaches, it's been very good. >> schieffer: i want to while i have you here shift to the president's speech. the president declared last week

"it's time for the war on terrorism to end." he said like all wars it has to end. senator coburn, do you think the war on terrorism is over? i don't think the president said it was over but he said we have to start bringing it to an end. what was your reaction to his speech? >> well, i see a big difference between the president saying a war is at an end and whether or not you've won the war. we can claim it's at an end but this war is going to continue and we have tremendous threats throughout that are building, not declining, building. to not recognize that is dangerous for us in the long run and dangerous for the world. >> schieffer: senator schumer? >> yeah, i think no one can dispute how strong the president's been on this war on terror. he's saying there's a new phase. we've been largely successful in

dealing with al qaeda in afghanistan and pakistan. that's not over. there are now new types of threats that we have to be vigilant about but he said under this long-term war on terror where small groups of individuals can hurt us we need some rules. we need some rules, we need some transpurple heartsy so american citizens and the citizens of the world know we're not just going willy-nilly. i think under scrutiny what they've done will hold up very well but having transparency, having rules and engaging other activities other than military to help curb the war on terror, diplomacy, economic sanctions and things like that is going to be useful as well so i think the president did a very, very smart pivot realizing we're not going to let up on terrorists but at the same time we're going meet the changes in the world. >> schieffer: senator coburn, the president also said he's asked the attorney general to review all these investigations and to leaks of what he says is classified information and

whether that's put a chilling effect on journalists trying to report the news. do you think the attorney general srp the right foreign head up this review? >> absolutely not. you cannot investigate your yourself and i think it's a total conflict of interest. first amendment rights and the freedom of the press in this country and the intimidation that is going forward, it doesn't mean you shouldn't investigate it. and it shouldn't mean we shouldn't be tough on that but allowing the very person that authorized the two things that we are very aware of today to investigate whether or not he did that appropriately is inappropriate. >> schieffer: well, let me just ask: do you think we need an independent counsel or something of that nature? >> i certainly think we need to separate it from the authority of the attorney general since the decisions were made either

by him or under him. i don't think he can investigate himself and so i don't know what we're going to get back but the point is is there's an inherent conflict of interest in me judging whether or not i did something than reporting to the president. >> schieffer: senator schumer, what do you think about that? >> the system is clearly broken. we have two very serious interests here. we have the right of the government to protect certain information from becoming public. often that's classified national security information sometimes it falls into other things. at the same time we want a robust and full freedom of the press and the only people who make the rules in this case are the government side. so what i've proposed along with lindsey graham and we'll be announcing that we have four democrats and four remembers and another gang of eight, i love these gangs of eight, i guess, is legislation that sets up rules where you have to go with -- if the government wants to go

to a member of the press and say you have to divulge your sourss and certain information they first have to go to a judge and that judge will impose a balancing test, which is more important? the government's desire to find out who leaked the information or the robust freedom of the press. and if we can set up these rule his think we'll avoid the morass. you always need set rules and an independent arbitor. we have neither now and i think our legislation which leader reid has said he would put on the floor rather quickly could help break the problem that we've seen erupt from time to time in the past several years. the. >> schieffer: senator schumer before i let you go. i want to ask you about this new york mayor's race. anthony wynner who left the congress in disgrace after he published some rather suggestive pictures of himself has announced that he is now running for mayor of new york city. are you going to support him?

>> >> i'm not commenting on the mayor's race or anthony weaner's race at this point, no. >> schieffer: do you think he ought to run? >> i'm not commenting, bob. >> schieffer: well i guess that's that. thank you for joining thus morning. we'll be back in a moment.

>> schieffer: we're back now for some analysis. david gergen worked in both the reagan white house and bill clinton's white house. he's now at harvard. michael gerson. you've seen controversies in your time in washington. we had this i.r.s. thing. we got the leaks investigation, all of the stuff going on. how do you think the white house has been handling it? >> not well but i do think it has to be put in context, bob. give them credit on one point and that is overall when you look back over the five years

this administration has been clean and free of scandals and i think they deserve credit for that. having said that now that these events have come up it's been a surprise. we all think the obama people do a superb job running the campaign but when it comes to running the government they can be so ham fisted. it boggle it is mind sometimes. on these recent controversies, as you call them-- and you and i have seen a lot of-- and they don't amount to watergate or iran-contra. but they're important. the government mishandled it in allowing these things to take place on the i.r.s. front and allowing things to take place. if then it came to the white house and how you communicate about this it's stunning. to paraphrase, what you need to do in the government when you have a bad set of facts on your hands you need to get the story out fast. but first you need to get it straight.

and that's exactly what they haven't done. they've had all these different conflicting stories and now we're into a third phase of this where we're not getting the answers. we don't know. i think right now the biggest thing they have to do: come clean. tell us the facts. >> schieffer: michael ger seine? >> well, i'd start by reminding people these are not second-term scandals, they're actually first term scandals where the information on them was delayed until after the election for a variety of reasons. so i don't know if that's successful or not successful in that political context. clearly they missed some classes in crisis management 101. you're supposed to get information out before people even ask for it. you should have consistent explanations. but we need to remember two things: one of them is the obama agenda was pretty much in trouble before the three scandals if you look at what was going on at the time in budget negotiations, failure to pass gun control or really overplaying their hand on some other issues. so that's one thing.

this didn't create the problems. the second one is that messaging has limits here. communication -- sometimes you don't have a communications problem, sometimes you have a reality problem. and we have an i.r.s. that engaged in abuses and stonewalling right now. we have an attorney general that's deeply compromised and may have misled a congressional committee. that's a serious set of accusations. these things are not going to be determined by what the white house -- how it explains it. the facts are going to determine how this moves forward. >> i agree with that. and my sense is -- my sense is that this white house is so politicized that when it comes to a controversy like this what they want to do is get out a good story instead of getting out the real story. and that that causes them problems. if they'd just come with -- if they'd told us all it will facts in the beginning on the i.r.s. thing they'd be a n a lot less trouble right now. >> schieffer: do you think the president has hurt himself? have these things hurt the

president? >> well, we're going to see how much they hurt politically. we can't judge right now. we don't know. i think they've hurt the president philosophically. he has a certain view of the role of government. it's a benevolent government to help the middle-class and help people rise on the ladder of opportunity. right now -- i'll point out two figures. according to pew, the reputation of trust in government is at historically low levels and the scandals contribute to that. the second one is by a recent number more than 22% -- 22% of people more than that want to keep the law want to repeal obamacare. that's a huge gap. >> it's widened. >> it has widened in recent months. now -- so i think the president -- that's a tough message to bring into a midterm election when your philosophy of government is under question and it's a tough thing for american liberalism. at the same time the president has expanded the role and reach

of government we've had a declining reputation of government in america. i think those things are lost. >> schieffer: you heard senator coburn say he thinks the attorney general should not be in charge of this review of the leaks and so forth. i actually agree with him on that. >> i think an outside group. i'm not sure why a special counsel is needed on the question of the leaks. i'm not sure any criminal laws have been violated here. it's simply been a failure to observe guidelines that are in place and i think an outside group -- i question a special counsel, that arises for the i.r.s. situation and who is going to get to the bottom of this? i think michael's right, it's in effect a crude form of stonewalling. >> schieffer: let me just ask you quickly. the president made a big speech on the war on terror and he says we have to bring this war to an end.

but that ease easier said than done. >> i'm not even sure he said that, by the way. i'm not sure there was a whole lot of -- the president has a way of rhetorically distancing himself from the war on terror while conducting it. he has a way of criticizing the policies of his predecessor while implementing them almost exactly. what we learned from this speech is that he wants to reduce the pace of drone operations from the obama level to the bush level, okay? we learned that he wants to close guantanamo which he's wanted to do all along but hasn't given the congress a viable plan we learned he was going to have a special envoy to do this. well, we have one, a very effective one. i think the reality here is the president knows that we're going to conduct this war he doesn't like to talk about it for ideological reasons so you end up with moral preening and not much policy change. >> bob, i thought it was a big league speech so i welcome in the that sense.

i hope he does more on foreign policy and it's also sal yatory that he's trying to demilitarize u.s. foreign policy and put it back at the state department. but the speech did not address what the really hard issues are: syria, afghanistan, iraq, especially iran, weapons of mass destruction coming out of iran could throw all of this out. we could be right back in the war on terror. >> schieffer: and we have to come back in a moment. i'll have personal thoughts. thank you both. >> thank you.

>> schieffer: people often ask me: of all the administrations you've covered which was the most secretive and manipulative? the nixon administration retired the trophy, of course. since then my answer is which ever administration is currently in power. information management has become so sophisticated every administration learns from the previous one. each finds new ways to control the flow of information. it's reached the point that if i want to interview nip in the administration on camera-- from

the lowest-level worker to a white house official-- i have to go through the white house press office. if their chosen spokesman turns out to have no direct connection to the story of the moment-- as was the case when u.n. ambassador susan rice was sent out to explain the benghazi episode-- than that's what we-- and you the taxpayer-- get. and it usually isn't much. so i am glad the president has asked the attorney general to review whether his investigations into leaks is having a chilling effect on journalists. but it shouldn't stop there. the president needs to rethink his entire communications policy top to bottom. it is hurting his credibility and shortchanging the public. and to head the review, how about someone other than the attorney general whose department is so deeply involved? that makes no sense to me. back in a minute. [ clang ] my house is where plants came to die. but, it turns out

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>> schieffer: welcome back to "face the nation" part two. the today we thought we'd explore a subject that affects everyone-- the weather. so we have convened a panel of experts to tell us how bad things are going to get this summer and beyond. heidi cull season the chief climatologist for climate central which is an inspect organization of scientists and journalists who study the climate and how it's changing. jeffrey kluger is an editor at large for "time" magazine. he co-wrote the cover story on the oklahoma tornado. david bernard is with us in person today. he usually joins us from his weather watching post at wfor t.v. our cbs affiliate in miami and marshall help is sherd the president of the american meteorological society. he is in atlanta this morning.

dr. shepherd, i want to start with you because we've had floods, we've had droughts, we've had tornados, we've had superstorms. it's cold when it ought to be warm and it's warm when it's supposed to be cold. i guess if it starts raining frogs that's probably the only thing we haven't had so far. what is happening? is this something different? is this just a cycle? what's going on here? >> yeah, it's really -- and i'm a professor at the university of georgia and here in georgia we've had almost all of those examples that you just gave-- tornados in atlanta. we flooded in 2009, a really bad brout. i think it depends on which phenomena you're talking about. certainly as i often say weather is your mood and climate is your personality. so on any given day you can have really cold weather or really violent weather, but the scientific literature, including our recent a.m.s. climate change statement does suggest that our climate is changing and i think we can say some things about

certain weather phenomena and climate phenomena that are more linked to this climate change and we are in a different climate system now. almost every weather phenomena happens in a warmer and more moist climate. and so i think we do see some changes in our climate and some responses in our weather. i think it's a bit premature to say that there's a definitive link between that moore tornado last week and climate change. but i think more research is needed there. >> schieffer: well, jeff, is there any consensus about what was causing this? >> well, in the case of the tornados-- as dr. shepherd says-- we're reasonably sure there is no link. and, in fact, to the extent that climate change plays a role the variables kind of neutralize one another. you get an increase in warm, moist air, which feeds ford doze but you also get a decrease in the up draft, the vertical shear. so they con sell each other out. i think what we see though, the fact we crossed 400 parts per

million of c.o.-2 in the atmosphere just last week, this is the highest it's been since the ploois seen era when there were forests in greenland and sea levels were 600 feet higher than they were right now. so we have supercharged, super accelerated c.o.-2 input into the atmosphere and this is what's driving so much of the mood or the personality, the climate change variables we see. >> schieffer: dr. cullen, there's no question it's getting warmer. we have a graphic here that just shows twelve was the hottest year on record. it shows how much hotter it was. the entire country was affected. is this going to get better or is it going to get worse? >> it's not going to get any better if we don't do anything about it. right now we've added about a degree and a half of extra

warming to our atmosphere. the map will senate that much warmer and so what we're talking about is how much is that extra degree and a half affect our day to day weather? so right now the jury is still out as to how global warming will affect tornados, which of those two variables will win out. but when it comes to things like heat waves, when it comes to things like heavy rainstorms, drought, wildfires, we know that the atmosphere is on steroids, if you will. so basically we know that we have to deal with weather-related risks, we live a country that has always seen extreme weather. we're basically moving in a direction where we're going see more and more of certain of these extremes and as we heard before that stuff is really expansive. >> schieffer: what is causing this? >> basically, add additional heat to the atmosphere, suddenly you're adding more moisture to the atmosphere so we know certain kinds of extreme events are going to happen more frequently. so the heat wave that would only happen, say, one in a 100 years

now going happen once every 50 years. the statistics, if you will, the likelihood of seeing a certain kind of extreme increases just by the virtue of the fact that the planet is warmer and also when it comes to storm there is's more moisture in the atmosphere. those storms can now rain down more heavily and basically at the same time we've got more people in harm's way. we saw that with moore, oklahoma as well. so this combination of amplifying risks, more people in harm's way, a warmer planet with more moisture bring more storms into play, it basically just increases our vulnerability across the boards. >> schieffer: dave bernard, you're our man on the hurricane watch. we talked to you many times during hurricane season and the bad news is noaa has come out with hurricane season predictions that say it could be worse this year than it was last year. they're predicting a likelihood of, i think, 13 to 20 named storms of which seven to 11 could become hurricanes.

>> well, you know, the key here is we have been in a climate pattern for the last 20 years of excessive storms in the atlantic basin that climate pattern, bob, is still in place so that's the reason why we're looking at an elevated number of storms. of course, the key everywhere year is where do these storms go? that's thing that we can't tell ahead of time. last year there were 19 storms and basically we had isaac hit louisiana and superstorm sandy. but the majority of the storms stayed out to sea. but with a forecast like that and the potential for more land falling storms, i think there could be an even greater impact and what we learned from sandy and going back to hurricane katrina and basically what dr. cullen was saying, we have more people now living on the coast than ever before so the impact potential is that much greater and we have to learn how to mitigate against these storms. clearly that was not done in the northeast. we've gone so long without a significant hurricane there. we've seen this in other areas. we have to learn to live with

these storms and going forward since we don't know exactly where this climate pattern may take us, with a warming world we have to adapt to these storms as well. >> schieffer: dr. shepherd, let me just cut to the chase here. are we doing something on thaefrt is causing the weather to change or is this just one of the cycles to change that we go through? >> this is a question i often get, bob. of course. it's amazing to me when someone comes up to me and says "dr. shepherd, the climate change is natural." i say of course it does, i should send my degree back to florida state university if i didn't know that. but what's most important about that is that on top of this natural variability, as heidi mentioned, we now have a steroid. think of a basketball player. i'm a big basketball fan. we here in the playoffs right now. a basketball ten feet high. think of it this way. climate change is adding about a foot to the basketball floor so more people can dunk basketball. there's just more amplification. that warmer and more moist

climate is amplifying, as heidi mentioned, some of the weather systems that we see. and one quick point i want to make. i often get the question: well, what is the big deal? one and a half degrees? well, if our child gets a one and a half or two degree fever that may not sound like a lot but our body responds to that and our climate system as well. the scary news is we're talking about an additional ten to 14 degrees perhaps in some models in the next 100 years. >> schieffer: jeff? >> and one of the problems is the problem is getting worse, as dr. shepherd says. we have now baked in another 50 parts per million of c.o.-2 in the atmosphere. even if we turned everything around now, what's in the pipeline already is going to increase up to 450 and at a rate of 5.4 billion tons of c.o.-2 the u.s. puts into the atmosphere every year and 2.4 million pounds per second that the world pumps in. we're getting a level of

consensus on thousands of peer-reviewed studies over decades that have established the connection between human activity and this kind of climate change and we have to face the reality that the problem exists and now we have to address it. >> schieffer: well, what is the human activity? >> well, the human activity principally is fossil fuels. everybody attribute this is to cars but actually 40% of all of the contribution is our homes, our office buildings and things of that nature. fossil fuels do make a difference. and we are actually making progress, a slow transition to renewables, the increase in mileage standards for cars. all of this is bringing these numbers down but all that's doing is sort of putting out the fringes of the wildfire that's blazing. we have to get to the heart of it and shut it down. >> schieffer: and this is not just something that is happening in the united states. this is happening worldwide. >> that's what's so tricky about this problem. it's the ultimate tragedy in a sense that we all contribute to

the problems and so it really -- someone once said climate change is really about a million little fixes and it's also the biggest procrastination problem in the sense that the longer you wait to fix it the tougher it gets to fix so the sooner we start the better off we are. >> and i think adaptation is going to be the key. we've already baked in this c.o.-2. we can't get rid of that. so we have to learn to live with the tway climate is going and that means responsible development. we can't keep building in the same places that maybe more prone to floods. i live in miami beach. we're dealing with sea level rise. that's something we're going to have to think about going forward in this new reality. >> schieffer: dr. shepherd, what i find kind of interesting is it's kind of like the country is divided in half. the western half of the country going through these drought which is bring on the fires and all of that. yet on the eastern side of the country we have all these floods that are going on right now. is there any reason, scientific reason, that it's kind of divided the country in half like

this? >> well, it is. one of the things that we've always known in the literature is that places that are drier likely will get more dry and places that are wetter will become more wet. you have to look at how weather patterns occur. weather patterns occur as big waves in the atmosphere. we call them scientifically waspy waves. so if you look at a weather map, for example, in any given day in terms of weather you'll have one part of the country is cool and wet there and a big sort of dip in the wave pattern, a trough, as we call it. meanwhile, we'll have a ridge of high pressure and nice weather in another other part of the country. it's gorgeous in atlanta right now and i was watching the braves and mets in new york, pouring down rain and cool the last couple of days. take that wave pattern and think about that from the perspective of climate. so you're not going to have the same type of response everywhere. that's why it's important to keep that in mind when we hear "well, gee it's really cold this

last couple of weeks, what are you guys talking about, global warming?" you cannot say anything about the overall climate system by looking at the last couple of days or where you live. oh, i wish i could predict my stock portfolio based on the stocks the last two weeks, the last two months. we can't do that. we cannot do that with our climate. >> schieffer: as is always the case around my house, we say when everything else goes wrong on top of it the toilet breaks. the thing you would least expect. in the middle of all this, jeff, noaa recently had one of its weather satellites go off line. what is the status of our technology? >> the status of our technology is precarious and it's easy to fix it. we have to major weather satellites hovering over the eastern half -- east and west coast, the goes east and goes west. they're in geosynchronous orbit. they just hover there. we have five polar satellites. these are all set to go down at one form or another, to wink out

between 2015 and 2016. the earliest we can replace them will be those very years which means that if there's any leg at all in launching construction schedules we're going to be struck blind. this we saw the wages of back during sandy when the goes east satellite did go down for a few weeks just as the storm was brewing and we did not predict the sharp left hook sandy took into the eastern sea board that is exactly what did the $65 billion worth of damage. it took the european system to weigh in and inform us that this was about to happen. now we had just enough assets in place, a satellite in orbit, to swing in to position and take care of this. but if we don't take care of this now and allocate the necessary money we are going to be vulnerable to whatever is out there. >> schieffer: i take it you would endorse that? >> i couldn't have said it better. right now 90% of the data that goes into our weather models comes from satellites in this infrastructure. it's our eyes in the sky and if we lose it we're flying blind.

as a country that sees a lot of extreme weather across the board we need strong forward-looking forecasts. >> schieffer: i'll let you close it out here, dave. what do we look for? >> well, i think as we go through the next few months everybody needs to keep in mind that regardless of where our climate is heading in the next 50, 100 years, the hurricane season is here now and it's hurricane preparedness week and as we saw last year, everybody from maine to texas, you need to be ready, you need to have a plan. >> schieffer: i guess we can't say "have a nice day" to close out this segment but thank you all for being here. we'll be back in just a moment.

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>> schieffer: he was different. i mean, he was commander-in-chief, but he took it to another level, didn't he? >> well, it's interesting, bob, in that franklin park zoo never spent a -- franklin roosevelt never spent a day in uniform in his entire life but as our entrance into world war ii approached see he sees the levers of military control like no president since abe lincoln. and he is, indeed, a war-time

commander-in-chief and what was my goal was to examine what kind of commander-in-chief he was and the three roles that he performed. one of which was recruiter in chief and how good were the people he chose to run the war? george marshall, ernie king, dwight eisenhower to be the supreme commander then i want to examine how good a strategist he was because even though roosevelt left the day to day conduct of the war to his generals, he made the major strategic decisions. and finally i wanted to examine him as morale officer. you're leading a country that's entering a war, the price is going to be exorbitant. how do you keep people loyal and committed to that crusade? >> schieffer: it was interesting to me among those top commanders that he chose that he did choose

arnold to head the air force. that turned out well, but the fact was arnold was very much a part of the isolationist wing and people that thought we ought not get involved with this before the war broke out how did he choose him? >> well, first of all, it's not surprising that a lot of people who were in the military in that era didn't vote for roosevelt. but hap arnold was impressed because roosevelt believed in air power. and by the end of the war, around described f.d.r. as the father of the u.s. air force. not himself, although he built the air force. he described roosevelt as the father of that air force. >> schieffer: how did he deal with his commanders? >> he was very personal with them. for example, pat was in all

kinds of trouble for slapping g.i.s in slis sicily. roosevelt brought him into his office, heaped praise on him. he was the same with eisenhower. he had an interesting relationship with george marshall. george marshall was the man he leaned on not just as his command of the army but in almost every decision he tried to first name george marshall because f.d.r. had that very warm, inviting personality and marshall chilled him on that. so he remained to the end of the war general marshall whereas ike was "ike." george was "patton." >> schieffer: and marshall always called eisenhower "eisenhower." he was a very formal man. what about the relationship between churchill and f.d.r.? >> well, it starts out with the united states as the junior partner because by the time we

get in the war the brits have been in since 1939, we're going into 1941. in that, i think that roosevelt deferred to churchill on military matters because churchill was a graduate of their equivalent of west point. sanders was a veteran of the world war. he had been first order of the admiralty twice and he was the head of a nation that had been in the war two years before him. it came time to decide where america was going to commit its troops first, all of f.d.r.'s generals are saying "we cross the channel. we go into western europe and drive on to berlin." churchill wants roosevelt to commit u.s. forces in the first place in north africa. why? because he can see this is the lifeline of the british empire and if he can get the coast of

africa secured it helps secure the lifeline. >> schieffer: do you think that roosevelt would have taken us into the war militarily had the japanese not attacked pearl harbor? because up until that point he saw us as the arsenal of democracy. we give the equipment and so forth to the people fighting in that war. >> that's an interesting question. part of the answer is that he was at war, an undeclared war on the high seas on the atlantic and shoot on site. we would be going after german warships. the country was not eager for war. the polls showed prior to pearl harbor that most americans didn't want to get involved in european conflicts. so my guess is that he would have done everything he could. he originate it had release of billions of war materiel to the brits. i don't think that he could have pulled it off without the

strange, ironic event ifs at pearl harbor which was a left-handed war for him. brought us in to the war that he wanted to fight, most which was against germany. >> schieffer: it's a wonderful book and certainly one i would recommend on this memorial day. thank you very much. >> well, thank you, bob. >> schieffer: back in a minute. ,,,,,,,,,,

>> schieffer: for a "face the nation" flashback on this memorial day week enwe want to take you on a tour of what those of us who live here see everyday-- the washington memorials and monuments hop or ining those who serve their country. ,,,,,,

>> schieffer: and that's it for us. we'll be right here next week on "face the nation." captioning sponsored by cbs captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org ,,,,,,,,,,

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