host: from houston is james hansen, director of nasa's goddard institute for space studies. dr. ansen, as we look at the issue, you have an op-ed in the "new york times" today and we wanted you to give us your take on things. instead of cash and trade you talk about cap and fayed. -- cap and trade you talk about cap and fade. guest: how i'm getting a big feed back in my ear. i wonder if we could do something about that. but what i actually recommend is not capped and trade, but a fee and dividend. because the fund -- fundamental fact is that as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest form of energy, then we will continue to use them more and more. but the fossil fuels are not made to pay for the damages that they do to human health, the environment, and future climate that our children and grandchildren will face. what we should do is put a fee on carbon, that means oil, gas, and cold should have a flat feet applied to them -- a flat fee applied to them and that money should not go to the government. it should be distributed to the public on a uniform basis. that way the person tha

james hansen doesn't believe scientists are simply chasing funding. hansen with nasa's gottard institute for space studies was one of the first to bring climate change into the consciousness. hansen was nearly alone back then. but today he's brought the vast majority of the scientific community to his side. we are changing our climate, he says, and are risking a different planet. he rejects nearly all of the skeptics' points. from moderate estimates -- >> we're talking about several meters of sea level rise if west antarctica begins to go unstable. >> -- to computer modeling. >> that's another big misconception. the computer models are helpful, but they are not the primary source of information. it's the earth's history that tells us with the most accuracy and the most reliability what the climate sensitivity is. we have measurements of the atmosphere composition. very precise from the bubbles of air trapped in the ice sheets as a function of time over the last 700,000 years. >> climate science is clearly complicated and often controversial. both side

host: steven, illinois, you're on the line with james hansen.caller: the main question i want to ask you is, you were talking about different things that could pollute the air. and what is the u.s. going to do -- you know, we have the nuclear power plants that are operating now. the most of them are on a 40 year contract. these companies are taking bids for more 40-year contracts. what happens if george three of those nuclear plant has an accident -- what happens if two or three of those nuclear plants has an accident in the next 20 or 30 years? nuclear guest: is actually one of these -- guest: nuclear is -- a one of the safest energy producers that we have. the next generation of nuclear power is inherently much safer. it has the ability to shut down automatically in the event of any anomalies. and there is even a greater potential in the fourth generation nuclear-powered, which would be capable of burning more than 99% of the energy and the nuclear fuel while present nuclear power plants to burn less than 1% of the energy. they end up leaving

host: james hansen is in houston, the director of the directorgoddard -- the director of the nasa goddard institute'. and he is the author of "storms of my grandchildren" we appreciate your time. guest: i should add that my opinions are my personal ones, not those of the government. host: we appreciate your time and we will see you back here tomorrow morning. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] . . no votes expected today. live coverage on c-span. a legislative business begins at noon. the senate is starting their eighth day of debate on health care. a number of amendments are expected today in bonn by sinister nelson of -- those are expected after 3:00 p.m. eastern trade watch live coverage on [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2009] -- c-span2. ben bernanke is speaking at the economic club of washington. you can watch that live on line and listen on c-span radio. today is the anniversary of the japanese attacks on pearl harbor. the national parks service has been collecting stories from survivor