Transcripts For CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20150529 : v

CSPAN Key Capitol Hill Hearings May 29, 2015

Universe. National geographic the known universe and the Discovery Channels how the universe works. You can say shes narrowly focused on the universe. [laughter] richard ally is evan pew professor of geo sciences at penn state university. Hes one of the major figures worldwide in the area of Climate Change and is dedicated to educating the public about what is happening and what will happen. He taught me that for what man has done to the atmosphere not to have caused Global Warming the laws of physics will have to be wrong. Third is chip brulee longterm activists in the cause of human rights. Hes a democratic socialist and asbsolutist and he has a new book too close for comfort forget the tea party movement. Hes sorry. [laughter] leonard pip is a columnist for the miami herald. He has won the pultser prize on raise in america. So first, michelle. Michelle well, good morning. You know, its one of the gaps in my training as a scientist that im finding myself in this sort of social situation, science communicator where im dealing with this odd cadence of people insisting that something is false is true and something that is true is false. This is something i dont have the rhetorical training and im trying to get the chops to do this. This is going on in my life right now at this moment. But the idea that the false is true that for example nasa could be hiding something from you, right now, we have the dom spacecraft it actually went into orbit around the largest solar system. This happened about three weeks ago. Its amazing. Im so excited. This is the first spacecraft used as an ion drive and its gone from one asteroid toe another. There may be evidence of liquid water. As they were profing series there were these odd bright areas inside some of the craters and were wondering if theyre a lighter rock or it was ice. And the images start coming. The reason is were using an ion drive. The thrust is very, very small. The engine has the thrust equivalent of blowing on your hand just like that. Very, very low thrust engine. So we dont do a burn and start looping around. And for the last two weeks weve been on the night side of the asteroid. Thats why there havent been more pictures and were all waiting when we swing around to the bay side. But this morning im answering emails about what are you hiding . What was in those craters. And the explanation is this doesnt really seem to get people emotionally to respond to that. You know, i i want the months of my life back that 2012 apocalypse because i was getting calls for people who frightened. And there were afraid that the world was coming to an end. And other people were i bet the world isnt coming to an end but i want to see where this astronomical junction. This thing was made up. Its one of the reasons i actually stopped working with history channel. I was one of the regular host for the universe. But they would present a show they was doing aboutas roids or possible life on mars from a scientific perspective and then they would have ancient aliens right after it. Seriously right after it. And they would be presenting these things as equivalent. And there was enough to make me stop actually working with the history channel. You know the strange thing was i think this gets at a lot of whats going on is somebody calls me at nasa and they said oh, my god, is it true the world is going to End Next Week . I sort of had enough. Think about this, do you think i would be in my Office Answering the phone if i thought the world was ending in a week . I said start getting worried when all of the signities buy up expensive wine and max out their credit card and ill go to some tropical im land because then you know something bad is going to happen. But this idea that i am not a person that i dont have feelings and emotion and a family and a reason to be alive, you know, that i wouldnt react emotionally if i knew the world was coming to an end. What odd disconnect you know somebody wants to separate the fact of being a scientist from the fact that you are a human being. And this is something that ive seen come over and over again. You know i was listening to theres a wonderful keynote address that leonard was giving down there and he was using the term he didnt coin it. But he used it before. The weapons of mass distraction. When there are things going on that are bad for consumerism or people might say that theyre bad for the economy or any number of reasons, bad for the reactionary culture for conserve tim and culture people often will try to distract you with Something Else. This started to make me very uncomfortable. I actually talked to the Discovery Channel and i talked to the Discovery Channel producers about this. But im beginning to have a ethical problem about the risk the earth stands from a gallery burst or from the risk that an asteroid can destroy us. Theres an even greater risk right now. We are not talking about that on the Discovery Channel. We are not talk about the huge amount of data that makes human driven Climate Changes fact. You know, this is the sort of thing where, you know, if you ask me for an elevator speech. I have you for three minutes in an elevator. Why should you believe that climate clang is real and that it is human driven . What are some of the most compelling arguments . Nasa has 20 satellites that deliver Climate Change data. Its one of the reasons why we have to protect our Earth Science budget. Some of it is land fact, data about land use and the heavy of vegetation and the entire surface of the world for the last 43 years. We have a record of what things have changed during that time. My friends are flying Research Aircraft over the ice caps of the world right now. They are wonderful. Theyre incredible young scientists, young women especially and you know, we are measuring from orbit one of our satellites im most proud of is grace. And you know of it, do you . The thing with grace, grace is actually two spacecrafts that flies at 100 miles apart from each other. Theres a microwave beam between the two of them. They can measure the distance accurate just tiny accuracy that is actually about 100 the diameter of 100 hair. As these two fly, they respond to the mass underneath them. When one of them is flying over a Mountain Range it actually gets accelerated. They do a complete earth image every two days and theyre doing this dance. And the reason we measure mass is that there are areas on the earth where mass is changing very quickly. And one of the things we can measure are aquifers, the amount of water deep under the ground from 300 miles up in space we can actually measure the amount of water in aquifers hundreds of feet below the ground. We see those aquifers draining. This is something that all of this data is not only free to everybody in america. Its free to everybody in the world. We want people to see these data. The other thing were measuring is the health of the ice caps. And greenland was in reasonable equilibrium. It was smaller in the summer. There was a cycle. For the last 15 years the ice cap on greenland which is a land based ice cap has lost 200 billion ton as year that has not been replaced. And if anything that trend is accelerating. Antarctica the ice sheets there were stable until just a few years ago. And the western Antarctic Ice sheet is losing 200 ton as year and another ice sheet that is beyond saving. That water will go into the ocean. And at this point there isnt any way to reverse that trend. I think thats something you can say. And you know, people often ask me, are you allowed to say this as a nasa scientist and the answer is absolutely yes because these are the facs. What im not telling you about is policy as a federal official i cannot comment on what we should do about whether we should do carbon cap and trade, about whether we should, you know not use fossil fuels. That is not my right as a federal official. I take that very seriously. I serve the United States government and you no matter what your political affiliation is. Andly give you and i will give you the best information that nasa has about whats beginning on with Climate Change. It is not my place to argue about the politics of it. The idea the attack on what a scientist is you know, are we not allowed to be human . Am i not allowed to go on television and say im scared . Its not that, you know, im going to tell you what to do, but i can tell you my emotional response. And its become very apparent to nasa scientists that just delivering more and more data about ok weve got these fabs facts about the ocean. I can tell you its not the sun. Weve been studying the sun very closely for 30 years. All of these data are not helping in the debate. And so instead were trying to draw back into our skills as storytellers and as people and as emotional human beings trying to tell this story. And ill wrap up with one quick sort of anecdote. If you ever wonder how much of an entertainment value people are getting out of this very important debate, i appeared on fox friends with steve doocy. He had done a huge 10minute piece about how nasa scientists were lying about the Climate Change record about how there was a temperature point from 134 1934 and they moved it. This was immediately it was actually rated as pants on fire lie by pants on fire checker. They became more consistent with weather stations. We calibrated for the height difference which is something you in boulder know about at 6,000 feet. I had all the facts and i went on the steve doocy show. And before the cameras rolled steve doocy was talking to me about this, about the facts, about the Climate Change data. And i was being very friendly and nonconfrontational saying your money pays my salary. And steve doocy, the cameras rolled. He gave me a very soft ball question about air quality and got me off. Wouldnt even let me talk. So theyre not interested in telling you what the facts are. Theyre interested in the entertainment, in the clicks, in the selling the ads on to tell vision shows. And you know, its one of the things we have to decouple. What have you heard about Climate Change and why are you skeptical about it . Its something we have to delve into. Thank you. [applause] so for those of you not familiar on World Affairs we will hold questions until each of the panelists have spoken. The next speaker is richard alley. Richard i am sitting there to trying real hard not to give michelle a standing ovation. We share friends and n. S. F. And nowwa nooaa. We were pointing about places that we are getting our food by pumping water out of the ground so fast that its not being replaced that its changing the orbit of sat light. People get that. All right. So and im a climate scientist so im one of the people who have gotten the occasional email that says youre an evil liar. Im trying to get you fired. Im going to watch you. I know where you are. Ive also weighted into the evolution issues and ive editorialized on that. The people who do not want to see evolution taught tend to be much nice tore me than the people who do not want to see Climate Change taught. Im a geologist and i do climate and i do ice sheets. If you come back at 3 00,ly tell you a little bit about how we can solve some of this. But im going to tiptoe into jims world. But michelle gave me such a beautiful opening here. So there is some research on some of the many well springs of this i dont want to hear the facts. And i want to show you a little piece of that, not the whole thing, ok . And so first of all, i would like you to think when you have ever been in one of the great cities of the world, paris or new york or whatever and tried to drive a car or seen somebody driving a car or at least when you heard about people driving cars in one of the great cities and i would like a show of hands very briefly how many of you have the impression that the great cities of the world are uniquely and beautifully designed to be absolutely optimal for moving the modern mix of traffic right . And theres a number of reasons for this. But one of them is that the great cities of the world are designed for an ox card coming to market 1,000 years ago. And they have built themselves around the streets that were built for an ox cart 1,000 years ago. They have built overpasses underpasses and through passes but they are still preserving the streets from hundreds of years ago from an ox card. I want you to think of a baby, a oneyearold and a 2yearold and how fast they learn and what they learn. And by the time theyre 1 or 2, they have a naive physics. If i sit this in midair it will fall down. If i set it on something it will stay there. It sits there. And you know, im a baby and there are certain things that come out of me that require that my diaper be change. But a gaseous emission is not one of them. And i am learning who is a reliable source and who takes care of me and who my people are and so forth. And i get a view of the world that is works. But a puppy grows up to be a dog. And if i throw something, it hits where i threw it. And now i go off to school and i i start learning science and the science has said this actually has a quantum way function and it could go two slots at the same time and im on this giant ball spinning all around the space and im falling through the center of mass all the time. And you know, those trace gases that come out of my rear end and the other ones that come out of your tail pipe are going to change the climate even though they dont matter because they dont have to change my diaper. And if you watch the puppy grow into a dog and you do that long enough and theres a reason to selection that affects survival you will get something that is different. And none of that makes any sense. None of that is the ox cart that was laid down in my brain when i was 1. And when theyve asked, you know, so you go to a 7yearold and theyve been told the world is round and people have done experiments and they have a little troubles with this, many of them do. Theyll draw the world round with you living inside. Or theyll draw the world round with a little divot and it may be 9 before you get this. And a small number of us apparently theres still a flat earth in society but eventually almost all of us get that. But we get it because all of the trusted Authority Figures in our world tell us that. And we have trusted Authority Figures. We have built very young sort of a hierarchy of who were going to believe and where were going to take our information from. And when all of our trusted Authority Figures say yes the world is round we get it. But when some of our trusted Authority Figures say nasa is lying to you from the satellites. Theyre making up the data. Theyre sneaking it around. Now the idea that maybe the gas that comes out of me doesnt change the world because i dont have to change my diaper, maybe you can stick wit. You done have to believe the scientists. And what we seen is this rise of Authority Figures who say that the two of us are evil liars, right . And so in some very real sense that we can go into our media bubble we can go into our cultural bubble and we can stay there. And in some very real sense these media bubbles are a strapping reality. And i think i will pass it along to chip and see what he says to that. [applause] chip haiku for Climate Change. Reality bites. As sea levels keeps rising water nips our feet. [laughter] so there has to be a space that listens those this Authority Figures. Im going to argue that the mass space has been groomed since the late 1800s to reject science, to reject what they call collectivism and reject Big Government all of which is evidence that climate scientists are all agents of satan. Its ok. You can get over it. So it all starts with evolution, the big lie of science. And the Catholic Church and most mainstream denominations reach an accommodation with science by saying wasnt god clever . Easy out, come on. And what happens unfortunately is that about the same time that this accommodation is happening there is the rise of organized labor in the United States which is a form of collectivism and which it is determined by a handful of protestant ministers to be a satanic distraction from the individual the rugged individualism that allows you to have a direct relationship with god. And so they become concerned with what are the fundamentals and they actually write a pamphlet that is phone as the fundamentals and are known as fundamentalists and one of the fundamentalists is that science is a lie. Because if you believe in science and evolution that the bible is a lie. If you believe that god is a very centered part of your life this is not something that you brush aside. It becomes engrained in your world view through the doctrine of your religious ideology or theeology. Ok. Lets go through a little roots of this. So how does this involve corporations today who are funding science deniers to go on tv and say things in the 1800s its evolution. In the 1920s. Its bulceviccs. 35 to 45 roosevelt and a massive Corporate Funding of antibig govept, antilabor union, anticollectivists organizing around the country. One of the most massive propaganda campaigns ever worked in the United States. In the 1950s we had the red scare against godless communism. Lets not forget godless communism. In the 1970s we had the christian right which a number of scholars point out when you have the collapse of the soviet union, what happens is that the the scary threat becomes internal. There are internal sub verses just like in the red scare. And the internal subversives are people that want you to denounce this false claim of science and have taken position of high office both in the political scene and in religion which happens to tie in to one of the most significant aspects of evangelical and fundamentalists christianity that is distinct in europe which is we are living in the end times, the apomliptic end time during wh

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