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Jan. 28, 2007 - Art Bell

02:36:21

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Flawed Mathematical Models - Orrin Pilkey

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	From the high desert in the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's time zones, prolifically covered by this program, Coast to Coast AM.
	It is a Sunday night in this part of the world.
	Soon to be Monday morning.
	Great to be here.
	I'm Art Bell, escorting you through the remainder, albeit a little bit of the weekend.
	Many of you facing a return to work tomorrow.
	Tomorrow is My Friday.
	As is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
	And Friday for that matter.
	Anyway, listen, tonight's HamCams is not as good as I thought it was going to be, but it's pretty cool.
	Now, next week I will endeavor to get a color shot up.
	I've got a, remember I told you my wife Erin got a ultrasound of baby Asia.
	It's a girl, folks.
	And so that's what's up there tonight.
	Not color, though.
	I got one of the black and white ones up.
	2D.
	I will endeavor to pluck a still copy of one of the better parts of the 30-minute DVD they gave us, which was way cool.
	If you haven't seen a modern ultrasound, they are something else.
	Anyway, you've got a 2D black and white one up there.
	If you can make anything out.
	See if you can spot the vital organs, the face, the feeding material for a little Asia, the spine, and well, just see what you can spot.
	Right now, she's like a little alien.
	Anyway, there'll be more about that here in a few minutes.
	U.S.-backed Iraqi troops.
	It's a bad day.
	It was a bad, bad day.
	On Sunday, attacked insurgents allegedly plotting to kill pilgrims at a major Shiite Muslim religious festival.
	Iraqi officials are now estimating about 250 militants died in a day-long battle near Najaf.
	A U.S.
	helicopter crashed during that fight.
	That's about three helicopters recently killing two Americans.
	Mortar shells, meanwhile, hit the courtyard of a girls' school in a mostly Sunni Arab neighborhood of Baghdad, killing five pupils, wounding 20.
	UN officials deplored the attack, calling the apparent targeting of children an unforgivable crime.
	And it really, truly is.
	Unforgivable.
	I don't care what war you're fighting.
	I don't care what war you're fighting, when would you target children, no matter who you are?
	Military Aims to Cut Back on Stop Loss, or you could retitle that Military Aims to Avoid the Draft.
	In an action-branded backdoor draft, and there you go, by some critics, the military over the past several days has held tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines on the job and in war zones beyond their retirement dates or enlistment length.
	My God!
	You can't imagine what that's like.
	I can tell you.
	When you're in the military, no matter how much you may or may not like it, it's like You're counting the days and the hours.
	There's no military guy who can't tell you the days to get back to the world.
	Which is what we call here.
	And to have them stop that.
	Renee gonna promise to bring you home, keep you in a war zone.
	Really?
	I can't use that word.
	It is widely disliked.
	Yeah.
	The Pentagon now under new Defense Secretary Robert Gates is trying to figure out how to cut back on.
	It's just, you know, they just have got to stop doing that.
	It's about the biggest morale killer you can possibly imagine.
	You're literally counting the hours till you're back in the world and some guy comes to you and tells you you're not going home.
	It's just unbelievable.
	Military officials on Sunday released the identities of four sailors that were killed when a helicopter crashed in the ocean off the San Diego coast.
	Three of the bodies yet to be found in northern Los Angeles County.
	I guess everywhere, huh?
	The Reverend Robert Drinian, a Jesuit, who over the objections of his superiors was the only Roman Catholic priest elected as a voting member of Congress, died Sunday.
	At 86 years of age, he had suffered from pneumonia and congestive heart failure during the previous 10 days, according to a statement at Georgetown University, which said he died at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington.
	Saudi Arabia's king urged Palestinian rival factions Sunday to hold talks in the holy city of Mecca, as fighting between Hamas and Fatah movements persisted in Gaza, with no clear winner emerging.
	Will there ever be?
	Early Monday, Hamas fighters mobilized around the main Fatah stronghold, the preventative security headquarters, and threatened to attack.
	Information minister there, That would be if Hamas warned the two sides were close to civil war and called on the President to order his forces back to their bases.
	And this is not something I'm injecting.
	It's part of the five-minute summary.
	New climate report to Rosie, experts say.
	Later this week in Paris, climate scientists are going to issue a dire forecast for the planet.
	That warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures, but that may be sugar-coated somewhat, or the sugar-coated version.
	Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report.
	Many top U.S.
	scientists simply reject the rosier numbers.
	Those calculations don't include the recent and dramatic melt-off of the Big Ice sheets.
	in two crucial locations.
	All right.
	Since I'm beginning to get a little long in the tooth, and I think I mentioned this last night, and since I've got a picture of Little Asia on my website tonight, I thought I would sort of include this as my theme song.
	Chuck in Portland, Oregon fast blasted me the following, Hey Art, I think this ultrasound picture of your daughter
	is going to be the first picture that Richard C. Hoagland looks at and doesn't see a face.
	It's been a while since I talked to Richard.
	Oh boy.
	You know, we are in the middle of a UFO flap.
	We've got, you know, things hovering above O'Hare in Chicago.
	We've got what's going on in Greenville, South Carolina.
	Let's talk the town there and beyond on radio and television and by internet across country.
	The question of the day has been, so what the hell was the strange light in the sky last night?
	Hundreds of people across the region called and emailed media outlets and the National Weather Service.
	This goes back a little now to report streaks of blue or blue-green light in the sky Wednesday at about 8.15.
	The weather guy said something like, well I guess it was WIFF-4 chief meteorologist said that most likely it's a group of meteors streaking into the Earth's atmosphere.
	He jokingly would not rule out the possibility of alien spacecraft.
	You can't really call meteors until you find a rock on the ground, right?
	So, he sort of acknowledged that, which is a first.
	By the way, we're going to do a lot of open lines.
	I'm going to squeeze quite a few into the first hour if I can.
	So, if you know the portal numbers you'd like to call now, we will try and slide you in quickly.
	The Ministry of Defense.
	This is from England.
	From the Guardian in England, where a lot of news that we don't get comes from.
	Ministry of Defense there went to extraordinary lengths to cover up its true involvement in the investigation of UFOs, according to secret documents revealed under the Freedom of Information Act files show.
	That officials attempted to expunge information from documents released to the Public Records Office under what they call the 30-year rule that would have revealed the extent of MOD's interest in UFO sightings.
	Actually, we had a guest on this subject and they really did go out of their way to cover it all up.
	Hey, a NASA astronaut and former University of Hawaii solar physicist, Edward Liu, is calling for a new spacecraft That would divert asteroids on a path to slam into Mother Earth.
	He's got something he calls the Small Space Tractor, which would cost between $200 million and $300 million.
	A drop in the bucket compared to what it would cost if something hit.
	Anyway, it'd hover near an asteroid to exert enough gravitational pull That the space rock's orbit would change and a collision with our planet would be averted, Lou said before a crowd packed into a 300-capacity auditorium at the University of Hawaii on Monday night that we're only trying to get really a tiny change in the velocity of the asteroid to prevent impact.
	Lou was part of a panel of scientists, including three Hawaiians, who characterized the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth as rare.
	But deserving of the same level of attention as major earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes, a report on the appearance appeared on the Honolulu Star Bulletin website Tuesday.
	The asteroid 99942 Apophilus is going to pass within about 20,000 miles of Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029.
	Now, it is going to come so damn close to Earth in 2029.
	Might change.
	In other words, Earth might actually draw it a little closer.
	So next time around, in 2036, kabang!
	So I think this is a pretty good idea, and I hope somebody comes up with $200 or $300 million, whatever they need.
	To avoid something like that.
	A highly contagious form of stomach flu sickened hundreds of passengers during a worldwide voyage on the famed Queen Elizabeth II cruise ship in what health officials called an unusually large outbreak.
	More than 300 people got sick on the cruise, but just four remained ill by the time the Queen Elizabeth II docked Wednesday in recent months.
	The norovirus has hit more than 1,000 cruise passengers.
	Pretty weird stuff.
	It's been really hitting cruise ships.
	Now, this is for me, it's for many of you.
	Smokers who suffer damage to a particular part of their brains appear to be able to quit their nicotine habits easily.
	A discovery, now I don't want brain damage to be able to quit.
	Anyway, a discovery that might open new avenues of additional research.
	A study of smokers who had suffered brain damage in various kinds of stroke showed that those with injuries to a part of the brain called the insula were in many cases able to quit smoking quickly and easily, saying in fact they had lost the urge to smoke altogether.
	The study was inspired by the experience of one man.
	He had smoked 40 cigarettes a day before his insula was damaged in a stroke.
	He quit smoking immediately after, telling researchers his body forgot the urge to smoke.
	He forgot the urge to smoke.
	Now, how cool is that?
	But of course, as I mentioned, you don't want brain damage to go there.
	Still, having learned that, they probably, the insula is in an area of the brain that is not particularly operable.
	But maybe they can come up with a drug or something that will go to the insula area.
	Wouldn't it be cool if you could just forget that you even had the urge?
	I continue on many fronts to avoid smoking, best I can, but I'm I'm only... I guess I'm doing pretty well.
	You know, as I mentioned to you, I'm down to four or five a day.
	Some days more, mostly days I'm on the radio.
	And I'm trying Shantex, it's a new prescription thing.
	I'm trying the nicotine gum and...
	Boy, I'll tell you, this is one bad mama of a habit.
	There's simply no question about it.
	All right, let's go to the lines.
	Let's take some calls.
	Allen in Texas, you are on the air.
	Hi.
	Hey, Art.
	Thank you so much for taking the call.
	A quick thing.
	On the bumper music that you do for the Moody Blues, where you do the reverse phase shifting, were you possibly the DJ that helped them get a start with one of their songs on the West Coast years and years ago, back in the 60s?
	Were you perhaps that DJ?
	No.
	I'm sorry.
	I would like to say yes.
	I wish I was.
	And I really love that group.
	Sure.
	One other thing.
	The guest you had on last week, would have been last week, Mr. Harper.
	And if you could just elaborate a little bit.
	Everyone seems to be focused on America.
	You focused on the Philippines as well.
	I would like just a little bit of input if you would.
	South of the equator.
	And what ramifications could possibly be involved with a scenario that you guys were talking about last week, if you would please?
	Which scenario?
	Perhaps a silver flare, if you would.
	Oh.
	Alright.
	I don't know how to answer that, really.
	Let's see.
	What can I say?
	A solar flare probably would have larger implications, I would imagine, anywhere near the equator.
	Of course, it entirely depends.
	A solar flare can be Earth-directed and generally affects the... Let me think about this.
	The northern latitudes generally get slammed harder than any other.
	I'd have to look into it.
	The radio conditions Around the equator are totally bizarre.
	They really are bizarre.
	They're amazing.
	It's a complete opposite situation here.
	In America, North America, one generally has the expectation that the shortwave bands open up during the day, the higher ones, around 14 megahertz and above, open during the day if they're going to open.
	And then close promptly when the sun goes down.
	It's exactly the opposite down there, near the equator, and they actually open up once the sun goes down.
	It was the damnedest thing I ever saw!
	I thought that radio propagated the same way just about all parts of the globe, but ooh, that's not true.
	Not even close to being true.
	All right, Jason in Tulsa, Oklahoma, east of the Rockies.
	You're on the air.
	Thank you, Art.
	This is Jason listening on 1170 KFAQ here in Tulsa.
	You said at the beginning of the show that some of the troops in Iraq were having to stay past their enlistment times.
	In the Navy myself, whenever you sign up, it definitely says that you have to stay as long as they need you in certain situations.
	So I think a lot of the guys may They're totally aware of what's happening and that they may be needed, you know, for longer.
	Did you say you were in the Navy?
	Yes, sir.
	I'm not sure how it applies to being out at sea, but I can tell you from the time I had in the Far East, Vietnam, Okinawa, the Philippines, that when you're in a war zone, buddy, and they tell you you're going home on a certain date, you're counting the hours.
	I have no doubt, sir, that they're definitely counting down to the time that they get to come home and see their families, but I don't think it's in a negative way if they get asked to stay.
	Oh, hogwashing sucks.
	It completely sucks.
	Any response?
	I don't disagree with the premise that you say that it's definitely not a happy thing or not a positive thing.
	I mean, they know that they're in the military, and they also know that they signed up in the very beginning for a certain reason.
	Yes, sir, and they also know that they were told they'd come home on a certain date.
	Well, I can tell you, sir, that I would definitely not have a problem in that situation, even though I was out on the water.
	All right, well, look, I didn't mean to shock you.
	You're really the exception.
	You're away from your family for, say, a year?
	And you know the date you're coming home, and they do a stop-loss trick on you, and you're there for another half year.
	I just, I can't even begin to tell you how much that sucks.
	And I would have other words for it, but it just, it's awful!
	I understand, I guess, that they have to be doing what they're doing, because the alternative to that is going to be a draft.
	I guess nobody wants that.
	The quality of people you get with a draft is just not what we've got right now.
	So I'm not totally in disagreement with what they're doing at the moment.
	But the stop loss part of it, yikes.
	Fred in Michigan, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hi, Art.
	How's the weather out there tonight?
	Quite nice, actually.
	Great.
	Glad to hear that.
	Congratulations on your little girl.
	Oh, thank you.
	There are authors, one in particular regarding the nature of matter, a fellow by the name of, let's see here, he authored a book, Continuous Creation, regarding the transmutation, yeah that's right, biological concept of the nature of matter, beyond Newtonian science and the Big Bang Theory, he developed the scientific explanation for the transmutation of light into matter.
	In other words, he believes that creation is an ongoing thing, that it's always been and always will be.
	One of your guests mentioned that no life form appeared until after the appearance of light, light energy.
	And I thought that was pretty provocative, because in the Genesis story of creation, that's exactly what it says.
	Yeah, let there be light.
	And before that, there was not.
	Yeah.
	And another thing, Art, you mentioned something about your kitties.
	Did one or more of them pass on?
	No, I'll tell you what, I'll lay it out when I get back.
	I've got a break here very quickly, but when I come back, I'll sort of catch you up on that.
	No, nothing as dire as that, but we did get a great big scare from the high desert and the great American Southwest.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Getting too anxious.
	It is indeed.
	Hi, everybody.
	Good evening.
	Happy to take your call and get you on the air in the next half hour or so if we can.
	Coming up at the top of the hour, we've got Dr. Oren Pilkey, and he's going to talk to us about modeling, about mathematical models.
	He thinks they're really out to lunch with the mathematics.
	In fact, he's going to talk not just about climate change modeling, But about the modeling that helped them decide to put nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, just up the road from me a little bit.
	On my kitty cats!
	They caught a cold, which became a very serious infection.
	We almost lost our little Filipino immigrant kitty, and then my other cat caught it.
	Oh, it was a wild week, you know, going to the vet for shots, and all kinds of shots, and then antibiotics, and getting them in my steam room.
	I think I told that story last night.
	I've got a steam room here, and so it's being used at least for something, and their poor little kitty faces and noses were pressed up against the glass.
	As we watch them get their steam treatment.
	Anyway, they're all nursed back to health, so nobody passed, and everybody's sort of on their way back to health and running around.
	All is well in the Bell household.
	We'll be right back.
	All right, as promised, let's go directly to the lines.
	Mike in Escondido, California.
	Howdy.
	How you doing tonight, sir?
	I'm doing quite well, Mike.
	Great, great.
	I was just calling.
	I just recently learned that I've heard a lot of stories, Mike, of blocks of ice falling from the sky.
	atmosphere down here in San Diego and I had learned one it fell up in Florida
	today and demolished a car totally totaled it I was wondering if you had heard
	anything about this I've heard a lot of stories Mike of blocks of ice falling
	from the sky most people think it's airliners that kind of thing that might
	It might be something else.
	You know, the way the weather is changing right now, nothing would surprise me.
	It's amazing.
	Yeah, they had called the airport down there in Florida and they said that there was no aircraft in the area, was the other thing I was going to bring up.
	Well, then where?
	Amazing.
	Big enough to demolish a house?
	It did a lot of damage to it and it totally totaled the vehicle today.
	Oh my God.
	Do you have a story on that, Mike?
	I believe it was on the Drudge Report.
	Drudge.
	Okay, I'll check Drudge.
	That's amazing.
	Yes, it is.
	Was there anybody in the car?
	No.
	I believe they woke up to it or walked outside to it.
	I'm glad they weren't in it.
	Alright, I'll sure look into it.
	Thanks, bud.
	Yes, sir.
	You have a good night.
	Yeah, you too.
	Can you imagine a block of ice big enough to demolish a car simply falling from the sky with no aircraft in the area?
	Brenda in Florida, east of the Rockies.
	You're on the air.
	Yeah, hi.
	There's been so much talk about our withdrawal from Iraq, and I heard something today from Britain that they want us to start withdrawing by May and have it over with by October.
	And I think we need to diplomatically work this out if it's possible, you know?
	Well, Brenda, I hated the whole prospect of going to Iraq in the first place and I was adamantly against it, but once we're there...
	Well, for example, I think we killed, what, 250 insurgents today?
	That's 250 people that are not going to be planning ways to demolish buildings and do other terrorism and damage to the United States.
	I don't think they'll come here.
	I think they know what's going on here, from what I understand.
	Alex's program has reached over there and they don't like what's happening here.
	What do you mean?
	They said they've been hearing things that are going on that, you know, about this North American Union and the way, you know, they're doing things over here that they just don't approve of it either.
	Well, they don't approve of our freedoms.
	Brenda, they don't like the fact that we are not part of their religion.
	And what they have said, basically, is that either we convert or I haven't heard that from anybody.
	Really?
	I mean, not exactly a Desmondian on TV about it or anything like that.
	Actually, Brenda, that's just about an exact quote.
	Really?
	Yes.
	Who said that?
	Well, an American Who had joined up with Al-Qaeda, recently said that in something that Al Jazeera broadcast, and then went worldwide.
	So I'm sorry you missed it, but it's actually in the Koran.
	Or they claim it's in the Koran.
	Well, there's two Korans.
	I mean, there's the original and there's something that somebody else wrote.
	Something that somebody else wrote.
	Yeah, somebody had redone it, and the real Koran, they even had this on the Christian radio station, or TV station, that they said the original Koran said it's a peaceful religion, and this other one that, this other guy was supposed to have redone it, this is the one that's radical.
	Okay, well, at any rate, it is indeed the radicals that interpret it that way, and they really do believe we should convert or die, Brenda, and that's not much of a choice.
	Yeah, well, the thing is, I mean, how many really are there of the radicals?
	Fewer and fewer every day, the way it looks.
	Oh, well, I wish they were coming into all of this.
	It's really sickening that, you know, this world can't have love and peace on this earth instead of all this fighting.
	I couldn't agree with you more, Brenda.
	It's such a waste of everything.
	It is.
	It is.
	A waste of life and money and time and everything.
	You're right.
	I totally agree, Brenda, but they really honestly do have that attitude, convert or die, and I'm not willing to convert.
	No, me neither.
	But that's the radicals.
	And maybe we need to have the other Muslims help with this situation.
	If they were not Actually, wanting to attack us, as they did, you know, the World Trade Center buildings, the Pentagon, and so forth and so on.
	And they were going to leave us alone.
	I'd be all in favor of pulling back and letting them stew.
	But, you know, I think that we'd see them right in our face if they had the chance.
	You know, it's about 9-11.
	It was in the Bible, in Jeremiah 30, God said He allowed this to happen because we have turned from Him.
	And He says, I gave you a grievous wound that medicine could not even heal.
	Now, wait a minute.
	It sounds like you're rewriting something.
	No, it's Jeremiah 30.
	It's in there.
	Well, I'm sure it is Jeremiah 30, but did it say anything about the World Trade Center building?
	Yeah, it said that it was the bringing down of the sycamore trees and raising of the cedars of Lebanon.
	Well, I know, but those aren't sycamore trees.
	Or weren't.
	He said that he allowed this to happen because we have turned from him.
	Well, that would be sycamore trees, though.
	Yeah.
	And the raising of the cedars of Lebanon is the towers going back up.
	Uh-huh.
	All right, well I guess everybody makes their own interpretation, but this business about convert or die, that's not much of a twist.
	I mean, you can look it up.
	It's been said and re-said by Al-Qaeda leaders, so it's for real.
	Arizona, Jerry, West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Yeah, how you doing, Art?
	Very well, thank you.
	Yeah, I was wondering when you're going to have that Jim Sparks on again, the one that remembers 80% of his abduction?
	That was the most amazing interview of its kind, Jerry, I think ever done.
	I know!
	It was spellbinding!
	It was, and so yes, I'm sure I'll have him on again.
	I mean, we really did hear the story in wonderful detail.
	I'm not sure what else could be said, but I'll look into it.
	Okay, yeah, there were some things you were going to ask him, but the time went so fast, you know, you didn't even get a chance to answer everything you wanted to.
	Yeah, if you recall, I went an extra hour with that interview.
	So, let me see what I can do, buddy.
	Okay, well, thanks a lot.
	Alright, see you later.
	He was one heck of an interviewer.
	There's no question about it.
	He had detail that I've never heard from anybody else.
	Pete, in Omaha, Nebraska, you're on the air.
	Hi, Art.
	Good to talk to you again.
	Welcome back.
	It's good to hear your voice.
	Just brought up what a little bit of what the gentleman earlier was saying about the weather and the shelf of ice that fell on the car and whatnot.
	I think it was a forecaster just a few weeks ago that was saying it was more of observing the weather patterns rather than forecasting.
	Like we've gotten into just being able to notice these changes and in some places so rapidly That you know it's an observing with the constant changes and like several of your guests have noted in the past that these like Red Oak would say that these changes would start getting more drastic as the earth is reacting to everything around it and almost like it feels the pain of the people here on earth and that you know it itself he mentioned would be like a dog flicking off the
	The fleas, as it scratches, that we would much be like that when the earth decides to kind of reclaim what it has been.
	There was a time when I would have laughed at all that.
	That time is not now, Pete.
	I kind of believe it.
	Yeah, with what you've, you know, all your past interviews with the Hopi tribe and, you know, I think people are starting to realize there's a few that have taught You know other people how to look for things that what happened in Indonesia two years ago with the tsunami all the natives that fled to higher ground just like the animals I think people as a whole by the way I want to say hello to all the troops and we love you and you know there's a lot of us that still know what's going on and you know.
	You were out of the service?
	No but I have a lot of friends and family that have and I know you have as well and I You just got to thank them for the fact that they're serving the country.
	I would be proud to serve if there was a draft.
	I'm 36, but you know what?
	After these World War II vets, what they did for our country, we can't let what we've done slip.
	Back to the weather, I just think that we need to pay attention to what's going on.
	Like you said, like a lot of other people, might not believe in the global warming theory.
	Could lead to global cooling.
	Who knows?
	This world's gone through so much in the phases that it has, but we need to pay attention to it.
	It's something that's real.
	You know, we don't know how to quite control it, you know, with all the different resources and everything, but, you know, pay attention to things going on and don't give up on, you know, nature and the human spirit, you know?
	Pete, I simply could not agree with you more.
	Thank you.
	There's just no question about it.
	There was a time when I would have just laughed.
	Of course, the American natives believe that our Earth is, in a sense, alive.
	And I think I'm willing to buy that.
	And I'm also willing to buy that human beings are connected to that which we walk around on, the Earth.
	There's a connection.
	And if the Earth is ill, then I think, let's see, what was the expression?
	I think if the earth sneezes, we all catch a cold.
	Leave it at that.
	So I guess that's part of my belief system now.
	Justin, in New Jersey, you're on the air.
	Hi.
	Hello, Art.
	Nice to talk to you.
	Good to talk to you.
	Welcome back to the States.
	Thank you.
	And I'm a longtime listener from IRC, and I have a question for you, but I was also wondering, now that you're back in the States, are you going to be continuing on with the screen call format?
	Um, I think so.
	You know, I actually thought about it, Justin, and I could take unscreened calls, as a matter of fact, the way it's set up right now.
	That didn't occur to me for a while, but I might do it.
	I might do it, Justin.
	Alright.
	Is there an advantage to the screened calls and the unscreened calls?
	No, I don't know.
	I wonder about that myself, Justin.
	Your odds of getting through Are pretty much equal, whether it's screened or whether it's unscreened.
	Either way.
	I don't know that it makes a gigantic difference.
	No.
	And one of the questions I wanted to ask was, why do you think there's all this push on nuclear power when there's a big shortage on uranium?
	Why do I think that?
	Well, easy.
	That's an easy one, buddy.
	We have such an incredible situation going on with the climate right now.
	That it makes nuclear power look more attractive, even with the extreme difficulty that we're facing right now of, you know, what to do with waste.
	And they're going to put the waste very near me, Yucca Mountain.
	We've got a piece of equipment here that, I think I mentioned to you, that Bill Hickey came up here and redid everything.
	And unfortunately, it looks like we've got a piece of equipment failing.
	Which is not unusual, when you put in new stuff within a day or two or three, you usually get a failure, and we're having one at the moment, so we'll hope all goes well.
	David in Van Nuys, California, you're on the air.
	Wow, congratulations on Little One Eyes, our first debut on the internet.
	You mean that's something.
	She looks just like you.
	Thanks, buddy.
	Yeah, I can't make out a thing.
	I mean, our technology is a little better than that.
	What happened?
	Why wasn't it so clear?
	Oh, actually it is.
	If you know what you're looking at, it's quite clear.
	And you've got to be a sort of a medical person.
	I will get some of the color shots up next week that are much, much better.
	I just didn't have time to get the DVD out and take a snapshot and do all that stuff, but I'll do it next week.
	Okay, great.
	Hey, the National Geographic had a show titled The Womb, and it shows the new 3D high-resolution views of a child being developed.
	That's what I've got.
	I've got a high-res color, three-dimensional picture, if I can snap it off the DVD.
	That's amazing.
	Technology is so incredible.
	But, you know, one thing I was concerned about, I was worried about, that with the ultrasound, what it does is it creates a vibration.
	That's how you get an image from an echo.
	I was wondering if that hurts the child since it's in liquid and that vibration may hurt its ears.
	I don't know if it could hurt at all.
	I suppose with pregnancy, you worry about everything.
	In fact, I've noticed that on television, whatever the medicine is, it doesn't matter.
	They always have a warning at the end that says, not good if you're pregnant, Or you're going to be pregnant.
	How anybody can exactly forecast that, I'm not sure.
	But it's kind of a tag on every medicine there is.
	And so if you're pregnant, you pretty much don't want to take anything that can be avoided.
	Phil in Arizona, welcome.
	First time caller.
	Yes, how are you doing, Art?
	Okay, sir.
	Yeah, I had some paranormal experiences.
	I wanted to talk to you about them.
	I hear voices every day and I talk to them.
	And what they did, they told me that there was going to be a bombing in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh.
	And that happened two months prior, two months after they told me this.
	And they told me that Osama Bin Laden, they tell me this all the time, he's in South Africa.
	And they told me that Syria was going to enter a war, and America warned them so they didn't go into war, and that's where weapons of mass destruction are in Syria.
	I'm curious, Hill, who do you think these voices you hear are?
	I really don't know.
	People.
	Just, uh, they're angels.
	Angels.
	Yeah.
	And so we can look for a bombing in Saudi Arabia in two months, is that correct?
	That's something I predicted, but yes, that's going to happen too again.
	It is, huh?
	Yeah, that's what they say.
	And they'll find Osama Bin Laden in South Africa.
	I really don't know why they say that, but somewhere that's where he's at, they say it to me all the time.
	Alrighty.
	Alright.
	We'll mark that one down.
	Hang in there, buddy.
	Still?
	Yeah.
	Oh, you're still there.
	Okay, well, listen, I've got to go, but we'll mark what the voices have said and see what happens.
	And Taiwan's going to be going to China.
	Well, that one you don't need a voice for.
	China is going to eventually take possession of Taiwan.
	I think there's very little question about that.
	And when that happens, I suppose we'll make noise and we'll bluster, but I have very serious doubts that we'll get involved in some negative way with China over Taiwan.
	I've sort of come to believe that one.
	Larry in Tampa, Florida, you're on the air.
	Hey, how you doing?
	Quite well, sir.
	I've listened to you for a long time, along with George.
	We've got about one minute.
	Sure.
	I'm commenting about the ice chunks that have fallen in three places across the U.S.
	The most recent one here in Florida, near Tampa, subsequent to a hailstorm.
	I saw it on WESH in Orlando here.
	It was huge.
	It was absolutely huge.
	It nailed the car, and I heard that another one nailed the house somewhere else.
	They showed a picture of it and the car was completely nailed.
	Do they have any conjecture on what it might be?
	There was none.
	It was subsequent to a hailstorm and the sky was clear.
	The sky was clear?
	Clear.
	During a hailstorm?
	After.
	After the hailstorm when the ice fell?
	Yes.
	Listen, I've got to go.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm totally out of time.
	I'm going to look into all this.
	I guess it's on drudge.
	I'll go take a look.
	From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
	Indeed, I hope here I am.
	We've had a piece of equipment go kaboom.
	So, trying to talk to Bill Hickey.
	Bill, if you're out there, pick a break and call me.
	Dr. Oren Pilkey is a James B. Duke Professor of Geology and he is a Director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, that's PSDS, within the Division of Earth and Ocean Science at Duke University.
	Currently, PSDS research focuses on beach replenishment and other forms of shoreline stabilization, evaluation of the validity of mathematical models of beach behavior Hazard Risk Mapping on Barrier Islands, Sedimentary Processes on Shore Phases, Migration of Hurricane Property Damage on Barriers, and Principles of Barrier Island Evolution in Columbia, South America.
	His research, in recent years, has been funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Geographic Society, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, the U.S.
	Geological Survey, and the National Science Foundation.
	Wow!
	As well as a variety of private foundations.
	He doesn't think much about mathematical modeling.
	Apparently, it doesn't take a whole lot of the modeling that decided that they will put so much nuclear waste right next to me at Yucca Mountain, where, well, gee, you know, I've heard there's earthquake fault lines that run under it.
	I've heard that there's some water that runs under it that they didn't anticipate.
	And all kinds of things.
	So I'm just not really looking forward to that.
	And it'll be interesting to see what he thinks of the mathematical models that say, put it there.
	I'm Art Bell.
	We'll be right back.
	All right.
	Here comes Dr. Oren Pilkey.
	Doctor, welcome to Coast to Coast AM.
	Well, I'm very pleased to be here.
	We've got some equipment problems, so I hope that all hangs in.
	But I am hearing you.
	All right.
	To sort of put a cap at the beginning of this, you think a lot, if not most, of the mathematical modeling done on various projects is horsepucky.
	Is that fair?
	Well, that's fairly fair.
	There are two kinds of modeling.
	There's modeling where you're expected to be accurate and precise.
	There's modeling of earth processes, and we just In my view, we cannot be accurate.
	Accurate models are not possible with natural processes.
	However, we can learn a lot, like we have about global change and so forth, using the models in a more qualitative way, where you just look at trends or orders of magnitude or directions and so forth.
	But I think our society is depending Very heavily on what we think or what we are told are accurate models, and they're just not accurate.
	All right, your book is Useless Arithmetic.
	That's pretty strong stuff.
	Useless Arithmetic.
	Is that correct?
	That's right, yeah.
	That kind of tells it in a nutshell.
	You know, that gives our view of the validity of Accuracy of quantitative models.
	Alright, let's begin, not with Yucca Mountain, but with global warming.
	Now, we've all been fed all kinds of information on global warming and what we can expect, how many degrees of warming in so many years we can expect, and you think, I take it, you think the models are simply wrong.
	Well, I think the mathematical models that are used to predict global change are, I mean, I agree with the general picture that the UN Committee, which is about to come out with a new report in the next week or two, with their general conclusion that we're going into global warming, global warming is a fact, we can measure it, and global change is a fact.
	But the problem is, just the way you stated it, when the models say that we're going to go up so many degrees and the water temperatures are going to go up so many degrees and sea level is going to rise so many inches or feet, we have to take those numbers with a grain of salt, a large grain of salt.
	We can't quantitatively predict, but we can look at these models and
	the models have been valuable
	in telling us that global change is upon us and we can't ignore it. We've got to do something about it.
	Let me read you what's in the in the current five-minute Associated Press
	news.
	It says, later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures.
	But that may be the sugar-coated version.
	Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001.
	In the last report, many top U.S.
	scientists reject these rosier numbers.
	Those calculations don't include the recent and dramatic melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations.
	Now, I take it all of this forecasting is being done by modeling, right?
	That's correct.
	Modeling is a good way to handle a lot of data, and God knows they've got a lot of data to handle, and you're dealing with a global phenomenon here, a global change.
	I agree that the 2001 report was pretty sugar-coated.
	that the initial, that the 2001 report was pretty sugar-coated.
	And, for example, very recently the UN panel there said they expected that more snow would
	start to accumulate on the Antarctic continent, and as a result of the warming of the oceans
	there'd be more evaporation, therefore there'd be more snow.
	More snow, yeah.
	But just the opposite happened.
	Recent measurements, all short term of course, but recent measurements have shown that the Antarctic continent is losing ice, losing snow, losing volume.
	And the same thing is happening in Greenland.
	It is melting faster than has been expected or predicted, and so they've been wrong.
	These are the two points, I think, that that article talks about where they have been wrong, and all of which indicate that sea level is bound to be rising a lot faster than anticipated, and that it's almost bound to accelerate.
	But putting it into, so this is where models are valuable, where you can, and by the way, these modelers, the UN panel, are quite honest and quite straightforward, and they evaluate their, they say, these are the problems we have with the model, these are the, you know, and they give all the bad and the good, and they say, this is a pretty weak assumption here, and this is a strong assumption here, This is very different from most mathematical modeling that goes on in our society.
	These guys really, really worry about their inaccuracies.
	So, if I can interrupt, then the climate modeling they're doing, you feel a little bit better about than some other areas of modeling?
	Among the type, the areas of modeling that we looked at in our book, We think that the climate modeling is by far the best, by far the most straightforward.
	They recognize they have lots of weaknesses and are straightforward about it.
	I'd be a bit more pessimistic than they are, and quite a bit more in fact, about their precise, some of their precise statements.
	But yes, I consider them to be the best, to be the best type of modeling among these things that we looked at, these various fields.
	Okay, well then there's a difference between you and, of course, you know the administration is very anti-global warming, or at least they certainly have been until very recent days.
	And, of course, what they do is attack the modeling.
	Yeah, that's one of the problems is that the models, I mean, for example, There's one group out there that is saying that, well, if we don't change our CO2 output within 10 to 12 years, we only have 10 to 12 years to change it and to actually turn things around.
	Well, they don't know it's 10 to 12 years.
	Maybe we can't turn it around, or maybe we have 50 years.
	That's the kind of thing that is being said by some groups, and this makes them vulnerable.
	I mean, the administration can say, well, that's nonsense, and they're right.
	You know, about some of these very quantitative and precise pronouncements.
	But basically, the Bush administration, for purely political reasons, is ignoring a major, major phenomenon that's going on globally, and it's much to our... We are wasting time.
	We are wasting time.
	There's a commercial that's running on TV right now, you might have seen it, and it shows a guy standing on a train track.
	You seen that one?
	There's a train coming, and the voice in the background says something like, and I'm paraphrasing, the climate will change in 30 years?
	Well, what difference does that make to me?
	And he stands aside, and behind him is his little girl, and of course it's a train wreck.
	Ah, yes, yes.
	That's a pretty good analogy.
	That's a great analogy.
	This is an exciting time for science, for global science, I think.
	In my lifetime, which I've been around a while, I've never seen the scientific community so galvanized on any public issue, and I'm very proud of the scientific community on this issue.
	Getting out and telling people about this instead of sitting in our offices with our green eyeshades and our computers and arguing amongst each other about little details.
	We are really getting out there.
	The scientists are getting out there and that's good, but we have to be careful of what we take of their modeling.
	We have to lift up the flap and look carefully.
	Okay.
	Well, it sounds to me as though you are pretty well convinced with the rest of the scientific community, which has pretty much reached a consensus.
	I mean, ten years ago, Doctor...
	People were saying it's horseradish and much worse.
	Today, it seems as though science has pretty much coalesced behind the facts.
	Yeah, that's true.
	I always shudder a little bit about this because, you know, good science is not necessarily done by majority vote, and great scientific breakthroughs are usually done by people who are on the outside who are not there in the swing of things, so to speak.
	Darwin and others were not in the swing of things, but I think the evidence is so overwhelming here that, I mean, there can be a lot of, there's still a lot that we have to argue about.
	We have to understand, for example, how much of this climate change is due to human beings, and that's not certain yet.
	Although I'm not sure, although it certainly Would impact what we do to mitigate it if we decide that we're part of the problem.
	However, it may go on no matter what we do.
	In fact, I believe that it will.
	If you look around the world right now, China and Asia, Eastern Europe, the rest of the world, you know, they want a couple cars in every garage.
	Basically, they want what we have and if they get it, And they're probably going to get it.
	I just, I don't see how we're going to change anything.
	Do you?
	I am completely, in complete agreement with you.
	It looks so hopeless in that sense because, you know, for us to be standing up there and telling the developing world that, hey, you know, we, you can't use, you can't use gas and oil like we're using it.
	You know, that, boy, that just doesn't wash.
	And so, you know, so the solution may lie eventually in Yes, you're absolutely right.
	It's really kind of almost depressing to look at the task before us if we're going to really make a change.
	Everybody wants to be like us, and we're producing much of the world's excess carbon dioxide.
	Well, we'll come back to that.
	Doctor, I'm in a little town called Pahrump, Nevada, in the high desert.
	I wonder if you know where that is?
	Well, I think you're not far from Yucca Mountain, judging from the introduction here.
	I don't know where that town is, no.
	No, that's all right.
	We're about 65 miles to the west of Las Vegas, and kind of not all that far from Yucca Mountain.
	I am very, very, very interested in what you have to say about Yucca Mountain.
	I'm very concerned about Yucca Mountain and what they're going to put there and they tell me that we're going to have to be custodians of this very dangerous stuff for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years and mankind has done nothing for that period of time.
	We have, you will be custodians or Nevada will be custodians for Well, for essentially a million years or a little bit more, that's the time frame over which some of this radioactivity will still be hot, some of the waste will still be hot, and yes, yes, you will be the custodian of that.
	Somebody has to be, and our fathers in Washington have decided that that will be the place to go.
	It has been our fathers in Washington that have decided this, and not the scientific community looking for the very best site.
	It's been a very political thing.
	And this, of all things in our society, of this kind, is totally controlled.
	It's totally involving mathematical models.
	Hundreds of mathematical models are being used to predict the fate of the waste at Yucca Mountain.
	But the problem is, it's complex, but the problem is that we scientists 20, 30 years ago, when we got computers that we could sit at our desk and do so much with, we told the bureaucrats that yes, we can predict what's going to happen 10,000 years into the future.
	And so the requirement has become If, uh, wherever we're going to put that nuclear waste, we must know what's going to happen for the next 10,000 years.
	Well, that's nonsense.
	Of course we don't know what's going to happen in the next 10,000 years.
	What's going to happen to the climate?
	Are we going to start another ice age?
	Are, you know, is there going to be a volcanic eruption?
	But even worse than that, even worse than that is the fact that recently the federal court said, no, we have to, we have to We have to move that up to 300,000 to 1 million years.
	We have to know what's going to happen during the next million years.
	Now that is so ludicrous.
	10,000 years was ludicrous, but a million years, I can't find an adjective to describe it.
	You know, we're going to go through several ice ages, and Yucca Mountain will be maybe a tropical rainforest during that time.
	The groundwater will be right up to the, you know, And, you know, they may as well have said, they may as well have said, uh, the federal court may as well have said, uh, we must put all the nuclear waste into the second ring around Saturn or something like that.
	It was, it was, it was an absolutely impossible requirement.
	So are, can we do, do we want to say that there was a federal court made up of, of idiots or, or are we scientists at fault?
	And I, I think we scientists have to take some of that blame that, That we didn't tell them, that we have convinced people that mathematical modeling can really predict what's going to happen, and therefore, go ahead and say a million years, because we have these sophisticated, state-of-the-art mathematical models that can tell us what's going to happen.
	And of course, I mean, a million years is just indescribably bad, just indescribably impossible.
	Well, Dr. Penalty, if you don't use mathematical models, what can you use?
	In other words, is there any way to decide where to put this waste other than what they're doing?
	Well, yes.
	That's a very good question, because what are we going to do?
	Say, well, let's just hope for the best and throw in the waste?
	Well, of course, we can do this in a much more qualitative way, and in fact, yucca mountain on the surface of things is quite
	uh...
	is quite uh... is quite a good is a good place to be in in the sense that it's not far from where all the uh...
	atomic testing went on so there's a lot of contaminated already contaminated land
	and and and the drainage we know this for sure the drainage of the ground
	water and the surface water is not going to go to las vegas or to your town it's going
	to go basically into into uh...
	Death Valley, excuse me.
	And the groundwater is going to be a full thousand feet, I think, below where they're going to store the radioactive waste.
	So, you know, on the surface of things, it's pretty good.
	I was fascinated, by the way, in a recent magazine article that interviewed people who are in the area where the groundwater will eventually flow if the repository fails.
	Will it fail?
	Is there any way to take good bets on whether it's actually going to fail and reach the groundwater?
	Oh, I think it will.
	I think there's no question.
	I think they assume that it will fail someday.
	And they're hoping that it won't fail for a million years, of course.
	But I think we should assume that it will fail.
	In fact, that's another approach to this thing.
	Assume that it's going to fail.
	Look at the worst case scenario.
	Where's that waste going to go?
	And it's going to go out down a valley, a large valley, and there are people who live there, a few people, but there are now people coming in, building nice houses and all that.
	Doctor, hold it right there.
	We're at a break point.
	We'll be right back.
	Dan in Clackamas, Oregon with a really good question, I think.
	He says, hi Art, would you ask Dr. Polky to please address the mathematical models used for our daily and three to four day weather forecasts here in Oregon?
	At least they're terribly inaccurate.
	Dan, here too.
	They call them weather forecasts, but they seem more like weather observations to me.
	In other words, they look out the window and correct what their model said would happen.
	Back to Dr. Pilkey in a moment.
	Doctor, sorry to cut you off so quickly.
	I'm not watching the clock.
	I'm looking at equipment here and absorbed in the material that you and I are talking about.
	Hey, no problem.
	So, you know, this is kind of interesting.
	Dan in Oregon talks about the modeling that they use for weather.
	Now, he's right about that.
	It seems as often to be wrong as right.
	Yeah, that's true.
	The mathematical modeling used for weather is perhaps In some ways the best kind of modeling there is, and it is inaccurate very often, that's because what we call a persistence time of things that make up the weather is very short.
	And so you can't usually, you're lucky to get three days.
	Sometimes you get five days, sometimes you get less than that.
	How many of us have failed to bring an umbrella, you know, to work and it rains when you come out?
	But, and that's a very important point, that this very good modeling, where they look back all the time, they look back to see if they can't try to improve their prediction, they still can't, they can't be perfect or anywhere close to it.
	Well, I think the weather service is still very valuable to us.
	Oh, of course it is.
	Actually, I'm quite good friends with them.
	I love reading the detailed discussion that they always put up.
	And I'm kind of friends with the fellow in Las Vegas.
	We had a forecast not long ago for 10 to 15 mile an hour winds.
	And we were getting, at the time, about 60 miles an hour.
	And so I called Las Vegas and noted that we were getting 55 and 60 mile an hour gusts.
	And he said, ooh, no kidding.
	Let me look into that.
	And it quickly, of course, changed.
	So that's what I meant when I said sometimes it seems more like weather observations.
	Yes, I think that's fair.
	I think that's a fair statement.
	And they, of all Earth surface processes that is There should be modeling, that we need modeling of.
	It's the weather, but we still, you know, we get three days if we're lucky and that's it.
	We need a lot more than three days at Yucca Mountain.
	Alright, let me again ask this question because I want to be very clear on it.
	If modeling is so faulty in some areas, Yucca Mountain as a good example, then doctor, what do we use?
	Well, we We have to simply accept a qualitative world.
	We have to simply accept that we can't model something, that we can't accurately predict the outcome of most natural processes on Earth.
	And so we just have to step back, and we're just going to have to live with it that we can't predict these things.
	So what do we do, for example, at Yucca Mountain, if we can't predict with a million years of certainty, what do we do?
	We can take another approach, what other countries are doing, and that is bury your waste and watch it.
	See what happens and change as technology changes.
	Change your, you know, we call it adaptive management.
	You would change things as you go along.
	See what happens.
	If the titanium drip shield that they're going to use at Yucca Mountain, if that starts to deteriorate, well, we got to do something different, you know.
	And so there are ways, in all these things, there are ways of We can plan.
	We can look at contingencies.
	What's going to happen if the following things happen?
	And then say, OK, if A happens, we'll do this.
	If B happens, we'll do that.
	But it does require us to step back and accept that we live in a qualitative world.
	We can't predict with accuracy where we're going in so many things on the Earth's surface.
	Well, let's come back to climate for a moment.
	We can certainly look, as an example, at the North Pole, and we can see that over the last several decades, I don't know, 40 or 50 percent of the ice that was there isn't there anymore.
	That's getting to be a very serious situation, and as the ice melts, it seems to be a process that is accelerating itself.
	Because, of course, the water absorbs more heat than the reflective ice with snow on it would, and so the process seems to be speeding up.
	But again, you think that modeling won't tell us where we're going with that?
	Oh, qualitative modeling is going to help us in that a lot.
	For example, qualitative modeling, just looking at what might happen without giving time on it, without giving volumes, without giving temperatures, we know that Big, big changes.
	Changes, I think, that you talk about in your book can happen to the circulation of the ocean, of the Atlantic Ocean, because of the changes going on in the Arctic.
	And we know that these things can happen.
	We know that Europe can become very quickly, in a matter of a few decades, can become much colder.
	And there are many, many things that could happen.
	Good things can happen.
	We can have shipping We can forget about the Panama Canal for a lot of our routes and so forth.
	There are winners and there are losers in all of this, but I do want to point out that it is very important for us to study these things.
	We need more oceanographic data on what's happening to that meltwater in the Arctic.
	You're familiar with what might happen to the Gulf Stream.
	It might be pushed to the south.
	I am.
	As a matter of fact, for I forget how many days recently, it did exactly that.
	It suddenly moved south.
	And that happened to coincide with some terrible, just awful storms in Europe.
	And I don't know if the two are connected, but I do know that it did for a time sort of begin to drift south and then came back.
	Yeah, the horror stories about the cooling of Europe are Potential cooling of Europe are valid.
	Boy, it's going to change a lot of things.
	You know, speaking of that, in Sweden, they take their nuclear waste and they bury it at more than a thousand foot depth, and they bury it in water.
	And the reason they do that, one of the reasons they're doing it, they assume, the scientists in Sweden assume, and they know, that someday the ice ages will come back.
	And that'll happen before the radioactive waste is dead, and Sweden is going to be covered with ice.
	And I thought that was very, very long-term thinking.
	It may not be as long-term as they think, but they assume that Sweden is going to be covered with ice, and any burial of radioactive waste right close to the surface might very well spread the waste all over to the south.
	So, people are thinking in these terms.
	We know ice ages are going to occur again, with or without the CO2, perhaps, the additional CO2 that we're putting in, but we're probably greatly increasing the rate of this occurrence, the rate of change.
	Okay, well, minus modeling, let's say that you're A scientist, which you are, and you're called in front of Congress or the Senate to testify on what you think is going to happen.
	Whether it's Yucca Mountain, whether it's climate, whether it's AIDS or fisheries, and I know you've got something to say about all of that.
	How do you go in front of these politicians and say, look, we need X number of dollars and we need to do the following without modeling?
	Well, I can point out in most of these things that we need, you know, with more field data, both in AIDS and in fishing and so forth, we need more data.
	And we need more field data.
	We need more observations in the oceans, in the atmosphere.
	And I wouldn't say to the Congress that we do this without modeling.
	I would say that we would We would use modeling to investigate the directions in which things are going, to look at the order of magnitude that changes might occur.
	So modeling would still be a central part of any investigation as to global change and all these other things.
	I wouldn't throw out models by any means, but I sure would throw out the quantitative model.
	We just simply have to accept that we're not going to be precise, we're not going to be accurate with these Well, they certainly need some way to decide how many dollars go where.
	So, you know, it's a little frustrating.
	I'm sure it's frustrating to you and to everybody else involved.
	Have you ever testified as to the relative inaccuracy of the modeling that others are using?
	Oh yes, a number of times, especially with regard to beach nourishment, which is becoming a big thing on all of our coasts, where we're pumping up artificial sand to replace sand that's being taken away because of sea level rise.
	I'm very critical.
	This is bad modeling.
	This is really bad modeling where they predict how long a nourished beach will last, and that's all part of a cost-benefit ratio.
	We've got to have a cost-benefit ratio according to the law, and in order to have a cost-benefit ratio, you've got to have an estimate of how long the beach will last when you pump it up.
	Well, who knows when the next storm will occur?
	That's how long the beach will last.
	And you don't know that, obviously.
	But the Corps of Engineers, when confronted with this, says, well, look, we can't go to the Congress and say, we want $12 million, plus or minus $5 million, to pump up a new beach.
	So therefore, they say, we must come up with an accurate estimate, which you can't do, an accurate prediction of how long a beach will last.
	The Corps of Engineers, or we scientists, shouldn't be giving Congress inaccurate numbers.
	Congress is going to have to live with the facts, too.
	And they're going to have to live with the fact that we can't predict how much a beach is going to cost.
	And we're just going to have to live with that.
	And that's true in other fields, as well.
	But that's a particularly obvious one, and one that's rather important here along the coast of the U.S.
	Speaking of coasts, here's another one.
	With the melting that clearly is going on, or I guess it's clearly going on, certainly at the North Pole, and a lot of glaciers now are beginning to retreat severely, eventually, particularly if it begins to occur at the South Pole, the Antarctic, it's going to begin to cause sea levels to rise, and as we all know, There's a lot of very valuable, very occupied shoreline, and we've got lots of it in the U.S., and are these people going to be at risk?
	Modeling says probably they're going to be at risk, and even looking at the world right now says that, I guess.
	What do you say?
	Oh yeah, of course.
	We don't need modeling to know that.
	Sea level rise is creating a huge risk to the world.
	We have so many coastal cities, and we know now, for example, along the East Coast, we have a very good tide gauge in North Carolina on a concrete pier at Duck, North Carolina, and it shows the current sea level rise is about one and a half feet per century.
	We know it's less in some places, like in Juneau, Alaska, it's dropping.
	Columbia, South America, on the Pacific Coast, it's rising at 10 feet per century, but in any event, globally, the sea level is rising, and the worst hazard for global change and sea level rise are in the atoll nations, like in Tahiti and some of the French Polynesian atoll islands.
	Tahiti isn't that tall, but some of the other islands, and even worse yet is Bangladesh,
	where millions of people live within several feet of sea level.
	And in these places, it's not going to be the flooding by the sea level rise, it's going
	to be the destruction of the freshwater supplies.
	Long before the land is actually flooded, the freshwater will be gone.
	The saltwater will have intruded into what they're using for their freshwater.
	And so, what are we going to do with these millions of refugees from Bangladesh?
	It's fascinating.
	And there is a movement afoot, interestingly enough, by some Native communities, even in Alaska and Siberia and the Atoll Nations.
	They're trying to get together.
	To sue the United States and Western Europe for producing all the CO2 that's causing the crisis on their shoreline.
	I don't know how far they'll get with that, but it's an interesting Interesting little issue, but a big issue, I guess.
	Yeah, I guess so.
	I just read about an island that disappeared.
	I guess 10,000 people had to move off this island.
	I'm trying to recall where it was, but there was a story about it, and they had to actually leave the island, and it's going to be the beginning of more of that for a lot of people.
	Yeah, that's what's happening.
	There's some atolls near New Guinea called the uh... carter at all the may have been abandoned the people
	of the move to new guinea and then the uh... nation of tupelo
	has made arrangements to move its people gradually that's all at all national movement to a new zealand so
	we're looking at at big changes in the world uh...
	doctor i'm gonna ask you for an opinion and that's all it is
	But there's this big argument about whether man's hand is a big part of this, or it's just a natural process.
	I don't think, in terms of our planning, it should matter that much one way or the other, because I don't think anything's going to change.
	That's my personal opinion.
	But I'd like to ask yours.
	Do you think man's hand is an important part of what's going on with the climate?
	Yeah, I think it is, but you're right.
	Your suspicion as to whether we can really pin down how much would be a point that I would make, that we can't really pin it down how much we are responsible.
	But what makes me think that we are at least partly responsible is the correspondence of the increasing carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, and that's as measured on Mauna Loa.
	The longest measurement of atmospheric CO2 is on Mauna Loa.
	And that increasing CO2 content just corresponds more or less with the global warming that we're seeing.
	For example, sea level rise, we see sea level rise beginning about 1850, the middle part of the 19th century.
	And that more or less corresponds to the increase in CO2 by humans, and so I think that's probably A qualitative indication that we're part of the problem.
	We're a major part of the problem.
	And then the question is, you know, what can we do?
	And I share your pessimism about getting the world to change its fossil fuel habits, but I don't think, because we're pessimistic, and I am, I don't think we shouldn't try.
	I don't think we should throw up our hands and walk away.
	I think we should try.
	We should try.
	Well, let's say that you were in charge of trying.
	Looking at what's going on in the world right now, what would you recommend?
	Well, if I was king of the world, I would be putting all kinds of resources into looking at alternate sources of energy.
	you know everybody knows uh... all kinds of potential sources of enemy
	uh... energy it's a little bit by the way enemies you know what one one
	uh... one interesting source that uh...
	it had heard too much about is uh... energy from uh...
	within the within the earth
	and it's been suggested that we could be drilling at the mid-ocean ridges and
	and getting huge amounts of energy where the hot magma is very close to the surface and we could be
	producing steam that could go all over the world.
	I think that's a little ways away, but I find that to be a fascinating Possibly.
	I think I would be, if I was king, I would be funding all kinds of research into other ways of driving around, other ways of transport, you know, get us out of fossil fuel.
	And I take it you believe the only reason we're not along that path right now is probably political.
	Oh, of course.
	Politics.
	Unfortunately, politics is behind this.
	And unfortunately, we the nation that is producing most of the CO2 in the world, excess CO2 or a good part of it, we're the nation that's dragging our feet.
	And I think that's really a shame.
	I wish we could change that.
	If I was king, I would change it.
	And if you're a king, we have another problem that's going on.
	It's out of your area of expertise, or maybe it isn't, but I keep getting these stories, Doctor, on these dead areas in the ocean.
	We're having more and more of these areas of the ocean that are virtually devoid of all life.
	You've heard about those?
	Yeah, well, the Mediterranean is changing dramatically, and then we have the dead area in the Gulf of Mexico.
	Off the Mississippi River, and these are very important in terms of our fisheries, in terms of the future of our fisheries.
	There was actually a story, Doctor, I'm sorry, there was actually a story saying that in 50 years, if we don't change, there's going to be no more fish left.
	No more fish left!
	I couldn't believe it, but it was a legitimate story that ran on the wire services not long ago.
	This time I'm watching, Doctor, we're at a break point.
	We'll comment on that when we get back.
	From the high desert, I'm Mark Bell.
	Here I am indeed.
	It's true.
	Dead zones in our oceans.
	Areas where nothing lives.
	I think there's one up off the coast of Oregon as well.
	And there was a very, very worrisome story saying that if we don't do something to change what's going on, in 50 years we won't have any fish in the sea.
	Now, maybe that's somebody's modeling that has told us that.
	Or maybe it's real.
	In a moment, we'll ask.
	Once again, Dr. Oren Pilkey.
	Doctor, had you heard that story, I'm curious, about all the fish being dead in 50 years?
	Well, yes, I have.
	The way I interpreted that story was that we're going to lose our, there's a possibility of losing commercial fisheries very quickly, and I think, I think it's partly due to the dead zone, but I think it's also due to the overfishing.
	And I think the greatest overfishing story of all is the Grand Banks off Newfoundland and Labrador, where the Canadians using mathematical models as fig leaves.
	I call it fig leaves because I do believe, as I read what happened there, there was a great deal of skepticism about the model, but the politicians said, well, you know, look it, we've got 40,000 people here depending upon this industry, this fishing industry, we're not about to
	stop the fishing just because of, you know, we've got to believe these models and so
	forth.
	And so they just kept right on fishing right until the last cod for all practical purposes
	was gone and then they stopped it.
	It was so amazing and the models have to be blamed for a good part of that loss.
	And in the rest of the U.S. we're still using, and the rest of the world, we're still using
	models and in the U.S. we control the fishing by panels and committees of local people.
	But it's so much in the politics that it is very, very difficult.
	That's part of the problem with democracy, is it difficult to stop really stupid things that we're doing when so many people depend on it for their living.
	Yeah, I know.
	It's one thing to sit back and academically talk about all this, but when you're depending on a paycheck from what you go out and get in your fishing boat, it's a different story.
	Recently in North Carolina, my state, the Federal Marine Fisheries has suggested that we stop fishing for two or three species and let them recover, but the Speaker of our Senate, Mark Basnight, Got up and gave a ringing speech about how, you know, we must support our poor fishermen, and he will do everything he can to, you know, make sure that this doesn't happen.
	And the same thing happened on the Grand Banks.
	Senators, congressmen, the Canadian equivalent got up on their soap boxes and said, hey, we'll save you.
	We're not going to let this happen.
	And they kept on going.
	And the Grand Banks was the world's greatest fishery.
	There's no question about that.
	You know, it's been fished for 450 years, starting with the Portuguese and the Spanish, and it was still healthy at the beginning of the 20th century.
	In fact, it was healthy by 1950, but then we began to, with the help of the government, with the help of the government, we began to get, the Canadian government began to get more efficient fishery methods.
	began to devise better nets, bigger ships and all that stuff.
	And everything was led to the demise of this really great fishery.
	And it's going to happen in other parts of the world.
	That 50 year estimate might might not be bad of this time when we no longer have big
	fisheries, you know, big big big fishing industries around the world.
	This is really getting scary.
	I mean, when you look at what's going on with the climate, and you look at what's going on with the oceans, and I guess it all relates, it's beginning to really scare me.
	Well, I think you should be scared.
	It's very difficult.
	We're increasing in population, but more important, we're increasing the amount of pollutants, not only carbon dioxide, but we're increasing what we put in water.
	We are getting better at that in some ways.
	We're reducing the amount of oil spill, perhaps, but there's still so much stuff coming in, like all the stuff that's coming into the Gulf of Mexico by the Mississippi River that's causing that dead zone, the big dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.
	It is frightening.
	It's kind of discouraging.
	It's maybe disgusting is a better word for it.
	We could do something about it, but it takes...
	Politician with backbones and so forth.
	Is it your view that these dead zones are nearly all produced by pollution?
	I can't tell you.
	I can't answer that.
	I know some of them are.
	And almost certainly it's some kind of pollution.
	Be it nutrient pollution, you know, too much nitrogen and phosphorus from sewers of some kind.
	Or is it industrial pollution?
	You know, there are all kinds of pollution, and so I guess, yes, it has to be some kind of pollution, which means then that it could be stopped, not cheaply and not with ease and not with political ease, but it could be stopped.
	Whether we have the willpower to do that is another thing.
	And another problem, like in the Mediterranean, there are so many countries involved, who's Who's going to tell Morocco and Spain and Italy and so forth, all these countries, to suddenly behave themselves?
	They have to work together on this.
	If the fate of the world is dependent on nations working together...
	I could just let it trail off there.
	You know, the average person listening to the program right now is bombarded by story after story after story about mathematical models predicting this and that, should they pretty much just disregard what they're hearing, just not pay attention to the news anymore, or what?
	Yes, and you're right.
	We are bombarded, and models are talked about.
	We just hear that, well, the models have said such and such.
	They should be very skeptical.
	And that's a little problematic, because sometimes the models, you know, if the models, if someone says, well, the temperature's going to increase, the models say that, well, I believe that.
	But if they say the temperature's going to increase by such and such, well, I won't believe that.
	You know, qualitative versus quantitative answers, and that's one of the problems with mathematical models is that they really, the mathematical modeling community is sometimes looked upon by people who have to work with them as an unassailable priesthood, something that you can't, you know, they almost look at themselves as being holy And that criticism is blasphemy.
	Okay, maybe you can break it down for me, Dr. Pilkey.
	In your estimation, where is the fault?
	Is the fault in not enough sampling for the modeling?
	Is it in the actual mathematics of the modeling?
	Where does it all fall down?
	That's a very good question.
	The problem lies Even if we understood every aspect of a process on the surface of the Earth, like let's say, in my own specialty, how much sand is being transported on beaches by waves, we can write down a list, which I did, in a book of 40 or so things that affect the amount of sand being transported.
	Even if we really totally understood that, we still We would not know when such and such a process is going to occur.
	We don't know what direction it's going to come from.
	We don't know what magnitude for what duration.
	So, in terms of quantitatively estimating the amount of sand that's going to be transported on the beach during the next decade, that's impossible.
	It's virtually impossible.
	No matter how good the models are, no matter how much data you have, no matter how much field studies, You have undertaken.
	You can't.
	You can't make that prediction.
	It's what we call ordering complexity.
	It's a fatal flaw in all mathematical modeling of Earth's surface processes.
	So, we can't do it.
	But we can, very easily and very neatly, we can determine whether a given shoreline, for example, is going to have a lot of sand transported or not much sand transported.
	We can do that.
	We can do that really nicely.
	It's all a matter of what you're trying to get out of the model.
	What can you do if you're a John Q. Citizen and you're confronted with a mathematical modeler who says the following is going to happen?
	I would ask that modeler what his assumptions are.
	You don't have to worry about the arithmetic or the mathematics.
	I would ask, what are the assumptions?
	The fundamental assumption behind what you've just said, what you've just told me.
	For example, if you have a modeler who is telling you about the amount of sand being transported on a beach by the waves, you could ask him, how do you estimate, what do you use for wave height?
	The amount of sand?
	Well, you know, if you've been on a beach, you've seen highways on Tuesday and low waves on Wednesday, and then you see waves come from the south on Thursday, waves come from the north on Friday.
	And so how do you put that all together?
	And the answer will often be rather appalling and make you rather skeptical of the model.
	So that's one approach.
	If you're a citizen, you don't have to understand the math.
	And I urge that people not be flummoxed by the math, you know, not be completely overtaken by that.
	And look at the assumption, and then use some common sense.
	And then look at previous applications of that model.
	Did they, down the road, did they estimate the whatever accurately?
	Ask for some examples of where the model has been applied.
	Did it work?
	So you're saying then, the math is probably good, but it's based on false assumptions.
	That's right.
	It's what we call model simplifications.
	They're not necessarily false, but they're ridiculous.
	In the sense, for example, in waves, we say, we take the one-third highest wave for a given period of time, and we say that's what the wave height is.
	And well, come on.
	So that takes out the big storms, which are much less than one-third of the time.
	And it takes out the long periods of calm weather, which are also important.
	So we have simplification after simplification, which are necessary to put into the model.
	So in the case of the waves, we can tell whether a beach has got a lot of sand moving or not much sand moving.
	When you have to use a simplification like one-third the highest wave, you are not going to be quantitative about it.
	No way you can get an accurate estimate that way.
	Okay.
	Coming back to Yucca Mountain, since it's so close to me, if the modeling is incorrect, and if Yucca Mountain fails, whether it's due to some sort of earthquake, and I understand there is a fault line there they didn't think about, And it's awfully early for things they didn't think about.
	What are the likely consequences?
	I assume they've looked at the worst-case scenarios for Yucca Mountain?
	Yeah, they have.
	Whether they looked at them accurately or not is another question.
	The worst-case scenario, basically, is that this radioactive waste would flow out into the groundwater and into the into California actually, but not into Las Vegas.
	And it would of course destroy the groundwater for anybody who's living in that area.
	That's one reason why Yucca Mountain's not a bad place in a sense, because there aren't very many people there.
	And if I was king, I would say we should buy up all the houses and all the ranches that are in that zone
	where the radioactivity might leak and get the water.
	How big a zone would that, Your Highness, be?
	I don't know.
	It's not very large.
	That doesn't help you very much, does it?
	But it's a fairly narrow zone.
	A few thousand square, probably a few hundred square miles that you could do a lot of, if you purchase a property, you could do a lot toward reducing the hazard.
	And the hazard, if it is going to occur, is likely to be several hundred years down the road.
	That's a qualitative statement.
	We don't know how fast the groundwater is going to flow, and we don't know how much groundwater there will be if the climate changes.
	There's going to be a lot more flow, and we have greatly underestimated, as you've probably heard, the amount of water that's flowing at the present time into Yucca Mountain.
	Not too long ago, they discovered radioactive chlorine, or they discovered Chlorine-36, which is a compound that was formed in the Bikini bomb blast in the Pacific, and it's globally in the atmosphere, and they discovered that in the tunnel at Yucca Mountain, which indicated then that the groundwater had flowed, some groundwater, at least along fault zones, had flowed all the way down into the chambers.
	That was 10 times the rate that they had assumed in their mathematical models.
	So here's a case where the mathematical models were wrong because their database was wrong.
	That's a very common problem.
	This is called a percolation flux problem, and it's really an example of how they just kept going
	and going on their models with that incorrect number.
	And instead, they should have tried to find this chlorine-36.
	They should have made an effort.
	Well, they did.
	They eventually found it, but they should have been doing that right at the very start.
	But that's so common with modeling.
	They're under pressure to show that Yucca Mountain is a good place to...
	It's so political, you know, well you know better than I if you've been involved in it.
	I think actually it was called the Screw Nevada Bill.
	Yes, that's correct, yeah.
	And that's back in the days when Nevada was very weak in the Senate.
	They're no longer weak in the Senate.
	You know what, if we were going to, if a scientist, I think, if a scientist were going to take charge of this thing, I think we would probably put the radioactive waste into salt.
	In some places in Kansas and in Texas.
	Because the salt deposits that we have there are millions of years old.
	The very fact that the salt is there indicates there has not been any water flowing through them.
	Otherwise the salt wouldn't be there.
	And so this is a real natural place for radioactive waste disposal.
	But politics has... A lot to do with it?
	Yeah, unfortunately politics has everything to do with it.
	And we have messed in our nest in the sense that we have required, we have as a requirement, you know, now it's a million years, it was 10,000 years of certainty that it won't, that nothing will happen.
	And so, you know, so the modelers have, the modelers have really messed this up.
	We scientists have messed this up because we've made this requirement an impossible requirement.
	And so, so the state of Nevada has an infinite amount of Scientific directions they can go to show that this thing can't work, that we can't possibly know what's going to happen in the next million years, but I don't think that's going to matter.
	I suspect that the state of Nevada will be overwhelmed by politics, and the nation will be overwhelmed.
	Yucca Mountain will be chosen because of politics.
	Yeah.
	Unfortunately.
	Is it final yet?
	I keep hearing about stages of finality in decision-making.
	Is it really final yet?
	No, it's not final yet.
	In fact, that decision by the federal court to extend the area of certainty for a million years has kind of put things on hold.
	The Bush administration did take another step toward approving it.
	But it's still not final.
	And boy, we've got to make up our mind one way or another here pretty quick.
	Well, you mentioned California.
	Now, are they absolutely certain, Dr. Polky, where the groundwater goes and that it does not meet groundwater elsewhere and percolate into different areas?
	In other words, if it all went wrong, California would be at risk?
	No, I don't think so.
	It's going into Death Valley.
	And I believe one thing they can tell quite accurately is where the groundwater will flow, just based on the slope of the land and the slope of the formations, the geologic formations.
	I don't think California, except for parts of Death Valley perhaps, is in any problem.
	There are no major centers of development, like Las Vegas or like your town, that are threatened.
	I think they're right on that one.
	Well, I hope so.
	There's a lot at risk if they're wrong.
	Yes, there is.
	And I think we could learn from... Well, you know, all this goes back to a decision in the Ford-Carter administration that we would not recycle radioactive waste.
	And one of the reasons we said we don't want to recycle radioactive waste is because we didn't want India and Pakistan to do that and they would get the bomb.
	Well, of course, India and Pakistan now has the bomb.
	They already have it.
	They already have it.
	Alright, Doctor, hold tight.
	We're at a break point.
	So, we decided, if I've got this straight, not to recycle radioactive waste because we didn't want India and Pakistan to do it.
	I'm going to think about that during the break.
	We'll be right back to repeat.
	Dr. Pilkey said the United States decided not to recycle nuclear waste because it would be a bad example for India and Pakistan, which of course went ahead and did it anyway, and they both have the bomb now.
	So, since that's already the case, I think we'll ask Dr. Pilkey why we're not recycling nuclear waste now and whether it's really efficient to do that at all.
	We'll ask in a moment.
	On the face of it, Doctor, it seems to me ludicrous that we would not recycle waste as an example to India and Pakistan, but let's go ahead and assume that that's why we did it.
	Well, India and Pakistan, as you mentioned, already have the bomb, so why aren't we doing it now?
	Well, that's a really good question.
	This is a bit out of my field, frankly.
	I'm concerned with the mathematical models in this, but I, you know, Recycling radioactive waste will produce plutonium, which is a bomb component, and I think the answer is that why we're not doing it now is because of the cumbersome bureaucracy that every nation has.
	We have started down this path.
	We have spent $5 billion looking for the right site, and we have a A large bureaucracy depended upon this, and it's just, these things don't turn around fast.
	And it would be, you know, but I think we should.
	I mean, it seems to me it makes perfect sense to go back to recycling, and I understand in Britain they do recycle.
	Yes.
	There's still waste, however.
	There's still waste, but it would be much less.
	And that's something to consider.
	And we are going to need, probably, we're going to need more recycled uranium because of I think we can assume that nuclear power is going to become more important again in this country.
	At least that's the way I see it.
	It's looking like that's going to happen now.
	Short of a miracle or whatever?
	Pardon me?
	Short of a miracle or a zero-point energy or something that comes along, we certainly are going to need more clean power.
	Yes.
	And that's nuclear power?
	That's right.
	And nuclear power is one way to go.
	Lots of baggage in nuclear power, but that's one way to go to get clean power.
	Okay, again with modeling, it's mentioned in here that you or somebody looked at the AIDS disaster in our world and modeling.
	What can you tell me about that?
	You know, that's a really interesting story.
	All this came about by an article, it was first pointed out by an article in a British newspaper by Rian Milan.
	And Milan is a very interesting person.
	He is the last of the Milans who, five generations ago, began apartheid in South Africa.
	But he was an anti-apartheid activist, a very powerful one because of his name.
	Anyhow, he was looking at the U.N.
	AIDS numbers.
	They had back what we call hindsight, a hindcast, and went back to 1999 and said that 250,000 South Africans died of AIDS.
	And I, by the way, don't want to in any way belittle the horror of AIDS.
	Mandela's son died not long ago from that.
	And so forth and so on.
	But at any rate, and then he saw, he knew that in Southern Africa, only South Africa has records telling how many people died, period.
	And he found that 350,000 people had died in 1999 in South Africa.
	And if 250,000 people had died of AIDS, that would mean that, you know, two-thirds of all the deaths in South Africa would be AIDS, and that was impossible.
	And the model that was used, it was called the UNAIDS model, I guess, was clearly incorrect, because it was not true that two-thirds of all deaths in South Africa are from AIDS.
	And what this illustrated was that there was a huge sympathy bias.
	Nobody's going to really lift up the flap on a statement like that, because everybody knows AIDS is terrible.
	But in reality, it was probably closer to 60, 70, 80,000 people died of AIDS in 1999.
	That's a pretty horrible figure in itself.
	It is, yes.
	But it's not nearly 250,000.
	And the problem was, they didn't look back.
	Nobody looked back.
	There's a sympathy bias.
	You know, we know AIDS is terrible, so let's just go with that number.
	And we can get more money if we make it look worse.
	And it's the same number that they use to estimate, the same model they use to estimate the amount of AIDS all over Southern Africa.
	And it's important because Africa has other problems.
	Africa has serious malaria problems and deaths from malaria and serious tuberculosis problems.
	And we've got to put all this in perspective, in an honest perspective.
	What should we hit first?
	Tuberculosis?
	AIDS?
	Or how much money should we put in which one, and so forth.
	So it's an example.
	But one of the more interesting aspects of this, he found that people were angry at him for pointing this out.
	Again, this is because there's so much sympathy with the AIDS problem, so much concern about it, that when he pointed this out, he talked about ruined dinner parties, losing friends, and all that, because he insisted that the AIDS numbers were wrong.
	And I've kind of seen it in my own experience that people don't, in something like that, they just don't want to have the truth pointed out.
	It's painful.
	And so, of course, that keeps the model results going, although now I think the U.N.
	has come to more realistic modeling now about AIDS, but they're still very fuzzy numbers.
	Okay, I've got something going nuts on me here.
	Doctor, let me kind of move over a little bit.
	I've always wondered about this and maybe you have some response.
	In the United States we frequently quote people as saying we have, oh I don't know, 300, 400,000 smoking Related deaths in the United States every year.
	I forget exactly what the number is.
	It might even be higher than that.
	However, I've always wondered about the sampling that ends up with those statements being made.
	For example, if a doctor signs a death certificate and somebody died of, I don't know, one thing or another, And that person was a smoker.
	I have a feeling they put down smoking-related death and that we get these strange numbers.
	Yeah, that's a real problem.
	That's a real problem with all kinds of modeling, but especially in health.
	Health modeling, AIDS for example, is probably underestimated because for all kinds of reasons.
	For one thing, people die of many things.
	They're very weak.
	And their immune system is shot and so they can die of many things and sometimes for social reasons, people don't want it known that, family doesn't want it known that AIDS is involved and so forth and so on.
	But the tobacco thing, the most fascinating aspect of that I found in researching this book was the secondhand smoke lung cancer thing.
	Declared that 3,000 people every year die of lung cancer and in order to do that, they had that number first and then they began to model it and they looked at a bunch of studies and in order to support their 3,000 number, they had to change the acceptable margin of error in that model.
	They suddenly loosened their standards in order to come up with a number that agrees with their preconceived number of 3,000.
	And in the federal court case on this, I don't know who brought who for what in the court, in the federal court case, a judge sued out and said that the EPA had cherry-picked their numbers.
	But then the head of EPA, Well, we know that we all know that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer and so they basically just declared that the models were valid and that we have 3,000 people dying of lung cancer due to secondhand smoke every year.
	Well, you know, so they just declared it and they ignored the models, they ignored everything.
	So that's another example of a problem.
	The modeling was bad, and the federal court found that the modeling was bad.
	It was that obvious.
	And yet the EPA continues to insist on that.
	There's no question that secondhand smoke creates all kinds of problems.
	For example, in asthmatic children and on and on and on.
	You can put up a whole list of things that secondhand smoke does, but there's no indication No statistically valid indication that it's a very big cause of lung cancer.
	It's an example of modeling gone awry again.
	Modeling used to prove your point.
	I thought that might be the case.
	I really did.
	I've always thought that, and I guess you just sort of confirmed that for me.
	So, what do we do with modeling?
	I mean, it's such a basic part of all the science that we're hearing about all the time.
	How do we correct this?
	Well, first of all, we have to get our politicians to accept a more qualitative world.
	We have to be skeptical.
	We as individuals have to be skeptical.
	of something that comes from us through models.
	Not to throw them all out by any means, you know, the qualitative versus quantitative that I've been talking about.
	Qualitative is good, quantitative is bad.
	Well, not all qualitative models are right either, but if they're giving you precise numbers, forget it.
	And so we have to, and we scientists, I think, have to come to the rescue of the rest of society in this thing.
	It's difficult because there are generations of scientists now, like in groundwater studies, this is what's important for Yucca Mountain, and they've never done anything but model.
	They're in the third generation of scientists that are just models.
	They don't understand how to do field studies.
	They don't do them.
	And they've become convinced that all we need to do is You know, model it.
	And so it's not going to be easy for us to turn this around.
	But we scientists, I think, have to lead the way.
	And that's what I'm hoping we're doing with this book.
	How long has your book been out?
	It just came out basically this month.
	By the way, you haven't mentioned my co-authors, my daughter.
	It's quite a thrill to do something like that.
	I understand you're about to become the father of a beautiful daughter.
	I am, yes.
	And you'll understand what a thrill it is to do something like this with your daughter.
	I am so looking forward to my daughter.
	Yeah, I can tell that.
	I've heard that from several people.
	Anyway, I didn't know that your daughter was co-author.
	I had no idea.
	It's not written down here, so that's quite an accomplishment, Doctor.
	Yeah, her name is Linda Pilkey Jarvis, and she is an expert on oil spills.
	And she, but she did work in groundwater for a while and she, and she became convinced of, she saw the problems with models in groundwater.
	She saw that they were, you know, that they really weren't predicting what they thought they were predicting.
	So we, and we discussed that, you know, talked about it.
	We found a lot of common ground in that.
	It's a lot of fun to work together.
	Boy, I bet.
	It's not quite like working with graduate students where I can kind of I don't want to lose my temper and say, hurry up!
	That's right, yes.
	So she did a lot of the research, or what part did she play in writing the book?
	She helped in several of the chapters.
	Her main thing was Yucca Mountain.
	She really did most of the research on that, and then helped in other chapters, in various chapters, such as the invasive plant thing and all that.
	It was fun, and she did some of the writing, did a lot of the editing.
	You know, I just like to... Oh, I do.
	...edit and write.
	Okay, so you ended up calling it useless arithmetic.
	Do you really think that's accurate, or should it have been called perhaps useless sampling, or useless...
	In other words, the arithmetic really is probably okay.
	It's the information that it's based on that's all screwed up, if I'm hearing you.
	I think I was, you know, to be more accurate, I should call it mathematics, but if you use the word mathematics in the title of a book, or you talk about, I've written a book on mathematical model, I could see when I talk with people about that, that their eyelids drooped a lot.
	Oh, dear.
	And one person actually said, this is true, one person actually told me, oh, that's too bad.
	And I thought, oh, my God, you know, we've got to come up with a title that'll get people to read it.
	And there's no mathematics in the book except in the appendix, and we only did that reluctantly.
	So, yeah, the title is overdone because some modeling is very good.
	Qualitative modeling is great.
	We overdid it to overcome the drooping eyelids of the general public.
	That's part of the reason that mathematical models are so powerful, because eyelids droop when you mention the word models.
	Sure, sure they do.
	It's sophisticated and state-of-the-art, and it's too complex for me to understand, so let's move on to the next subject.
	A lot of times, Doctor, when you write a book like this, before you release it to the general public, you get it to, you know, some colleagues and other scientists who allow them to sort of proofread it for you, and I wonder if you did that, and what kind of reactions you got.
	Oh, I did that with all the chapters.
	We did that with all the chapters, for sure.
	Boy, it's dangerous not to.
	And of course, we found there was disagreement with our standard models among some scientists.
	But I think, by and large, sending it to the experts, we did get agreement.
	And I think some of the disagreement was political.
	I mean, for example, my field of looking at beach nourishment is a highly political thing.
	But the global change chapter on sea level rise is much less political.
	So you get more agreement in that, less politics in the opinion.
	But of course you have to send it out.
	And we got several distinguished scientists to write little blurbs on the back of the book, on the cover of the book.
	So we think we're pretty solidly based.
	There will be disagreement, I think.
	Folks in the Corps of Engineers will be very unhappy.
	Folks in the Bureau of Land Management will be unhappy because of our chapter on mine, open pit mines.
	Tell me about that.
	That's a big problem for you in Nevada.
	You've got a lot of open pit mines, and the problem with open pit mines is that they, when they're abandoned after 20 or so years, they tend to, they fill up with water, and that water, if it's the right kind of rock, or I should say the wrong kind of rock, It's going to fill up with terribly acid water.
	And like the big pit, Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana, where a few years ago a flock of 300 or so snow geese landed on the water and never took off because they were instantly killed by the acid water.
	And the company at that point claimed that they had eaten some bad grain.
	Then they changed their mind after a while.
	Changed their tone.
	But at any rate, the BLM was, for years, was claiming that, first they were just saying, you have to have an environmental impact statement when you begin a mine.
	So they were saying, well, it's going to be swimming water, you know, fresh water in 50 years.
	You have to come go for 50 years.
	And then they began to be criticized for that because it's obviously not true, so they went into mathematical modeling.
	And there, the bureaucrats and BLM don't understand modeling for the most part.
	In the Corps of Engineers, they do understand modeling.
	They still do it wrong.
	But in the BLM, they didn't understand modeling, but they were happy as long as it came up with fresh water, with a conclusion that 50 years from now, the water's going to be fine, and you can go swimming in it and catch lake trout.
	Well, finally, a geochemist named Robert Moran kind of blew the whistle on that.
	It's really impressive.
	This guy is a consultant.
	He's not an academic, so he did it at some risk to his own livelihood, and he blew the whistle.
	Now the models are coming up with more accurate numbers, but he points out even with these better numbers, the model still Are not, not valid for all the reasons that I've been talking about.
	You can't, but you can, you can, in a qualitative way, you can say this is going to be a bad lake 50 years from now, or this is going to be a good lake 50 years from now.
	And so, and so the BLM is, it's like so many government agents, same problem with the Corps.
	The BLM is expected to encourage mining.
	At the same time, they're supposed to make sure mining is safe.
	And it won't leave what we call giant cups of poison all around the landscape.
	And well, you know, those are conflicting... Those are conflicting... They certainly are.
	Doctor, hold tight.
	We're here at the top of the hour.
	I want to be able to open up the phone lines and allow some people to ask questions.
	And I want to address a particular concern I have.
	If you say the models are no good, the people who don't like what's being said are going to use that as ammo to kill it.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Yes, here I am.
	My guest is Dr. Oren Pilkey, and here's what I want Dr. Pilkey to think about during the break that we've got coming up, and that is, I'm willing to buy into what he's saying.
	That is to say that a lot of the modeling that's being done right now simply is inaccurate based on the sampling information.
	However, Once you've said that, let's take climate change as an example.
	Once you've said that the modeling is essentially trash, I'll be a little overly dramatic I suppose, or perhaps not, but once you've said it's trash, then you have handed the enemies, the political enemies of whatever it is, whether it's global warming or whether it's AIDS, the AIDS epidemic and
	money for it or the fisheries or beaches or any of these things or even mines,
	any of these things that we're trying to come to conclusions on. You hand the
	enemies of these things ammunition which they're going to use improperly to just
	kill the whole thing.
	So I wonder if Dr. Pilkey worries about that.
	When you say the modeling is no good, then perhaps you're saying, well, global warming is simply not real because the models aren't real.
	We'll ask about that in a moment.
	Dr. Pilkey, I guess you heard what I had to say.
	I'm very curious.
	Do you worry about that?
	Oh, do I ever.
	In fact, I'm terrified that, yes, you're absolutely right that this will be distorted, it can be distorted, and we can fill the baby out with a bath.
	But the truth must be known, and we must, you know, we're going up a dead end if we Believe these models in their totality.
	We must recognize their limitations.
	And of course, I'm a strong believer in global warming and the fact that we are, we personally, we people are responsible for at least part of it, a significant part of the warming.
	But yes, when one criticizes something as fundamental as mathematical models in our society, There's a large group out there waiting right now, perhaps listening right now, that are waiting to jump on this and point out, you know, that all these things, you know, throw the baby out with the bath, that all this is wrong, all modeling is wrong, and that's not so.
	But you're right, it's a hazard of a book like this.
	Do you cover that in the book?
	I don't think we do.
	I'm trying to think.
	I don't think we say that.
	Of course, we hope we made a strong enough case that that can't happen.
	We say ad nauseum that there are good models and there are bad models.
	There are qualitative and there are quantitative models.
	Our modeling that we're talking about strictly has to do with major Earth surface processes like Like global warming, like fishing, like, you know... For the benefit of the audience, for the benefit of the audience, explain the basic difference between the two models.
	Yeah, good.
	In putting it in a quick way, quantitative models answer the questions where, when, and how much.
	How much is a project going to last?
	When is a beach going to disappear?
	What's it going to be like in Las Vegas, Nevada, with the coming global warming?
	This is quantitative.
	The qualitative models answer the questions how, why, and what if.
	Why is it getting warmer?
	What if we reduce the amount of CO2 we're putting in the atmosphere?
	What might happen?
	I think it's where, when, how much for quantitative, and how, what if, and why for qualitative.
	You have to think about that a little bit, but it's a pretty fair distinction.
	In a quantitative model, you come up with an accurate answer.
	What you say is an accurate answer to a question about a process.
	How much sand is being transported on the beach?
	How much is the temperature going to increase?
	How many fish are left?
	And in a qualitative answer, in a qualitative model, you say, will the temperature increase?
	Is it going to go up or is it going to go down?
	And for fishing you'd say, well, you just answer the question quite differently.
	You ask the question and answer the question quite differently.
	If I was an attorney, Doctor, and I had you on the stand, And I was on the side of trying to squash all of this global warming talk.
	I'd put you on the stand, and I wouldn't let you answer anything that I didn't want you to answer.
	I would just allow you to destroy the modeling being used by those promoting the concept that global warming is coming.
	And by the time I was done, I can assure you that you would destroy the whole concept of global warming without ever being able to say a word about your belief that it really is happening, despite the bad modeling.
	Not if I was a good witness.
	Not if I was a good witness.
	A good witness knows how to make sure that the attorneys don't hold complete sway.
	You've got to, when you answer the question, you've got to Put in the plug for qualitative modeling and put in the fact that you believe that global warming is happening and global warming is a real hazard for our society and for the world.
	So, you're right.
	On the stand, there's that tension between the outstanding attorney and often the scientist.
	This is not the scientist's field to be playing word games like the attorneys do.
	And the politicians.
	Yes, yes.
	are crushed on the stand. They come off looking like idiots.
	Well, not necessarily so. I mean, I would take your book and I would say,
	look doctor, I've read your book and nowhere in there do you say that you believe
	global warming is real, but you do certainly, and this is a yes or no question, doctor, do you believe
	the the modeling is accurate? Is that a yes or no? And of
	course you'd be forced to say no, it's not accurate. Of course I would try not to answer
	with a yes or no.
	That's pretty hard to do.
	You're right.
	There is this hazard that does worry us.
	We don't want to throw the baby out with a bath.
	This hazard exists.
	I expect that I will be misquoted.
	Our book will be misquoted in this regard.
	I guarantee it.
	I guarantee it.
	Claudette in Mississippi.
	You're on the air with Dr. Pilkey.
	Hi, Art.
	In 1995, I was in Egypt, and Zahi, you know, gets all upset about the salt on the walls in the Great Pyramid.
	Yes.
	He says it's tourist.
	History books say that the guy that first went in the pyramid found the salt on the walls.
	Okay, when the robot, I don't know if it was the Japanese that did the robot that went up the Queen's Chamber?
	They did, yes.
	Alright, and then the French were allowed to drill into a massive area where they thought they might could find another cavern.
	That's correct.
	And sand started pouring out.
	Do you recall that?
	Yes, yes I do.
	Okay, and then they stopped it up real quick because they thought it might be ballast.
	Okay, that sand was not indigenous to Egypt.
	It was radioactive and it had gold flecks in it.
	Okay.
	Now that's something that Ahmed told us on the tour.
	And so I'm thinking maybe the ancients had a way of dealing with waste.
	Maybe they built pyramids to cover waste.
	Maybe that's what the seraphim is.
	Maybe the bulls pulled all the waste and they built pyramids over it.
	And by the way, when I was there, I am a sculptor.
	And I did think that the stones were poured and sculpted on the pyramid.
	Alright, do you have a question for Dr. Pilkey?
	Well, it's just that, could we do away with the radioactive waste by putting them in pyramids?
	Okay.
	Yeah, that's an interesting question.
	You know, there are natural sands, what we call heavy mineral sands, That could come from somewhere, not necessarily Egypt, that are radioactive, slightly radioactive.
	For example, there's a mineral called monazite, which is somewhat abundant in some sands along the east coast of the U.S., and this is a radioactive mineral.
	And sometimes heavy minerals contain gold, so it might possibly be entirely a natural type sand.
	Could be.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Let's go to Trenton, Washington.
	You're on the air with Dr. Oren Pilkey.
	I was wondering if you had heard of Patterson beads?
	I think I have.
	These are the glass beads that I think it's been proposed that we put our radioactive waste I don't believe that quite yet.
	in the form of glass beads and the glass beads are inert and therefore would prevent the
	radioactivity from escaping.
	I don't believe that quite yet.
	These are little beads that were made with a gentleman that was working with fleshmen
	in ponds when they did cold fusion and that was in the news and shortly after came out
	a TV rundown of that and they showed a Geiger counter and a qualified amount of radioactive
	Yeah, Collar, I know what you're talking about.
	It was on Good Morning America, actually.
	And that was, I think, probably a year after the No, I don't think it had anything to do with cold fusion.
	It was a way of reducing the time that it took radioactive materials to decay, radically reducing the decay time.
	And not taking on the radiation, but neutralizing it in a manner that they don't have any idea how it does it.
	But it's a metal encapsulation of some kind.
	It's got a series of, I can't remember what they call it, but there was something in there that was like a little baffle plate or something that somehow neutralized it.
	And they demonstrated, they showed the Geiger counter, and as I recall, it was something like 200 years worth of deterioration or neutralizing in a 20 minute period that they ran the Geiger counter for the show.
	Okay.
	Yeah, that is correct.
	There was a demonstration on Good Morning America.
	So there are a number of methods, Doctor, of reducing or speeding up radioactive decay.
	Now, this kind of thing, where you see it on Good Morning America, and as he pointed out, they had a Geiger counter and they seemed to prove it, but then you never hear another word about it.
	Well, you know, there's some... Actually, I stand corrected on Patterson beads, I guess.
	The beads that I was thinking of, the glass beads, which is one of the Proposed approaches to storing radioactive waste, which sounds pretty good.
	We have a number of things that are being considered.
	But again, we move very slowly on that.
	But I'm unaware of any method that could reduce radioactive elements decay at a well-known rate.
	At least most of them, all of them do.
	How we configure the half-lives.
	I'm unaware of any method That would increase the rate of radioactive decay, but I'll stand corrected if it's true.
	Yeah, they did show it.
	It was on Good Morning America.
	It was very interesting, but then never another word about it.
	So we'll leave it at that, and maybe somebody will get us a follow-up.
	Mona in New Orleans, you're on the air with Dr. Pilkey.
	Thank you.
	Hi Art.
	Dr. Pilkey, I heard you mention that the Army Corps of Engineers won't be very happy with what you wrote in your book.
	I don't think that a lot of people know that they came out last June and admitted fault for the flooding that happened in New Orleans.
	And one thing I have found is that the Army Corps is very untouchable.
	There's a lot of bureaucracy involved.
	Yeah, that is so true.
	You know, we have criticized their modeling in the technical literature.
	I've written several papers, me and my colleagues have written several papers on on their individual mathematical model in the Journal of Coastal Research, and we've never gotten a response from them.
	We'd sure like to get a response, but they are untouchable for political reasons.
	That is, politicians like pork barrel projects, and they're the origin of pork barrel projects.
	But I've been going back slightly here.
	The Corps, in a way, because the way the Corps is set up, where they have to have projects in order to survive, I don't think any agency that has to have projects to survive could ever be honest and confident.
	We've set them up wrong, and that's the way the politicians want it.
	They want the Corps to do their bidding.
	I think that people all over the country need to know there are those levees.
	Is it south of Sacramento?
	Yeah.
	And they were built with the same design as the ones in New Orleans.
	Yeah, I think there's a disaster waiting to happen in Sacramento, too.
	There's been a lot of publicity about that recently because of the New Orleans problem, and there are other levees around the nation that are in danger from the so-called unexpected storm.
	What about dams?
	Are they responsible for many of the dams all over the country?
	Yeah, they built some of the dams, not all of the dams.
	And by and large, our engineering of dams is pretty good.
	And there are a lot of small dams that are being considered hazardous and are being looked at carefully.
	But our major dams, by and large, are pretty well engineered.
	Of course, they create a lot of problems, but that's another matter.
	Doctor, out of curiosity, she's from New Orleans.
	Was there any mathematical model that predicted exactly what would occur with that intensity of storm?
	No, and a lot of models went into the design of the levees and the design of the storms or the estimate of what the storms could do.
	I think, though, that the modeling did Mathematical modeling did tell the Corps of Engineers that the, for example, that the levees would be breached where the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet channel comes in.
	A modeler in LSU, and this would be just a qualitative model, said that there's going to be the storm surge right there where that channel intersects with the levees.
	The storm surge was going to be higher there because of the impact of the big channel.
	And it could potentially overtop the levees, and it did.
	The Ninth Ward was immediately flooded by that overtopping of levees.
	Is he the man that warned and warned and warned them?
	There were a number of scientists and engineers who warned the Corps, and I think a lot of the politicians in Mississippi and Louisiana had to know That the levees were very vulnerable.
	They had been sinking, for example, and some of them were well below what they were when they were first built.
	I mean, that is an example of the problem with the Corps of Engineers.
	They should have fixed those levees, but the Corps says, well, we tried to get the money, but they shouldn't just try.
	They should have been shouting from the mountaintops.
	We don't accept We've got to hold it right there.
	engineers who build bridges, can you imagine building a bridge and say, well, it fell down
	because of an unusual storm or the wind were too high and that water tower fell down?
	You know, we don't accept that from other engineers and we shouldn't have accepted it
	here.
	And the fault goes to a lot of people for New Orleans, but the Corps of Engineers is
	a big one.
	We've got to hold it right there.
	When I come back, I'd like to ask you if the levees in New Orleans are now fixed so that
	when the next storm of that kind of magnitude comes along, all will be well.
	From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
	Dr. Oren Pilkey is my guest, and his book is Useless Arithmetic, Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future.
	That title alone provoked the question that I asked just prior to the top of the hour.
	It's very worrisome to me that, you know, just based on the title alone, you go, boy, here's some ammunition for the anti-global warming people and a lot of the rest of them as well.
	And it certainly is that.
	So, that said, Dr. Pilkey, And Dr. Pilkey, welcome back.
	to be on the side of those who believe global warming is going on.
	He just doesn't like the methods used in some of the modeling.
	So I want you all to be straight on that.
	I'm Art Bell.
	In a moment, we continue.
	And Dr. Pilkey, welcome back.
	I want to ask you a very sensitive question, and that is, are the levees in New Orleans
	now repaired to the degree that if they get a storm of similar intensity, and it's certainly
	likely, that all will hold up and be well?
	Well, I think it's widely recognized, even by New Orleans people, that they will not, that there is still a high risk of these levees failing in one fashion or another, either being over top where that channel comes in, or perhaps failing along some of the other sections that weren't repaired.
	I don't think, I hope, nobody really is convinced that they're perfectly safe now.
	It's a very serious problem, and we have to have a societal debate as to whether we should rebuild those levees.
	In a time of rising sea level, and in a time of decreasing salt marshes out in front of New Orleans, which is going to increase the storm surge, the height of the storm surge, should we do this?
	Should we move the city?
	At least we need to have this debate, and we're not having that, unfortunately.
	Clearly not.
	All right, let's go to Jim in Los Angeles.
	You're on with Dr. Pilkey.
	You were saying that in Hawaii they had the only place there was that was checking out the carbon dioxide levels.
	And doesn't a lot of that come up from the Southeast Asia and Australia and whatnot?
	I'll probably remember the sands coming up there and blowing up from China.
	And we get smoke and stuff that they track back to China, fires in China and Australia and whatnot.
	As a matter of fact, that's true.
	Oh, certainly.
	Absolutely.
	The CO2 that's being measured on Mauna Loa is believed to be a good measure of global CO2 concentrations, and it's coming from everything.
	It's coming from volcanoes.
	It's coming from industry everywhere.
	Yes, there's no question it's coming from a lot of places.
	It's certainly not a measure just of CO2 from North America or from Hawaii.
	It's considered to be a good global measure.
	Actually, Doctor, he's referring to a sandstorm in Mongolia.
	Now, there was a time a few years ago that our skies here in Southern Nevada turned yellow.
	And they were yellow for several days while the weather guys on TV here in Las Vegas scratched their heads about yellow.
	What's the yellow all about?
	Well, it turned out to be a sandstorm in Mongolia.
	Hey, that's very interesting.
	We have the same problem on the East Coast.
	We have sandstorms from the Sahara that have affected climate in the weather in South Florida and in the Caribbean.
	And so, yeah, this is a global world, so to speak.
	Things from a long ways away can have a lot of impact on us.
	Incidentally, one, you know, there was mysterious where the early natives of the Bahamas were getting Clay to form pottery, and it turns out that they were getting clay that came from African dust and accumulated in crevices in the limestone.
	So, yeah, there's a lot of that going on.
	It is a small world.
	All right, Robin in Oklahoma, you're on with Dr. Pilkey.
	Hi Art.
	Hope your cats are getting better.
	They are.
	Oh, good.
	I have a question.
	Do they ever do modeling?
	Uh, for environment on, like, our food chain.
	I'm, I know the smoking's bad, but they never seem to touch the food.
	We have chicken factories down here, you know, the, and, uh, they put the litter out.
	Well, when they're, when they're growing them, they give them arsenic.
	Besides that, they pump them full of antibiotics.
	They give arsenic and all kinds of stuff.
	I mean, they're going faster and faster from egg to gold market.
	And they put the chicken litter out, okay?
	And it is in our streams.
	It is in our drinking water, our lakes, where we get our water.
	They tested our lake, the lake where we get our water, oh, ten or so years ago.
	There's arsenic in it and all kinds of stuff.
	You know, I just wonder if they ever make models, you know, on how everything affects everybody else.
	Well, they certainly are doing that kind of modeling.
	Some of that modeling is very good, the qualitative modeling of what goes on in streams and lakes.
	Of course, this becomes very political, and because of politics, sometimes we We don't use those models or don't use the results of those models the way we should.
	That's a very common accusation of the current administration.
	Looking at how these pollutants that you speak of move in groundwater becomes a more difficult modeling problem.
	Modeling groundwater flow is difficult.
	Very difficult.
	Okay.
	On to Matt in Salt Lake City.
	You're on with Dr. Pilkey.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	I love number-crunching.
	I'm glad to hear you've got this guest.
	Carbon dioxide.
	I've got a bunch of questions.
	For instance, when they take the numbers for carbon dioxide, I saw in the paper recently that we reached over 7 million tons in the United States.
	but here i want to read in the uh...
	and cycle peter the natural output of carbon dioxide is around seven
	hundred million times so we're country put that about one one hundred
	of the natural process that but i was going to ask you to you are are you aware
	not if they include the uh... northern lights into that
	figure you know because there's a like a for between i think it was uh... ten to
	fifty million times coming in at methammonia off the stand in northern lights
	all by itself that includes the also actually that the measures you you're absolutely right that
	natural feel to issue
	Production of natural CO2 is huge.
	And we're talking about, when we talk about production of CO2, we're talking about production of excess CO2.
	CO2 that is produced or is in the atmosphere at a concentration that's too high for the oceans to absorb it or for the forests or whatever.
	to absorb the co2 and so that's why you know absolutely uh...
	uh...
	the human contribution may be quite small compared to natural production of
	carbon dioxide and i'm not aware of the role of northern lights in the
	product you said methane i think
	another greenhouse gas uh... i'm not aware of the role of northern lights in
	that i'm sorry speaking of methane
	uh... yeah methane coming off the sun is one source of methane
	i know that some people say methane takes a long time to break down the atmosphere and when i
	looked up in the chemistry book it says it breaks down sunlight rather quickly
	That's why it's undetectable unless you're near a methane source.
	But what I was going to ask you is that, you know, they talk about cows being methane producers and we should do it with cows, but I'm thinking, well, if the grass lays on the ground and rots, or if the cow eats it and digests it quickly and makes methane out of it, isn't the net sum zero?
	I mean, there's no gain either way?
	No, I don't think.
	The cow, in effect, manufactures methane.
	It wasn't there before.
	They manufacture it chemically in their bodies.
	And yes, interestingly enough, they are a major source of methane, which is a surprise to me.
	This is not my field of endeavor.
	But one of the new methane sources that's just becoming apparent is the melting of ice, the permafrost.
	In the tundra of the Arctic, in Siberia especially, Russian scientists are finding that a huge amount of methane is being released in this melt.
	And CO2 as well, by the way.
	But this melting is going on at a pretty fast rate.
	The permafrost is moving up.
	The limit, the line of permafrost, no permafrost, is moving north at a very rapid rate.
	And as it moves north, it releases more and more CO2 and methane.
	Doctor, there is a great debate going on right now, and I think it has something to do with modeling, and this debate circles around what are called these triggers, these points where What's happening is going to accelerate at, you know, a gigantic rate.
	There's going to reach some point in this environmental process where, kind of like flipping a switch, it's going to really accelerate past what we can even imagine.
	That's true.
	There is a debate about that.
	You know, and I think you're aware of the 8,200 years ago we had what looked like a climate surprise where suddenly a huge cooling occurred and just lasted for, at least in the eyes of some scientists, it lasted for 20 or 30 years.
	This is based on field evidence.
	And yes, yes, there are other surprises.
	For example, the Gulf Stream.
	That could happen on a decadal time frame.
	Yeah, there are potential surprises, and surprise means it's not predictable, although we can use qualitative models to say this is what could happen, and that's where the models are very important, but predicting when it's going to happen is not possible.
	Okay, Sam in Michigan, you're on with Dr. Pilkey.
	Good morning.
	Good morning, Eric.
	Let's see.
	In 05, the hurricane season, James McCanney made some startling observations in that the
	quantitative energy of that hurricane season relative to 06 was a fraction, and yet 06
	had almost no hurricane.
	That's one observation I'd like him to comment on.
	Well, they totally missed those six.
	I mean, all the modeling said it was going to be... I forget how many they predicted, but they just totally missed it.
	Yeah, and then our David Sirita program last year revealed the fact that he had been commissioned by the energy industry to investigate the most feasible alternative energy source.
	He discovered helium-3 and A fusion process that he said was easily attainable.
	I recall, yes.
	And yet, it's just all... And then the European Space Agency, this ought to get a rise out of everybody.
	In 2001, Art, I saw this in a documentary video.
	They launched their deep space probes, not with nuclear power, but with highly advanced uh... solar equipment on board of the uh...
	uh... these space vehicle
	and i'm not sure about that but i had doctor uh... they did
	really miss uh... all six in terms of uh...
	East Coast.
	All the modeling apparently told them it was going to be a horrible year for hurricanes.
	Well, almost nothing touched us.
	On the other hand, over on the Pacific side, the typhoons were unbelievable.
	So, where was the modeling for all of that?
	Well, I think that's a really good example of where we stand in our modeling, in accurate modeling of this is a major process, the hurricane, something we really need to know about.
	And we just, we're not at a stage where we can predict this.
	And we haven't been very good in the past either.
	So I think, and we've learned to live with that.
	I think we can just kind of view the The prediction about hurricanes for the next year being something like stock market predictions and kind of curious and maybe interesting, but we shouldn't take them much more seriously than that.
	Oh boy.
	Bruce in Memphis, you're on with Dr. Pilkey.
	Good morning.
	Hey Art, welcome back.
	And hi Dr. Pilkey, thank you for taking my call.
	Thank you.
	I was in New Orleans for the storming for six days so I got to watch the water rise and
	everything. There's a man named Douglas Brinkley that could be considered a historical
	modeler. He wrote Rising Tide, 1927 Flood, but he also has a book on that called Deluge that's
	about the storm and it's more of a historical modeling. My question for you is, oh god I'm
	nervous because I'm on the phone, Oh, oh, uh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
	They had predicted with a fictitional Hurricane Pam almost a year to the day before Hurricane Katrina.
	And that came out of LSU and that was a climatologist or a climate scientist at LSU.
	And he's a, I think, German.
	I'm not sure.
	His name escapes me.
	Douglas Brinkley does not.
	Everyone should read Deluge.
	But I was wondering if you knew about that study and In the Hurricane Pam scenario, they calculated a hurricane, category 3, and it flooded almost exactly where they said it would flood.
	And that was the man, that was the man that warned and warned and warned and warned.
	In fact, I think he was on 60 Minutes, wasn't he?
	He was.
	He went to Congress.
	Yeah, yeah.
	He's the guy.
	They paid him to do that.
	They paid a lot of money for that, the federal government, for that study and apparently I don't know.
	I can't answer that question.
	in their desk and let it go. I'm not sure. But it flooded at the 7th. They predicted
	it. I was wondering if you knew about the Corps of Engineers mathematical modeling for
	the Mississippi Delta floodplain. If you knew about any of that, if the water rises, if
	the climate rises, and the waters rise, where does Memphis sit in that? Is Memphis going
	to be coastal property?
	I don't know. I can't answer that question. River modeling is, actually, I believe the
	Corps' modeling of the behavior of the Mississippi River may have been better back when they
	used a physical model, you know, an actual model on the ground. But that's another matter.
	But I think the example you're using of model predictions of what could happen with a Category 3 hurricane by the individual in LSU, I'm sure is true, and that's a good example of a qualitative model you know you you just assume a certain level and it
	has to be reasonable as far as
	uh... atmospheric processes are concerned and then you look at the
	elevation of the levees and that's good modeling and that way and he didn't say i'm
	sure when it was going to occur
	he said if it occurs this is what's going to happen and of course we knew it would occur someday and we know
	that it will occur again someday
	so uh... you know we gotta uh... what does it take us to uh... what does it take for
	us to learn Hmm.
	Kathy in Ontario, up in Canada, you're on the air with Dr. Pilkey.
	Hi.
	Hi Art, hi Dr. Pilkey.
	Hi.
	I recently read your book, Art, that you wrote with Whitley Strieber.
	Oh yes.
	And I thought it was pretty well put together.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, it's quite a concern, and like that fellow that phoned That said, we just got winter in Canada here a couple weeks ago.
	It seems kind of pretty odd, but I've been noticing global warming myself for the last 9, 10, 15 years maybe.
	And I have a maybe stupid question, but even though it might be stupid, I still would want to know why.
	And that is, I know that the nuclear waste needs to be contained, but is there in any way that you can like Cook it?
	Like, heat it?
	In a volcano or something?
	In a volcano.
	Well, Doctor, there are other people who would like to launch it into the sun.
	Yes, that's true.
	And there was some talk about burying it in the deep sea in trenches.
	The problem there being that eventually that would be, the way trenches work, eventually A thousand, two thousand, ten thousand years, it might be coming back as volcanoes and launched into the air.
	Just what we need!
	Just what we need!
	Listen, Dr. Pilkey, it has been a pleasure.
	I hope your book is not taken and used as Inappropriate material to knock a lot of things that are going on down.
	I hope it's used in the right way.
	Thank you for saying that.
	I really appreciate that, and I really appreciate the opportunity to be on your show, Art.
	All right, my friend.
	Thank you, and you have a good night.
	The clock says we've got to go.
	We've got to go.
	Good night, Dr. Pelley.
	Good night.
	And for everybody else, and I guess Crystal's got blue back, so...
	Is the time of day it is.
	Good night all.
	See you next weekend.
	I'm Art Bell.

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