Science Advice to President Bill Clinton

Abstract

The first recommendation about creating the post of Science Advisor to the President (to President Harry Truman) was by a friend of mine, Bill Golden, who at 95 is still going strong. And that began the process. That event occurred at the end of World War II as it became abundantly clear that we faced a future to be heavily influenced by advanced science, especially electronics and nuclear science and engineering, that was emerging.

Appendix

The following is the transcript from the question and answer sessions following Dr. Gibbons’ April 28, 2005 speech at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Dr. Pielke::

Okay, great. Well, I have a number of different topics to touch on, and I thought we’d start with some general questions. I’m sure we’d like to know what your interactions with President Bill Clinton were like. Can you tell us some examples of a situation or two that he called upon you for advice or input on policy decisions?

Dr. Gibbons::

Well, my favorite in terms of personal memory was, I was home on the farm on a Saturday afternoon, and the phone rang, and it was President Clinton calling. And he doesn’t usually do that. And he said, I’m getting ready to write a speech about “the bridge to the 21st century”, and I’d like some ideas about what sorts of things could we plausibly imagine happening here in the next, say, decade or two, that arise from advances in science and technology. I swallowed hard and – when you get to that, everything you knew sort of disappears in your mind. But I said, “Let me call you back.” (laughter) So I called the President back in 5 min and I said, I think there are a lot of things we could talk about, but one is a somewhat nebulous thing that I call “inner space (inner space being the opposite to “outer space”). We do have a big focus on going off to planets and other worlds, and we have wonderful advances in astronomy. But inner space is our increased understanding of what happens at the molecular level, at the atomic level, in materials. And learning how to, not only understand what happens in that inner space, but how to take fuller advantage of it as we learn how to get more out of less. The President built it into a talk, and it turned into – I think Dr. Neal Lane probably gave it the terminology of “nanotechnology.” I didn’t want to use “nano” because I didn’t think very many people would know what that meant. But that was the origin of nanotechnology stuff.

And, oh, there are other times the President wanted – early in the Administration he wanted me to set up briefings, simultaneous briefings in the space of 2 h, on both the Space Station and on the Superconducting Supercollider. And I swallowed hard again but we did it, and President Clinton and Vice President Gore stayed there the entire time, listening carefully. He ultimately made decisions on the basis of that dialog.

Dr. Pielke::

Well, similarly, everyone knows that Al Gore is famously interested in the environment, science and technology. What was it like working with Al Gore? And what was his presence like in OSTP?

Dr. Gibbons::

Al had a very strong presence in the Administration in terms of science and technology. I guess I would have to say he was Clinton’s “guru” in a lot of areas of politics, and the politics of science and the applications of science in helping achieve Presidential goals.. Al was not my competitor, he was a partner, and I therefore, fortunately, had two champions, not one. Unlike poor Al Bromley who had to struggle with some of the White House administrators, I had nothing but help from those quarters. You know, Al Gore went to Harvard to study, I think, social sciences, probably economics and political science. But while he was there he took a course on population and environment from Roger Revelle. And it was in that course that Gore found the shades falling from his eyes. He came to recognize the central issue of resources and people. His later book Earth in the Balance emerged from that experience. He became highly knowledgeable, especially in climate change research, and remains to this day very importantly involved. So he was a real champion. And a task-master, too, (chuckle) because he’d always want more information. One of my favorite staff members at OSTP was Dr. Rosina Bierbaum. And Vice President Gore used to call her day and night, for data and advice. And that was legitimate and important. So we helped feed him the good stuff.

Dr. Pielke::

As a science advisor, outside observers of OSTP recognize that the science advisor wears different hats. One of those hats, for better or worse, is that of chief ambassador from the scientific community to the highest levels of government – and in that role the science advisor represents a very large, now one hundred and thirty-five billion dollar ($135 billion) science budget. And at the same time the science advisor is supposed to provide wise counsel to the President on how to use science effectively, and oftentimes make difficult budget decisions about scientific priorities. How do you balance the two hats between working as a representative of a larger scientific community and also speaking back to that community and maybe imposing some limits?

Dr. Gibbons::

I honestly think it’s not all that hard. Because, representing the process of science and its value to the American people is an easy thing to advocate, and it is legitimate. There’s no way I would ever get in a pleading for this or that project or university, but I was nonetheless a strong advocate for science itself. That’s consistent. At the same time, people at OMB have long been besieged with people who wanted to have more of what they were interested in. And so I tried to be very careful when we worked with OMB when they would send us, say, a budget proposal from an agency. We worked very carefully to try not only to identify the things that we thought were most important of what they proposed, but also some of the areas where it was, in our judgment, maybe less important and therefore subject to scrutiny. And it worked out pretty well. No one tried to shoot anybody. But you have to apply that kind of judicious oversight to these budgets or they’ll get away from you and you’ll lose.

Dr. Pielke::

You made a transition early in your career from a physicist to a director of an environmental program at Oak Ridge, on up the line to OTA. What kind of advice would you give to scientists who might be in the audience who are thinking that maybe somewhere up the line there’s a policy career there. Is there anything that worked particularly well for you or that you might have done differently, looking back?

Dr. Gibbons::

Well, I think fate rewards a prepared mind. And my good fortune was that I was working at Oak Ridge National Lab at the time, and we lived, basically, in the shadow of the Cumberland Mountains. The mountains, in turn, because of the modern technology of earth moving, were being torn down for coal. The mountains were literally disintegrating over there on the western horizon. And that caused me great concern about how we were mining coal and how we were using technology. So I got more and more interested in environmental issues in the Appalachians. And my wife and I both got interested in the almost complete unavailability of assistance for family planning in those same counties. It was miserable. Miserable! A common – a frequent occurrence was that a woman would try to stop her pregnancy by drinking turpentine or do other things that often killed the woman. Not a very satisfactory way to practice family planning!

So we worked hard in the Cumberlands in terms of broad environmental issues, including energy. And that led me, at ORNL, to start work on energy efficiency and conservation – a new concept. This was 1969, 1970. And then I went on to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, because when you gravitate toward public policy, you can’t do that very well in a national laboratory. Jerry knows that very well. So I moved to the university and was the first director of the Energy, Environment and Resources Center. It was interdepartmental and intercollegiate. And a lesson in and of itself was how to get different departments to go the line. I learned things like sharing overhead returns, which was a very important key to effective cooperation.

But anyhow, that led me to further work (technical, economic, and legal) on energy efficiency and conservation. Soon I was asked to join the Nixon Administration. They wanted to start doing some work on energy use in the federal agencies because there was a plausible chance of a shortage of heating oil in the winter of 1973–1974, and President Nixon didn’t like the thought very well that he might have to face that prospect. So he established the Office of Energy Conservation. And he put it over at the Department of the Interior because the Secretary of the Interior was a good friend of his. And they looked around for someone who knew something about efficiency and energy consumption and they found me. I agreed to set up the office, and that was early summer 1973. And about sixty days after I first got to Washington, the Yom Kippur War broke out. And so I suddenly found myself in Cabinet meetings and other things that I had not anticipated. It was a real fast learning experience. When I left to return to the University of Tennessee in the late summer of 1974, I left almost on the same train as Nixon when he left town. (laughter) So I said to myself, if I ever go back to Washington, it will be to some other branch of government. And then I did come back several years later to direct OTA, and went from there to the White House.

So as a physicist I said, okay, this is going to be a good last job in Washington because I started out in a Republican administration and then I came back and ran a totally nonpartisan congressional office for both the House and the Senate. Now, if I stay and join a Democratic administration, that’ll be a totally symmetric function and I can leave town. And that’s what I did. (laughter)

Dr. Pielke::

Can you tell us more about OTA, the Office of Technology Assessment, which was defunded by Congress in 1995? Can you tell us a little bit about what the provision of science advice to Congress was like during your 13 years there? What, maybe, is missing today?

Dr. Gibbons::

Well, for any new activity in a delicately balanced political process such as Congress, if you try to start something new in that environment, you’re immediately suspect. And we were. We were called the Office of Technology Harassment by some and the Office of Technology Arrestment by others because they saw us as a tool of left-wing liberals who they thought would wipe out American industry and do all sorts of things. It took us about 6 years for the gestation period to complete – and for Congress and the greater public, especially the industrial public, to gain confidence in OTA as being a place where you could really get an authoritative, fair shake on an issue; and it could be reported to Congress in a helpful way. OTA did not have political bias in it. And it worked, I think, remarkably well. OTA reports are still used.

We ran a cropper with one study we had to do. It was a study on space-based missile intercepts at the same time that President Reagan was hell-bent for a so-called Star Wars system. We delivered our report, and it was like hitting a very large hornet’s nest with a very large baseball bat. And we caught hell for it. It took a retired Air Force general and Dr. Charles Townes and other people to look at our work and say, “Yes, it’s okay” to prevent the Star Wars fans from trying to wipe out OTA on the spot. So that was one major flag raised, about whether OTA was capable of doing truly nonpartisan but expert analysis. I think we were right. I don’t think they had a case on us. But they lay in wait a long time. Some people called the demise of OTA (which was led by Rep. Newt Gingrich) as being “Reagan’s Revenge.” Many members of Congress simply saw no need for that kind of analysis. Even Gingrich himself said that while OTA did accurate work, they did it too slowly and we don’t really have a need for it. So how can you fight that? Further while they were cutting budgets, they needed a sacrificial lamb. OTA was less than 1% of the congressional budget, and less visible, and therefore it was chopped off. There are still members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, who would very much like to reestablish something like an OTA. Maybe as a new wing of the “Generous Accounting Office” [that was a joke] (laughter) or, as they now call it the General Accountability Office.

Dr. Pielke::

So how does decision-making in the legislative branch suffer for lack of an OTA?

Dr. Gibbons::

First of all, they don’t get very much foresight on science and technology issues. And secondly, they get a lot of input that they try to handle themselves by checking with a friend here or a consultant there and the likes, and it’s a very spotty process. The Congress is not well served by the community of science and technology, in my book.

Dr. Pielke::

So you’re obviously not in government now but you’re an observer. How would you characterize the changes in the role of science under the Bush Administration, the role of a science advisor? How do things look different, from your perspective, from your tenure?

Dr. Gibbons::

Someone said, I guess it was Yogi Berra, that you can see a lot by observing. (laughter) I haven’t tried to observe too closely because the present Bush II Administration is not transparent. But what I do see is a continued support for science research. That’s broadly the case in the Congress. It’s not a very well digested support, but it’s there – widespread. I see a shift away from this notion of Presidential initiatives such as environment improvements. I see a shift toward a singular focus on the military. And now even the military research budget is suffering. The DOD 6.1 and 6.2 programs are badly suffering now. And all that tells me is they’re interested in building weapons, not developing new weapons for new needs.

Dr. Pielke::

And those are the basic and applied research programs.

Dr. Gibbons::

Yes, 6.1 is basic and 6.2 is applied. And so I think the current Administration is misguided. There was an article in The New York Times two Sundays ago authored by Bill Perry and John Deutch, who really took after the Administration on these points. So what do we do? I don’t know. We suffer through. We give our feelings about the matter, and we hope things will come out right.

Dr. Pielke::

Let’s go down this path a little further. The Bush Administration has been criticized more than any administration for the misuse of science. And there’s been a series of reports by Congressman Henry Waxman, the Union of Concerned Scientists, I believe you signed onto the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Dr. Gibbons::

Yes, I agreed with their report.

Dr. Pielke::

What do you think about the claims of the misuse of science, and how should outside observers in the scientific university community make sense of this? Because, in some respects Henry Waxman, he’s a Democrat, and the Union of Concerned Scientists helped to support John Kerry. In the work that I do I try to point out that there’s something more than just partisanship here.

Dr. Gibbons::

I would say there’s very little partisanship in this. It’s a reflection of very genuine concerns. Not so much about the misuse of science, but the misrepresentation of science, a very selective representation of scientific results, and the politically creative and selective labeling of proposed projects. You all have heard of the Healthy Forests Act. (response) And you know about the Clear Skies program. These are cleverly developed terms, but they totally misrepresent what the state of science is on those very issues and what is in it. So it’s much more of a PR game than it is a substantive change for the improvement of these issues. So that causes a great deal of angst. I must say it is not just science that the angst is based on; it is a basic concern about openness of government, about the way that facts and opinions are represented in an almost totally politically-oriented way.

I have to blame a lot of this on Karl Rove, who’s an absolute mastermind in political maneuvering. Incidentally, Rove said that the definition of a Democrat is a person with a Ph.D. (laughter)

Dr. Pielke::

Sounds like he’s been to Boulder a few times.

Dr. Gibbons::

I think it is a matter of concern about honesty in terms of a fair representation of what the science community has to say. It has been badly misrepresented in climate change, and it is still apparent, even though they are still trying to work out of that one. They also fudge around on things such as stem cells. They claimed there are many lines of stem cells, and everyone knew that was wrong. They had included all the marginal stuff they could. I think it genuinely causes angst on the part of our community. And we ought to be raising our concern about the misuse of science to make a political point.

Dr. Pielke::

What practical advice, again, for scientists far from the Beltway and the – what kind of advice would you give to the university scientists or federal lab scientists in this environment?

Dr. Gibbons::

I told this to a group of Nobel Laureates once who came to the White House. I said that when the mantle of recognition goes onto your shoulders, it doesn’t come free, it comes with extra responsibilities. The fact that science and technology now so dominate the shape of our society, and the future options we have to deal with things in the coming century, makes ours a heavy mantle. It is exhilarating to know that is where we’ve gotten, but it’s mind-boggling to think about the kind of responsibility that comes with it. So I think we would be untrue to our own selves if we, the science and technology community, did not become increasingly aware of these issues. Aware of the current discussion of them in political dialog. And then make our best thoughts known.

Some people say that if you are a scientist, you shouldn’t be talking about politics. I think that’s total nonsense. The scientist is a citizen just as much as an economist is a citizen. And the economists don’t hesitate. (laughter)

Dr. Pielke::

I’d like to turn to climate change. The Boulder Front Range area is home to one of the greatest concentrations of climate scientists per square mile any place in the world.

Dr. Gibbons::

Good stuff.

Dr. Pielke::

Yes. President Bush has had a lot of criticism for his refusal to support Kyoto. I gave you an extended quote from former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth, who was critical of the Clinton Administration. He said, and I’ll just read part of this quote, that the Clinton Administration “Never mounted a serious campaign internationally or domestically after retreating from its public commitment to aggressive action on global warming within 24 h of the successful conclusion of the Kyoto talks in December of 1997.” I guess the question would be, if you are looking at trends in emissions or other metrics, scientific metrics, you wouldn’t see much of an inflection point from among George Bush I, Bill Clinton, and George Bush II. What’s your perspective on how the Clinton Administration handled global warming and how it contrasts with the current President?

Dr. Gibbons::

Well, it was a tragedy in the Clinton Administration because Clinton had lost a lot of his power. This was near the mid-point of his second term, and Congress was increasingly polarized. We even had, for instance, Capitol Hill demands placed on OSTP – to do no travel with respect to climate change – to do no travel, and also to make no statements about automobile fuel efficiency. It was as bad as the – what was it called – the Whitewater witch hunt that went on earlier, of people trying to stifle the legitimate work within the Administration. We were really bound by the zealots up on the Hill. I had left just a few months after Kyoto in April 1998, and Neal Lane was taking over. I felt very disappointed but not surprised at the outcome of the Kyoto Protocol meetings. Al Gore went over and desperately tried to help make it work better. A couple of my people were there trying to help out. But the bottom line was that the forces were so massed against doing anything formal, that the best we could do would be to take it as far as we could. To try to go beyond that in the waning months of that Administration would only mean that Congress would rebuff us. There were votes on the Hill saying essentially the treaty would be dead on arrival if we ever sent it up there. Byrd spoke because he comes from a coal state. He later reversed himself on this, but there was a lot of antipathy and suspicion about what Kyoto would imply. When Bush II, however, said, well, Kyoto would mean it would cost us economically, that was a shallow shot. Everyone knows that the economic cost of responding to Kyoto, even for the US, which would be the hardest to do, would be maybe a tenth of a percent in our GDP growth. The reaction shows a non-recognition of the severity of the problem and the cost of delay in addressing it. On the good news side the support of research in global climate change has been strong and growing, and Bush II’s people have supported it, although they do it with borrowed money. (laughter) And that’s easier than if you’re doing it taking it out of your own hides. I feel that the US government sadly failed across the board in overcoming partisan self-interest about the urgency of taking definitive action on climate change. Despite some improvement, the situation is still ominous for our descendants.

I have to think back to the advice a wise person gave me years and years ago: my wife and I were concerned about lack of family planning capability in the Appalachian South, and we were asking this person, who was an old seasoned reporter, about what to do. We said, how do we get people’s attention to the plight of these folks and enable us to get some action? He said, I tell you there’s one thing you can do, and that is, “talk about it.” Talk about it. And he said it doesn’t even matter which side you take! Talk about it. Get it to be part of the public agenda. And that’s what I hope is going to happen with Kyoto now that it’s approved and in place. It’s embarrassing that we aren’t part of it. But the evidence is rolling in now at an extraordinary rate on the validity of our concern. Even greater concern than we had thought a few years back. So I think things are going to happen. But we can’t afford to sit back. The longer we sit back, the tougher it’s going to be to take action. And there are still going to be people who will try to kill it for various selfish reasons.

Dr. Pielke::

Yesterday President Bush gave a speech, and I know you haven’t had a chance to hear it or read it, but we talked about this a little bit earlier, in which he called for a major new initiative in nuclear power. Then he tied that to the greenhouse gas issue. And since you have expertise in energy, what are your thoughts on – again, looking toward nuclear power, as either a way to limit the reliance on foreign sources of energy, or to deal with the greenhouse problem, or anything else?

Dr. Gibbons::

In the late ‘60’s I made several talks about greenhouse and electricity and nuclear power when I was at Oak Ridge National Lab. We talked about it at OTA. Nuclear is but one option of several to help cut down on the amount of greenhouse gases. Nuclear is coming into its own. It’s getting competitive; it’s getting reliable. We still haven’t closed the back end of the fuel cycle (waste), and it is still very suspect on the part of the American people because we screwed up so many times before in the way we managed it.

I feel that it is an important option for the future. The last thing we want to do is to throw away something that seems to work while we go after things that don’t seem to work. So I’m very sympathetic and so was President Clinton. In fact, we moved ahead with relicensing of plants during the Clinton Administration. But we can’t count on it entirely. We can spend ourselves into the ground trying to just bail our way out of the energy problem with folks singling out one kind of power. But we must not retreat from it. We’ve just got to resolve the remaining problems. It’s not going to be simple. So I say if nuclear power is President Bush’s energy plan, then he doesn’t have a plan.

Dr. Pielke::

Let’s spend the last 15 min or so taking questions from the audience. See what’s on your mind. We’ll have to repeat the questions up here so that they get on the tape. Why don’t we open things up.

Audience Question::

How can we depoliticize the global climate change issue?

Dr. Gibbons::

First of all, any important issue is going to be politicized. Just like any important new invention is going to have opportunity for both ill and good. Gutenberg’s printing press created great opportunity for mankind, but also for enslavement in other ways. Every important new idea has this dual principle for good or for ill. On climate change, how do we depoliticize it? As long as it remains important, people are going to politicize it in that they are going to take sides. The fossil fuel industry is never going to be happy with climate change actions. Neither are the oil-producing countries, the Saudis and others. They funded a lot of people that we know the names of here in the States who published ads and articles aimed against climate change.

So you can’t depoliticize climate change in that sense. But here’s an example of partial depoliticization: the formulation of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), a panel of experts from many nations, charged with comprehensive analysis of climate change and impacts. The process that IPCC goes through for reviewing critiques of its studies is excruciatingly careful. And in that sense it ought to be taken as a non-political input to illuminating the situation. But it is bound to going to get politicized too. People are going to claim that interests weren’t represented and that sort of thing.

Every important decision, and action on global climate change is an important international political decision, is going to have a degree of politicization in it. And I think our goal is to try to do these things despite this politicization. To overwhelm it, overcome it, and push things aside. As Congressman George Brown would say, the thing that will most readily help is very careful work done that can be very persuasive in terms of how it’s used. Both in terms of the economics and the technology of alternatives, and of the science itself. And I think we’re making good progress, especially in climate – paleoclimate studies. The North Atlantic Conveyor Belt now is seen as a reality rather than a figment of imagination. It is just part of human nature to have parties at interest line up on opposite sides on these issues.

Audience Question::

What do you think the role of the public should be in making decisions about science policy?

Dr. Gibbons::

Well I think it should be front and center because it’s the public that’s supporting our enterprise. The public needs to be better informed about these issues and about the decisions that we all face as a society: where to go with science investments, and what to do with the technologies that emerge. Sadly we’re not. I fear that the train is leaving the station of the advancement of science and technology and most of the people that actually are paying for the train are still standing back in the station. How many people, for instance in Boulder here, a university town, believe that the Earth was formed 6,000 years ago? A fair number I imagine. In the US it is an unbelievable fraction of our population. So our people need to get better informed because if we are going to maintain a democracy we have got to have a participatory society that governs. And you can’t govern without knowledge. James Madison said it well. He said that if we mean to be our own governors, we must develop and use the power that knowledge gives.

Audience Question::

I have a flip side to that question. Both the description of Clinton’s efforts to advocate to the NSF versus the NIH, or the challenges of addressing the issues of global warming, or having an informed populous, might be better addressed by having a well-educated population. Whether that’s the population in Congress or as OTA was attempting to do, or the public in voting and leaning on Congress to act in a particular way. So my next question is, how do we do that? What is the role of scientists, the politicians, and the science advisor in education and, particularly, in science education? Or, I can put it further and say, not what’s the role, but what’s the obligation?

Dr. Gibbons::

To be a good citizen means you need to use your knowledge and your talents in the political process as well as in the scientific world. We’re not excused. Some people don’t think that way. A lot of folks tend to think, well, we’re doing really important work in our profession, and that has great national importance. And we don’t have time to divert to participate in politics. But that’s wrong. That’s wrong. I think we all ought to be informed and involved.

And I think we have to stand up and shout when people start going off into the far right conservative realms of religion and then claim that they have found the truth. There can be an enormous difference between opinion and fact, between faith and fact. This argument on evolution, the argument on stem cells: it sneaked into the White House. It sneaked into the Oval Office. And that’s a very bad sign. So that’s why I flunked retirement about four times now. And I hope the rest of you will, too, when you get older.

Audience Question::

Could you please comment on OSTP’s role in diplomatic relations. In particular, what role do you see the Science Advisor to the Secretary of State having in the future – the position you helped to establish?

Dr. Gibbons::

Okay, the issue is the role of science in our international diplomacy. In my position, there is – it’s probably one of the most under-attended options in our quiver of arrows that have to do with foreign policy in part because, as someone described the State Department to me once, the State Department is a bunch of technophobes. They tend to be people who have almost no background in science and even less interest so they don’t see it as part of international endeavors. When I was in the White House I found that in a number of instances with respect to world trade, with respect to other things. Since leaving the White House I have worked with the National Academies. And The National Academies were interested in this because they live across the street from State. And they said, my gosh, we don’t have any science activities in the State Department. And so they went out and solicited some support from, guess who? Bill Golden, the person who originally made the suggestion to President Harry Truman to create the job of Science Advisor to the President. Golden supported a study at the Academies on the role of a science advisor to the Secretary in the State Department. And then it was delivered to Secretary Madeline Albright. I at the time was also hired as a part-time consultant to go over to the State Department, and I talked with them about science and technology and its relevance to the issues they were facing beyond nuclear weapons. And Albright bought it. She appointed Norm Neureiter, an extraordinary person, to become science advisor to the secretary. When Colin Powell succeeded Albright, he decided to keep Neureiter. That was the real acid test: could you go through the transition from a Democratic President to a Republican President and still have that science advisor stay there. That was Neureiter’s role, and he did beautifully.

Now they’ve gone from something like four post-doctoral Science Fellows at State to twenty. Most of them are provided at no extra cost to the State Department by the professional organizations such as AAAS, the American Chemical Society, the American Physical Society, and engineering societies. They’ve chosen people to go and work in State for a year or two, and many of them stay. Once they’re there the State Department begins to realize how important they are. They are now embedded in a number of our overseas missions. So I think maybe we have turned the corner in State recognizing the enormous opportunity that science and technology provides our diplomats in terms of options that we can use in our foreign policy missions. So I think it’s working. But it’s not guaranteed. You’re going to State are you? Good luck. They need you.

Dr. Pielke::

Let’s take one more question before we wrap it up.

Dr. Gibbons::

Yes.

Audience Question::

One of the major things we try to do at the university and all faculty try to do at the university is to teach critical thinking. It appears that people make their way up the level politically without some of that education. (laughter)

Dr. Gibbons::

That’s a very diplomatic statement.

Audience Question::

And I wonder, how do you deal with people at a high level who have not learned critical thinking?

Dr. Gibbons::

Well, first of all, you have to approach them with some awe because they manage to get elected. And some of them never do anything more after that. (laughter) But it is tricky because these people must deal with an enormous number of parameters they have to take into account when they make a decision. You know the French writer Victor Hugo. He said “Science says the first word on everything and the last word on nothing.” All of the scientific deliberations, most of them, have to be taken into account. But there are so many other parameters, so many other variables. I could tell you horror stories about some decisions made at OMB in terms of where are we going to put this or that project that’s proposed by three different universities. And the other things they have had to take into account when they were trying to make a decision about who ought to get the award. So the Hugo quote is my motto for tonight. Remember that we have very important things to say, but we’re trying to swim in a very large pond with some other big fish.

Dr. Pielke::

On that note let’s thank Dr. Gibbons for a wonderful evening. (applause)

Dr. Gibbons::

I can’t tell you how flattered I am that you came out on this snowy night. (applause)