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Lou Dobbs Tonight
Doubting Dean; Bush Nominees; Bunkers Busted; Global Warming; Suicide Terrorism's Roots
Aired June 06, 2005 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everybody. Tonight, radical Islamist terrorists escalating their suicide attacks in Iraq. Are those attacks escalating because of religious fervor or because of occupation of homelands by foreign forces? A leading expert joins us.
And racial violence rising in our overcrowded high schools. Tens of thousands of students are afraid to go to school. We'll have a special report tonight.
And the conflicted science of global warming. Is a global catastrophe imminent? Two leading scientists on opposite sides of the debate join us.
Our top story tonight, the rising criticism of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. Two senior Democrats, Senator Joseph Biden and former Senator John Edwards, say Dean has gone too far in his attacks on Republicans. Dean is also facing criticism for the slow pace of his fund-raising for Democrats.
Bill Schneider has the report -- Bill.
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Lou, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean is speaking out. Nothing new about that. But this time some Democrats are speaking back.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SCHNEIDER (voice-over): Howard Dean has been saying some pretty harsh things about Republicans.
HOWARD DEAN, CHAIRMAN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: And a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives.
SCHNEIDER: That's his job. He's the Democratic Party chairman. He's supposed to be partisan.
Right now, Democrats feel disempowered for good reason. Democrats have less power now than at any time in the past 80 years. They also feel bullied by conservatives. Democrats want a leader who will show some fight and punch the bullies in the nose.
DEAN: Democrats are now going to speak for ourselves. We're going to tell the Americans what our message is.
SCHNEIDER: But some leading Democratic politicians are distancing themselves from Dean's strident rhetoric, including two who may run for president in 2008.
SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN (D), DELAWARE: He's doesn't speak for me with that kind of rhetoric.
JOHN EDWARDS (D), FMR. VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My own view is the chairman of the DNC is not the spokesman for the Democratic Party.
SCHNEIDER: Dean is rallying the Democratic Party base. But for politicians like Biden and Edwards, that does not sound like a winning strategy. After all, the Democrats rallied their base brilliantly in 2004. They gained nine million new votes. But the Republicans gained 12 million.
The lesson of 2004 is Democrats are unlikely to win by rallying their base. Democrats need to reach out to Republican voters by presenting themselves as uniters, not dividers. That's not exactly what Dean seems to be doing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SCHNEIDER: Rallying the base is also a good way to raise money from small donors over the Internet, but it may not work too well with high-dollar donors, who are more interested in seeing a winning political strategy. This year, Lou, the Republicans have out-raised the Democrats.
DOBBS: And in these days of money and politics, that seems to be the bottom line. Bill Schneider, thank you very much.
SCHNEIDER: Sure.
DOBBS: Senators returned to work today after a weeklong recess. At the top of their agenda, the confirmation of President Bush's nominees to be federal judges. The senators will also debate the nomination of John Bolton as our next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Ed Henry reports from Capitol Hill -- Ed.
ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Lou.
That's right, right back into the fire, the man in the middle who's taking some heat is Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. You'll remember that last month when this filibuster deal was cut, there was some question about whether his authority was questioned, whether or not he was undercut because he was left out of the loop on that deal, and then Frist lost an initial vote on John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. But Frist today basically said he feels this has been overblown.
He took to the Senate floor to kick off this new week in the Senate after the recess and said that in fact he's making progress on this -- on these nominations. And, in fact, today in Texas, Priscilla Owen was sworn into her new seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. And, in fact, this week Frist is hoping for speedy confirmation of two more of the president's judges, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor.
Frist is also, as you mentioned, trying to bring back the nomination of Bolton. At this point it does not look like he has the 60 votes to break a filibuster, but it's clear to both sides that he probably has at least 51 votes. If there was in fact a straight up- or-down vote on Bolton, he could get it passed, and that's why Republicans are saying they want Democrats to stop the stalling. They want to have an up-or-down vote.
Today, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, though, said that in fact the person who is stalling here is President Bush, because his administration has refused to turn over more documents about Bolton's qualifications, his time over at the State Department. They want those documents.
Democrats like Reid also had a press conference led by Reid today, saying that the believe Republicans have spent far too much time on these controversial nominations, that Republicans are not spending enough time on issues like the economy, healthcare, pension reform as well. But I asked Senator Reid at this press conference about the fact that a new issue of "Rolling Stone" magazine has an interview with the senator in which the senator is asked about the fact that he recently called the president of the United States a loser. And in this interview, Senator Reid immediately told the interviewer that in fact he had also called the president a liar.
He was referring back four years ago when he said the president had lied about the Yucca Mountain situation out in Nevada. Then the interviewer said, "Well, you apologized about using the word 'loser,'" but Harry Reid in this interview said he did not apologize. He noted he had not apologized for calling the president a liar.
I asked the senator today whether or not this is going to make it more difficult to forge that kind of bipartisan compromise, if in fact he's not apologizing for calling the president a liar. Here's Senator Reid.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MINORITY LEADER: I know you hate to give up on that. I apologized for the "loser." I haven't for the "liar." But, you know, if -- it looks like, with all due respect to you, maybe you could come up with something else.
HENRY: But do you think it's helpful to...
REID: I've answered the question. I've answered the question.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: You can see there Senator Reid getting a little peeved at that question. It's clear the Senate has only been in session for a few hours now after this Memorial Day recess, but already some of the tension is there. There's going to be a lot of knock-down, drag-out fights over these nominations -- Lou.
DOBBS: Ed Henry from Capitol Hill. Thank you.
U.S. and North Korean officials today held their first meeting in almost a month discussing North Korea's escalating nuclear challenge. The officials met in New York, where North Korea has a diplomatic mission at the U.N. The United States wants North Korea to return to six-country talks on its nuclear program.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE: We do not believe in bilateral negotiations with the North Koreans. We meet with the North Koreans in the context of the six-party talks. We believe that this is the best way to make certain that North Korea gets a consistent and coherent message from all of the members of the neighborhood that their nuclear weapons program simply has to go.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in Thailand, strongly denied press reports the Bush administration is split over its North Korea policy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: The president has stated what the policy is. The secretary of State has stated it. And I have stated it. And it's all exactly the same. So I think that the stories that have been playing are just inaccurate and mischievous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: Rumsfeld also insists the United States has not set a deadline to bring the North Korean nuclear issue to the U.N. Security Council.
In Iraq, U.S. troops destroyed a massive bunker complex. That complex discovered west of Baghdad last week. The insurgent complex, the size of nine football fields.
Jennifer Eccleston reports from Baghdad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JENNIFER ECCLESTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The series of underground bunkers discovered by the U.S. Marines and Iraqi forces are now destroyed. It was part of an ongoing anti-insurgency operation in Anbar province, a center of the Sunni Arab resistance.
Now, the Marines and Iraqi soldiers uncovered this elaborate series of bunkers with large stores of heavy weapons, including rockets and mortars, ammunition and supplies. It was located in the town of Karma, not far from the troubled city of Fallujah.
The bunker was actually found on Thursday, one of a dozen weapons caches uncovered in the area in recent days. No insurgents were actually in the compound at the time, but it was likely, according to Marines, used recently, because there was fresh food in a kitchen.
It had a fairly comfortable layout with a furnished living quarters, two showers and a functioning air-conditioner. The bunkers were built into an old rock quarry and totaled roughly a half a million square feet, making it, according to the Marine spokesman, one of the largest underground insurgent hideouts discovered in at least the last year.
Now, it's not clear whether the compound dated back to the era of Saddam Hussein or whether it was recently constructed by the insurgents. But again, that bunker has now been destroyed.
Jennifer Eccleston, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: Still ahead, Arabs and Jews on a violent clash at one of the Holy Land's most important religious sites. We'll have that report.
And racial violence in our overcrowded high schools is rising. We'll have a special report from Los Angeles next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Violent clashes today between Israeli police and Palestinians at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Israeli police threw stun grenades to disperse hundreds of Palestinians who were throwing rocks at Jewish visitors to the site. Those visitors took place -- take -- were there as Israelis were celebrating the capture of East Jerusalem 40 years ago. Two Israelis were injured, one Palestinian arrested.
A bitter enemy of Israel has won a decisive election in southern Lebanon. The radical Islamist group Hezbollah and its allies won all 23 parliamentary seats in the south. Lebanon is holding elections region by region over four weekends until June 19. The United States and Israel say Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that must disarm immediately.
Hezbollah's main sponsor, Syrian President Bashar Assad, today declared foreigners are trying to destroy the Arab identity. Assad made his declaration at the opening of his Ba'ath Party Congress in Damascus. Syria faces rising U.S. pressure over its failure to end its support of insurgents and terrorists in Iraq.
Brent Sadler reports from Damascus.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRENT SADLER, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, takes a bow center stage in Damascus. Popular among his ruling Ba'ath Party elite, unpopular with dissidents at home and critics abroad, led by the United States. But President Assad told delegates to ignore outside pressure in drafting reforms, warning that foreign-inspired political change in the region is an assault on Arab identity.
BASHAR AL-ASSAD, SYRIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): This leads in the end to the cultural, political and moral collapse of the Arab individual and his ultimate defeat, even without a fight.
SADLER: Arabs, he urged, should rally as one.
AL-ASSAD (through translator): We must face this situation with greater awareness, responsibility and defiance.
SADLER (on camera): U.S. officials warn that Syria is not immune to democratic changes taking shape in the region. The same U.S. officials whose policy helped topple Iraq's ruling Ba'athists, Syria's one-time ideological twin.
(voice-over): But Syria, say officials here, is not Iraq, and President Assad is no Saddam Hussein. And neighboring Iraq, they complain, is but the latest American action to undermine Arab identity and unity.
BOUTHAIN SHABAAN, BA'ATH CONGRESS SPOKESWOMAN: The U.S. policy in the region for the last few years, in my opinion, has been targeting this Arab identity by trying to turn the Arab world into ethnicities, religions and smaller groups. Do we want to be Sunni and Shi'ite and the Christians, or do we want to be Arabs?
SADLER: President Assad is signaling much hoped-for economic and political reforms at home. But Syria's international relations, especially with the U.S., may be set in stone.
JOSHUA LANDIS, SYRIACOMMENT.COM: Syria is not changing direction in any dramatic way. He said we're sticking by our Arabism and we're sticking by our steadfast position against foreign conspiracies. He's not going to fall in line with George Bush.
SADLER: Refusing to jettison, it seems, policies that Syria's long-lasting regime has lived and ruled by.
Brent Sadler, CNN, Damascus.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: Coming up next, illegal immigration is adding dramatically to already severe problems in our overcrowded high schools. Racial violence is rising; tens of thousands of students are afraid to go to school. Our special report coming up.
And my guests tonight, the parents of a deputy sheriff killed by an illegal alien who fled to Mexico. Why these parents want the United States to demand the extradition of illegal alien criminals.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(JOINED IN PROGRESS) (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Students are scared. Thousands are staying home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People are not coming to school tomorrow. Not a lot of people are coming because they're scared. Like me, myself, I'm not going to come.
WIAN: Many blame the changing demographics of inner city schools like Jefferson. It used to be largely African-American, a source of pride for the black community. But after two decades of nearly unchecked illegal immigration and rapid birthrates, Jefferson is now 92 percent Latino, just 7 percent black. Still, that's not the main problem, says UCLA education professor John Rogers.
JOHN ROGERS, UCLA EDUCATION PROFESSOR: There's a history of black and brown kids getting along and going to school together in South L.A. at Jefferson High School. The school is dramatically overcrowded. There's over 3,800 students at Jefferson now, which is more than double what there were 25 years ago.
WIAN: The school is bursting with more than four times as many students per acre than the state recommends. It also has a teacher shortage. A third of the teachers it does have lack proper state credentials.
The result, fewer than a third of its students graduate. Only one in eight are eligible for a state college. L.A. School Superintendent Roy Romer says Californians have failed to make education funding a priority.
ROY ROMER, SUPERINTENDENT, L.A. UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT: They need to invest in their young. And they're not doing it adequately. You've got to have better skills in language and math and in science. And this state is not yet doing it. They need a clarion call to action.
WIAN: If scenes like this are not a clear enough call, it's hard to imagine what would be.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIAN: Lack of education resources is not just an inner city problem in California. Every single school district in Los Angeles County spends less than the national average per pupil. And that includes wealthy districts like Malibu and Beverly Hills -- Lou.
DOBBS: Casey, thank you very much. Casey Wian reporting from Los Angeles.
Violence and the threat of violence are also rising in the American workplace. A new study finds the loss of millions of American jobs, millions of them, to cheap foreign labor markets is behind much of the rage.
Bill Tucker reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Scenes like this from a shooting at Jeep's Toledo, Ohio, plant by a disgruntled employee earlier this year are all too familiar. An angry employee unleashes that wrath in the workplace.
Not every unhappy employee commits murder and suicide, but there is an alarming increase in violence in the workplace. A survey by more than 600 human resources and security executives found 82 percent reported an increase in workplace violence in the last two years. The reasons are basic.
DOUG KANE, RISK CONTROL STRATEGIES: We've seen a lot of companies being downsized over the last several years. As a result of that, they're turning to off-shoring and outsourcing a lot of their activities. As a result of that, some of the employees now are tasked with training their replacements, which, again, creates somewhat of a hostile work environment.
TUCKER: Fifty-eight percent of those responding to the survey by Risk Control Strategies say employees have threatened to assault or kill senior managers. It's the uncertainties of the job place, compounded with economic pressures, that often push employees over the edge. The new bankruptcy bill which allows wages to be garnished is expected to worsen the problem.
LARRY CHAVEZ, CRITICAL INCIDENT ASSOCIATES: With the downturn in the economy, and with the loss of jobs on a relatively massive scale, it's not going to take much more beyond that to have someone thinking negative thoughts about their organization.
TUCKER: Bottom line for employees, they take their work very personally, while their employers forget they're people and treat them as a line item in the budget.
(on camera): But a separate and soon-to-be-released survey showing a decline in outsourcing trends found that employee backlash is a major concern among companies considering outsourcing. Eighty- eight percent said they're more concerned about employee backlash than they are about severance costs or customer reaction.
Bill Tucker, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: The Supreme Court today ruled federal authorities can prosecute those who use marijuana for medical purposes. By a 6-3 vote, the high court ruled 10 state laws allowing medical marijuana use do not protect users from the federal ban against marijuana. The court ruled that the Constitution allows federal regulation of home- grown marijuana as interstate commerce. Lawyers for the two women who filed that appeal argued unsuccessfully that medical marijuana is neither bought nor sold and should not be considered commerce. That brings us to the subject of our poll tonight. Do you believe the federal government should prosecute doctors who prescribe medical marijuana, yes or no? Cast your vote, please, at LouDobbs.com. Results coming up later in the broadcast.
Pope Benedict XVI today gave his harshest rebuke yet of gay marriage in his six-week-old papacy. The pontiff said same-sex unions are, in his words, expressions of anarchic freedom that threaten the family. The pope also blasted divorce and unmarried heterosexual couples who live together.
The pope's words come on the same day that a conservative Christian group suspended its boycott of the Ford Motor Company. The American Family Association called for the boycott just last week in protest of Ford's policy giving benefits to same-sex couples.
Today, the AFA said it has met with Ford dealers. They have promised, they said, to talk with Ford officials about the policy. The AFA says it will give the dealer six months before it decides whether to reinstate the boycott.
In New York, actor Russell Crowe, who was promoting his new movie about boxing, was arrested today for assault. The concierge at the hotel where Crowe was staying says the actor threw a telephone at him. Crowe's publicist said Crowe was frustrated after he had tried and failed to get a hotel worker's help in calling his wife in Australia.
Crowe was charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon. The weapon in this case, the telephone. Crowe was released on his own recognizance and could face up to four years in jail.
Coming up, why one American family says the policies of the Mexican government actually give criminals an incentive to kill. The family is fighting to change those policies, and they will be our guests here next.
Also ahead, the real motive behind radical Islamist terrorism. I'll be talking with the author who says terrorism is rarely about religion.
And global warming, is it catastrophe or simply nature? Two of the world's leading authorities on climate change debate the issue with me here next.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff David March was shot and killed at close range during a routine traffic stop in April of 2002. The prime suspect in the shooting is an illegal alien named Armando Garcia. He was convicted of other crimes in this country, and he was deported from the United States three times.
Investigators don't know the whereabouts of Garcia, but the L.A. County Sheriff's Office believes he escaped to Mexico. Now the family of Deputy Sheriff David March is fighting to change the U.S. extradition treaty with Mexico so that fugitives who flee to Mexico can be brought to justice in the United States.
Joining me now are John and Barbara March. They're the parents of Deputy Sheriff David March.
We thank you both for being here tonight.
BARBARA MARCH, DAVID MARCH'S MOTHER: Hello, Lou.
JOHN MARCH, DAVID MARCH'S FATHER: Thank you, Lou.
DOBBS: Let me ask you first, have the L.A. County sheriff's deputies, have they been as aggressive as you would like in this investigation?
J. MARCH: Absolutely. Sheriff Lee Baca and his guys have not only done everything they could, but they've been so supportive of our family and keeping us posted in what's going on. They've been just terrific.
DOBBS: And the federal authorities, have they been helpful as well?
B. MARCH: Well, the problem that we have locally is a federal problem as far as allowing Mexico to abandon the treaty and there's no consequences.
DOBBS: The treaty is the extradition treaty...
B. MARCH: Yes.
DOBBS: ... of 1978. I think many people would be surprised that that treaty has been modified, if you will, by the government of Mexico because of its concerns about U.S. punishment for serious violent crime. Could you explain to us how that treaty has been amended by one side, and permitted?
B. MARCH: Go ahead.
J. MARCH: It was actually amended twice. First, the treaty was supposed to be the mutual extradition of prisoners. Then the Mexican government decided that the death penalty was cruel and unusual. And then in 2002, they decided that even life in prison without parole was cruel and unusual punishment. And so they've just basically done -- have done what they pleased. In the meantime, we're just firmly of the belief that if someone commits a crime in this country, they should be punished by our laws.
DOBBS: Mrs. March, the fact that that treaty has been amended, do you believe it actually poses an incentive to kill in this country?
B. MARCH: Well, absolutely. And this is what happened to our son. He was shot and knocked down with the first bullet, which went under his arm, through the bullet -- the armhole in the bulletproof vest. But then to make sure that Dave died, Armando Garcia had to come back and execute him with a bullet to the head.
Therefore, when he would escape the American border, he knew obviously that he would not be extradited for murder.
DOBBS: Mr. March, your wife says, with very powerful directness, that Armando Garcia killed your son. Of course, that's the allegation. What makes you think it is Armando Garcia?
J. MARCH: Well, all I can say is that both the sheriff's department and the police department feel that they have an absolute solid case and proof that it was Armando Garcia. We're sure that it's Armando Garcia. And we have become good friends with Steve Cooley and Lee Baca -- that's our D.A. and our sheriff -- and they're pretty straight with us.
B. MARCH: The evidence points this way, put it that way.
DOBBS: It points that way. And Mrs. March, is it your sense that the Mexican federal officials, as well as provincial officials, are being as cooperative and helpful and vigorous in their investigation, searching for Armando Garcia, as they should be?
B. MARCH: Absolutely not. They are protecting him, giving him safe haven in Mexico, as with many other killers and felons here in the United States that belong back here for trial.
J. MARCH: Three thousand, Lou. The L.A. County DA feels there's 3,000 families that are in pain over the loss of a loved one whose perpetrator of the crime has gone back across the border. Now, that's of 9/11 proportions.
B. MARCH: Lou, also, what I'd like to point out is that our U.S. attorney's office is not doing its job. The law states that we can prosecute people from other countries who have committed a crime, and who have returned to the United States after deportation. We're not doing that.
DOBBS: I know...
B. MARCH: Apparently, we do not have the money for this. However, we do seem to have the money to bring in immigrants that are not of legal status, and we seem to be able to take care of these people, but we do not have the money to prosecute these killers.
DOBBS: Barbara March, John March, we thank you both for being here. I know this is painful for you, in the most personal of ways. And it is difficult for all of us who are trying to deal with the issue of border security, and the relationship with a government in Mexico that is -- the best way it can be put, not cooperative. We hope, with you, I'm sure everyone watching this broadcast is hoping fervently that the killer of your son is brought to justice, and soon.
J. MARCH: People need to get involved, Lou. And the initiative coming up in California for the California Border Patrol, and the bringing back the Patriot Act, and the anchor baby issue, all these things are coming up in Congress, and people need to get in touch with their Congresspeople.
DOBBS: Here, here. John and Barbara March, thank you both for being here.
B. MARCH: Thank you, Lou.
J. MARCH: Thank you, Lou.
DOBBS: Mexico's refusal to extradite criminal suspects facing the death penalty or life in prison in this country is now at the center of a Denver murder investigation. Mexican officials arrested an illegal alien suspected of killing a Denver police detective. Raul Garcia Gomez was arrested in Mexico after a month-long international manhunt. Garcia Gomez allegedly shot and killed Denver Police Detective Donald Young in the back, shot him several times, and wounded Detective John Bishop. The Denver district attorney is negotiating now with the Mexican federal government to have Garcia Gomez extradited back to the United States to stand trial. The odds, however, are against the district attorney in this case, for the reasons that you have already heard, because in this case, as in others, the Mexican government refuses to extradite any suspect who might face the death penalty or life in prison without parole for crimes committed in the United States.
Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado wants President Bush to negotiate -- renegotiate our extradition treaty with Mexico. Tancredo says the treaty interferes with the judicial system in the United States, and in fact, has encouraged violent criminals to flee to Mexico in order to avoid punishment in this country. Congressman Tancredo will introduce an amendment this week to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for 2006. That amendment urging President Bush to renegotiate the extradition treaty with Mexico, so that suspects facing the death penalty or life in prison will face justice in the United States.
There are nearly half-a-million illegal aliens at large in this country who have been ordered deported, but who have not been. Of those, as many as 85,000 have been convicted of serious crimes other than their illegal status. There are some 2,000 federal Border Patrol agents who are dedicated to enforcing immigration laws within our borders. That means by simple math that our Border Patrol agents are outnumbered by fugitive criminal aliens by 225 to 1.
Coming up next, the author of a new book says this country must immediately gain control of our porous borders in order to fight radical Islamist terrorism. He's our guest next.
And then scientists divided on the causes, the effects of global warming. We'll have a special report, and two of the world's leading authorities in climate change join us to debate the issue. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: My next guest says the United States must immediately secure our nation's borders in order to prevent another terrorist attack in this country. Robert Pape says completing a partial border fence along our 2,000-mile border with Mexico would cost, by his estimate, about $6 billion. That, he says, is the same as paying for U.S. military operations in Iraq for just about a month.
Robert Pape is the author of "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism." For the book, he compiled the first data base of every suicide attack in the world since 1980. Robert Pape is associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago and joins us here in New York tonight. Good to have you with us.
ROBERT PAPE, AUTHOR: Thank you for having me.
DOBBS: Let's begin first with your thesis that -- and I must say, supported by impressive data. Most of us think of these suicide bombers as, first, religious zealots who are simply trying to reach heaven through their martyrdom. You see it quite differently.
PAPE: Well, I do now. But I have to say, that before I collected the data, I also thought it was mainly driven by religion. But the facts are, when we collect data from all around the world, and we see all the suicide terrorist attacks that have occurred all around the world since 1980, this wealth of new information creates a new picture. You see, suicide terrorism is not as closely associated with Islamic fundamentalism as many people think.
DOBBS: Now, the first -- most people think of the radical Islamist suicide bomber with a bomber vest, the dynamite, the explosives wrapped around them. But that wasn't even an idea of a radical Islamist terrorist.
PAPE: Exactly right. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that many of your listeners probably haven't heard from. It's the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, which is a Marxist group that's completely secular, that draws from Hindu families from the Tamil regions of the country. The secular Hindu Tamil Tigers have done more suicide terrorist attacks than Hamas, and they invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.
DOBBS: And that idea is also attached to the religious drive of these radical Islamists, particularly obviously in Iraq, where we're now focused. You also put forth some startling numbers. In terms of the suicide attacks that have occurred over the course of the first attacks against Saddam Hussein, do we have those statistics up? And if not, I'll just -- we'll just -- do we have those? Let's take a look at those. The nationality of --
PAPE: These are actually al Qaeda.
DOBBS: -- of al Qaeda suicide attackers, their origins. I think many people would not be surprised, given what has transpired in this country on September 11th, to find that most are from Saudi Arabia, followed by Morocco. These are -- this is extraordinary. Why that breakdown in your judgment? PAPE: What the vast majority of suicide terrorist attacks have in common is not religion, but a clear secular strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. Al Qaeda fits this pattern, not perfectly, but quite strongly. You see, what that table shows is that overwhelmingly, al Qaeda suicide terrorists, the 71 who actually died to fulfill Osama bin Laden's attacks since 1995, come overwhelmingly from Sunni countries where we've stationed tens of thousands of American combat forces, and actually, quite few from the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran. If you look at that chart, you'll see that Iran -- an Islamic fundamentalist country with 70 million people, three times the population of Saudi Arabia, three times the population of Iraq, has never produced a single al Qaeda suicide terrorist.
DOBBS: And the reason for that you posit is that there is no occupation of Iranian...
PAPE: There's no occupation and no threat of occupation. Iran is not just simply a big state. It's a big state with a fairly large army, and an army that hasn't been defeated by a previous war, as Iraq was, or under American heavy-duty economic sanctions for a long period of time.
DOBBS: Implications for your studies U.S. policy in the Iraq, in the Middle East going forward?
PAPE: So long as tens of thousands of American combat troops remain in the Persian Gulf, we should expect anti-American suicide terrorism to continue. In Iraq, before America's invasion in March 2003, there was not a single suicide terrorist attack in Iraq's history. Since then, it's been growing, and will likely continue to grow as long as our forces are there.
DOBBS: The economics that you are that you are recommending in terms of putting absolute border security for our southern border, our northern border, for our ports, the economics are overwhelmingly in favor of your recommendation?
PAPE: Absolutely. We should recognize that even if we reverse policy and begin to withdraw forces from the Persian Gulf, that's going to take years to turn that supertanker around. As a result, we need to expect that anti-American suicide terrorism is going to grow. And toughening border security, especially with a fence, much like the fence that the Israelis have built on the West Bank, would be an excellent investment.
DOBBS: Robert Pape. The book is, "Dying to Win." Intriguing and thought-provoking. We thank you for being with us.
PAPE: Thank you for having me.
DOBBS: Coming up at the top of the hour here on CNN, "ANDERSON COOPER 360." Anderson Cooper joins us to tell us what's ahead. Anderson? ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah, Lou, about 15 minutes from now, the jury is out. Michael Jackson's hospitalized over the weekend. Now waits at Neverland for a verdict. Are his hospital visits for real, or all part of the Michael Jackson show? We'll take a look at that.
Also, a massive search underway in Aruba for a missing American student. We'll have the latest on the investigation.
And if you're trying to lose weight, we talk to a doctor who shed hundreds of pounds himself. He did it with protein shakes and baseball. A surprising diet. We'll explain at the top of the hour. Lou.
DOBBS: Looking forward to it, Anderson. Thank you.
Still ahead here tonight, is global warming an unavoidable catastrophe or is it nature at work? We'll have a special report. Two leading authorities on climate change join us to debate the matter. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Tonight the debate over global warming. A new government report finds that coastal regions of Louisiana and Texas are now sinking into the Gulf of Mexico at a much faster rate than geologists had previously thought. Rising temperatures are melting ice caps, or are they? We know global climate change is happening. What we don't know is why. Are fossil fuels to blame, or is this part of a cyclical, normal planetary pattern? How serious is this problem, and can we poor human beings do anything at all about it? Christine Romans has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The worst scenarios of global warming: floods, dangerous thunderstorms and hurricanes, heat waves and a deadly rise in sea level.
DAN LASHOF, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL: The pace of global warming that we expect over the next century, if we don't curb the pollution that is responsible, is faster than anything humans have experienced in recorded civilization, quite literally.
ROMANS: The polar ice caps are contracting at a rate of 9 percent each decade. Glaciers and land-based ice sheets are melting into the sea. And as a result, the consensus has sea levels rising up to three feet by the end of this century. That would swamp America's low-lying coastal areas, push saltwater deep into fresh water river valleys, and according to the Environmental Protection Agency, flood 22,000 square miles along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, drenching Louisiana, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.
As the sea rises by one to three feet, temperatures will climb by five to 10 degrees.
JAMES MCCARTHY, PROFESSOR, HARVARD UNIV.: People living anywhere in the world will likely experience more extremes in temperature.
ROMANS: He calls Europe's 2003 heat wave that killed 20,000 people a foreshadowing of how unprepared we are for global warming. Yet other scientists call these forecasts alarmist, and say rising temperatures are normal, because we're in an interglacial period.
MYRON EBELL, COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: We're probably towards the end of it. And the sea levels will keep rising until the next ice age begins.
So it's something we have to adapt to, but it happens very slowly. And it's not anything that human beings haven't had to deal with in the past.
ROMANS: And recent mapping shows most of the Antarctic continent may actually be cooling down.
JOHN CHRISTY, PROFESSOR, UNIV. OF ALABAMA, HUNTSVILLE: This is one thing everyone should understand: The climate is always changing. No one has a legal right to a static climate.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: Global warming doubters say the biggest climate catalysts are natural variations conflicting cycles lasting decades, centuries, millennia. Mother Nature is clearly vicious. The question is, does man make it worse?
DOBBS: And can man make it better?
ROMANS: Exactly.
DOBBS: Christine, thanks very much.
For more now on the issue of global climate change, global warming and what can be done, if anything, about it all, I am joined by two leading experts with divergent views. Here in New York, I am joined by Gavin Schmidt, scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He says the global climate crisis is serious. He says it is man-made, and one that we must address immediately.
In Washington, D.C., Patrick Michaels, professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, author of the book "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming." He says the threat of global warming has been grossly exaggerated.
Thank you both for being here. Let me begin, if I may, with you, Gavin.
GAVIN SCHMIDT, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Certainly.
DOBBS: Is there any reason that, with the best minds in the world focused on this issue, that we can't say with conviction and absolute scientific study based on fact, that the ice caps are either melting or that they're growing? SCHMIDT: The ice caps are melting or growing, depending on where you look. The most important things, though, are to focus on what we do know, where are both me and Patrick Michaels in agreement. We're in agreement that the amount of carbon dioxide has increased by 30 percent over pre-industrial levels over the last 100 years. We're in agreement that the world has warmed by about .7 of a degree over the last 100 years. We are in agreement that that is to a large extent due to man-made factors, in particular, carbon dioxide and methane.
DOBBS: Let me turn to you, Patrick. These are alarming statistics. But let me begin precisely as I did with Gavin, why can't the best scientific minds in the world come to conclusions about the totality of impact? Let's start with the idea of -- let me finish -- the snow pack and the size, diminishing or otherwise, of glaciers in Antarctica and the Arctic?
PATRICK MICHAELS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Well, southern Greenland is losing ice, but the temperature's going down where it's losing ice. Antarctica is gaining ice. The temperature is going down in Antarctica.
And by the way, Gavin and I are in great agreement about one other thing he didn't mention, which is it's not going to warm all that much in the policy-foreseeable future. His boss, James Hanson, says, if we stay on the current policy trajectories that we're on, we'll get about three-quarters of a degree of warming in the next 50 years, which is certainly a modest amount.
If you take our climate models, they all predict warmings of different slopes, and adjust them with reality, what you get is the same number, three-quarters of a degree.
SCHMIDT: I'm going to have to (INAUDIBLE).
MICHAELS: What that means, what that means, very importantly, is that this issue is not and should not be presented in the stark and dire terms. There's a lot of time for investment in future technologies.
DOBBS: Let me stop you there, if I may, Patrick. Gavin wanted to say something in the midst of this statement of agreement.
SCHMIDT: OK. We can state our agreements a little bit too strongly. Our best models, based on projections of what's going to happen to greenhouse gases in the future, give temperature rises of between .9 and another degree, to maybe two degrees by 2050. Most of that uncertainty is due to what the trajectory of carbon dioxide is going to be like. And that's really a function of the economics and technology, things that as current scientists, we really don't have a good handle on.
(CROSSTALK)
DOBBS: That's what bothers me about, frankly, gentlemen, from both your perspectives. You don't have a good handle on it.
SCHMIDT: The economics.
DOBBS: The economics. But also, the source of that carbon dioxide. You know what it is. We're a world of 6 billion people. I mean, Patrick, the idea that we do nothing, forgive me, just as a layman here, but 6 billion people on this planet, projected to reach 9 by the end of this century, that has to have a huge impact...
MICHAELS: Of course.
DOBBS: ... on CO2 levels.
MICHAELS: Human beings are putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But while we sit here and chat so amiably about this, nature has declared her hand on warming, unless billions and billions of dollars of climate research is wrong. These climate models -- Gavin has one, his boss has one, NASA has one -- there are about 20 of them. They have a central characteristic, which is this: They predict constant rates of warming, once warming starts.
SCHMIDT: That depends absolutely on the projection of carbon...
MICHAELS: Excuse me, can I finish?
SCHMIDT: ... dioxide that you put in. If you put in a rate of change that isn't changing very much, then you get linear outputs. Linear extrapolation is not good science, I'm sorry.
MICHAELS: Well, unfortunately the models produce linear warming with exponential increases in carbon dioxide. You know that, Gavin.
SCHMIDT: (INAUDIBLE) isn't going to be...
(CROSSTALK)
DOBBS: Let me ask you this. And it frustrates everyone who's concerned obviously about the planet, the well-being of ourselves, our children, our grandchildren and generations to come.
Let's assume that there is a problem, that whether it is man-made or natural, that these degrees of temperature are going to rise into the next century, that the sea level is going to rise, that we have a pollutant issue that is affecting not only the ozone layer but the quality of our atmosphere. Can we do anything about it?
MICHAELS: Sure.
SCHMIDT: Yes, we can. There are forward-looking companies, for instance British Petroleum, who have reduced their emissions, not only of carbon dioxide, but also of methane, with extremely cost-effective strategies, and those kinds of things can be adopted by many other companies, DuPont for instance, IBM, and national economics.
MICHAELS: Let me answer that.
DOBBS: Doctor, you get the last word. MICHAELS: OK. One of the problems on this issue is that the future requires investment in technology. And there are a lot of people out there -- I'm not saying Gavin -- who say we should raise energy prices because of global warming, so much that people will be unable to afford energy.
What will happen then is people will not have the money that is required for investment in the technologies of the future. It would have exactly the wrong effect.
I will tell you, I own a lot of stock in Honda and Toyota. There's a reason for that. Because they are very forward-looking. Now, if the government had taken my money away from me, I would not have been able to invest it, would I?
DOBBS: Well, we're delighted that you have your money and you've invested it of your own free will. I have to say, you get the last word, but it's 15 seconds' worth.
SCHMIDT: Climate change is here. Carbon dioxide will be regulated at some point in the future. Forward-looking companies, forward-looking countries are going to have to do something about that if they want to keep up with what's going to happen.
DOBBS: Gavin Schmidt, Patrick Michaels, thank you both for being here.
Still ahead, the results of our poll tonight, and a preview of what's ahead tomorrow. Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Ninety-four percent of you say the federal government should not prosecute doctors who prescribe medical marijuana.
Thanks for being with us tonight. Please join us here tomorrow. One Texas lawmaker will be here to tell us why he's trying to stop Minuteman volunteers in his state. Thousands of invasive foreign plants and animal species causing billions of dollars in damage. We'll have a special report. Please be with us. Good night from New York. "ANDERSON COOPER 360" begins right now -- Anderson.
COOPER: Lou, thanks very much.
END
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired June 6, 2005 - 18:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everybody. Tonight, radical Islamist terrorists escalating their suicide attacks in Iraq. Are those attacks escalating because of religious fervor or because of occupation of homelands by foreign forces? A leading expert joins us.
And racial violence rising in our overcrowded high schools. Tens of thousands of students are afraid to go to school. We'll have a special report tonight.
And the conflicted science of global warming. Is a global catastrophe imminent? Two leading scientists on opposite sides of the debate join us.
Our top story tonight, the rising criticism of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. Two senior Democrats, Senator Joseph Biden and former Senator John Edwards, say Dean has gone too far in his attacks on Republicans. Dean is also facing criticism for the slow pace of his fund-raising for Democrats.
Bill Schneider has the report -- Bill.
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Lou, Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean is speaking out. Nothing new about that. But this time some Democrats are speaking back.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SCHNEIDER (voice-over): Howard Dean has been saying some pretty harsh things about Republicans.
HOWARD DEAN, CHAIRMAN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: And a lot of them have never made an honest living in their lives.
SCHNEIDER: That's his job. He's the Democratic Party chairman. He's supposed to be partisan.
Right now, Democrats feel disempowered for good reason. Democrats have less power now than at any time in the past 80 years. They also feel bullied by conservatives. Democrats want a leader who will show some fight and punch the bullies in the nose.
DEAN: Democrats are now going to speak for ourselves. We're going to tell the Americans what our message is.
SCHNEIDER: But some leading Democratic politicians are distancing themselves from Dean's strident rhetoric, including two who may run for president in 2008.
SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN (D), DELAWARE: He's doesn't speak for me with that kind of rhetoric.
JOHN EDWARDS (D), FMR. VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My own view is the chairman of the DNC is not the spokesman for the Democratic Party.
SCHNEIDER: Dean is rallying the Democratic Party base. But for politicians like Biden and Edwards, that does not sound like a winning strategy. After all, the Democrats rallied their base brilliantly in 2004. They gained nine million new votes. But the Republicans gained 12 million.
The lesson of 2004 is Democrats are unlikely to win by rallying their base. Democrats need to reach out to Republican voters by presenting themselves as uniters, not dividers. That's not exactly what Dean seems to be doing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SCHNEIDER: Rallying the base is also a good way to raise money from small donors over the Internet, but it may not work too well with high-dollar donors, who are more interested in seeing a winning political strategy. This year, Lou, the Republicans have out-raised the Democrats.
DOBBS: And in these days of money and politics, that seems to be the bottom line. Bill Schneider, thank you very much.
SCHNEIDER: Sure.
DOBBS: Senators returned to work today after a weeklong recess. At the top of their agenda, the confirmation of President Bush's nominees to be federal judges. The senators will also debate the nomination of John Bolton as our next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Ed Henry reports from Capitol Hill -- Ed.
ED HENRY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good evening, Lou.
That's right, right back into the fire, the man in the middle who's taking some heat is Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. You'll remember that last month when this filibuster deal was cut, there was some question about whether his authority was questioned, whether or not he was undercut because he was left out of the loop on that deal, and then Frist lost an initial vote on John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. But Frist today basically said he feels this has been overblown.
He took to the Senate floor to kick off this new week in the Senate after the recess and said that in fact he's making progress on this -- on these nominations. And, in fact, today in Texas, Priscilla Owen was sworn into her new seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. And, in fact, this week Frist is hoping for speedy confirmation of two more of the president's judges, Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor.
Frist is also, as you mentioned, trying to bring back the nomination of Bolton. At this point it does not look like he has the 60 votes to break a filibuster, but it's clear to both sides that he probably has at least 51 votes. If there was in fact a straight up- or-down vote on Bolton, he could get it passed, and that's why Republicans are saying they want Democrats to stop the stalling. They want to have an up-or-down vote.
Today, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, though, said that in fact the person who is stalling here is President Bush, because his administration has refused to turn over more documents about Bolton's qualifications, his time over at the State Department. They want those documents.
Democrats like Reid also had a press conference led by Reid today, saying that the believe Republicans have spent far too much time on these controversial nominations, that Republicans are not spending enough time on issues like the economy, healthcare, pension reform as well. But I asked Senator Reid at this press conference about the fact that a new issue of "Rolling Stone" magazine has an interview with the senator in which the senator is asked about the fact that he recently called the president of the United States a loser. And in this interview, Senator Reid immediately told the interviewer that in fact he had also called the president a liar.
He was referring back four years ago when he said the president had lied about the Yucca Mountain situation out in Nevada. Then the interviewer said, "Well, you apologized about using the word 'loser,'" but Harry Reid in this interview said he did not apologize. He noted he had not apologized for calling the president a liar.
I asked the senator today whether or not this is going to make it more difficult to forge that kind of bipartisan compromise, if in fact he's not apologizing for calling the president a liar. Here's Senator Reid.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV), MINORITY LEADER: I know you hate to give up on that. I apologized for the "loser." I haven't for the "liar." But, you know, if -- it looks like, with all due respect to you, maybe you could come up with something else.
HENRY: But do you think it's helpful to...
REID: I've answered the question. I've answered the question.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HENRY: You can see there Senator Reid getting a little peeved at that question. It's clear the Senate has only been in session for a few hours now after this Memorial Day recess, but already some of the tension is there. There's going to be a lot of knock-down, drag-out fights over these nominations -- Lou.
DOBBS: Ed Henry from Capitol Hill. Thank you.
U.S. and North Korean officials today held their first meeting in almost a month discussing North Korea's escalating nuclear challenge. The officials met in New York, where North Korea has a diplomatic mission at the U.N. The United States wants North Korea to return to six-country talks on its nuclear program.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, SECRETARY OF STATE: We do not believe in bilateral negotiations with the North Koreans. We meet with the North Koreans in the context of the six-party talks. We believe that this is the best way to make certain that North Korea gets a consistent and coherent message from all of the members of the neighborhood that their nuclear weapons program simply has to go.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in Thailand, strongly denied press reports the Bush administration is split over its North Korea policy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, DEFENSE SECRETARY: The president has stated what the policy is. The secretary of State has stated it. And I have stated it. And it's all exactly the same. So I think that the stories that have been playing are just inaccurate and mischievous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOBBS: Rumsfeld also insists the United States has not set a deadline to bring the North Korean nuclear issue to the U.N. Security Council.
In Iraq, U.S. troops destroyed a massive bunker complex. That complex discovered west of Baghdad last week. The insurgent complex, the size of nine football fields.
Jennifer Eccleston reports from Baghdad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JENNIFER ECCLESTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The series of underground bunkers discovered by the U.S. Marines and Iraqi forces are now destroyed. It was part of an ongoing anti-insurgency operation in Anbar province, a center of the Sunni Arab resistance.
Now, the Marines and Iraqi soldiers uncovered this elaborate series of bunkers with large stores of heavy weapons, including rockets and mortars, ammunition and supplies. It was located in the town of Karma, not far from the troubled city of Fallujah.
The bunker was actually found on Thursday, one of a dozen weapons caches uncovered in the area in recent days. No insurgents were actually in the compound at the time, but it was likely, according to Marines, used recently, because there was fresh food in a kitchen.
It had a fairly comfortable layout with a furnished living quarters, two showers and a functioning air-conditioner. The bunkers were built into an old rock quarry and totaled roughly a half a million square feet, making it, according to the Marine spokesman, one of the largest underground insurgent hideouts discovered in at least the last year.
Now, it's not clear whether the compound dated back to the era of Saddam Hussein or whether it was recently constructed by the insurgents. But again, that bunker has now been destroyed.
Jennifer Eccleston, CNN, Baghdad.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: Still ahead, Arabs and Jews on a violent clash at one of the Holy Land's most important religious sites. We'll have that report.
And racial violence in our overcrowded high schools is rising. We'll have a special report from Los Angeles next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Violent clashes today between Israeli police and Palestinians at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Israeli police threw stun grenades to disperse hundreds of Palestinians who were throwing rocks at Jewish visitors to the site. Those visitors took place -- take -- were there as Israelis were celebrating the capture of East Jerusalem 40 years ago. Two Israelis were injured, one Palestinian arrested.
A bitter enemy of Israel has won a decisive election in southern Lebanon. The radical Islamist group Hezbollah and its allies won all 23 parliamentary seats in the south. Lebanon is holding elections region by region over four weekends until June 19. The United States and Israel say Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that must disarm immediately.
Hezbollah's main sponsor, Syrian President Bashar Assad, today declared foreigners are trying to destroy the Arab identity. Assad made his declaration at the opening of his Ba'ath Party Congress in Damascus. Syria faces rising U.S. pressure over its failure to end its support of insurgents and terrorists in Iraq.
Brent Sadler reports from Damascus.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRENT SADLER, CNN SR. INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, takes a bow center stage in Damascus. Popular among his ruling Ba'ath Party elite, unpopular with dissidents at home and critics abroad, led by the United States. But President Assad told delegates to ignore outside pressure in drafting reforms, warning that foreign-inspired political change in the region is an assault on Arab identity.
BASHAR AL-ASSAD, SYRIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): This leads in the end to the cultural, political and moral collapse of the Arab individual and his ultimate defeat, even without a fight.
SADLER: Arabs, he urged, should rally as one.
AL-ASSAD (through translator): We must face this situation with greater awareness, responsibility and defiance.
SADLER (on camera): U.S. officials warn that Syria is not immune to democratic changes taking shape in the region. The same U.S. officials whose policy helped topple Iraq's ruling Ba'athists, Syria's one-time ideological twin.
(voice-over): But Syria, say officials here, is not Iraq, and President Assad is no Saddam Hussein. And neighboring Iraq, they complain, is but the latest American action to undermine Arab identity and unity.
BOUTHAIN SHABAAN, BA'ATH CONGRESS SPOKESWOMAN: The U.S. policy in the region for the last few years, in my opinion, has been targeting this Arab identity by trying to turn the Arab world into ethnicities, religions and smaller groups. Do we want to be Sunni and Shi'ite and the Christians, or do we want to be Arabs?
SADLER: President Assad is signaling much hoped-for economic and political reforms at home. But Syria's international relations, especially with the U.S., may be set in stone.
JOSHUA LANDIS, SYRIACOMMENT.COM: Syria is not changing direction in any dramatic way. He said we're sticking by our Arabism and we're sticking by our steadfast position against foreign conspiracies. He's not going to fall in line with George Bush.
SADLER: Refusing to jettison, it seems, policies that Syria's long-lasting regime has lived and ruled by.
Brent Sadler, CNN, Damascus.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: Coming up next, illegal immigration is adding dramatically to already severe problems in our overcrowded high schools. Racial violence is rising; tens of thousands of students are afraid to go to school. Our special report coming up.
And my guests tonight, the parents of a deputy sheriff killed by an illegal alien who fled to Mexico. Why these parents want the United States to demand the extradition of illegal alien criminals.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(JOINED IN PROGRESS) (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Students are scared. Thousands are staying home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People are not coming to school tomorrow. Not a lot of people are coming because they're scared. Like me, myself, I'm not going to come.
WIAN: Many blame the changing demographics of inner city schools like Jefferson. It used to be largely African-American, a source of pride for the black community. But after two decades of nearly unchecked illegal immigration and rapid birthrates, Jefferson is now 92 percent Latino, just 7 percent black. Still, that's not the main problem, says UCLA education professor John Rogers.
JOHN ROGERS, UCLA EDUCATION PROFESSOR: There's a history of black and brown kids getting along and going to school together in South L.A. at Jefferson High School. The school is dramatically overcrowded. There's over 3,800 students at Jefferson now, which is more than double what there were 25 years ago.
WIAN: The school is bursting with more than four times as many students per acre than the state recommends. It also has a teacher shortage. A third of the teachers it does have lack proper state credentials.
The result, fewer than a third of its students graduate. Only one in eight are eligible for a state college. L.A. School Superintendent Roy Romer says Californians have failed to make education funding a priority.
ROY ROMER, SUPERINTENDENT, L.A. UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT: They need to invest in their young. And they're not doing it adequately. You've got to have better skills in language and math and in science. And this state is not yet doing it. They need a clarion call to action.
WIAN: If scenes like this are not a clear enough call, it's hard to imagine what would be.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WIAN: Lack of education resources is not just an inner city problem in California. Every single school district in Los Angeles County spends less than the national average per pupil. And that includes wealthy districts like Malibu and Beverly Hills -- Lou.
DOBBS: Casey, thank you very much. Casey Wian reporting from Los Angeles.
Violence and the threat of violence are also rising in the American workplace. A new study finds the loss of millions of American jobs, millions of them, to cheap foreign labor markets is behind much of the rage.
Bill Tucker reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL TUCKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Scenes like this from a shooting at Jeep's Toledo, Ohio, plant by a disgruntled employee earlier this year are all too familiar. An angry employee unleashes that wrath in the workplace.
Not every unhappy employee commits murder and suicide, but there is an alarming increase in violence in the workplace. A survey by more than 600 human resources and security executives found 82 percent reported an increase in workplace violence in the last two years. The reasons are basic.
DOUG KANE, RISK CONTROL STRATEGIES: We've seen a lot of companies being downsized over the last several years. As a result of that, they're turning to off-shoring and outsourcing a lot of their activities. As a result of that, some of the employees now are tasked with training their replacements, which, again, creates somewhat of a hostile work environment.
TUCKER: Fifty-eight percent of those responding to the survey by Risk Control Strategies say employees have threatened to assault or kill senior managers. It's the uncertainties of the job place, compounded with economic pressures, that often push employees over the edge. The new bankruptcy bill which allows wages to be garnished is expected to worsen the problem.
LARRY CHAVEZ, CRITICAL INCIDENT ASSOCIATES: With the downturn in the economy, and with the loss of jobs on a relatively massive scale, it's not going to take much more beyond that to have someone thinking negative thoughts about their organization.
TUCKER: Bottom line for employees, they take their work very personally, while their employers forget they're people and treat them as a line item in the budget.
(on camera): But a separate and soon-to-be-released survey showing a decline in outsourcing trends found that employee backlash is a major concern among companies considering outsourcing. Eighty- eight percent said they're more concerned about employee backlash than they are about severance costs or customer reaction.
Bill Tucker, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
DOBBS: The Supreme Court today ruled federal authorities can prosecute those who use marijuana for medical purposes. By a 6-3 vote, the high court ruled 10 state laws allowing medical marijuana use do not protect users from the federal ban against marijuana. The court ruled that the Constitution allows federal regulation of home- grown marijuana as interstate commerce. Lawyers for the two women who filed that appeal argued unsuccessfully that medical marijuana is neither bought nor sold and should not be considered commerce. That brings us to the subject of our poll tonight. Do you believe the federal government should prosecute doctors who prescribe medical marijuana, yes or no? Cast your vote, please, at LouDobbs.com. Results coming up later in the broadcast.
Pope Benedict XVI today gave his harshest rebuke yet of gay marriage in his six-week-old papacy. The pontiff said same-sex unions are, in his words, expressions of anarchic freedom that threaten the family. The pope also blasted divorce and unmarried heterosexual couples who live together.
The pope's words come on the same day that a conservative Christian group suspended its boycott of the Ford Motor Company. The American Family Association called for the boycott just last week in protest of Ford's policy giving benefits to same-sex couples.
Today, the AFA said it has met with Ford dealers. They have promised, they said, to talk with Ford officials about the policy. The AFA says it will give the dealer six months before it decides whether to reinstate the boycott.
In New York, actor Russell Crowe, who was promoting his new movie about boxing, was arrested today for assault. The concierge at the hotel where Crowe was staying says the actor threw a telephone at him. Crowe's publicist said Crowe was frustrated after he had tried and failed to get a hotel worker's help in calling his wife in Australia.
Crowe was charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon. The weapon in this case, the telephone. Crowe was released on his own recognizance and could face up to four years in jail.
Coming up, why one American family says the policies of the Mexican government actually give criminals an incentive to kill. The family is fighting to change those policies, and they will be our guests here next.
Also ahead, the real motive behind radical Islamist terrorism. I'll be talking with the author who says terrorism is rarely about religion.
And global warming, is it catastrophe or simply nature? Two of the world's leading authorities on climate change debate the issue with me here next.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff David March was shot and killed at close range during a routine traffic stop in April of 2002. The prime suspect in the shooting is an illegal alien named Armando Garcia. He was convicted of other crimes in this country, and he was deported from the United States three times.
Investigators don't know the whereabouts of Garcia, but the L.A. County Sheriff's Office believes he escaped to Mexico. Now the family of Deputy Sheriff David March is fighting to change the U.S. extradition treaty with Mexico so that fugitives who flee to Mexico can be brought to justice in the United States.
Joining me now are John and Barbara March. They're the parents of Deputy Sheriff David March.
We thank you both for being here tonight.
BARBARA MARCH, DAVID MARCH'S MOTHER: Hello, Lou.
JOHN MARCH, DAVID MARCH'S FATHER: Thank you, Lou.
DOBBS: Let me ask you first, have the L.A. County sheriff's deputies, have they been as aggressive as you would like in this investigation?
J. MARCH: Absolutely. Sheriff Lee Baca and his guys have not only done everything they could, but they've been so supportive of our family and keeping us posted in what's going on. They've been just terrific.
DOBBS: And the federal authorities, have they been helpful as well?
B. MARCH: Well, the problem that we have locally is a federal problem as far as allowing Mexico to abandon the treaty and there's no consequences.
DOBBS: The treaty is the extradition treaty...
B. MARCH: Yes.
DOBBS: ... of 1978. I think many people would be surprised that that treaty has been modified, if you will, by the government of Mexico because of its concerns about U.S. punishment for serious violent crime. Could you explain to us how that treaty has been amended by one side, and permitted?
B. MARCH: Go ahead.
J. MARCH: It was actually amended twice. First, the treaty was supposed to be the mutual extradition of prisoners. Then the Mexican government decided that the death penalty was cruel and unusual. And then in 2002, they decided that even life in prison without parole was cruel and unusual punishment. And so they've just basically done -- have done what they pleased. In the meantime, we're just firmly of the belief that if someone commits a crime in this country, they should be punished by our laws.
DOBBS: Mrs. March, the fact that that treaty has been amended, do you believe it actually poses an incentive to kill in this country?
B. MARCH: Well, absolutely. And this is what happened to our son. He was shot and knocked down with the first bullet, which went under his arm, through the bullet -- the armhole in the bulletproof vest. But then to make sure that Dave died, Armando Garcia had to come back and execute him with a bullet to the head.
Therefore, when he would escape the American border, he knew obviously that he would not be extradited for murder.
DOBBS: Mr. March, your wife says, with very powerful directness, that Armando Garcia killed your son. Of course, that's the allegation. What makes you think it is Armando Garcia?
J. MARCH: Well, all I can say is that both the sheriff's department and the police department feel that they have an absolute solid case and proof that it was Armando Garcia. We're sure that it's Armando Garcia. And we have become good friends with Steve Cooley and Lee Baca -- that's our D.A. and our sheriff -- and they're pretty straight with us.
B. MARCH: The evidence points this way, put it that way.
DOBBS: It points that way. And Mrs. March, is it your sense that the Mexican federal officials, as well as provincial officials, are being as cooperative and helpful and vigorous in their investigation, searching for Armando Garcia, as they should be?
B. MARCH: Absolutely not. They are protecting him, giving him safe haven in Mexico, as with many other killers and felons here in the United States that belong back here for trial.
J. MARCH: Three thousand, Lou. The L.A. County DA feels there's 3,000 families that are in pain over the loss of a loved one whose perpetrator of the crime has gone back across the border. Now, that's of 9/11 proportions.
B. MARCH: Lou, also, what I'd like to point out is that our U.S. attorney's office is not doing its job. The law states that we can prosecute people from other countries who have committed a crime, and who have returned to the United States after deportation. We're not doing that.
DOBBS: I know...
B. MARCH: Apparently, we do not have the money for this. However, we do seem to have the money to bring in immigrants that are not of legal status, and we seem to be able to take care of these people, but we do not have the money to prosecute these killers.
DOBBS: Barbara March, John March, we thank you both for being here. I know this is painful for you, in the most personal of ways. And it is difficult for all of us who are trying to deal with the issue of border security, and the relationship with a government in Mexico that is -- the best way it can be put, not cooperative. We hope, with you, I'm sure everyone watching this broadcast is hoping fervently that the killer of your son is brought to justice, and soon.
J. MARCH: People need to get involved, Lou. And the initiative coming up in California for the California Border Patrol, and the bringing back the Patriot Act, and the anchor baby issue, all these things are coming up in Congress, and people need to get in touch with their Congresspeople.
DOBBS: Here, here. John and Barbara March, thank you both for being here.
B. MARCH: Thank you, Lou.
J. MARCH: Thank you, Lou.
DOBBS: Mexico's refusal to extradite criminal suspects facing the death penalty or life in prison in this country is now at the center of a Denver murder investigation. Mexican officials arrested an illegal alien suspected of killing a Denver police detective. Raul Garcia Gomez was arrested in Mexico after a month-long international manhunt. Garcia Gomez allegedly shot and killed Denver Police Detective Donald Young in the back, shot him several times, and wounded Detective John Bishop. The Denver district attorney is negotiating now with the Mexican federal government to have Garcia Gomez extradited back to the United States to stand trial. The odds, however, are against the district attorney in this case, for the reasons that you have already heard, because in this case, as in others, the Mexican government refuses to extradite any suspect who might face the death penalty or life in prison without parole for crimes committed in the United States.
Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado wants President Bush to negotiate -- renegotiate our extradition treaty with Mexico. Tancredo says the treaty interferes with the judicial system in the United States, and in fact, has encouraged violent criminals to flee to Mexico in order to avoid punishment in this country. Congressman Tancredo will introduce an amendment this week to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for 2006. That amendment urging President Bush to renegotiate the extradition treaty with Mexico, so that suspects facing the death penalty or life in prison will face justice in the United States.
There are nearly half-a-million illegal aliens at large in this country who have been ordered deported, but who have not been. Of those, as many as 85,000 have been convicted of serious crimes other than their illegal status. There are some 2,000 federal Border Patrol agents who are dedicated to enforcing immigration laws within our borders. That means by simple math that our Border Patrol agents are outnumbered by fugitive criminal aliens by 225 to 1.
Coming up next, the author of a new book says this country must immediately gain control of our porous borders in order to fight radical Islamist terrorism. He's our guest next.
And then scientists divided on the causes, the effects of global warming. We'll have a special report, and two of the world's leading authorities in climate change join us to debate the issue. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: My next guest says the United States must immediately secure our nation's borders in order to prevent another terrorist attack in this country. Robert Pape says completing a partial border fence along our 2,000-mile border with Mexico would cost, by his estimate, about $6 billion. That, he says, is the same as paying for U.S. military operations in Iraq for just about a month.
Robert Pape is the author of "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism." For the book, he compiled the first data base of every suicide attack in the world since 1980. Robert Pape is associate professor of political science at the University of Chicago and joins us here in New York tonight. Good to have you with us.
ROBERT PAPE, AUTHOR: Thank you for having me.
DOBBS: Let's begin first with your thesis that -- and I must say, supported by impressive data. Most of us think of these suicide bombers as, first, religious zealots who are simply trying to reach heaven through their martyrdom. You see it quite differently.
PAPE: Well, I do now. But I have to say, that before I collected the data, I also thought it was mainly driven by religion. But the facts are, when we collect data from all around the world, and we see all the suicide terrorist attacks that have occurred all around the world since 1980, this wealth of new information creates a new picture. You see, suicide terrorism is not as closely associated with Islamic fundamentalism as many people think.
DOBBS: Now, the first -- most people think of the radical Islamist suicide bomber with a bomber vest, the dynamite, the explosives wrapped around them. But that wasn't even an idea of a radical Islamist terrorist.
PAPE: Exactly right. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that many of your listeners probably haven't heard from. It's the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, which is a Marxist group that's completely secular, that draws from Hindu families from the Tamil regions of the country. The secular Hindu Tamil Tigers have done more suicide terrorist attacks than Hamas, and they invented the famous suicide vest for their suicide assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. The Palestinians got the idea of the suicide vest from the Tamil Tigers.
DOBBS: And that idea is also attached to the religious drive of these radical Islamists, particularly obviously in Iraq, where we're now focused. You also put forth some startling numbers. In terms of the suicide attacks that have occurred over the course of the first attacks against Saddam Hussein, do we have those statistics up? And if not, I'll just -- we'll just -- do we have those? Let's take a look at those. The nationality of --
PAPE: These are actually al Qaeda.
DOBBS: -- of al Qaeda suicide attackers, their origins. I think many people would not be surprised, given what has transpired in this country on September 11th, to find that most are from Saudi Arabia, followed by Morocco. These are -- this is extraordinary. Why that breakdown in your judgment? PAPE: What the vast majority of suicide terrorist attacks have in common is not religion, but a clear secular strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. Al Qaeda fits this pattern, not perfectly, but quite strongly. You see, what that table shows is that overwhelmingly, al Qaeda suicide terrorists, the 71 who actually died to fulfill Osama bin Laden's attacks since 1995, come overwhelmingly from Sunni countries where we've stationed tens of thousands of American combat forces, and actually, quite few from the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran. If you look at that chart, you'll see that Iran -- an Islamic fundamentalist country with 70 million people, three times the population of Saudi Arabia, three times the population of Iraq, has never produced a single al Qaeda suicide terrorist.
DOBBS: And the reason for that you posit is that there is no occupation of Iranian...
PAPE: There's no occupation and no threat of occupation. Iran is not just simply a big state. It's a big state with a fairly large army, and an army that hasn't been defeated by a previous war, as Iraq was, or under American heavy-duty economic sanctions for a long period of time.
DOBBS: Implications for your studies U.S. policy in the Iraq, in the Middle East going forward?
PAPE: So long as tens of thousands of American combat troops remain in the Persian Gulf, we should expect anti-American suicide terrorism to continue. In Iraq, before America's invasion in March 2003, there was not a single suicide terrorist attack in Iraq's history. Since then, it's been growing, and will likely continue to grow as long as our forces are there.
DOBBS: The economics that you are that you are recommending in terms of putting absolute border security for our southern border, our northern border, for our ports, the economics are overwhelmingly in favor of your recommendation?
PAPE: Absolutely. We should recognize that even if we reverse policy and begin to withdraw forces from the Persian Gulf, that's going to take years to turn that supertanker around. As a result, we need to expect that anti-American suicide terrorism is going to grow. And toughening border security, especially with a fence, much like the fence that the Israelis have built on the West Bank, would be an excellent investment.
DOBBS: Robert Pape. The book is, "Dying to Win." Intriguing and thought-provoking. We thank you for being with us.
PAPE: Thank you for having me.
DOBBS: Coming up at the top of the hour here on CNN, "ANDERSON COOPER 360." Anderson Cooper joins us to tell us what's ahead. Anderson? ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah, Lou, about 15 minutes from now, the jury is out. Michael Jackson's hospitalized over the weekend. Now waits at Neverland for a verdict. Are his hospital visits for real, or all part of the Michael Jackson show? We'll take a look at that.
Also, a massive search underway in Aruba for a missing American student. We'll have the latest on the investigation.
And if you're trying to lose weight, we talk to a doctor who shed hundreds of pounds himself. He did it with protein shakes and baseball. A surprising diet. We'll explain at the top of the hour. Lou.
DOBBS: Looking forward to it, Anderson. Thank you.
Still ahead here tonight, is global warming an unavoidable catastrophe or is it nature at work? We'll have a special report. Two leading authorities on climate change join us to debate the matter. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Tonight the debate over global warming. A new government report finds that coastal regions of Louisiana and Texas are now sinking into the Gulf of Mexico at a much faster rate than geologists had previously thought. Rising temperatures are melting ice caps, or are they? We know global climate change is happening. What we don't know is why. Are fossil fuels to blame, or is this part of a cyclical, normal planetary pattern? How serious is this problem, and can we poor human beings do anything at all about it? Christine Romans has our report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The worst scenarios of global warming: floods, dangerous thunderstorms and hurricanes, heat waves and a deadly rise in sea level.
DAN LASHOF, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL: The pace of global warming that we expect over the next century, if we don't curb the pollution that is responsible, is faster than anything humans have experienced in recorded civilization, quite literally.
ROMANS: The polar ice caps are contracting at a rate of 9 percent each decade. Glaciers and land-based ice sheets are melting into the sea. And as a result, the consensus has sea levels rising up to three feet by the end of this century. That would swamp America's low-lying coastal areas, push saltwater deep into fresh water river valleys, and according to the Environmental Protection Agency, flood 22,000 square miles along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, drenching Louisiana, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.
As the sea rises by one to three feet, temperatures will climb by five to 10 degrees.
JAMES MCCARTHY, PROFESSOR, HARVARD UNIV.: People living anywhere in the world will likely experience more extremes in temperature.
ROMANS: He calls Europe's 2003 heat wave that killed 20,000 people a foreshadowing of how unprepared we are for global warming. Yet other scientists call these forecasts alarmist, and say rising temperatures are normal, because we're in an interglacial period.
MYRON EBELL, COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: We're probably towards the end of it. And the sea levels will keep rising until the next ice age begins.
So it's something we have to adapt to, but it happens very slowly. And it's not anything that human beings haven't had to deal with in the past.
ROMANS: And recent mapping shows most of the Antarctic continent may actually be cooling down.
JOHN CHRISTY, PROFESSOR, UNIV. OF ALABAMA, HUNTSVILLE: This is one thing everyone should understand: The climate is always changing. No one has a legal right to a static climate.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: Global warming doubters say the biggest climate catalysts are natural variations conflicting cycles lasting decades, centuries, millennia. Mother Nature is clearly vicious. The question is, does man make it worse?
DOBBS: And can man make it better?
ROMANS: Exactly.
DOBBS: Christine, thanks very much.
For more now on the issue of global climate change, global warming and what can be done, if anything, about it all, I am joined by two leading experts with divergent views. Here in New York, I am joined by Gavin Schmidt, scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He says the global climate crisis is serious. He says it is man-made, and one that we must address immediately.
In Washington, D.C., Patrick Michaels, professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, author of the book "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming." He says the threat of global warming has been grossly exaggerated.
Thank you both for being here. Let me begin, if I may, with you, Gavin.
GAVIN SCHMIDT, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: Certainly.
DOBBS: Is there any reason that, with the best minds in the world focused on this issue, that we can't say with conviction and absolute scientific study based on fact, that the ice caps are either melting or that they're growing? SCHMIDT: The ice caps are melting or growing, depending on where you look. The most important things, though, are to focus on what we do know, where are both me and Patrick Michaels in agreement. We're in agreement that the amount of carbon dioxide has increased by 30 percent over pre-industrial levels over the last 100 years. We're in agreement that the world has warmed by about .7 of a degree over the last 100 years. We are in agreement that that is to a large extent due to man-made factors, in particular, carbon dioxide and methane.
DOBBS: Let me turn to you, Patrick. These are alarming statistics. But let me begin precisely as I did with Gavin, why can't the best scientific minds in the world come to conclusions about the totality of impact? Let's start with the idea of -- let me finish -- the snow pack and the size, diminishing or otherwise, of glaciers in Antarctica and the Arctic?
PATRICK MICHAELS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Well, southern Greenland is losing ice, but the temperature's going down where it's losing ice. Antarctica is gaining ice. The temperature is going down in Antarctica.
And by the way, Gavin and I are in great agreement about one other thing he didn't mention, which is it's not going to warm all that much in the policy-foreseeable future. His boss, James Hanson, says, if we stay on the current policy trajectories that we're on, we'll get about three-quarters of a degree of warming in the next 50 years, which is certainly a modest amount.
If you take our climate models, they all predict warmings of different slopes, and adjust them with reality, what you get is the same number, three-quarters of a degree.
SCHMIDT: I'm going to have to (INAUDIBLE).
MICHAELS: What that means, what that means, very importantly, is that this issue is not and should not be presented in the stark and dire terms. There's a lot of time for investment in future technologies.
DOBBS: Let me stop you there, if I may, Patrick. Gavin wanted to say something in the midst of this statement of agreement.
SCHMIDT: OK. We can state our agreements a little bit too strongly. Our best models, based on projections of what's going to happen to greenhouse gases in the future, give temperature rises of between .9 and another degree, to maybe two degrees by 2050. Most of that uncertainty is due to what the trajectory of carbon dioxide is going to be like. And that's really a function of the economics and technology, things that as current scientists, we really don't have a good handle on.
(CROSSTALK)
DOBBS: That's what bothers me about, frankly, gentlemen, from both your perspectives. You don't have a good handle on it.
SCHMIDT: The economics.
DOBBS: The economics. But also, the source of that carbon dioxide. You know what it is. We're a world of 6 billion people. I mean, Patrick, the idea that we do nothing, forgive me, just as a layman here, but 6 billion people on this planet, projected to reach 9 by the end of this century, that has to have a huge impact...
MICHAELS: Of course.
DOBBS: ... on CO2 levels.
MICHAELS: Human beings are putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But while we sit here and chat so amiably about this, nature has declared her hand on warming, unless billions and billions of dollars of climate research is wrong. These climate models -- Gavin has one, his boss has one, NASA has one -- there are about 20 of them. They have a central characteristic, which is this: They predict constant rates of warming, once warming starts.
SCHMIDT: That depends absolutely on the projection of carbon...
MICHAELS: Excuse me, can I finish?
SCHMIDT: ... dioxide that you put in. If you put in a rate of change that isn't changing very much, then you get linear outputs. Linear extrapolation is not good science, I'm sorry.
MICHAELS: Well, unfortunately the models produce linear warming with exponential increases in carbon dioxide. You know that, Gavin.
SCHMIDT: (INAUDIBLE) isn't going to be...
(CROSSTALK)
DOBBS: Let me ask you this. And it frustrates everyone who's concerned obviously about the planet, the well-being of ourselves, our children, our grandchildren and generations to come.
Let's assume that there is a problem, that whether it is man-made or natural, that these degrees of temperature are going to rise into the next century, that the sea level is going to rise, that we have a pollutant issue that is affecting not only the ozone layer but the quality of our atmosphere. Can we do anything about it?
MICHAELS: Sure.
SCHMIDT: Yes, we can. There are forward-looking companies, for instance British Petroleum, who have reduced their emissions, not only of carbon dioxide, but also of methane, with extremely cost-effective strategies, and those kinds of things can be adopted by many other companies, DuPont for instance, IBM, and national economics.
MICHAELS: Let me answer that.
DOBBS: Doctor, you get the last word. MICHAELS: OK. One of the problems on this issue is that the future requires investment in technology. And there are a lot of people out there -- I'm not saying Gavin -- who say we should raise energy prices because of global warming, so much that people will be unable to afford energy.
What will happen then is people will not have the money that is required for investment in the technologies of the future. It would have exactly the wrong effect.
I will tell you, I own a lot of stock in Honda and Toyota. There's a reason for that. Because they are very forward-looking. Now, if the government had taken my money away from me, I would not have been able to invest it, would I?
DOBBS: Well, we're delighted that you have your money and you've invested it of your own free will. I have to say, you get the last word, but it's 15 seconds' worth.
SCHMIDT: Climate change is here. Carbon dioxide will be regulated at some point in the future. Forward-looking companies, forward-looking countries are going to have to do something about that if they want to keep up with what's going to happen.
DOBBS: Gavin Schmidt, Patrick Michaels, thank you both for being here.
Still ahead, the results of our poll tonight, and a preview of what's ahead tomorrow. Please stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: Ninety-four percent of you say the federal government should not prosecute doctors who prescribe medical marijuana.
Thanks for being with us tonight. Please join us here tomorrow. One Texas lawmaker will be here to tell us why he's trying to stop Minuteman volunteers in his state. Thousands of invasive foreign plants and animal species causing billions of dollars in damage. We'll have a special report. Please be with us. Good night from New York. "ANDERSON COOPER 360" begins right now -- Anderson.
COOPER: Lou, thanks very much.
END
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