by Judith Curry
Mother Jones has an article entitled “CIA’s Weather Underground.” Its closing sentence:
In this political climate, it’s no wonder the CIA declined to discuss its global-warming research for this article. For the time being, the climate spooks have gone underground.
Intellibriefs has an article entitled “The CIA has a Climate Program – And It Shouldn’t Be Secret.” Some excerpts:
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Intelligence work and climate science have a lot in common. They both involve grappling with uncertainty, trying to make sense of a signal amid the noise of ambient data and preparing to fight threats to country. So it makes sense that in 2009 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) opened the Center on Climate Change and National Security, a place where Langley analysts could look at the latest science on climate change and view it through the prism of national and international security. But as Charles Mead and Annie Snider reported in a piece for McClatchy earlier this year, having government spooks keep an eye on climate change has been politically controversial from the beginning.
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The problem is that such the CIA’s environmental intelligence gathering has little value if it’s not being shared—not a single document has been issued, and the agency insists on classifying much of its material classified. And that secrecy means the agency itself, by virtue of its isolation, is missing out on the latest science. That’s the conclusion of a new report (PDF) from the Defense Science Board, which urged the CIA to get beyond the traditional culture of secrecy and open up on its global warming assessments. The board even recommends the establishment of a new intelligence agency that can study the security impacts of climate change, but do so in an open and unclassified way, “cooperating with other domestic and international intelligence efforts.”
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The Defense Science Board has issued a new report entitled “Trends and Implications of Climate Change for National and International Security.” Excerpts from the Executive Summary of the report:
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This report describes observable climate change and its consequences. It does not attempt to address the complex and controversial set of causes, nor does it offer recommendations on the possibility of changing the pace or scope of climate change. Instead, the focus is on the need to manage consequences.
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This report uses data and projections from a wide variety of sources to discuss trends and consequences. While this data comes from credible sources, climate information systems and climate modeling fidelity leave room for wide variances in projections. Hence, while the historical and recent trends seem clear, and consequences are visible in many parts of the world today, projections for future rates of change and impacts are far less clear.
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Currently no coherent, integrated climate information system capable of generating reliable, sustained, and actionable climate data and projections exists. [T]he majority of observational assets and many of the modeling assets are intended primarily for exploratory science rather than for supporting operational, long-term climate assessments.
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The plethora of climate models present their own risk management challenges. Some of the models purport to provide highly accurate, long-term predictions (forty to one hundred years). For these predictions, there is a need for validation and verification standards. Also needed are clear uncertainty bounds and attention to the unpredictable variables that impact climate in the near-term. Few of the models purport to provide accurate predictions that cover the planning time frame typical of most government activity.
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Given the need for comprehensive global data to understand current conditions and make better predictions about future changes, there is a need for a comprehensive approach to space-based systems and systems operating in other domains.
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The long-term trends in the release of the variety of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere are complex and controversial. Further, the prospects for significantly changing those trends are equally complex and controversial but are not central to the purpose of this report.
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Climate change is likely to have the greatest impact on security through its indrect effects on conflict and vulnerability. Many developing countries are unable to provide basic services and improvements, much less cope with repeated, sudden onset shocks and accumulating, slow onset stresses.
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The single greatest direct driver of impact on the human habitat is water–too much or too little.
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The United States has neither the resources nor the influence for an open-ended commitment to addressing the world’s challenges related to the consequences of climate change. The United States does have a vital interest in promoting stability in areas of strategic interest. Adaptation will inevitably include more effective water management, population migration, changes in agricultural practices and approaches to dealing with hydrometeorological disasters resulting from extreme changes in weather patterns. The effectiveness of adaptation will have significant national and international security implications.
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The United States will need to collaborate with the political, economic, and military leadership in these regions to develop the needed expertise in civil engineering, hyrology, energy, agriculture, land use and infrastructure planning. The long-term stability of these regions will depend on progress in all of these activities, even with no further climate change.
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The Department of Defense has demonstrated capabilities to respond to natural disasters. Much of this experience is applicable to dealing with the near-term effects of climate change. Still, there is a major difference. The traditional objective is disaster relief is a return, as quickly and as practical, to the condition of life as it existed before the disaster. Instead, near-term solutions need to be on the path to adaptation.
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JC comment: The members of the Task Force are from the private sector, and government agencies (DOD, State, CIA), with two members from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory: none from universities, and no climate scientists. Among the people that provided presentations to the Task Force, I only identify two associated with the climate science community: Chester Koblinsky and Kenneth Verosub. My point in highlighting this is that this assessment is rather different from the other climate impact assessment reports that have been prepared by U.S. government agencies and the NAS/NRC. I think this assessment is particularly valuable in that it is an independent, outside look at the climate change situation. This particular assessment considers climate change (regardless of cause) as a practical problem, rather than as a political issue.