[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
NATIONAL SECURITY IMPLICATIONS OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
before the
SELECT COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
AND GLOBAL WARMING
and
SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT, PERMANENT SELECT
COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JUNE 25, 2008
__________
Serial No. 110-41
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on
Energy Independence and Global Warming
globalwarming.house.gov
----------
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SELECT COMMITTEE ON ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
AND GLOBAL WARMING
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts, Chairman
EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr.,
JAY INSLEE, Washington Wisconsin, Ranking Member
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona
HILDA L. SOLIS, California GREG WALDEN, Oregon
STEPHANIE HERSETH SANDLIN, CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
South Dakota JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma
EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
JOHN J. HALL, New York
JERRY McNERNEY, California
------
Professional Staff
Gerard J. Waldron, Staff Director
Aliya Brodsky, Chief Clerk
Thomas Weimer, Minority Staff Director
------
PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
SILVESTRE REYES, Texas, Chairman
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan
ROBERT E. (BUD) CRAMER, Alabama TERRY EVERETT, Alabama
ANNA G. ESHOO, California ELTON GALLEGLY, California
RUSH D. HOLT, New Jersey HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico
C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland MAC THORNBERRY, Texas
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
MIKE THOMPSON, California TODD TIAHRT, Kansas
JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois MIKE ROGERS, Michigan
JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island DARRELL E. ISSA, California
PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania
ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
Nancy Pelosi, California, Speaker, Ex Officio Member
John A. Boehner, Ohio, Minority Leader, Ex Officio Member
Michael Delaney, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Hon. Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress from the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, opening statement............... 1
Prepared statement........................................... 4
Hon. Silvestre Reyes, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Texas, opening statement.................................... 6
Hon. Anna Eshoo, a Representative in Congress from the State of
California, opening statement.................................. 6
Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., a Representative in Congress
from the State of Wisconsin, opening statement................. 8
Hon. Darrell Edward Issa, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, opening statement......................... 9
Witnesses
Panel I
Thomas Fingar, Deputy Director of National Intelligence for
Analysis, Chairman, National Intelligence Council.............. 12
Prepared Statement........................................... 15
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Director, Office of Intelligence and
Counterintelligence, U.S. Department of Energy................. 12
Panel II
Rt. Hon. Margaret Beckett Mp, Former Foreign Secretary, United
Kingdom........................................................ 58
Prepared Statement........................................... 60
Answers to submitted questions............................... 164
Vice Admiral Paul G. Gaffney (Ret.), President, Monmouth
University, West Long Branch, New Jersey....................... 68
Prepared Statement........................................... 106
Answers to submitted questions............................... 171
Lee Lane, Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute......... 114
Prepared Statement........................................... 116
Marlo Lewis, Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute..... 126
Prepared Statement........................................... 128
Dr. Kent Hughes Butts, Professor, Political Military Strategy,
Center for Strategic Leadership, U.S. Army War College......... 153
Prepared Statement........................................... 155
JOINT HEARING ON NATIONAL SECURITY IMPLICATIONS OF GLOBAL CLIMATE
CHANGE
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2008
House of Representatives, Select Committee on
Energy Independence and Global Warming, Joint
with the Subcommittee on Intelligence,
Community Management, Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence,
Washington, DC.
The committees met, pursuant to call, at 9:40 a.m., in Room
210, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Edward J. Markey
[chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and
Global Warming] presiding.
Present from the Select Committee on Energy Independence
and Global Warming: Representatives Markey, Blumenauer, Inslee,
Herseth Sandlin, Cleaver, Hall, McNerney, Sensenbrenner, and
Walden.
Present from the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Subcommittee on Intelligence Community Management:
Representatives Reyes, Eshoo, Thompson, Murphy, Hoekstra,
Tiahrt, and Issa.
Staff present: Ana Unruh Cohen.
The Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all so much
for being here at a joint hearing of the Select Committee on
Energy Independence and Global Warming and the Select Committee
on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Intelligence Community
Management.
I want to thank Chairman Reyes and Chairwoman Eshoo,
Ranking Member Issa and the rest of the members of the
Subcommittee on Intelligence Community Management for joining
us today for this important hearing, and Mr. Sensenbrenner, the
ranking member of the Select Committee on Global Warming, and
our members as well.
We find ourselves at a critical moment in history. The
impacts of our altered atmosphere from the burning of fossil
fuels are beginning to manifest themselves in the United States
and around the world. Our response to this challenge can be to
either unleash a technology revolution that will enhance our
national economic and environmental security or to burden the
planet with climactic catastrophe.
Whether it is floods in Iowa, cyclones in Burma, or
drought, starvation and genocide in Darfur, we know that
environmental threats underpin many global conflicts and
crises, and that global warming will only make matters worse,
and that human beings all over the planet face death or famine
or injury if we do not act.
The select committee's very first hearing focused on the
geopolitical implications of our Nation's dependence on oil and
the impacts of global warming. That inaugural hearing occurred
in the same week that the U.N. Security Council held its first-
ever discussion on the implications of global warming for
international peace and security, and the same week that 11
retired top U.S. military leaders and the Center for Naval
Analysis issued the report, ``National Security and the Threat
of Climate Change.''
We are honored to have two key participants in those
efforts with us today: the Honorable Margaret Beckett, the
former Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom, and Vice
Admiral Paul Gaffney.
One of the key recommendations of the CNA report was for
the Intelligence Community to incorporate the consequences of
climate change into a National Intelligence Estimate. After
that first select committee hearing, I introduced legislation
requiring such an analysis. Through the hard work of Chairwoman
Eshoo and her colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee,
similar language was included in the House Intelligence
Authorization Bill last year.
The Director of National Intelligence has since responded
with the National Intelligence Assessment, finalized earlier
this month, and which informs much of today's hearing.
Unfortunately, the NIA is classified, and therefore the public
cannot benefit from the excellent analysis that the
Intelligence Community has brought together in this report.
But make no mistake, this first-ever high-level
Intelligence Community study of global warming, which calls the
climate crisis ``a threat to American security,'' is a clarion
call to action from the heart of our Nation's security
establishment.
I understand the reasoning behind the decision of the
National Intelligence Council to classify the specific regional
security impacts of global warming in this NIA, but I am
reserving my judgment as to whether that is the right choice.
The science is conclusive. We know that global warming is
occurring today, and we know that severe security consequences
will result. I believe that our goal must be to marshal the
political will to halt and roll back global warming and save
the planet from this disaster.
The Intelligence Community is hesitant to tell the world
who will be affected, what might happen, and where the greatest
security risks will occur. But that is exactly what we need. If
people know specifically what those severe security problems
will be and where they will be and who they will affect, then
perhaps we will finally have enough political will, both in
this country and internationally, to do the hard work of
solving the climate crisis.
After 7 years of ignoring the problem, the Bush
administration continues to limit what their experts can
communicate to the public on this critical issue. Whether it is
the Environmental Protection Agency or the National
Intelligence Council that is sounding the alarm, whether it is
a danger to the public or a danger to national security, the
President doesn't want America to know the real risks of global
warming.
I would now like to recognize the gentlelady from
California, Ms. Eshoo, for an opening statement. And then I
will recognize the two ranking members from the minority.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Markey follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you, and good morning, Mr. Chairman.
I think that what I would like to do is to ask the chairman
of the House Intelligence Committee, because I know he has
other commitments this morning, to make his statement, and then
I can follow.
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Reyes. Thank you, Chairwoman Eshoo and Chairman Markey,
and the ranking members as well, for conducting this very
important hearing.
I think this is vitally important, that we provide the
forum for all these exceptional witnesses to provide us the
information and the benefit of their expertise, because this is
an issue that we all realize we have to contend with, whether
it is in terms of operational considerations, certainly budget
considerations, but most importantly, as a grandfather, the
implication that it means for future generations, not just in
this country but throughout the world.
So I think this is certainly an important hearing and one
of a series of opportunities that we will have, as a Congress,
to factor this issue into everything that we do. So I
appreciate the opportunity to be here, and we will follow it
closely.
Thank you.
The Chairman. I thank the chairman very much.
And now we continue to yield to the gentlelady from
California, Ms. Eshoo.
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you to Chairman Markey and, certainly, to
the chairman of the full Committee on Intelligence in the
House, to all of my colleagues here.
A special welcome to our witnesses.
I want to start out by noting the historic nature of this
hearing today. It is extraordinary because it represents the
very first time that the Government of the United States is
acknowledging the national security implications of global
climate change.
Many of us have believed for decades that this issue has
great national security importance. In the 1990s, then-Senator
Gore highlighted the issue, and he pushed to keep the issue on
the national agenda as Vice President. The Nation then began
using intelligence assets and our allies to collect data on
climate change. I think this is a little-known fact by people
in our country and people around the world. That, of course,
came to a halt in 2001. And I think it is really being
resurrected today, to move forward and to really accept one of
the great challenges of the 21st century.
Outside experts began acknowledging the linkage between the
environment and security, and so this hearing today brings the
two together with the two committees that have done work on
this.
This year, Javier Solana, the E.U. High Representative for
Common Foreign and Security Policy, issued a paper calling for
coordinated research on mitigation and on coping strategies for
global climate change. In 2007, the German Advisory Council on
Global Change argued for the importance of stopping climate
change trends. The CNA, advised by 11 former generals and
admirals, released an in-depth report on likely security
implications. And the Center for Security and International
Studies and the Center for a New American Security released a
joint report on the same.
Last April, after the release of the CNA study, I wrote to
the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, and
asked him to undertake a National Intelligence Estimate of the
anticipated geopolitical effects of global climate change and
the implications of such effects on the national security of
the United States. He responded that it would be, quote,
``entirely appropriate'' for the National Intelligence Council
to prepare such an assessment.
But when we included a requirement for a National
Intelligence Estimate in the intelligence authorization bill,
there actually were those that ridiculed the issue on the floor
of the House. I think we are coming a long way today. This
report should put those doubts to rest.
I want to salute our witnesses that have done so much work
on this issue and the Director of National Intelligence for
their work on this assessment. The NIA is the result of just
open-source collaboration between the Intelligence Community
and the scientific and academic communities.
While I am pleased with the report's conclusions, I am
disappointed--and that disappointment is shared by many of my
colleagues--that it is classified ``confidential.'' This is the
lowest level of classified information, a classification level
rarely used, but one that prevents this report from being
released and discussed in the public domain.
I have often noted that the Intelligence Community, at
least in my view, overrelies on secrecy and classified
information. In this instance, I believe that the document
should not be classified, and I hope that the DNI will decide
to declassify it.
The Intelligence Community accepted the science as a given
and without judgment, and still found that there are very
serious national security implications. Increased global
temperatures mean heavy precipitation events, reduction in
glaciers and Arctic ice, and rising sea levels. These climatic
events will mean crop failures, water shortages, flooding,
coastal storms, and increased incidents of infectious diseases.
Each of these leads to instability.
And our witnesses, I believe, are going to talk about this.
I am not going to go into the detail of many of them.
I also want to add that as many as 48 U.S. coastal military
installations are endangered by flooding and associated damage.
Now, some would claim that by discussing the implications
of global climate change we are creating a panic, because, as
someone said, no one can predict the weather. In the law
enforcement community, in the emergency response community, we
train people for the eventuality of things taking place. In
other words, we prepare. And so I believe that we must address
the foreseeable consequences. And it is the lack of
preparedness that should cause any kind of panic.
I would note that in a speech last month, the NATO
Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, described the
greatest security challenges facing the alliance. And he said
the following, and I will close on this: ``In tomorrow's
uncertain world, we cannot wait for threats to mature before
deciding how we counter them. The nature of this new
environment is already taking shape. It will be an environment
that will be marked by the effects of climate change, such as
territorial conflicts, rising food prices, and migration. It
will be characterized by the scramble for energy resources, by
the emergence of new powers, and by nonstate actors trying to
gain access to deadly technologies.''
Note that the very first threat he mentioned are the
effects of global climate change. There is no question in his
mind that the climate change poses a national security
challenge. And I think that, from this day forward, the words
``climate change'' and ``international security'' will be
forever linked.
So I want to thank everyone for being here, especially the
wonderful subcommittee that I have the privilege of chairing.
And I especially want to point out the wonderful and
important work of our staff: Diane La Voy, Mieke Eoyang, and
Josh Resnick.
And, with that, I will yield back the balance of the time
that, really, I don't have. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr.
Sensenbrenner, the ranking member of the Select Committee on
Global Warming.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
This is the third hearing on the national security
implications of climate change that I have attended since this
Congress began. It was the topic of the select committee's
first-ever hearing in April 2007, as well as a hearing in the
Science Committee last September.
Reading through the testimony, it doesn't seem like there
is much new information to assess. Much of the information
today is based on last year's U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change reports. The conclusions of the IPCC have been
studied in great detail by this Congress and warrant further
consideration in the next Congress. However, I think the
American people want the Congress today to focus on how to
reduce gas and energy prices, improve energy security, and to
increase domestic energy supplies.
The National Intelligence Estimate appears to give a good
overview of climate change projections, how they might affect
certain regions and nations, and how this will affect the
United States. The NIA constructs these projections out to
2030, which is a far shorter time frame than many of the
projections in the IPCC report. Much of the worst-case
scenarios projected by the IPCC are in the latter half of this
century.
The national security implications of climate change will
cause some concerns. But so do the implications of climate
change policies that stand to reduce the availability of cheap,
reliable energy sources around the world.
Many of the cases detailed in the NIA will have to be dealt
with through adaptive measures. As one of our witnesses will
point out today, much of the world is not only poor, but energy
poor, which makes adaptation much more difficult.
The testimony of Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute, shows that an estimated 1.6
billion people have no access to electricity at all. Power
plants, however fueled, would immeasurably improve these
people's lives. Where do they fit into the climate change
picture?
The testimony of Lee Lane, resident fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute, summarizes the complexity of this issue.
Mr. Lane notes that the lens of national security might not be
the best way to view the issues associated with global warming.
Climate change policy will require trade-offs that are
unavoidable, including a weakened U.S. economy, that could
affect how this country handles conflicts.
And Mr. Lane notes that if China and India do not
participate in efforts to cut greenhouse gases, worldwide
efforts to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations will fail. And
I agree. And yet efforts to force China and India into
compliance will only worsen global conflicts.
Mr. Lane is also right to point out that the only way to
achieve these greenhouse gas reductions is through the
development of new technology and that, in the near term, the
focus should be on further developing technologies like
nuclear, clean coal, solar, wind and biomass. These
technologies have the potential to produce clear, tangible
improvements to the environment, which must be a key part of
any climate change policy.
These technologies can also help bolster the energy
security of the United States, which should be a top priority
of the Democratic leadership in Congress. There is perhaps no
action that could better help the energy security of the United
States than providing access to domestic oil and gas supplies.
However, instead of taking this crucial action, Congress today
will again talk about the threat of global warming, as opposed
to the real threats of high energy prices and energy security.
I thank the Chair, and I yield back the balance of my time.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
And now the Chair recognizes the ranking member of the
Intelligence Subcommittee, the gentleman from California, Mr.
Issa.
Mr. Issa. I want to thank Chairman Markey, Madam Chairwoman
Eshoo and Ranking Member Sensenbrenner. Additionally, I want to
thank Dr. Fingar and our second panel of witnesses for
testifying here today.
I come here today with a number of questions and
reservations on the recent National Intelligence Assessment on
global climate change. Our Nation and its Intelligence
Community are facing many serious threats. At a time when we
are short on analysts to assist in finding weapons of mass
destruction and terrorist activities around the globe, I am
concerned that projects like this on climate change and the NIA
amount to a dangerous diversion of intelligence resources.
I don't say that lightly. I don't make climate change a
light issue. The question is not, is it appropriate for us to
be concerned about possible climate change and its impacts? Of
course not; that is a great concern. Is it appropriate to ask
hypothetical questions to the State Department, to the CIA and
others on what will happen if X occurs? All of that is
reasonable. We continue to do it, and I would expect, on a
bipartisan basis, we continue to ask those questions so that we
can plan and so that we know that the community is doing its
planning.
What I am concerned about is, clearly, the CIA and other
intelligence agencies do not and should not have the resources
of climatologists. I believe that that is probably our greatest
threat.
I hope today we will look at this in terms of what it is.
It is a study of, if in fact there is drought, if in fact there
is famine, if in fact a number of things occur. It is not a
study of, will they occur. On that, the science is not settled,
although the science is unsettling.
Certainly, for all of us who remember a quote--we earlier
had quotes--but a quote that goes this way: ``I believe it is
appropriate to have an overrepresentation of factual
presentations on how dangerous it is as a predicate for opening
up the audience to listen to what the solutions are.'' That
quote, of course, I have to give credit to Vice President Al
Gore.
I could go on and give the quotes on Dr. Hansen, who now is
a leading advocate on climate change and, some would say, an
alarmist, when, in fact, he was also an author of the ``nuclear
winter'' we were going to receive as of 1971. He was wrong
then, and he is wrong now.
That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be concerned about the
effects of putting carbon-based fuels into our climate. We
should be concerned for a number of reasons: First of all, we
don't know the effects. Second of all, the effects we do know
include pollution that adversely affects life around the world.
Lastly, we know that these are limited resources. In America
today, with $135 oil, mostly due to our lack of willingness to
produce domestically, we fully understand why our cost is so
high, and yet we would like to have it lower.
So I would like to join all of the people on the dais here,
I believe, in saying that we have to find alternatives that
help drive down the cost of oil, reduce the use of
hydrocarbons, and continue the study by serious climate-based
professors, none of whom, by definition, would normally be in
the CIA, in order to find out the real question of when will
these events occur, if they will occur, and how we can stop
them.
Lastly, Mr. Chairman, I think the most important thing for
us to remember here today is not 7 years ago, not 17 years ago,
not 27 years ago, but in 1971, when we began looking at climate
and the production of--then it was dust and other particulates,
but clearly the effects of burning oil, natural gas, coal, we
sounded an alarm. That was at a time in which an answer was
open to us, an answer that in my district produces 2,200
megawatts of power, and that was clean-burning nuclear.
Today, in California, we are prohibited from doing any
nuclear--zero emissions. We continue to have an argument
throughout that entire period while taking away the solution
that the French and the European Union and others have sought,
which is, while we don't know the effects of burning carbon-
based in some areas, we do in others. Knowing that, in fact, it
is not good to burn coal and others, from a particulate
standpoint, if we could avoid it, knowing that there are over a
billion people without electricity around the world, not this
committee but this Congress should dedicate itself to quickly
freeing up the prohibition on nuclear so that, in fact, we can
get off carbon-based electricity in this country, dramatically
reducing our carbon footprint, something we can do today. We
can do it in a matter of 5 or 6 years. It will do more, by far,
than other things that we are looking at at the present time,
or any other thing we are looking at at the present time.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent to have my
entire statement put in the record and would like to move on so
we can get to our panelists.
I yield back.
The Chairman. Without objection, so ordered.
That completes the time for opening statements.
Now I recognize Chairwoman Eshoo for the purpose of
introducing our first panel of witnesses.
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Now I would like to introduce our very distinguished first
panel.
Dr. Thomas Fingar is the deputy director of national
intelligence for analysis and chairman of the National
Intelligence Council, or the NIC, which provides the President
and senior policymakers with intelligence analyses on strategic
issues. Analytic reports produced by the NIC have been reviewed
and coordinated throughout the Intelligence Community.
Dr. Fingar will describe the approach that the Intelligence
Community has used to produce the National Intelligence
Assessment, or the NIA, on the security implications of global
climate change. And he will present a summary of the
Intelligence Community's key observations on the subject.
However, the NIA, as we stated previously, the NIA itself
remains classified at the confidential level.
Accompanying Dr. Fingar from the NIC are Dr. Matt Burrows,
the NIC's counselor, who has been key in the drafting of the
NIA; and Ms. Karen Monaghan, the national intelligence officer
for economics, who is responsible for the NIA's analysis of
food and other resources, amongst other issues.
I am also very happy to welcome Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the
director of the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
in the Department of Energy, which is one of the 16 agencies
that make up the Intelligence Community.
So many people think that there is one agency that makes up
the Intelligence Community, the CIA. There are 15 others. So he
heads up one of the 16 agencies.
This office is responsible for the National Laboratories of
the Department of Energy, which will need to play an
increasingly important role in assessing and mitigating the
security impacts of climate change.
And also of interest is that the office has pursued a
collaborative approach in working with other countries on
energy and climate as a global security issue, an approach that
relies on open-source, unclassified information.
So, Dr. Fingar, we look forward to your prepared statement
and to the opportunity to discuss this important topic with you
and your colleagues. And we also want to thank you for your
very special leadership.
The floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS FINGAR, DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL
INTELLIGENCE FOR ANALYSIS, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
COUNCIL; ACCOMPANIED BY ROLF MOWATT-LARSSEN, DIRECTOR, OFFICE
OF INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
ENERGY
Mr. Fingar. Thank you.
Chairman Markey, Chairwoman Eshoo, members of the
committees, thank you for this opportunity to brief your
committees on the national security implications of global
climate change to 2030.
We have submitted a statement for the record that provides
considerable detail on the study and its conclusions. As you
requested, I will provide only a brief summary, but I ask that
the full statement be included in the record.
The Chairman. Without objection, it will be included.
Mr. Fingar. The just-completed National Intelligence
Assessment that undergirds our statement for the record was a
new and challenging venture for the Intelligence Community.
Our ultimate objective was to assess the national security
implications for the United States of global climate change. In
order to do so, we had to reach outside the Intelligence
Community for expertise on climate science, on how projected
changes would affect specific countries. We did not address
mitigation, nor make any judgments about costs or future
technologies.
The approach we adopted had four stages.
Stage one was to establish a starting point. Since the
Intelligence Community does not conduct climate research, we
turned to other U.S. Government organizations with the
requisite expertise, including the U.S. Climate Change Science
Program and climate modelers and experts for the Department of
Energy National Laboratories and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Association.
Our primary source for climate projections was the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fourth assessment
report. We relied primarily on the report's mid-range
projections.
Stage two was to assess how global climate change
projections would impact specific countries. For this stage, we
commissioned parallel studies by the Joint Climate Change
Research Institute, a collaborative research program of the
University of Maryland and the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory, and Columbia University Center for International
Earth Science Information Network.
Both teams examined how projected climate change would
affect water scarcity, populations at risk from sea-level rise,
and overall vulnerability to climate change in approximately 60
countries. The countries examined did not include highly
developed countries with the economic, technical and political
capacity to cope with the effects of climate change between now
and 2030.
The results of stage two were reviewed by country and
regional specialists convened by the National Intelligence
Council and the Naval Postgraduate School. The goal was to
assess the ability of each of the countries and regions to cope
with the projected impacts.
The results of the stage three assessment provided the
basis for the Intelligence Community's examination of how the
results of projected climate change would affect U.S. national
security interests to 2030.
The fourth stage of the study assumed that climate change
will occur as forecast by the IPCC report, and that it will
affect specific countries as projected in stages two and three.
We chose 2030 as the end point because it is far enough in
the future to see physical and biological effects of climate
change but close enough to allow judgments about the likely
impact of such changes.
I will now summarize briefly the key conclusions of our
assessment.
Our analysis found three primary paths through which the
effects of climate change could impact national security: water
scarcity, decreased agricultural productivity, and
infrastructure damage.
Water scarcity and decreased agricultural productivity can
trigger human migration. Regardless of whether the migration is
inter- or intrastate, it could cause or exacerbate tensions
between the migrants and the receiving population.
Damage to infrastructure resulting from increases in the
frequency or intensity of severe weather events could have
significant economic costs and add to social and political
tensions. Social tensions and economic costs could lead to
state or regional instability, threatening U.S. interests.
We judged that global climate change will have wide-ranging
implications for U.S. national security interests over the next
20 years, because it will aggravate existing problems, such as
poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation,
ineffectual leadership, and weak political institutions. All of
these threaten domestic stability in a number of African,
Asian, Central American and Central Asian countries.
We assess that climate change alone is unlikely to trigger
state failure in any state during the period to 2030, but it
could contribute to inter- and, more likely, intrastate
conflicts, particularly over access to increasingly scarce
water resources.
We also judge that climate change effects could prompt
migration in search of better living conditions, both within
nations and from disadvantaged to more affluent countries.
Climate-induced or -exacerbated tensions will be a major
contributor to instability in several areas of Africa, where
many countries are already challenged by persistent poverty,
frequent natural disasters, weak governance, and high
dependence on rainfall for agricultural yields.
In Asia, current research indicates that extensive parts of
South, Southeast, and East Asia will face risks of decreased
agricultural productivity, floods and droughts. By 2025, cereal
crop yields would decrease by 2.5 to 10 percent, according to
some calculations. Projections indicate that as many as 50
million additional people could be at risk of hunger by 2020.
Most developed nations and countries with rapidly growing
economies are likely to fare better than those in the poorer
developing world, largely because of greater coping capacity.
Nevertheless, many regional states important to the United
States could experience negative consequences. Rapidly
developing states could experience economic setbacks and uneven
growth, leading to political instability. Most U.S. allies will
experience negative consequences, but also have the means to
cope with the projected effects of climate change out to 2030.
Some countries will benefit from climate change effects,
including those in the Northern Hemisphere, where temperature
increases will lengthen growing seasons and facilitate access
to energy and other resources. Most of North America in the
mid-latitudes will be less affected by climate change in the
next few decades than either the tropics or the polar regions.
Most studies suggest the United States as a whole will enjoy
modest economic benefits from increased crop yields, but the
Southwest will have serious water problems, and the East Coast
could be subject to more severe weather.
Current infrastructure design criteria and construction
codes may be inadequate for climate change, increasing
vulnerability to heightened storm intensity and flooding. A
number of coastal military installations in the Continental
United States are at significant risk of damage from storm
surge-induced flooding. Two dozen nuclear facilities and
numerous refineries along U.S. coastlines are at risk.
Mr. Chairman, this brief outline presents a summary at the
50,000-foot level, but I hope it has given you a clear
understanding of how we conducted the study and the nature of
the implications for the United States.
My colleagues and I will now be very happy to provide
additional details in response to your questions.
[The statement of Mr. Fingar follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you so much, Dr. Fingar.
And I want to congratulate you, first of all, on the
National Intelligence Assessment. It is a first-class product.
Our Nation is indebted to you and your team. You have done a
very good job here in laying out this problem for our country
and for the planet. And I think it has already had a major
impact on the debate about how this country must act
aggressively to combat the threat of global warming.
In your testimony, you conclude that global warming will
multiply existing problems internationally, including social
tension, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership,
weak political institutions, poverty, scarcity of resources,
and large-scale migration. That, to me, sounds like a laundry
list of the underlying causes of terrorism.
Could global warming worsen the very problems that are
underlying and driving the terrorism problem today?
Mr. Fingar. First of all, thank you for the positive
comments on the National Intelligence Assessment. I will
certainly pass them to the people that did most of the heavy
lifting on this project.
The summary of conditions that you provided and that is in
our statement is very similar to the list of conditions and
preconditions for alienation that appear to be at work in some
cases of recruitment into terrorist activity. So I think logic
suggests that the conditions exacerbated by the effects of
climate change would increase the pool of potential recruits
into terrorist activity.
The Chairman. And from your perspective, is this additional
contribution to terrorism something that the United States
should be concerned about and take action to prevent?
Mr. Fingar. We should certainly be concerned about any
factors, any instance, any areas in which recruitment of people
to terrorist activities is occurring. So my short answer would
be yes.
The Chairman. As you look at Somalia and Darfur, do you
believe that those were areas where this did actually
contribute to the rise in tension amongst different groups and,
as a result, increase the national security concerns of the
United States?
Mr. Fingar. If you are drawing the linkage from drought
here as a climate-change-exacerbated factor, drought is
certainly one of the factors in the unstable situation in
Sudan, in Darfur, but only one of those. The clashes that are
partly religious, partly ethnic, partly economic, partly the
strivings of people for the ability to live in a very difficult
situation--all are a factor in creating a terrible humanitarian
situation.
To my knowledge, we have not had instances of large-scale
recruitment or attempts to recruit for terrorist activity out
of this particular population.
The Chairman. You mentioned that the Intelligence Community
has done very little work on assessing the implications of
climate mitigation strategies, whether they are carbon capture
and sequestration, biofuels or nuclear.
I really don't understand the conclusion drawn on page 7 of
your testimony that, quote, ``Efforts to develop mitigation and
adaptation strategies to deal with climate change may affect
U.S. national security interests even more than the physical
impacts of climate change itself.''
If we haven't analyzed mitigation strategies yet, where
does the conclusion that doing the work to avoid global warming
would be even worse than global warming itself? Is that
sentence from page 7 in the classified National Intelligence
Assessment, or was this added to your testimony at some later
point?
Mr. Fingar. No, it is a part of the reason that we have
planned follow-on studies to look at mitigation effects.
The operative word is ``may.'' We don't know. We don't know
what effects efforts to expand nuclear power will have on
proliferation possibilities. We don't know what effect
mitigation efforts in one country may have on conditions in a
second or a third country; that, for example, mitigation
effects in India that could affect, perhaps adversely,
conditions in Pakistan.
So that is the reason the sentence is there. We think it is
important to take proposed remediation activities and look at
them so that we can provide judgments that we cannot make at
this time.
The Chairman. But if we read that conclusion on page 7, you
get a totally flawed and false view of what the NIA, which is a
hugely important document, actually concluded.
I have seen the classified document. And this idea that our
attempts to avoid global warming could be more damaging to U.S.
national security than global warming itself is simply not
there.
We have seen this administration politicize intelligence
before, and it looks like they have done it here again--not
you, sir, of course--by inserting in your testimony this
statement that is simply not supported by the intelligence and
which is, in fact, completely misleading. Clearly, we need to
have the NIA declassified in full so that it can be read and
debated without being filtered through the White House.
If this White House wants to debate how we should address
and mitigate the climate crisis, we welcome that debate.
Because it is the White House, not the Congress, that wants to
send nuclear power reactors to Saudi Arabia, in the most
unstable region in the world, in the name of global warming.
There will, I guarantee you, be a severe security implication
for this country in the form of uncontrolled nuclear
proliferation from that absurd policy.
So I think it is important for us to have it out on the
table, if sending nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia is the
administration's argument that they are making in a climate
change context.
Again, I thank all of you at the table.
Mr. Fingar. If I may respond briefly, Mr. Chairman, for the
record, to note that the White House had no involvement in the
production of either the National Intelligence Assessment or
the statement for the record, other than the statement for the
record with the normal OMB review process. This is the judgment
of the Intelligence Community.
The Chairman. Did OMB ask for any changes in the language
of your testimony?
Mr. Fingar. Not in that portion of it.
The Chairman. Let me turn then and recognize the ranking
member of the select committee, the gentleman from Wisconsin.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Fingar, am I correct in assuming that the National
Intelligence Estimate was based exclusively on the report of
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?
Mr. Fingar. No, sir, you are not correct in that.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay.
Mr. Fingar. We took, as a starting point, the IPCC fourth
report. We added to that peer-reviewed scientific materials
produced in the years since that report was produced. We
consulted with a variety of U.S. Government and academic
specialists on it. But we did not attempt to evaluate the
climate science, that that review and supplementing of it said
that reflected a reasonable scientific projection.
The IPCC report is at a global level, which doesn't provide
very much useful information on how individual nations,
subcomponents of nations, sectors of the economy, agricultural
crops and so forth. For that kind of detail, we turned to the
two commissioned studies.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Several weeks ago, there was an article
that appeared in Nature magazine that said, for approximately
the next decade, we will be experiencing a period of global
cooling.
Was any of the information in the Nature article put into
the National Intelligence Assessment, or did that article come
out too late for it to be of use to you?
Mr. Burrows. I don't believe we used it, other than the
experts we have consulted may have seen it and factored it into
their analysis. But we did not use it.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Well, given the fact that the
computerized projections that the IPCC used would come up with
a significantly different result if even there was a tenth-of-
a-degree cooling or a tenth-of-a-degree warming, and greater
than that if the variations were different either up or down,
how would the National Intelligence Assessment change if the
IPCC projections ended up being proven wrong because of changes
in actual, observed temperatures either upwards or downwards?
Mr. Fingar. We can't answer that question, sir----
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay.
Mr. Fingar [continuing]. Because we took, as the starting
point, projected change. If change occurs in ways that are
different, then our assessments based on the projection of the
individual countries and then a projection of the coping
capacity of those countries and then on national security would
have to change.
But, again, the starting point for this was the climate
science report of the IPCC. They have been peer-reviewed,
including in parts of the U.S. Government. If that is wrong,
then what follows is wrong.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Okay. Well, I think that makes the point
that many of us on this side of the aisle are making, is that
even a small error on the part of the IPCC projections,
compared to what is actually observed now and in the future, is
going to make all of this debate really irrelevant, in terms of
how we deal with the issue.
I think we are going to be hearing pretty soon that many of
the people who have been involved in this effort for quite a
while were predicting a nuclear winter and global cooling as
late as 25 to 30 years ago. And, in terms of making decisions
that would have a major impact on our economy, one that would
weaken our economy at a time when it is not too strong, it
seems to me that we ought to stop and think through things.
Because if we make decisions now and it is based on imprecise
data or projections that are wrong, there will be a lot of
people hurt very unnecessarily.
I yield back the balance of my time.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
And the Chair recognizes the gentlelady, the Chair of the
Intelligence Subcommittee.
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First, Dr. Fingar, thank you for your testimony and the
written testimony that all of the members have in their binders
and have read.
I think that the early questions so far really are
indicative and point out, you know, the two different pictures
that are painted of the whole issue of climate change, that
there were scientists that did great work decades ago and,
based on what they knew then, made projections. Now it is being
said that, ``Gee, they made projections and they got into
something and they weren't exactly right, so this is not a sure
science, and so let's set this aside and let's do something
else.'' I don't belong to that school of thought.
And I say this with sincerity, because I really respect the
ranking member of the select committee, Mr. Sensenbrenner. He
was part of the congressional delegation that the Speaker led
on climate change to India and, you know, was a real asset to
that effort.
I think it is important to lay down once again that the
Intelligence Community are not the researchers of the science.
They have accepted the science that has been put forward by a
variety of agencies and experts, and have moved out to make
their comments as a result of their study and the NIC,
producing the NIA on the whole issue of how this impacts not
only our national security but how it brings about
international insecurities.
So, now, my question to you is quite a broad one, and that
is: What, in your view, comes next? Should there be a team that
is put together in our Intelligence Community?
It seems to me that we cannot and have not been able to do
effective work, our own Intelligence Community, without working
with other intelligence communities around the world. We
strengthen our own ranks and our own efforts and certainly
bring a great deal to theirs and the international bodies that
I lifted some quotes from their leaders from in my opening
statement.
So can you give us your view of what you believe are the
next steps that need to be taken? And what mechanisms? What
mechanisms do you think exist today, or do we need to design
new ones? So that is my question.
Thank you, again, for your superb work.
Mr. Fingar. Thank you. Thank you for your confidence in
asking such an ambitious question.
Additional work clearly is required on climate science. In
my judgment, that work is best done in other agencies of the
United States government other than the Intelligence Community
where the expertise and the access, the contacts with
international scientists, counterparts, research institutions
around the globe, since this is a global problem, involving
existing international mechanisms to continue to work the
climate science issues. That climate change issue on which
intelligence, covertly, clandestinely acquired information, is
not very helpful.
We can't steal Mother Nature's intentions. I am being a
little facetious, but the fact of the matter is we don't have a
body of classified information that would be significant in
size and certainly not different in kind to that which is
available in other places.
Where we plan to focus next within the Intelligence
Community, based on what we have learned out of the study just
completed, is to drill deeper into the effects on individual
countries. One of the things that we discovered in doing this
study is that for much of the world data doesn't exist with a
granularity that is really needed to make confident
assessments. So an effort needs to be made to acquire that
data. We are going to drill down in selected countries.
A second focus will be a look at the great power
implications of the climate change's effects forecast here.
Russia----
Ms. Eshoo. Great powers.
Mr. Fingar. Russia perhaps benefiting, the United States
benefiting but having some deleterious impacts. China and India
are in the countries that will now experience, over the
timeframe----
Ms. Eshoo. In other words, there are winners and losers, a
combination.
Mr. Fingar. There are winners and losers in this; and some
of them are very big, important global players. What are the
implications for cooperation, for competition for resources and
the like? That is a subject for future study.
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you.
The Chairman. The gentlelady's time has expired.
Mr. Fingar. The third area would look at some of the
mitigation strategies that have been proposed. We didn't do it
the first time, but we have been asking how would that change
things.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr.
Issa.
Mr. Issa. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me ask a question, in a little bit of the abstract but
not too much.
If I was to say that there were ominous signs that the
earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and
that these changes portend a drastic decline in food production
for serious political implications for just about every nation
on earth, the drop in food output could begin quite soon and,
perhaps, in only 10 years from now, the regions of decline that
would feel the greatest impact would be the wheat production of
Canada and Russia, but, additionally, areas on the margin and
only marginally self-sufficient, tropical areas in Indonesia,
Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Africa, where growing seasons depend
on rains brought by the monsoon, would you say that that was at
least, in part, essentially what we painted for you with this
global climate change as a potential that you had to deal with
in your analysis?
Dr. Fingar, I mean, I know that is not the exact words of
any of the studies, but isn't that essentially what we painted
for you, is that global climate change to begin in as little as
10 years, going out to 2030, would have these kinds of effects
in many of the areas I named?
Mr. Fingar. I guess three comments.
One is, we took, as a starting point, a set of projections.
We took the mid-range projections, which----
Mr. Issa. I appreciate that on the study, Doctor.
Mr. Fingar [continuing]. Which are not as extreme as was
done there, but that our starting point was a set of
projections and scenarios about how climate change would affect
the physical and the biological world.
Mr. Issa. I appreciate that. But, as you said, you are not
a climatologist. You don't have them on staff. You had to reach
out to get even what the projections were.
What I read you was, as far as I can tell, similar to what
you are dealing with as the hypothetical: Change beginning in
as little as 10 years, droughts, marginal areas not being able
to meet food demands. True or false?
Mr. Fingar. Well, what I am having difficulty with is the
word ``hypothetical.''
Mr. Issa. Well, let me be less hypothetical.
You were--between your graduate and undergraduate years in
1975, I think you were a Ph.D. candidate when that was written.
That was based on global cooling.
The projections for global cooling, Newsweek, Science, full
page, 1975, were that those things would occur, that marginal
areas, areas having less technology, less able to cope with,
such as Indochina then, the Soviet Union, Canada, based on
their wheat, because wheat harvests don't do very well as it
warmed in that case, and certainly the areas along the Equator,
if they stop getting the rain that came with monsoons, that
that would adversely affect and lead to instability. Now, your
study today, based on the opposite, or the studies you accepted
based on the opposite, have the same effect.
My point here today is the problems of 1975, based on
global cooling, and the problems here, based on global warming,
appear to be the same problems. Wouldn't you agree that, in
fact, if you have a change of 7 or 8 degrees and a change in
how much water falls where, marginal areas up or down, we are
going to be affected and affected fairly dramatically? Isn't
that true?
Mr. Fingar. I can't argue that it isn't true.
Mr. Issa. Okay, then, following up, because I have very
limited time and I want to get to just one single point in
this, I appreciate what the Intelligence Community brings to
us.
For purposes--this is a committee on global climate change
mixed with a Committee on Intelligence. For purposes of
intelligence, no matter what we give you in hypotheticals, a
rise of 7 degrees, a fall of 7 degrees, inability to grow crops
in India because they burn cow dung and the sky doesn't allow
enough sun to get in, whatever the hypothetical we give you,
isn't it true that you are prepared and that one thing that we
can count on is that you will give us some analysis of what
will happen if, but, in fact, you cannot really feed accurately
within your resources of any of the intelligence agencies the
input of whether the temperature is going to go up or down,
whether the temperature is going to cause or not cause a
drought?
What you can do is deal with any hypothetical we give you
as to global climate change and come back to us and say, yes,
if you cut off the water in X country or if this country has a
crop failure, we can give you an analysis of the impact to
America's security and the stability of those countries. Isn't
that essentially what we are--the relationship that we should
have with your agency?
Mr. Fingar. Yes, that is correct.
Mr. Issa. Okay.
Mr. Fingar. If the question is posed as what would be the
implications of--make up the hypothetical or pick the
scientific study. What would change would be sort of the
confidence level, about whether it was purely hypothetical or
was grounded in real-world experience and the quality, as
judged by those able to do so, of the underlying science.
Mr. Issa. Doctor, I hated to make it as painful as it was.
It is very important. I appreciate the Chair's indulgence. It
is very important. I appreciate that you and the agency, that
all of the agencies of the Intelligence Community are very good
at giving us these hypotheticals and not qualified per se to
look into climate change, but, rather, given a set of scenarios
that might occur, giving us a reasonable projection and, as you
said, I think very importantly, Mr. Chairman, that we delve
into a deeper--that the very mitigations we have to analyze
whether those mitigations have side effects.
I appreciate the Chairman's indulgence and yield back the
time I also don't have.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr.
Holt.
Mr. Holt. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Madam Chairman. I
appreciate your putting this hearing together.
Just to follow the line of questioning from this morning
for just a moment longer, let me ask, Dr. Fingar, why you chose
the IPCC judgments. And I gather this was not just a randomly
selected essay that somebody tossed off the top of their head
and that you, as I recall from reading the assessment, you
actually subjected it to some analysis about how conservative
it was or how far out it was.
Mr. Fingar. I would like Matt to answer that.
Mr. Burrows. We selected the IPCC fourth assessment as well
as other--we selected the IPCC's fourth assessment report as
well as other peer-reviewed scientific material, because,
first, it was--IPCC report was peer-reviewed and accepted by
the U.S. government. So it was, in our minds, the consensus
document by which to use as a base, then, for analyzing the
security implications of climate change.
Mr. Holt. Thank you.
The other question I would like to pursue--and I am sure
there won't be time to exhaust it--but it is something that,
Dr. Fingar, you and I have discussed before. It is the
implications for the way we do and collect intelligence,
collect and analyze intelligence in the United States.
For 50 years, partly because of the Cold War mentality, and
for various other reasons, our intelligence, both the budget,
the directives and the way the analysts think, has been
oriented toward politico/military issues. It has all been, you
know, in shorthand. We might say we have been practicing
criminology, trying to get inside the political dynamics in the
world.
You said you had to use a different methodology in putting
this together. I wonder if we shouldn't be using that different
methodology more often in more other areas. Because by focusing
on the politico/military dynamics, we can sometimes miss things
that are perhaps of even greater import.
Mr. Fingar. I absolutely agree with you on two dimensions,
maybe more than two, specifically. One is thinking about our
national interest or national security in ways that are broader
than they were in the past. And certainly the range of
questions that are posed to the Intelligence Community now come
from a much wider spectrum of U.S. government agencies, and the
old way of doing things is inadequate to new problems.
The other is the reaching out for information that is not
inherently sensitive or classified because we stole it, because
we used very sophisticated methods to achieve it. Engaging with
experts inside and outside of the United States government,
inside and outside of the United States has become--is
increasingly important and now soon to be mandated by DNI
McConnell as a part of what is expected of all analysts in the
community.
Mr. Holt. So I gather part of this different methodology
that you recommend means a better use, more integrated use of
open-source information.
Mr. Fingar. Absolutely, absolutely.
Mr. Holt. You are alluding to the fact that in the
Intelligence Community there is this belief--a fallacious
belief, I might say--that hard-won information, in other words,
information gained surreptitiously or through expensive
national technical means, is somehow better information than
you might get. It is certainly harder, one, but it is not
necessarily better than what you can get from open sources.
Our time is expiring. I thank you for your observation.
The Chairman. Did you want to add something, Dr. Fingar?
Mr. Fingar. No, but if I may beg the Chair's indulgence, I
am watching the clock because I have an airplane to catch. So
if it becomes necessary for me to turn it over to my
colleagues, please indulge me. I thought we were going to end
at 11:00. I had scheduled around that.
The Chairman. Let me now turn and recognize the gentleman
from Oregon, Mr. Walden.
Mr. Walden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Fingar, what level of confidence do you have in your
assessment? What level of confidence do you apply to this
assessment?
Mr. Fingar. The confidence level we have applied is of low
to moderate, the reason being the cascade of uncertainties.
There was uncertainty about the climate change projections that
we took as the base lines. There was uncertainty about the
impact on the individual countries. There were uncertainties
about the judgments of the experts we consulted about the
ability of different countries and regions to cope with them.
So that that cascade of uncertainties gives us a bottom line of
low to moderate.
Mr. Walden. Of low to moderate on your assessment. So as we
read this, the public version of this document, we should
assume that your confidence level behind it is low to moderate?
Mr. Fingar. Correct.
Mr. Walden. Why publish something at that level?
I understand the answer. I was hoping to get it from him.
Dr. Fingar, why publish at that level? Will you stand
behind this report?
Mr. Fingar. We will stand behind it. We will stand behind
the methodology we used, and one of the reasons I used as much
of the time for my presentation to lay out that methodology so
people would understand what we did to reach the conclusions.
Again, just to close the loop, if you meant publish in the
sense of public, we were asked to present an unclassified
statement for the record. The National Intelligence Assessment
is classified.
Mr. Walden. All right, let me switch gears. Because when I
think of national security and global climate change and all of
these issues, I also see the issue of food security and energy
security, being able to grow crops. I represent a very arid
part of Oregon, 70,000 square miles where, you know, the line,
whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting. It has gone
on for 100 years.
I sense in global climate change as part of what is in the
public report is you are going to have different moisture
regimes which will affect crops, which will affect food stocks,
correct?
What you have done is take the published data, scientific
data, analyzed that and tried to apply it on a country-by-
country basis to determine what we could anticipate happening
in those countries with the known science of global climate
change. And to all of that you apply the low-to-moderate
confidence level in your findings; correct?
Mr. Fingar. To the assessment we make of the national
security implications for the United States is the bottom of
that cascade.
Mr. Walden. Okay. So then when we are talking about the
national security interests of the United States, as I watch
the food price crisis around the world, as I watch the energy
crisis here in this country and around the world, as I talk to
my constituents, the farmers and ranchers, who provide a lot of
the food that is, frankly, exported in terms of wheat and other
grains around the world, it seems to me that our energy lack of
independence in the United States, the price of oil, fertilizer
and other inputs, is having a very significant impact on
stability around the world.
Then you look at the money we are sending to, oh, Hugo
Chavez at $130 million a day for oil out of Venezuela, the
money going into China and Russia, is that also not a security
issue that may be even larger than what we are facing with
global climate change?
It seems to me that the Chinese and the Russians are
becoming more financially independent at our price because we
are sending the money for oil and all to them. Aren't they
building up their militaries? Doesn't that provide a bigger
issue we should be focused on?
Mr. Fingar. It is a different issue----
Mr. Walden. I know that.
Mr. Fingar [continuing]. That I am unable to size in a
comparative way.
Mr. Walden. So you think global climate change issues are
equal then, is that what you are saying, to what we are seeing
unfold today on the energy picture?
Mr. Fingar. I will invite----
Mr. Walden. Yes, maybe somebody else.
Mr. Mowatt-Larssen. Well, I would agree with your principal
contention that it is very useful to look at the climate issue
in the context of energy, obviously. In fact, I go so far to
say they are more or less a single equation of state. As you
change energy policy, you will have positive or negative
environmental consequences, including on global warming. In
fact, I would use a quote that maybe captures one element of
that from the World Economic Forum, Global Futures Report from
this year.
They stated, ``The failure to develop a holistic policy
approach to management of both energy security and reducing
carbon emissions may end up threatening both objectives.''
I think, of course, that will also affect, as we look into
the future on this issue, the kinds of confidence we have in
our analysis will depend largely on the variability of the
studies.
The Chairman. I hate to interrupt, only because Mr. Fingar
has to leave, and I would like some of the other members--the
gentleman's time has expired. I apologize to you.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr.
Thompson.
Mr. Thompson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
holding this hearing.
I thank you for being here to provide testimony, and I just
want to add my thanks to all the people behind putting together
this work. The estimates are a fabulous help to us, and now I
appreciate all the work that goes into it.
I just want to point out that all of your estimates are
based, more often than not, on judgments. Your judgments are
based on uncertainties, and that is kind of the nature of the
business that you are in.
Also, I think it needs to be pointed out that when you
label something a certain confidence level, that is an
accumulation of everything, that there is parts of your work
that have higher confidence ratings than others, as I
understand it, from my position on the Intelligence Committee.
So I think that needs to be pointed out in the beginning.
But I, too, had concerns about the IPCC's findings and
wanted to know whether or not these are things that we could
take to the proverbial bank.
I met with a group of scientists from one of the
universities in my district, the University of California at
Davis, an agricultural institution, and all the scientists I
met with, they just kind of shrugged. They said, well, of
course this is good stuff. You just have to remember, it is a
consensus report. So this is kind of like the lowest common
denominator. They were already at the point where this was
accepted.
I also want to point out that the private sector is
certainly, in my district, is interested in this type of work.
I represent an area, the main crop--agricultural district--the
main crop is a wine grape, fruit for wine productions; and
every vineyard in my district on their own is out trying to
figure out how to reduce their carbon footprint.
They know it is good for business. They know it is good for
their survival. And they look at things like the increase in
temperature; and, already, the warming in California, the
increased temperatures in California are already responsible
for the introduction, they claim, of two new pests per month.
This has an impact on the business, and the private sector
is going out there. They are installing solar panels. They are
burning different types of fuel, different types of farming
practice. They are investing a lot of money out of pocket
because they know that this is important.
A lot of it is based on data that has been made available;
and it seems to me that we should be looking at how to make all
of the data available so everybody, governments--not only local
governments and State governments here but governments around
the world--we can work in conjunction with them to deal with
what would be devastating geopolitical problems if this comes
about.
I guess I would like to hear from you, Dr. Fingar,
regarding the making public, declassifying this information, so
we can have the benefit of working across agencies, working
across governments, working globally to deal with this.
Mr. Fingar. Let me respond to three points that you made.
One is the Intelligence Community is used to working with
uncertainty, working with partial information. That is what we
do all the time. That is why we exist. If we have all of the
information, you wouldn't need to hire us. So we are used to
trying to piece together a 1,000-piece puzzle when you have 15
pieces and somebody lost the box cover.
Dealing with the uncertainties around the IPCC report,
okay, that is what we know, in quotes, and as a starting point,
so we will take that and work with it. So in that respect what
we did here is what we normally do on a different kind of
subject and difficulty to go back at the sources of
information.
The peer review character is important to this. It is a
peer--the IPCC report is peer reviewed. It is
biopharmaceuticals, farmers apply fertilizer on the basis of
sort of peer-reviewed papers of one kind or another. It is not
just another hypothesis.
But the classification of the NIA is one that there is
several reasons here. It was not a NIC decision. The decision
to have it classified was the National Intelligence Board, the
heads of the 16 agencies meeting together chaired by the
Director of National Intelligence.
Part of it is we are reluctant to have our input to
decisionmaking become a part of the debate. We believe
decisionmakers need the chance to work it.
The issues, the problems that are identified in our
assessment here are such that, if they are going to be tackled,
there is going to be extensive engagement by the United States,
many components of the United States, with other governments,
with international agencies.
Our experience and our judgment is that we would complicate
and make that much more difficult if we were to sort of
identify who are the winners, who stand to benefit if nothing
happens, which governments we consider to be to incompetent to
manage the problem. Do we direct money to the most competent or
the most incompetent? Where there are the most people affected
or likely to have the shortest----
There are many, many policy decisions that seem to me could
be informed by this report and that stigmatizing in some way
the potential partners by the judgments that we make about them
strikes us as the wrong way to go about it.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the ranking member of the Intelligence
Committee, the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Hoekstra.
Mr. Hoekstra. Thank you. Just a couple of questions or
comments.
Low to moderate means you don't know. I mean, we have read
National Intelligence Estimates where there are high confidence
in those types of things, and they have proven to be wrong. And
even in their high confidence it says, you know, we could still
be wrong. Low to moderate means--I believe that is accurate,
correct? You really don't know?
Mr. Fingar. Yes.
Mr. Hoekstra. It is a pretty low standard.
Mr. Fingar. Yes, but this is not a fact.
Mr. Hoekstra. But it is a very low standard in terms of the
rankings as to what we see in national intelligence
assessments?
Mr. Fingar. Right, but this is one of the things that you
will appreciate, being on the Intelligence Committee, where the
estimates, where the confidence levels are based on the
quantity and quality of the information we have available.
Mr. Hoekstra. Right.
Mr. Fingar. Those kinds of criteria, trying to take it out
to different kinds of information, we have got a lot of
information of which we are incapable ourselves of assessing
the quality.
Mr. Hoekstra. The second, what value, exactly, did the
Intel Community add to this process in terms of HUMINT
collection, SIGINT collection, you know, clandestine
collection? Where was the value that the Intel Community added
in this?
Mr. Fingar. There is--correct me if I am wrong in that, but
there is no clandestine collection involved in this. It is just
working with open-source information. And the value was the
experienced analysts who know how to look at national security
implications of various situations--country specialists, region
specialists, economic specialists, military specialists, who
were able to look at the data that came out of stage three.
Mr. Hoekstra. We don't have that at State?
Mr. Fingar. You have some, of course----
Mr. Hoekstra. I mean in terms of taking a look at global
trends and these types of things, the Intelligence Community is
in a better position to do that kind of analysis on global
trends than what we have in the State Department?
Mr. Fingar. I don't know if the Congress asked the State
Department for this. They asked us to do it. You asked us to do
it.
Mr. Hoekstra. Why can this report not be declassified?
Mr. Fingar. I don't have anything to add to the answer I
just gave your colleague from California.
Mr. Hoekstra. I mean, I support the chairman of this Select
Committee in terms of asking for the report to be declassified,
because I see--I don't see anything that the Intel Community
has added to this study. I don't see any disclosure of
clandestine, covert information, as far as I can tell.
I would welcome this report to be studied or to be released
to see how little value I think was received as an output of,
perhaps, good work by the Intel Community but tasking the wrong
people to do the work. I am all for releasing this.
Ms. Eshoo. There is a bipartisan sensibility on this.
Mr. Hoekstra. Yes. I see no intel value that came out of
this report that says, wow, we really need to protect these
sources, methods or process.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. Hoekstra. Yes.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. I agree that this should be
declassified, as well, based on Dr. Fingar's testimony that
there wasn't any clandestine information that added value to
the report.
Mr. Hoekstra. I said this from the beginning. We are asking
the wrong agency to do the wrong work. There are other more
pressing intelligence needs that are out there right now.
I would apologize for Congress asking you to do this work
in the first place. This could have been--as you have said,
most of this is open-source information. You have gone through
it. You have reviewed it. You said, hey, if there is climate
change--and, as my colleague pointed out, if temperatures go up
we have got a problem; if temperatures go down, we have got a
problem, you know; and we can say that with low-to-moderate
confidence.
There are a lot more pressing issues out there for the
Intelligence Community to be focused on right now that would
help keep America safe and that would actually enable the
Intelligence Community to do what I think we are spending $40
billion a year on, and it is not speculating on open-source
information. It was a waste of time, a waste of resources for
the Intelligence Community to be focused on this issue versus
other folks in the government that could have done this job and
have a responsibility for doing it.
I am assuming we didn't go--did we task anybody to go into
these countries and to ask whether countries were developing
strategies potentially to deal with global warming in these
areas?
Mr. Fingar. We did not.
Mr. Hoekstra. I am sorry?
Mr. Fingar. We did not.
Mr. Hoekstra. I mean, I would think that is what we want to
know. Does Russia, do countries in Africa, are they thinking
about global warming? Are they tasking and developing plans to
deal with global warming, instability? If they are, what those
are?
That is what I think would be of interest from the
Intelligence Community saying, you know, get into these
governments and see how they are planning on dealing with it.
Because that would be the insight that the Intel Community
could give us that we can't get from open sourcing. But it
appears that that didn't even happen.
With that, I yield back my time.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
The gentleman from California.
Mr. Issa. Mr. Chairman, at this juncture I would ask as a
unanimous consent that the Chairs and the ranking members
prepare, at the end, the conclusion, a request for a
declassification; and in lieu of declassification, if that is
turned down, that we have a redacted version so that all of us
on the committee can see what, if anything, is being held as
closed. Because, clearly, the vast majority of this document,
if not the entire document, should be declassified.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman for that suggestion. I
would propose that we do work together jointly as committees;
and the majority and the minority can go on to accomplish that
goal, I think. I thank the gentleman for that proposal.
Mr. Fingar. Mr. Chairman, if I may beg your permission to
catch my airplane, my colleagues would--but we would certainly
receive the committees'--the joint two committees----
The Chairman. Could I ask you, Dr. Fingar, if you could
just answer questions from one more member before you leave? Is
that possible? I mean, is it a classified time that your flight
is leaving?
Mr. Fingar. No, it is a 12:30 flight.
The Chairman. Oh, 12:30 flight. I think, out of courtesy to
the gentleman--I apologize to the members.
We thank you.
Mr. Fingar. But my colleagues are very well-equipped.
The Chairman. All right. Before you do leave, sir, do you
stand by the conclusions in the National Intelligence
Assessment?
Mr. Fingar. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And I would pick up on my
exchange with Congressman Holt that the fact that the material
we used in this was not classified, it does not lessen the
significance of having the Intelligence Community analytic
capabilities arrayed against it. Information is information.
Knowledge is knowledge. How we get it and so forth is less
important than does it inform our judgments. And I absolutely
stand behind this, both the statement and the assessment.
The Chairman. Thank you, Doctor, very much and thank you
for your contributions to the security of our country.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr.
Cleaver.
Mr. Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Dr. Fingar, for being with us today. We
appreciate it.
Because of the international nature of intelligence, how
would you gauge the sharing of information between the U.S. and
allied nations, particularly as it relates to this issue,
climate change and security? The point I am making is we
obviously have to depend on other nations as we secure
intelligence. Is that a free-flowing or is that a difficult
proposition?
Mr. Burrows. In terms of this study, we did share the
analysis with our commonwealth partners and also solicit their
comments and reactions to it at several different stages. We
also have had, also, interaction with other services in other
countries on this issue, so I can----
Mr. Cleaver. Are we perceived, as best you can determine,
as 21st-century thinkers with regard to climate change? Are we
perceived around the world, with our allies, as 21st-century
thinkers?
Mr. Burrows. You are talking about the Intelligence
Community?
Mr. Cleaver. Yes, yes.
Mr. Burrows. Certainly on this issue, I mean, they were
very interested in our analysis and, for the most part, shared
and agreed with the conclusions of it.
Mr. Cleaver. What--either, any one of you, what is it, do
you believe, to be the greatest threat to national security
caused by the effects of climate change?
Mr. Burrows. Well, I think as we, as Dr. Fingar indicated
in his remarks, and we put in the statement for the record, it
is the fact that it has this cascading effect on other
problems. So it is really the confluence of climate change and
the impacts on various parts of the world with what are already
existing problems. And there is a long list of these that he
mentioned in his statement, you know, poverty, a marginal
agricultural production to begin with, migration issues and so
on. So it is, actually, the inner section of climate change
with these others that is the most troublesome.
Mr. Cleaver. I read an article recently where the writer
was talking about the problem--the problems we are going to
have with water. They talked about the fact that Lake Meade in
California would probably be bone dry in 12 years, and they
said there would probably be wars fought over water, or
conflicts fought over water, the Nile, the Jordan. Is that an
exaggeration?
Mr. Burrows. It is an exaggeration in the sense that it is
not inevitable. In fact, on, you know, on water, these disputes
have existed in some ways for some time. I mean, we detail
action in reports, some--there are some existing water
problems.
The key is if you have an institutional mechanism in place
for sorting out water disputes, I mean, that then decreases the
risk of a conflict happening. So it is correct to say that
these could be water--who siphons off water, how much water,
scarcity, there is all these factors, increase the risk of
tensions and conflicts. But it is not, I don't think, fair to
say that that conflict is inevitable just because you have
these facts.
Mr. Cleaver. Thank you.
I yield back 28 seconds, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman very much.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr.
Murphy.
Mr. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it and
appreciate the time; and, to the panel, thank you very much for
your service and the report.
I would like to focus--I am a member of both the
Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee. I
would like to focus my first question on the declassification
decision and go down a little bit there. Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, I
appreciate your service to our Army, to the CIA, now the
Department of Energy. I had the great honor of teaching at your
alma mater, West Point.
I know Dr. Fingar said it. I wrote it down here. He said it
wasn't a NIC decision. You were privy to this. Whose decision
was it not to declassify this report?
Mr. Mowatt-Larssen. Well, we, as one of the 16 agencies in
the Intelligence Community, of course, we participated in the
discussion about both on the content and then in the consensus
on how to handle it. I would just have to echo Dr. Fingar's
comments that we, of course, supported that decision.
I think the----
Mr. Murphy. Can I ask you to slow down a little bit? Of the
16 entities, though, was it someone from those 16 agencies that
said we should not declassify this or is it someone above those
agencies?
Mr. Mowatt-Larssen. I am not privy to specific details
other than the fact that we all participated in the process of
both drafting the document--particularly the Department of
Energy, with our national laboratories in particular. Our
primary contributions to the NIA were scientific expertise, as
you imagine, on some levels and computer modeling and then, of
course, also as an intelligence entity within the Department of
Energy.
So I would defer to my colleague, Matt, on any further
drilling down on that process of classifying.
Mr. Murphy. I am sure you understand we are a little bit
perplexed why you did not declassify this document. Why it was
classified to begin with?
Mr. Burrows. Well, again, as has been alluded to at the
National Intelligence Board meeting, all the 16--which is
chaired by the Director of National Intelligence, all the 16
agencies sit around the table and one of the questions deals
with the classification and the release, so on, to allies. In
that session, there was a unanimous agreement by all the
agencies to not declassify this report.
Mr. Murphy. It was a unanimous decision to classify it?
Mr. Burrows. To keep it classified.
Mr. Murphy. Okay, I just wanted to be sure.
I am going to change over to the armed services side here.
If you could elaborate on as far as what you think the most
significant impact on U.S. homeland security, specifically as
relates to when you look at global warming, the rising of the
water--a lot of our military bases are on the coastline. When
you look at San Diego shipbuilding, when you look at
Connecticut and Groton, shipbuilding there as well, but also
the other military bases, the Marine Corps and the Army. Could
you elaborate on that effect on Homeland Security and the
implications there?
Mr. Burrows. Okay, we actually identified three areas--
broad areas where the impact would be greatest on U.S.
homeland, and that was dealing with the drought in the
Southwest. Then, secondly, the infrastructure along the east
coast, and this would be affected by storm surge.
Mr. Murphy. And third?
Mr. Burrows. And third was dealt with these installations
as well as nuclear power plants. Most of them are located--I
mean, the military installations that we looked at are located
along the coast, so it is linked with the second.
Mr. Murphy. What recommendations does the panel have that
this Congress should be aware of that we should move forward on
when you look at those three areas that you targeted?
Mr. Burrows. Well, as members of the Intelligence
Committee, we don't make policy recommendations. I mean, we
tell you what we think based upon the climate science and also,
you know, what the data tells us about possible threats. We
don't actually recommend particular steps to be taken.
Mr. Murphy. So, in your professional judgment, you can't
give us any idea what we could do to mitigate potential damages
of global warming?
Mr. Burrows. No. In the first place, that is not our job.
But, also, in the second place, as we have talked about here,
we didn't actually look at mitigating strategies in any depth.
Mr. Murphy. I see the balance of my time has expired. I
thank the gentleman.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from California.
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just want to get something down for the record that I
think really is very important, especially around this whole
area of confidence levels in NIEs and, in this case, the NIA,
and that is on Iraq having chemical and biological weapons and
was close to making a nuclear weapon.
Of course, this was all put out in the run-up in the
rationale to invade Iraq. That was high confidence. So I think
that we need to understand the context of these things and
maybe even remember the old Boy Scout motto, ``Be prepared.''
I think if this discussion is about anything, it is about
using the science, not political science, but using the science
and the best minds of our Intelligence Community to be prepared
and to map out a plan not only for our own country but to work
with nations around the world. Because it threatens the entire
global community.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I thank the gentlelady.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr.
McNerney.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Nuclear winter, or the lack of it, has been brought up
twice by members on the other side of the aisle as a relevant
example of alarmist predictions that never took place.
Well, I am delighted that nuclear winter never took place,
but the very fact that nuclear winter was brought up in this
context shows a complete lack of understanding of what nuclear
winter pertains to, namely, that it is a consequence of nuclear
war, which helps explain some of the gross misunderstandings we
are seeing with regard to the national security and economic
implications of global warming.
Now, much better analogies are CFC emissions impacting
outer atmosphere ozone and acid rain. In both of these cases,
national action and global cooperation mitigated the threat
without destroying the U.S. economy, contrary to the dire
predictions of the same critics who believe that mitigating
climate change will have dire consequences to our economy.
Now, Dr. Burrows, you wrote in the testimony, I assume,
that you are at least participating in that, that as scientific
modeling improves intelligence agencies will see more valuable
studies and more valuable data. Are there any scientific
capabilities needed that don't exist and for which none is
being developed?
Mr. Burrows. Well, on the--as far as scientific
capabilities in the Intelligence Community, I think Dr. Fingar
explained--I mean, what we are looking at is using the
capabilities outside the Intelligence Community on this issue
of climate change. We are not looking to develop within the
Intelligence Community, particularly, scientific capabilities,
because we see that as a duplication and probably not a very
good use.
Mr. McNerney. Well, are there capabilities that need to be
developed that aren't being developed that you could identify?
Mr. Burrows. I am not qualified on a scientific side to say
what scientific capabilities need to be developed.
I can tell you, as we have put out in the testimony, areas
where we would like to put more of our effort in looking at the
security implications, but I can't tell the scientific
community outside what they should be doing.
Mr. Mowatt-Larssen. Sir, if I may add to that.
Mr. McNerney. Sure.
Mr. Mowatt-Larssen. I think your question really touches on
a very important philosophical point. The ownership of this
problem, in particular, touches on all communities. The
Intelligence Community undoubtedly has a role to follow the
NIA, but so do, for example, the Department of Energy and
national laboratories.
We have extensive capabilities. I can't speak to all of
them, with things like computer modeling, renewable and energy-
efficiency technologies, mitigating greenhouse gas emissions,
systems dynamics analysis, rural data center atmospheric
trace--just a sampling of capabilities in our own national
laboratories. There the culture is this great transparency of
collaboration internationally with foreign partners, foreign
countries, foreign scientists. I think one thing the
Intelligence Community can do to build on some of the
discussion up to this point is exploit our open source, open
innovation capabilities, to bring all that in as best possible
to improve, to improve our baseline.
The NIA is a baseline. It is not the end product of where
we are going to end up on this; and the key is this
international collaboration, private/public sector partnership.
Mr. McNerney. Well, it was recommended that the
Intelligence Community should conduct a scenario exercise.
Aren't these scenario exercises already being conducted?
Mr. Burrows. Yes. I mean, we routinely conduct scenario
exercises. This pertains to a scenario that are not scientific
scenarios but ones dealing with implications of security,
political and economic and so on. We do that. As the testimony
indicated, we would like to do more of this, particularly when
it pertains to this issue of climate change.
Mr. McNerney. Well, much of the oral testimony that Dr.
Fingar gave had to do with a methodology. How confident are
you--and this is a question that has been circulating this
morning--how confident are you of the methodology that was
used?
Mr. Burrows. I think we are highly confident of the
methodology that was used just for the purposes, I think, that
all of us related, that we went out and sought out, as best we
could, the expertise on the outside, both in terms of the
science and, secondly, also using outside experts along with IC
experts to determine the implications. But this is done--as we
put in the report, this is an imprecise science. I mean, you
are dealing with a 20-year projection. There are a lot of
factors. You cannot be totally certain of how these things will
work out.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. Hall.
Mr. Hall. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Burrows, you just said you had a high confidence in
your methodology. Dr. Fingar said that he was working from the
mid-level assessment of the IPCC, which is a document that has
been accepted by our government and is a consensus of
scientists from countries around the world. That was
corroborated by peer review by the Climate Change Science
Program, Department of Energy National Laboratories and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, or NOAA--none of which
are tree-hugging environmental groups, by the way, to my
knowledge--also, the University of Maryland, the Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory, the Naval Postgraduate School,
et cetera, et cetera. At what point and by whom was this rating
of low-to-moderate confidence given to the report?
Mr. Burrows. Well, this happens in the cases of all
National Intelligence Assessments and Estimates.
Mr. Hall. I just want a simple answer, because I only have
4-minutes.
Mr. Burrows. Okay, it is done at final stage of the
coordination process. This is a working-level coordination.
Mr. Hall. By whom, please?
Mr. Burrows. All the agency reps at the coordination
session.
Mr. Hall. I would love to know the names of those people.
In terms of low confidence or moderate confidence, how
confident are you right now that the Mississippi River is
flooding and 300-plus miles of shipping are closed due to high-
water levels?
Mr. Burrows. High, confident.
Mr. Hall. How confident are you that five Boy Scouts were
sucked up in a tornado and killed in the last few weeks?
Rhetorical questions, okay.
How confident are you that there is an early fire season
starting and raging in the Rockies and California mountains?
How confident are we that a typhoon just killed 800 people
on a cruise ship or a ferry in the Philippines and shortly
before that a cyclone killed many people in Myanmar?
How confident are we that there is a drought in Georgia and
north Florida that was so severe that last year they had to
close nuclear power plants because there wasn't enough water
for the cooling system? Do you remember that?
Mr. Burrows. Yes, these are all facts.
Mr. Hall. Your report says ``increased intensity and
frequency of severe weather events'' are likely. How confident
are you that these phenomena we are witnessing in seemingly
more and more frequent sequence could fit the model that your
report describes of increased intensity and frequency of
storms?
Mr. Burrows. I am not, on that level, confident.
Mr. Mowatt-Larssen. Sir, to the point on the low-to-
moderate confidence, I think it is very important to note that
that assessment is based on the variability of the science
listed. It is not to suggest that it is conservative or
pessimistic but that, in fact, as we know more about the
science, as the science is a greater consensus across the
board, we may, in fact, determine that we have underestimated
the threat as much as we may have overestimated it. There is no
suggestion in low to moderate that the problem is not real.
Mr. Hall. Oh, thank you for saying that you may have
underestimated. I am glad to have that on the record.
The one thing I agree with my minority colleagues about is
that this report should be declassified in its entirety with no
redacting. I didn't see anything that I thought needed to be
redacted.
Mr. Mowatt-Larssen. Sir, there is one thing in the report,
if I might add to your point, that would talk about factors
that may dramatically change our assessment. Tipping points,
those are included in the reports as illustration of some of
the viewpoints that still may ultimately greatly affect the
outcome of our assessment.
Mr. Hall. Right, and the more information that is withheld
from the public, the harder it will be to convince people that
climate change is happening and that we need to make the right
decisions, not only for our national security but for our
economic security.
We could have invented Prius here, but decisions made by
our government and our industries allowed somebody else to get
to that hybrid technology first, and we are suffering from it.
Our national security is suffering through the increased use of
foreign oil and the flow of dollars overseas.
I want to ask one last question, because I know I am going
to run out of time on the answer.
The scenarios described today by you would potentially--
with the U.S. potentially being drawn into humanitarian
interventions because of refugees of climate change crossing
boundaries in our hemisphere, among others, the necessity of
the United States to referee fights over water throughout the
globe are truly daunting.
As we have seen in Iraq, a large sustained military effort
has had a draining effect upon our military and National Guard.
I am curious what your thoughts are. Under the scenarios laid
out in the report, what would our military end strength need to
be to address these new challenges while still meeting
traditional national security demands? How much additional
spending would that require?
Mr. Burrows. Well, again, we can't make any recommendations
on specific spending requirements. What we indicated there was
that, in view of the conclusions that we drew that humanitarian
situations were more likely to occur in the future and the U.S.
would be probably, as you say, drawn into it, and that is the
extent of the analysis and judgment.
Mr. Mowatt-Larssen. I might add to that as well. I think
that question specifically raises the broader question of what
will policymakers need in the future to answer questions like
that and what will they need from us. I think the very simple
response to that is adequate forecast, foresight and warning.
In a classic intelligence context, how long ahead of problems
will they need that foresight and warning and what will it
consist of?
Mr. Hall. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
I just want to close by saying that I hope that the modest
economic benefits that you show the United States gaining from
global warming do not include the flooding of Cedar Rapids or
the three 50-year floods in the last 5 years in my district in
New York.
I yield back.
The Chairman. The time of the gentleman has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Washington State,
Mr. Inslee.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you.
Just reading the Doctor's report, it says, ``We judge
global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for
U.S. national security interests over the next 20 years.
Climate change could threaten domestic stability in some
States, potentially contributing to intra- or, less likely,
interstate conflict, particularly over access to increasingly
scarce water resources. We judge that economic migrants will
perceive additional reasons to migrate because of harsh
climates, both within nations and from disadvantaged to richer
countries.''
Now, I don't think you have to be an intelligence or secret
agent with classified experience to recognize this is a
security concern of the United States. I want to ask you about
what we are doing about that.
Many of us believe we should stop global warming so we can
eliminate or reduce these security threats of the United
States. I want to ask how we go about that.
I want to refer to a chart. This is a chart showing our
research budgets for a variety of national enterprises.
On the left is the chart for the research budget. This is
the research budget for the United States for our entire energy
R&D research budget. You see it peaked in 1980. It has gone
down since. It is about $3 billion per year. This is the
research budget for our health expenditures in the United
States. It is up to about $34 billion a year.
On the right is our traditional DOD research and
development budget. We see it has gone up precipitously, is now
in excess of about $82 billion.
We are spending about $82 billion a year on R&D on weapons
systems, but we are spending $3 billion a year trying to
prevent the most massive weaponized system against the very
climate system upon which life depends on the planet Earth. To
me, there is a serious question whether or not we are doing
adequate research and development to prevent this security
threat to the United States.
If you think these, with all their terror, are in
Afghanistan and Iraq, this weapons system that we are
unleashing on the world is going to have national security
implications well beyond any localized conflict. I think your
report makes that clear. Yet we are spending peanuts, crumbs or
less. We are spending 55 times more money fighting war in Iraq
in this oil-rich region than we are trying to figure out a way
to stop climate change and developing clean energy for the
future of the country.
So it is a bit rhetorical, but I will ask the gentleman or
gentlelady to comment about whether or not having an adequate
research and development budget to build clean energy
technology for the United States, to prevent global warming, to
prevent the internecine conflicts in the Sudan--they are raging
today over water, not 20 years from now. They are fighting over
grass and water in the Sudan and Darfur today. We are
experiencing forest fires in Alaska, in Georgia, and floods. We
are experiencing rainfall that closed a national park for the
first time in 140 years, today, not 2030.
So I would just ask you, do you think it makes sense, given
the security implications of global warming, that we do a
little better job on our research and development budget to
make it consistent with the nature of this threat?
Ms. Monaghan. I think, as Dr. Burrows indicated, we in the
Intelligence Community don't make proposals about what
policymakers should decide. But I think, after doing this
report, the one thing that became very clear is a lot of this
is about trade-offs. One of the reasons we did such a--more
than a 20-year projection is because some of the decisions that
will be made will need a long time horizon in order to get an
impact. When you are talking about the food and fuel crisis
today, any solutions to that crisis, if implemented today,
would take 10, 15 years to pan out.
So, it is all about trade-offs, and it is all about
thinking about, you know, if you make one decision on
mitigation or adaptation, what are the implications of that? I
think that is what we were beginning to unpack in this
assessment.
Mr. Inslee. Well, let me just ask you for your thoughts. I
understand your limitations, but, you know, doesn't it seem to
you that if we can prevent a very significant increase in
world-wide tensions--and I think it is very clear that this is
going to cause a very significant increase in worldwide
tensions, which has the possibility to result in conflicts that
one way or another we get dragged into. We have got troops all
over the globe because of local tensions that have boiled over
or may boil over. Doesn't it make sense to try to prevent those
tensions from developing, to try to reduce national security
concerns of the United States, and is an R&D budget critical to
that?
Mr. Mowatt-Larssen. I would add taking that to a broader
level of providing the kind of information to policymakers, to
informed decisions, whether that is over R&D budgets or over
decisions of where to put our priorities. And I agree with my
colleague. We have to think of those things in a much broader
sense.
One of the things that hasn't come up today is that this
effort, if we are going to understand global warming in the
proper context, beyond the science, it is going to involve--has
to involve a multi-disciplinary, global, international-type
approach, bringing best knowledge everywhere, to put that into
information that we get better at providing over time to our
policymakers so they can make informed decisions.
Mr. Inslee. We have got a lot of knowledge. We just don't
have any action after 8 years, this administration. We are
going to start that in the next one.
Thank you.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
All time for questions of this excellent first panel has
expired. We thank you so much for the work that you have done
in presenting this information to us.
Again, on a bipartisan basis, we are going to be making a
request to you to declassify this document--not to you
specifically but to the administration--so that we can have a
fuller discussion of the basis upon which this analysis has
been made.
With the thanks of both committees, we will now move on to
the second panel. Thank you so much.
The second panel consists of four or five very
distinguished citizens of the world. But because of our time
constraints and her inability to stay with us for a longer
period of time, I would like to ask that we allow our first
witness to give her testimony. She is the Right Honorable
Margaret Beckett.
Mrs. Beckett is joining us today in her personal capacity
as the former Foreign Secretary of the United Kingdom. We
understand that you will have to leave after providing your
testimony.
Mrs. Beckett, we welcome you. We thank you for joining us
today, and we thank you for your service to our planet and your
time in public office. Whenever you are comfortable, please
begin your testimony.
STATEMENT OF RT. HON. MARGARET BECKETT MP, FORMER FOREIGN
SECRETARY, UNITED KINGDOM, C/O HOUSE OF COMMONS, 1 PARLIAMENT
STREET, LONDON SW1A 2NE
Mrs. Beckett. Thank you, sir. I have been listening with
great interest to the latter part of your first panel, and I
will be as brief as I can because of the pressures on your time
and mine.
I think at present we are getting a sharp reminder of the
impact of insecurity, whether it is energy insecurity, food
insecurity, water insecurity, and the impact that can have
across the world and how its fostering instability. For
example, we have seen food riots in many countries across the
world.
About a year ago, as Foreign Secretary, I chaired the first
U.N. Security Council debate on the relationship between
climate change and peace and security. Some 55 countries took
part, an unprecedentedly large number for such a Security
Council debate, with the Secretary General and all his senior
staff--and it was the representative from the Congo who said,
during that debate, this won't be the first time people have
fought over land, water and resources, but this time it will be
on a scale that dwarfs the conflicts of the past.
Certainly we take the view that the impact on the global
economy, which I have just heard your colleagues refer, on
conflict, on the risks of conflict on climate change are all
linked together. We are seeing a resource crunch across the
world at the moment. We are seeing, perhaps, structural shifts
in the global economy which may require a structural shift in
response, and we feel that all of these things reinforce the
need to address climate change.
I heard one of your witnesses, I think, indicate that
energy security and climate security go hand in hand. Tackle
one, and you are tackling the other.
As we look across the world in the UK, it is clear that
there are countries that have greater or lesser abilities to
tackle some of the impacts that we believe we will fight. But
it is also clear the Stern approach that the British public
published--commissioned a year ago indicates that it will not
cost the Earth to change our economies in a direction which can
help us tackle the impact of climate change, but it could if we
don't. He insists then the minimum cost is about 5 percent of
global GDP of inaction of climate change. He now says he thinks
he was too optimistic.
My final point is that climate change--certainly I see, and
the British government has seen--is a threat multiplier. It
interacts with other problems that exist, interacts to make
them worse, pressures on migration, as again has been mentioned
already in your committee.
Less than a week ago, the second-most-senior official in
our Ministry of Defense made the point at a meeting in London
that our defense ministry sees these issues as a real threat to
our national security, and we see that as being the case across
the world.
Thank you.
The Chairman. We thank you very much.
[The statement of Mrs. Beckett follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Would it be possible for you to answer a
couple of questions from the committee?
Mrs. Beckett. Sure.
The Chairman. Great.
Let me just ask you how you found the British public's
understanding of the security implications of global warming
and whether or not it helped to inform the discussion of policy
solutions in your country?
Mrs. Beckett. I think the people understand the issue. What
they don't understand yet is the urgency. There is a tendency
to assume this will be a problem for our children, so that
makes it a moral dilemma but not necessarily the recognition of
the fact that it can be a problem for us within 5, 10, 20
years. Again, perhaps a better recognition of the impact on
migration, but on some of the other issues, although every day,
as the resource crunch continues, concern about food
insecurity, water insecurity, energy insecurity is increasing.
The Chairman. Well, let me turn and recognize the ranking
Republican on the committee, Mr. Sensenbrenner, from Wisconsin.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you very much, Madam Foreign
Minister.
As you may know, I have somewhat of a skeptical view of
this entire issue, and I am deeply concerned about the impacts
on the economies and on the people of some of the changes that
have been proposed.
You may recall at this time the European Commission reduced
the cap on carbon emissions for EU countries, including the
United Kingdom. Shortly thereafter, the Times of London ran a
story that said that this will cost the British electric
generating industry approximately 6 billion British pounds, or
12 billion USD, per year in order to buy the carbon offset
credits necessary.
Of course, all of this would end up being passed on to
ratepayers and consumers of electricity.
Furthermore, this story indicated that about two-thirds of
the credits would be purchased outside the European Union.
This is not a free lunch, and I am wondering what the
British government is proposing to help residential ratepayers,
particularly those on fixed incomes, to pay for this huge
increase in the cost of electricity that they are going to need
to light their homes and maybe even heat them.
Mrs. Beckett. I think everybody would share your concern if
it was believed that in the round there would be a very
damaging and only a damaging economic impact.
You picked up, quite rightly, on the increase in energy and
costs. The British government already does give extra help,
particularly to the least well off, to the elderly and the most
vulnerable, and is looking all the time at how much more can be
done and when it can be done.
But I think I would suggest that although, for those who
like me are believers in the science, it would be much more
difficult if we believe that the net impact, the overall impact
would just be damaging. But we, many of us, believe that, in
fact, if you look at the position in the round there are
advantages as well as disadvantages.
Let me give you a specific example. It is now very much
predicted that ice in the Arctic will disappear faster than
anyone had imagined. That can cause problems, but also, of
course, it could create new trade passages. It could free up
the availability of greater resources. One of the challenges
for the world community is to try to see the availability, for
example, of those trade routes, of those resources doesn't feed
conflict and instability by trying to encourage international
cooperation.
So, yes, of course, there will be some damaging impacts,
but there are huge opportunities to, not least for those who
are the first movers in the industries, in the technological
developments that would be required.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. That is 6 billion pounds of higher
electricity cost and in a country the size of the United
Kingdom is a lot of money. It is going to impact on people who
are the least likely to pay the most if, all of a sudden, next
month's electricity bill will be two or three times their
current electricity bill. Is the government prepared to have a
welfare program that is that vast in order to prevent people
like this from, frankly, going broke or freezing during the
winter?
Mrs. Beckett. Well, as I said, Mr. Sensenbrenner, the
government does, in fact, have such a program, although I no
longer speak for the government.
But can I add that, yes, there is an impact on the costs of
the electricity companies. Those same companies have made
equally similarly large sums of money over the last several
years in terms of extra profits. There is much discussion about
how they can work with the government to help those who are
most vulnerable.
So that is constantly kept under review, and that will
always be the case in every country. I assure you I am as
conscious of the need to get re-elected as any politician. So,
yes, of course, we recognize the impact, but there is another
side to the coin, which is not always recognized.
Mr. Sensenbrenner. Thank you.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time is expired.
If you don't mind, the other members of the committee, we
will just recognize members for 2 minutes for questions from
Mrs. Beckett. I know she has to leave, and we could still
accommodate the other witnesses on this panel.
The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from California, Ms.
Eshoo.
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you, Mrs. Beckett, for joining us. I think
that you not only honor us but you grace this very important
hearing. We all want to salute you for the incredible role that
you have played and the contributions that you have made. I
just couldn't mean that more, and I am so delighted that you
are with us today.
As a former Secretary and now as Chair of the Parliament's
Intelligence Community, you have been the principal user of
national intelligence, as well as being responsible for its
oversight. Today, as you know, we are examining the marriage,
the bringing together of national security and the whole issue
of climate change. Can you tell us what sort of information or
judgments related to climate change do policymakers need from
their intelligence services?
I am sure you have already heard and picked up on the
diminishment of even bringing the two together, that we have so
many other things to do in the world. And this tinkering around
with whether temperatures go up or down and perhaps some
inexact parts of the science, we need to leapfrog over this
stuff and really get to important things.
Can you comment on that and kind of fill in the blank as to
what you think, what sort of information or judgments we need
to bring about in the cooperation of the international
community's Intelligence Communities?
Mrs. Beckett. I think the main thing that can be
contributed by the international community's Intelligence
Communities at present is in the area of analysis.
I understand. I sympathize very much with those who say,
there are lots of important challenges. Is this so immediate?
All I can tell you is that it is factored into the work.
The analysis of what the governments believe are the problems
they are going to face, the analysis of what they are likely to
do in order to begin to address those problems.
For example, I heard mention of India. I am told that India
has begun to construct an 8-foot fence along their border with
Bangladesh, no doubt partly as matter of a concern about
migration.
The department I previously headed, the Department of
Agriculture, has worked for a long time with the Chinese
government about the threats to their food supply that climate
change poses. This is a huge issue. As the Chinese ambassador
who said to me, many years ago, when you are the leader of
China, the first thing you think in the morning is can I feed
my people today? Because if you can't, you are in serious
difficulty.
This kind of understanding is factored into the work and
the analysis of our Intelligence Committee; and, for example,
our foreign policy order planners in the Ministry of Defense
and in the front office are working now on an assessment of
impact in the Arctic, which I believe they are hoping to share
with your own community, perhaps in the autumn.
Similarly, they are thinking about the impact in the
Arabian peninsula, huge implications there, not least in the
Nile Valley, Nile delta of sea-level rise, salination and so
on, all things that are likely to lead to pressures on the
economies as well as----
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. We thank you.
The gentleman from California, Mr. Issa.
Mr. Issa. Thank you.
Madam Chairman, I appreciate your testimony here today; and
I will try to be very, very brief in my questions and make them
British-centric.
When we talk about the problem, we will accept that it is
going to happen if we don't stop putting CO2 into
our atmosphere. Based on that, Europe has led the way in
nuclear increases in nuclear energy, while the United States
has not built a new one since 1979.
First, how would you caution us on the fact that currently
the vast majority of our energy is produced by CO2-
emitting systems, 51 percent of which is coal?
Secondly, and this is much more directed to Great Britain,
you are presently an oil-exporting country, essentially
exporting carbon knowing that it will be outcast throughout the
world.
One, do you think that Great Britain should take a role by
only using domestic oil and, in fact, not exporting North Sea
oil?
Last but not least, in the alternative, if you still wanted
to export it, don't you think you have a responsibility to pay
cap and trade on, in fact, the export of that carbon, knowing
that it is going to be put into the atmosphere?
Mrs. Beckett. Well, insofar as there is a cap-and-trade
system in the world, the UK will participate in it.
With regard to using just our own oil, I am no expert, but
I understand that for many countries and many uses it is a
mixture of oils that is required, and it is not always possible
simply to source everything domestically no matter how much oil
you have.
And I understand your point about dependence, for example,
on coal. One of the technologies which we would like to see not
just developed, but used, is carbon capture and storage, where
work is going on in the UK, in the European Union and, I
understand, in the United States.
Mr. Issa. I appreciate that, Madam Chair, but you said you
had to deal with this in 5 to 10 years. In 5 to 10 years,
developing science can't be an answer. What would you do today
to reduce the size of the carbon footprint of your own country
and ours?
Mrs. Beckett. The biggest thing that we could do is to
increase our energy efficiency. If you look, for example, at
what Japan has achieved, that is a tremendous step forward.
Equally, we are--and I believe the government is likely to make
a statement soon--we are likely to put greater input into
renewables.
I understand your point about nuclear energy, but of
course, although the British Government is committed to that
expansion, that itself will take some 15, 20 years or so. So
energy efficiency and renewables are very much the way for us
at this moment in time.
Mr. Issa. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mrs. Beckett. Thank you. I have to go, I fear, sir. I think
all politicians understand the pressures of the vote and the
whips.
The Chairman. We are honored that you were able to spend
the time with us that you have so far. And your contributions
globally to understanding of this issue and giving us political
leadership is something that we respect very greatly here in
the United States; and we thank you.
And we understand----
Mrs. Beckett. Thank you very much.
The Chairman [continuing]. The pressures that you are
under.
Mrs. Beckett. Thank you. It has been an honor. I am sorry I
couldn't spend longer with you.
The Chairman. Thank you.
The Chair recognizes now the gentleman from New Jersey for
the purposes of recognizing one of his constituents.
Mr. Holt. Thank you, Chairman Markey and Chair Eshoo. I
appreciate your yielding the floor to me to present to you
retired Vice Admiral Paul Gaffney. Madam Chair, Mr. Chair, you
could not find someone better qualified to testify today and
share wisdom on this subject. Retired Vice Admiral Gaffney has
had a career applying science and technology to our Nation's
security, as Chief of Naval Research, as Commander of the Naval
Research Lab, as a distinguished oceanographer, as a charter
member relative to this subject of MEDEA, applying national
technical means to understanding our Earth and its climate, and
as a member of the CNA study on national security and climate
change.
I also think you will appreciate Admiral Gaffney's
scientific approach to this issue. And I must say I am
delighted to see him here today, to welcome someone who
contributes so much to our national security, but also to the
general welfare of New Jersey.
The Chairman. We thank you.
Why don't you begin your testimony, Admiral Gaffney, and
then we will recognize the other witnesses as well.
STATEMENT OF VICE ADMIRAL PAUL G. GAFFNEY (RET.), PRESIDENT,
MONMOUTH UNIVERSITY, WEST LONG BRANCH, NEW JERSEY
Admiral Gaffney. Chairman Markey, Chairwoman Eshoo, my
Congressman, Congressman Holt, thank you, sir, very much--he
does so many great things for our university--and members of
the committee, thanks for the opportunity to appear this
morning.
I have submitted formal testimony, and I will just try to
summarize by discussing first, just briefly, the 2007 CNA
report on the threat of climate change to national security;
and then to opine, give you my opinion on the value of
leveraging defense and intelligence capabilities and data to
both better measure the progress, or even the nonprogress, of
global climate change, and to inform climate change policy and
planning, especially security planning. Let me start with the
CNA part.
I was a member of the military advisory board that sat with
the CNA as it developed its report. And I would like to submit
that report for the record; I think you have all seen it maybe
for months.
[The information follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Admiral Gaffney. The report on security and climate change
does not judge whether or how much climate is changing, does
not judge whether mankind is responsible for it or whether
humans can turn it around. Rather, it points to the
international and regional security consequences of climate
change if the disturbing environmental signals that we have
been measuring in our sophisticated last few years continue
unabated.
The report likens the threat of climate change to that of
the strategic threats we endured during the Cold Wars in that
the probability of disastrous climate change cannot be
determined with absolute certainty; but the effects of climate
change, if current trends continue, on international security
can be so great that one must prepare--plan, if you will--to
deal with that.
It finds that the least developed nations of the world are
most likely to be affected by climate change phenomena and the
least likely to be able to cope with it eventually or even
start to adapt to it now. In the report, we call for deliberate
planning by the U.S. security organizations, meaning combatant
commanders, intelligence agencies, et cetera.
I personally think that it is most useful if the climate
science community at large can be as specific as possible in
predicting climate change regional effects. Climate change may
prove to be a global phenomenon, but it will be, I think, far
from average. In some regions it will be much warmer, in
others, much colder, especially if we have an abrupt climate
change event, as has been discussed over the last 5 or 6 years,
in the North Atlantic. In places it will be wetter, other
places drier, some places stormier, et cetera. The question is,
what will those changes be regionally so that U.S. security
leaders can deliberately include expected results, predicted
results in their plans?
To that end, I have seen the value of leveraging the
talent, sensors, analytical and computational capabilities, and
the data collected and the data archived by the defense and
intelligence agencies. I saw that specifically and firsthand
throughout the 1990s, from about 1991 through 2000, as a
participant with MEDEA and its related groups.
I see some benefits, previously unreleased data and
information from national security systems. National technical
means, if you will, and others may help climate scientists at
large get a fuller or clearer picture of what is going on in
nature. And it is important, I think, increasingly, as we
wrestle with climate change predictions; it is also important
as we craft regionally specific plans.
And secondly, scientists and decision makers within the
national security community may get better insight into their
own security-mission-related challenges, not necessarily
affected by climate change at all, by conferring with top civil
scientists who have received security clearances and have
access to capabilities.
Certainly, deliberate acts of reviewing and releasing data
or deriving unclassified products from that data, from
unreleasable data will cost something. But such costs would be
considerably less than replicating data collection otherwise.
This cost-benefit point is more important when one
considers the stakes involved in either underestimating the
effects of, or overreacting to, climate change or their
security-jeopardizing regional effects. If I can quote from
former Speaker Newt Gingrich in his recent book, we cannot
afford to be wrong about climate change. If national security
leaders are to make actionable regional security plans that
consider climate change, they need to know with the highest
available degree of specificity the effects for their
respective theaters.
In these most troubled parts of the world that we worry
about most, governments are probably not prepared and maybe not
willing to collect sophisticated, long-time, serious data. Yes,
the successes of MEDEA are about a decade old, and many new
sensors have come into being in the civil and the commercial
world. I have recently seen unclassified compilations of open
source collectors that can help us monitor the environment in
this particular case. But the national security communities may
have different flexibilities in satellite orbits, undersea
access, resolutions, just a couple of examples. And they may
also have and probably have useful archives that go back years
and generations to fill in gaps. It is worth a look, I think.
The climate change debate is serious. Potential effects are
also serious. And for regional security reasons, we should plan
for it. But to plan we need to use the best measurements and
the best data. We should leverage our best sources from all
agencies.
Thank you.
[The statement of Admiral Gaffney follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Admiral Gaffney, very much.
Ms. Eshoo. Mr. Chairman? Can I ask that the CNA report in
its entirety be placed in the record of our hearing today?
The Chairman. Without objection, so ordered.
The Chair recognizes next Lee Lane, who is a Resident
Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Lane's
research focuses on a range of issues related to climate
policy, and he was the Executive Director of the Climate Policy
Center from 2000 to 2007.
Mr. Lane, welcome.
STATEMENT OF LEE LANE, RESIDENT FELLOW, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE
INSTITUTE
Mr. Lane. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a great
honor to be here. I would like to thank both chairpersons, the
ranking members, and all the members of both committees for the
opportunity to discuss these issues with you today.
I am Lee Lane. I am Resident Fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute. AEI is a nonpartisan, nonprofit
organization conducting research and education on public policy
issues. AEI does not adopt institutional positions on issues,
and the views that I am going to express here this morning are
solely my own.
I think the committees are to be commended for addressing
the issues covered in this hearing. Climate change is one of
the most important and certainly one of the most difficult
problems facing the world. I have worked for the last 8 years
on developing economically efficient solutions to this. I think
all of us are concerned with American national security, so the
committees have clearly focused on matters of prime importance
and the intersection of two very important concerns.
My remarks really can be summarized in three points, which
I would like to do, briefly, here.
First, climate change poses a very serious long-term
problem. However, I have questions about whether looking at it
through the lens of national security may not provide something
less than the most useful perspective for viewing it. Some have
worried that by worsening environmental and resource problems
in very poor nations climate change may pose a risk to U.S.
national security. Ecological problems in poor countries are,
in fact, troubling, and for many points of view; but within the
next 20 years or so, expected global warming is likely to have
only a fairly modest effect on these problems, all of which
would exist were no warming expected to occur whatever.
Moreover, as many distinguished economists have pointed
out, in the near-term, efforts targeted at directly alleviating
the underlying environmental stresses and poverty are likely to
be far more cost-effective than attempts to reduce greenhouse
gases will be. That is not to say that reducing greenhouse
gases isn't extremely important in the long run, but--and this
is my second point--a balanced climate policy requires careful
consideration of both the costs of mitigation and its benefits.
Imposing very rapid emissions cuts are likely to impose
significant burdens on the American economy. But more
importantly still, if China and India don't join in efforts to
curb emissions, our sacrifices will leave little or no
environmental benefit.
Furthermore, attempts to use trade sanctions to coerce
China and India and other nations to adopt greenhouse gas
limits seem to me to be likely to add to international
conflict, not to alleviate it.
Finally, some of the technologies that look to be important
as potential solutions to the problem of climate change carry
risks of their own. Certainly a substantial expansion of
nuclear power raises questions and concerns about
proliferation, as Chairman Markey has already alluded to. And
expanding biofuels production, if that indeed turns out to be
part of the solution, raises the specter of squeezing global
food supply, another serious problem.
The real point I am trying to make here is just that trade-
offs are inevitable in climate policy, and that is part of why
it becomes such a difficult policy problem.
Third, new technologies will be the key to success, but
halting climate change requires zero net emissions from the
global economy. Zero net emissions. Today's technologies are
not even close to being able to meet this goal at reasonable
costs, nor will incremental improvements in those technologies
suffice.
Devising new, transformational technologies and diffusing
them globally could easily consume the remainder of this
century. As time passes and emissions continue, the risk grows
that high-impact, abrupt climate change might appear.
I will simply conclude, since I notice my time has expired
here, by noting that there is possibly a family of technologies
that might be able to produce a rather rapid global cooling
even in a high greenhouse gas world.
The Chairman. We will come back to you in the question-and-
answer period.
Mr. Lane. Okay.
The Chairman. Thank you.
[The statement of Mr. Lane follows:]
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The Chairman. Our next witness is Marlo Lewis. He is a
Senior Fellow in the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where
his work includes global warming and energy security. Dr. Lewis
is no stranger to Capitol Hill, having previously served as
Staff Director of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on
Regulatory Affairs.
Welcome, sir.
Mr. Lewis. Thank you, Madam Chairman and Mr. Chairman; it
is a real honor for me to be here today.
Ms. Eshoo. Put your microphone on.
STATEMENT OF MARLO LEWIS, SENIOR FELLOW, COMPETITIVE ENTERPRISE
INSTITUTE
Mr. Lewis. Thank you. It is a real honor for me to be here
today. Thank you very much.
My testimony develops two simple points. First, there are
security risks associated with climate change, but also
security risks associated with climate change policy. And that
leads to my second point, which is that the Intelligence
Community should assess not only the potential impacts of
climate change on national security, but also the potential
impacts of climate policies on national security.
Let's start with DOD, the single largest consumer of energy
in the world. Rising energy costs already force DOD to
economize in ways it never had to do in the era of $30 oil or
even $60 oil. What happens if cap-and-trade programs push fuel
costs even higher? Would DOD have to reduce the number and
scope of training exercises, for example? Maybe not. But it is
a risk.
And the Intelligence Community should assess it, consider a
more fundamental risk. Money, an old adage tells us, is the
sinews of war. Economic power is the foundation of military
power. Economic might was critical to winning the Cold War and
the Second World War and the First World War.
In democratic politics, moreover, there is always a trade-
off between guns and butter. It is harder in bad economic times
to raise funds needed to recruit, train, and equip the Armed
Forces. Rising unemployment and malaise can foster
isolationism.
The recently debated Lieberman-Warner bill would require a
70 percent reduction in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Other legislation would go further. Yet, as a forthcoming CEI
analysis shows, for the economy to keep growing at 2.2 percent
a year and achieve a 70 percent reduction in emissions would
require U.S. carbon intensity to decline almost four times
faster than it has over the historic period of the last 45
years.
So maybe, just maybe, big cuts in emissions can't really be
achieved without big cuts in economic growth. If climate policy
harms our economy, it could also sap our military strength.
We heard today that climate change could adversely affect
natural resource availability, and we could see increased
conflict among nations and within nations over resources like
water and food. But climate policy also has a high potential to
produce conflict.
Vice President Gore says the whole world must reduce its
emissions 50 percent by 2050. Since most emissions' growth in
the 21st century will come from developing countries, this goal
may not be achievable without, for example, prohibiting China
and other developing countries from building coal-fired power
plants.
Already some U.S. and European leaders are calling for
carbon tariffs to penalize goods from China and India. Here is
a warning: Trade wars don't always end peacefully. If America
adopts this anticoal policy toward the world, we will
continually butt heads with China and many other developing
countries.
We have heard today that climate change could cause crop
failure and food shortages and internal chaos in some
countries. Well, during the past year food riots have broken
out in more than 30 countries. In at least one instance, Haiti,
rioters brought down the government.
And one factor fueling this crisis is a global warming
policy, biofuel subsidies and mandates. We are only at the baby
steps of this policy. If we ramp it up and, in addition, limit
developing countries' access to fossil energy, we could
possibly condemn millions to poverty and misery, not a good way
to promote stability and peace in the world.
A much-touted study on abrupt climate change warned that a
deep freeze in the North Atlantic would limit access to oil and
gas and force poor nations to go nuclear, increasing the risk
of proliferation. Well, a global moratorium on coal generation
could do very much the same. Most cap-and-trade advocates are
staunchly anti-nuke. But do they really suppose poor nations
will consent to a ban on coal as an electricity fuel and not
demand access to nuclear power?
We often hear that coastal flooding from sea level rise
could create millions of refugees in low-lying countries like
Bangladesh. But climate policy might actually make Bangladesh
more vulnerable to sea level rise. In 2006, Bangladesh's
economy was $55 billion and growing at 6 percent a year. At
that rate, Bangladesh's economy will be $1 trillion in 2050 and
$18.5 trillion in 2100, the miracle of compound interest.
But suppose----
The Chairman. Could you please summarize?
Mr. Lewis. Okay, I will summarize.
If Bangladesh adopts a carbon tax and its growth rate falls
by just 1 percentage point, its economy will be less than half
the size in the year 2100, it will be less able to protect its
citizens from sea level rise or handle other critical
environmental challenges.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Lewis, very much.
[The statement of Mr. Lewis follows:]
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The Chairman. And our final witness, Kent Hughes Butts, a
professor of political-military strategy at the U.S. Army War
College. Dr. Butts previously taught at the U.S. Military
Academy, and is the author of Climate Change: Complicating the
Struggle Against Extremist Ideology. And he has a chapter in
the recent book, Global Climate Change: National Security
Implications.
We welcome you, Dr. Butts.
STATEMENT OF DR. KENT HUGHES BUTTS, PROFESSOR, POLITICAL-
MILITARY STRATEGY, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP, U.S. ARMY
WAR COLLEGE
Mr. Butts. Chairman Markey, Chairwoman Eshoo, members of
the committee, I am honored to be able to contribute to the
hearings of the committee on the recent NIA on national
security implications of global climate change to 2030. I
appreciate the opportunity to respond to your questions
concerning the NIA, the concerns of the military planners, and
how the intelligence and military communities could plan for
the various climate change scenarios.
My testimony today reflects my personal views, and does not
necessarily reflect the views of the Army, the Department of
Defense, or the administration.
Climate change has surfaced as a critical security issue in
the post-Cold War era. While conflict between nation-states
remains central to security studies, security strategists now
see that regional stability depends on governments maintaining
legitimacy and meeting the basic needs of their populations.
The effects of climate change can overwhelm the capacity of
fledgling democracies to meet those needs. Because climate
change may worsen existing tensions and help destabilize
regions, it is a worthy topic for Intelligence Community
research, military planning, and interagency cooperation.
I found the NIA to be a fine effort. It is broad in its
approach and includes the various levels of resolution
concerning global climate change and security. The strategic
issues were given appropriate emphasis, and the NIA spells out
regional effects that could lead to instability and conflict.
In this way, it encourages the security community to explore
proactive approaches to security issues.
Because of the breadth of the topic, the NIA needed to
highlight many significant areas that would warrant their own
assessments. One of these areas is determining the regional
implications of global climate change for U.S. national
security.
Future assessments could articulate U.S. national security
interests in each region and evaluate the implications of
climate change for those interests. Where are there threats?
What opportunities are created?
While much environmental security and climate change data
is open source, there are many regions where data is currently
unavailable or limited. The capacity of individual governments
to mitigate or adapt to climate change effects would be
difficult to discern, and a proper topic for future
Intelligence Community research.
In terms of relations with China, the United States is
import-dependent for petroleum and mineral resources and finds
itself competing with China for influence and minerals access
in two critical regions of the world where global climate
change is increasingly apparent, the Middle East and Africa.
However, the impacts of climate change create common
interests among countries, as well as competition. Because the
United States is similarly dependent upon these two regions for
its mineral imports, the two countries, China and the United
States, do share a common interest in maintaining stability and
ensuring dependable access at reasonable prices.
Cooperation between the United States and China on
mitigating the effects of climate change and encouraging the
development of adaptation capabilities in mineral-producing
regions are significant areas of cooperation that could serve
as confidence-building measures between the two powers. This
could also ensure a stable supply of mineral resources to an
already tight world market and promote regional stability.
State political systems unable to meet the demands placed upon
them by the populations struggle to maintain legitimacy and
power and invite the introduction of extremist ideology.
Global climate change places additional demands upon
political systems that many developing states cannot meet.
Scarcities of resources, lack of water, reduced agricultural
capacity create underlying conditions that terrorists seek to
exploit. Food riots in Cairo at a time when members of the
Muslim Brotherhood are running for election demonstrate the
problem.
Military planners are responding to the demands of their
leaders for proactive approaches to these issues and the
underlying conditions of terror. Planning for the impacts of
global climate change in the Intelligence and Military
Communities should balance high-impact, low-probability
scenarios with low-probability, high-impact scenarios. It is
important to plan for low-probability, high-impact events to
identify the long lead time responses necessary to ensure U.S.
national security interests.
Such planning has the additional value of indicating to
vulnerable countries that the U.S. takes threats to their
existence seriously. As the military has learned on the
battlefield, security planners need to prepare for what the
threat can do, not just what the threat is likely to do.
The Chairman. Dr. Butts, we appreciate your testimony, and
each of the other witnesses.
[The statement of Mr. Butts follows:]
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The Chairman. There are now six roll calls pending upon the
House floor that will necessitate all of our Members having to
go over there. So what we are going to do now is go to a round
of 2 minutes of questioning for each of the members here.
And we will begin by recognizing Chairwoman Eshoo for her
round of 2 minutes.
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't know; this
button is broken on this.
Thank you to each one of you for your expertise that you
have brought to us and for your magnificent service to our
country.
Vice Admiral Gaffney, I would like to ask you the following
question--and I have more, and I am going to put them in
writing. You represent the thinking of the military. That
brings an enormous amount of weight, as it were, to the subject
matter at hand.
What do you recommend, given all of the discussion,
obviously the knowledge that you have--and I would read into
the record all of your background. I mean, after reading this,
no one can say this man does not know what he is talking about.
I mean, this is incredible, the role of the military in this.
What would you advise our committee in terms of entwining--
intertwining the challenges, the national security challenges
relative to climate change and the role of the U.S. military in
the planning and the addressing of this enormous challenge that
we have?
Admiral Gaffney. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
First of all, I would recommend that the combatant
commanders in the regional theaters consider environmental
change, climate change in their planning, both for the short
term, but also for the long term. Likewise, planners inside the
Defense Department that make investments in future capabilities
should consider this for the long term.
I also believe, and I think I said this, when you are doing
planning regionally it should not be these long lazy curves
that one sees sometimes presented by scientists, but much more
regionally specific. And when you get to that, I think we need
to collect the best data possible from every agency of
government. And I have seen that both the Defense Department
and the Intelligence Community have data, that they are already
collecting as part of their regular mission, that should be
reviewed to see if it is useful for this particular issue.
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you.
The Chairman. The gentlelady's time has expired.
The gentleman from California, Mr. Issa.
Mr. Issa. Thank you, Chairman. I will be equally brief.
Dr. Lewis, Dr. Butts, you seem to have a common theme. The
theme was be careful what you wish for and do, because then you
have to figure out how to mitigate what you did to mitigate.
Fair assumption?
Mr. Lewis. Yes.
Mr. Issa. Should this committee, as we tasked, okay, what
apocalyptic events could happen if the temperature rises 7
degrees, or as I suggested earlier, 1975 scenario, it drops 7
degrees--it seems to have the same effect.
Given that and given the assumption that today's prediction
is that it is a clear rise in temperature from CO2
emissions--that is sort of the given truism today--should we
ask what CO2 abatements are most efficient with the
least offsets and in what locations and begin fast-implementing
them?
And I will give you a quick example. We can deploy wind
energy anywhere in the world and the proliferation is limited.
We can deploy nuclear here in the U.S. if we have the will to,
and proliferation would be nonexistent.
But you flip that around, okay: Can you do the same
inverse? Of course not. So should we be asking the question of
our best think tanks, in addition to agencies and so on, how do
we get to zero emissions as quickly as possible with the least
offsets and weigh those?
And secondly, because the time is limited, don't we also
have to ask what the impacts of rising food prices and so on
are, and be just as concerned that those food prices are going
to rise if we do exactly what we are doing today with no
change? In other words, if we ignore global warming and it
doesn't happen, we still have some very dangerous scenarios.
Mr. Lewis. I guess I would have to say ``yes.'' I mean,
that was a very multipart question.
But, you know, it is interesting; Congress may not be able
to enact a cap-and-trade program yet, but it certainly has the
power of the purse. And it was interesting, as pointed out
earlier, that we are spending $3 billion on energy technologies
in this political climate in which people are saying that, you
know, we could have some low-probability events that could
actually destroy civilization.
So, I mean, I am just wondering what it says, really, about
political reality that we can have a rhetoric that I would
consider alarmist, you know, that this is a civilization-ending
peril, and yet we are only prepared to spend $3 billion to deal
with it. However, what we would really like to do is impose a
regulatory system on the economy that would force people to
spend trillions.
There seems to be a disconnect there.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. Hall,
for 2 minutes.
Mr. Hall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am interested in Professor Butts's assertion that the
threat of climate change could provide opportunities for
multilateral cooperation. Sort of the flip side of the coin
that the former Secretary from the UK, Mrs. Beckett, made in
terms of climate change being a threat multiplier.
Do you envision technology transfer programs, water
security agreements, coordinated disaster response efforts?
Could you elaborate on those multilateral cooperations?
Mr. Butts. Sir, all of those would qualify. I think that
the mechanisms of our National Security Community could reach
out to other nations and seek areas of cooperation and build
confidence--CBMs, confidence-building measures. So in areas
where there may be border disputes, there may be cooperation on
dealing with watershed management. In areas where there are
common interests, as I mentioned with China and the United
States, how might we work together to improve development in
those areas, help the governments maintain themselves in power,
and prevent failed states that terrorists might take advantage
of?
Mr. Hall. Thank you.
And I would just like to--I know time is short here. I just
want to thank the Admiral for quoting Mr. Gingrich that we
cannot afford to be wrong about this. And I believe personally
that I would rather be wrong on the side of doing what it takes
to mitigate climate change, because in the process of doing so,
we will be creating new technologies and new jobs and new
industries and renewable technologies here, hopefully keeping
the jobs here at home and reversing that flow of dollars that
has been bleeding us for the last several years and putting us
in an insecure economic and national security position.
And I yield back.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman very much.
I thank the panel for their tremendous contribution today.
We apologize to you, but we did learn today that the
Intelligence Community believes that global warming creates
conditions that foster terrorism. That shocking conclusion
should give even greater reason to act promptly on climate
change legislation.
Unfortunately, the harsh truth has been papered over in
public testimony. This administration has a multicolor scheme
for warnings--red, orange, yellow, green--but the
administration uses another color on climate change, and that
is whitewash. It does a great disservice to the American people
to obscure the truth behind the cloak of phony secrecy claims.
We need, on a bipartisan basis, to have this entire report
declassified so that we can have the full-ranging debate not
only that the United States needs, but the entire world needs
so that we can take the action now before it is too late.
We thank each of you for your contribution today. We
apologize to you for the truncated nature of the hearing. But
with that, this hearing is adjourned with a minute and 38
seconds yet to go a quarter of a mile over to the House floor.
Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 12:31 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
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