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62–523 2010

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 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut 

HILDA L. SOLIS, California 

STEPHANIE HERSETH SANDLIN, 

South Dakota 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin, Ranking Member 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

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 

ROBERT E. (BUD) CRAMER, Alabama 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

RUSH D. HOLT, New Jersey 

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland 

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts 

MIKE THOMPSON, California 

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

PETER HOEKSTRA, Michigan 

TERRY EVERETT, Alabama 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

HEATHER WILSON, New Mexico 

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas 

JOHN M. McHUGH, New York 

TODD TIAHRT, Kansas 

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan 

DARRELL E. ISSA, California 

NANCY PELOSI, California, Speaker, Ex Officio Member 

JOHN A. BOEHNER, Ohio, Minority Leader, Ex Officio Member 

MICHAEL DELANEY, Staff Director 


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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 


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JOINT HEARING ON NATIONAL SECURITY 

IMPLICATIONS OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE 

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 


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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. 


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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:] 


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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. 


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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 


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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. 


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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. 


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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 


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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. 


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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 


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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 interor 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 exVerDate Mar 15 2010 21:35 Dec 09, 2010 Jkt 062523 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B523.XXX B523

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perience 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:] 


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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.’’ 


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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. 


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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 


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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 

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nisms 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 


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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 


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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. 


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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 


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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. 


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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, 


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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. 


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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. 


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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 


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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, 


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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. 


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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. 


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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 critVerDate Mar 15 2010 21:35 Dec 09, 2010 Jkt 062523 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B523.XXX B523

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ics 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 


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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 midlevel 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. 


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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. 


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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 localVerDate Mar 15 2010 21:35 Dec 09, 2010 Jkt 062523 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B523.XXX B523

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ized 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 multidisciplinary, global, international-type approach, bringing best 

knowledge everywhere, to put that into information that we get 


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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 


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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:] 


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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. 


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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 


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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. 


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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 


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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:] 


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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 securitymission-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 

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fects. 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:] 


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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. 


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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-andanswer 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 


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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 comVerDate Mar 15 2010 21:35 Dec 09, 2010 Jkt 062523 PO 00000 Frm 00157 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\B523.XXX B523

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peting 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 highimpact, 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. 


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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 


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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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