Joint Hearing of the Intelligence Community Management Subcommittee of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming - National Security Implications of Global Climate Change

Statement

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Nuclear winter, of the lack of it, has been brought up twice by members on the other side of the aisle as a relevant example of enormous predictions that never took place. Well, I'm 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's a consequence of nuclear war which helps explain some of the gross misunderstandings we're seeing with regard to the national security and economic implications of global warming.

Now, much better analogies are CFC emissions impacting outer atmosphere ozone and acid rain. In both of these cases, national action and global cooperation mitigated the threat without destroying the U.S. economy, contrary to the dire predictions of the same critics who believe that mitigating climate change will have dire consequences to our economy.

Now, Dr. Burrows, you wrote in the testimony -- I assume that you were 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.

REP. MCNERNEY: Well, are there capabilities that need to be developed that aren't being developed that you could identify?

MR. BURROWS: I'm not qualified on the scientific side to say what scientific capabilities need to be developed. I can tell you, as we 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, 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 national laboratories. We have extensive capabilities. I can't speak to all of them, but things like computer modeling, renewable and energy- efficiency technologies, mitigating greenhouse gas emission, system dynamics analysis, world data center, atmospheric trace gas, 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. And 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 of that in as best possible to improve, to improve our baseline. The NIA as a baseline is not the end product of where we're going to end up on this and the key is this international collaboration, private-public sector partnership.

REP. 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 -- (inaudible) -- scenario is not scientific scenarios, but ones dealing with implications of security, political and economic and so on. And 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.

REP. MCNERNEY: Well, much of the oral testimony had to do -- that Dr. Fingar gave -- had to do with a methodology. How confident are you -- and this is a question that's been circulating this morning -- how confident are you of the methodology that was used?

MR. BURROWS: I think we're highly confident of the methodology that was used, just for the purposes that I think all of us have related, is that we went out and sought out, as best we could, the expertise on the -- on outside, both in terms of the science and, secondly, in also using outside experts along with IC experts to determine the implications. But, you know, this is -- as we put in the report, this is an imprecise science. I mean, you're dealing with a 20-year projection. There are a lot of factors. You cannot be totally certain of how these things will work out.

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