By Cliff Montgomery – Dec. 21st, 2011
America’s spy network needs a group that can investigate the full impacts of global warming in a straightforward and public manner, stated a recent study from the Defense Science Board (DSB).
The U.S. Director of National Intelligence ought to create a new intelligence organization “to concentrate on the effects of climate change on political and economic developments and their implications for U.S. national security,” according to the large DSB report entitled, Trends and Implications of Climate Change for National and International Security.
The climate change study group also would “report most of its products broadly within government and non- government communities,” and openly foster assistance and dialogue with all such parties, stated the report.
But as The Spark reported in Sept., the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) already has a Center on Climate Change and National Security.
So why does America’s intel community need another such organization? Because the CIA appears to have declared that everything about its “Center on Climate Change”–its every action, decision, finding and policy– must be withheld from the American public for ‘security reasons’.
The CIA’s Center on Climate Change released a statement dated Sept. 13th, which flatly denied a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for copies of any Center report concerning the effects of global warming.
The FOIA request was from the National Security Archive, a leading governmental secrecy watchdog group.
“We completed a thorough search for records responsive to your request and located material that we determined is currently and properly classified and must be denied in its entirety…,” declared the CIA’s Center.
That stance can be a problem, as the DSB notes, since the majority of experts on global warming work “outside the government [in] universities, the private sector, and NGOs.”
“Compartmentalizing climate change impact research can only hinder progress,” pointed out the DSB study.
“The most effective way to tackle understanding [climate change] may be to treat it, for the most part, as an open question, transparent to all engaged in its study,” added the DSB report.
