I suppose if the CIA doesn’t think enough of it to keep their center going, climate isn’t as much of a security problem as the NYT once claimed. I wonder what the pols and military guys on this list think about climate and national security these days? From my view, there are many other national security threats far more tangible and worrisome. – Anthony
Amid budget scrutiny, CIA shutters climate center
Annie Snider, E&E reporter – Greenwire: Monday, November 19, 2012
With the U.S. intelligence budget shrinking, the CIA has quietly shut down its Center on Climate Change and National Security — a project that was launched with the support of Leon Panetta when he led the agency, but that drew sharp criticism from some Republicans in Congress.
Multiple sources with knowledge of the center said it closed its doors earlier this year, with its staff and analysis continuing under other auspices.
CIA spokesman Todd Ebitz confirmed the change.
“The CIA for several years has studied the national security implications of climate change,” Ebitz said in a statement to Greenwire. “This work is now performed by a dedicated team in an office that looks at a variety of economic and energy security issues affecting the United States.”
The CIA launched the climate change center in September 2009 after a spate of reports linking climate change and national security that drew interest from some members of Congress seeking political action on climate change.
The center was designed as a small unit of senior specialists focused on the impact that environmental changes could have on political, economic and social factors in countries of concern to the United States. The analysts probed questions such as, under what scenarios might a massive drought cause large-scale migration, and when might a government’s failure to respond to a devastating flood open the door for terrorist groups to win over the local populace?
Analysts at the center worked to develop warning software that combined regional climate projections with political and demographic information, and held climate war games looking at what might happen in extreme scenarios, such as if rapid glacial melt caused the ocean’s major currents to shut down.
Full story here: http://eenews.net/public/Greenwire/2012/11/19/1
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This is where the real action has moved to:
Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate
http://www.majoreconomiesforum.org/
Take a look at who the member countries are, and if you live in one of them ask yourself; did you even know your country was participating in this? What level of government? Under whose authority? To negotiate what?
Well, based on the last meeting, they’re figuring out how to get $100 Billion by 2020 to fight climate change:
http://www.majoreconomiesforum.org/past-meetings/fourteenth-meeting-of-the-leaders-representatives.html
This is why the UEA is yapping about a “more focused” group that can more easily reach a consensus.
This is why the World Bank suddenly produced a “climate study”, bankers presenting economic issues to financial leaders, the science presented as a “fait accompli”.
This is why the CIA resources have been seconded to another group more focused on “economic and energy security issues”
OT, but the BOM Nino 3.4 SST index is currently 0.12 degrees and falling, for more than a week:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/monitoring/nino3_4.png
The Nino 3 index has just fallen below zero:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/indices.shtml
But the WUWT ENSO dial shows the value just increased from 0.5 to 0.7 degrees. Do we have a closet warmist controlling this dial?
The CIA obviously figure out cAGW was a hoax, but they should keep their eye on the cAGW propaganda machine !
Watching Beijing says:
November 20, 2012 at 10:49 am
“4. Economic Espionage
This issue concerns foreign power-sponsored or foreign power-coordinated intelligence activity directed at the U.S. Government or U.S. corporations, establishments, or persons, which involves:
The unlawful or clandestine targeting or acquisition of sensitive financial, trade or economic policy information, proprietary economic information, or critical technologies; or
The unlawful or clandestine targeting or influencing of sensitive economic policy decisions.”
For instance, foreign scientists using “environmental risk” to shut down industries in the US?
——————————–
Exacta-MundoO!
It was me who said Exacta-Mundo because it’s true every word, as well as it’s patently obvious what Al Gore did is terrorism to the letter.
This is crime girls, and it’s being done under your noses while government employees threaten to unleash the power of ‘popular opinion’ on you for ‘dissenting’.
It’s crime pure and simple and always has been and always will be and this generation of Americans will be the one known as the ones who couldn’t stop a scam so obvious it amounts to demanding Americans adopt the religious belief that there is a Magic Gas in the atmosphere which can hide massive amounts of a spectra of infrared light: infrared heat – and that there’s no way known to mankind to find out if this is true, so we all have to go ahead and install Al Gore’s policies he would have installed if he’d have won the election.
He called on people to ignore the election and install the policies anyway, and his followers, did, have, and are.
Now. Does it sound like I was too disinterested to really care because I said ‘ditto’ to what Watching said? Because I’m personally tired of watching an entire generation of people act like they never saw mass communications used to take over and bludgeon citizenry to satisfy the greed of a failed presidential would be.
It’s crime.
Period.
Always was
Always will be.
I guess it means that the move to less visible premises is in response to a less visible threat. In a few years the threat will disappear entirely along with the small dedicated team who have no doubt realised the original threat was from their own NASA and not foreign climate refugees.
CIA + FBI should start preparing to collect the top protagonist FROM BOTH CAMPS, that are confusing the regular climatic changes with the non-existent GLOBAL warmings. The ones that are lying that global warmings exist -> in jail == the ones that are ”skeptical” that climate is changing all the time – direct on loony farm. Bottom line: human can change the climate, for better and for worse, BUT human cannot produce any GLOBAL warming
CIA & FBI, here are the therm of references:
human can build extra dams on dry lands; to save extra storm-water = improving the climate – the green people are against dams and new water storages on land – direct to jail!
2] human can chop the forests -> rain stops coming on land / clouds avoid dry lands, as Australia, like cars around traffic island = objecting dams to be built and improve humidity level + extra CO2 as food for the trees – CIA &FBI, nutters from both sides of the sandpit in straight-jackets and direct to a loony-farm
This sort of reminds me of the film “The Three Days of Condor”.
One could make the argument that prior to the climategate emails they had good cause to consider it a problem. (Not the climate, per se, but that too many people believed what they were being told about the climate.)
The CIA center was a legitimate planning cell when it was set up. With all the clamoring in the press and some very vocal “scientists”, they needed to look to see what policy/intelligence indicator implications there would be for climate change induced resource wars anywhere in the world. In intelligence, you sometimes run down some strange rabbit holes to try to track down all the “what ifs”. The real concern wasn’t Canada invading from the north or Mexico from the south (though that is a different topic), but wars breaking out in Asia and Europe after crop failure due to climate change. Our relationship is good enough with Canada that we would work something out if a new ice-age was imminent,
Of course the other problem is the CIA has traditionally recruited almost exclusively from Ivy-League institutions. The Ivys seem to have all imbibed large quantities of kool-aid in recent decades, so the analysis may very well have drifted off through the looking glass.
@Elephant’s Child: Judicial watch is wrong to be upset on this. Intelligence sources and methods is an excepted document area of freedom of information. Pretty much everything the CIA does involves intelligence sources and methods. It is up to congress on this one to keep them in check. We the people just need to make sure we send reliable representatives to congress to pull in the purse strings when the intelligence people start to stray from their remits. FOIA is pretty much irrelevant to most of what the intelligence community does by law.
Truth be known the CIA was probably looking to see if the ‘climate investigations’ could get them access to areas of the world where they could not easily send in operatives before (like we don’t read thriller novels out here…)
If the office is close it more likely means they couldn’t use the cover to get where they wanted to go….
When the CIA decides a cover isn’t any good any more, you know that cause is dead.