tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24603066985807131052024-03-13T00:21:16.584-04:00The Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and SecurityA Discussion operated by the International Institute for Strategic StudiesAndrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.comBlogger209125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-67961997899574017952011-02-11T20:46:00.001-05:002011-02-11T20:46:10.998-05:00The End of the Transatlantic DialogueThis will be the last post on the blog. As of February 1, I am no longer working at the IISS. I can say with confidence that the dialogue was successful in bringing together a diverse group of experts to discuss how climate change will affect a broad range of security threats. We held workshops on <a href="http://www.iiss.org/programmes/transatlantic-dialogue-on-climate-change-and-security/tdccs-events/conflict-and-competition-over-changing-water-resources/">water</a>, <a href="http://www.iiss.org/programmes/transatlantic-dialogue-on-climate-change-and-security/tdccs-events/climate-change-food-and-security/">food</a>, and <a href="http://www.iiss.org/about-us/offices/washington/iiss-us-events/climate-change-energy-security-overlapping-priorities/">energy</a> security. We held larger conferences to bring the debate outside the experts, in both <a href="http://www.iiss.org/about-us/offices/washington/iiss-us-events/iiss-us-conference-defining-global-security-in-the-21-century/">Washington</a> and <a href="http://www.iiss.org/events-calendar/2010-events-archive/may-2010/the-global-security-implications-of-climate-change/">Brussels</a>.<br />
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We delivered our <a href="http://www.iiss.org/EasySiteWeb/getresource.axd?AssetID=51287&type=full&servicetype=Attachment">report</a> (PDF) to the European Commission at the end of January. With the completion of the report, my time at the IISS has come to an end, and I have moved on. If you are looking for updates on me, take a jump over to my personal website at <a href="http://www.andrew-holland.com/">www.andrew-holland.com</a>. I will also continue my blogging at <a href="http://www.revolutionarytransitions.blogspot.com/">www.revolutionarytransitions.blogspot.com</a>. I will continue to look at how climate change affects security, but I will also write about the broader changes that the earth and human society are undergoing. I hope that you will update your RSS feeds and your bookmarks. <br />
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Finally, if you are looking for the most up-to-date analysis of global affairs from the IISS, I would direct you to the <a href="http://www.iiss.org/whats-new/iiss-voices/">IISS voice</a>s blog, which should be your first stop for any global security issue. <br />
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Thanks go out to all who participated in our events; it would not have been a success without you. Thanks also to everyone who followed this blog from its <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-dialogue-on-climate-change-and.html">inception</a> to its closure. I really believe that blogging is the best way to reach a large and connected audience around the world. Thank you.Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-18535354281121997272011-02-04T18:17:00.004-05:002011-02-08T10:45:34.524-05:00Summary of the Launch Event in US<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TVFk8ZQQJtI/AAAAAAAABhQ/0xg5CDwPgWQ/s1600/TDCCS+final+report+launch+011.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" h5="true" height="214" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TVFk8ZQQJtI/AAAAAAAABhQ/0xg5CDwPgWQ/s320/TDCCS+final+report+launch+011.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Last week, on Wednesday, January 26, the IISS held a small <a href="http://www.iiss.org/about-us/offices/washington/iiss-us-events/the-results-of-the-iiss-transatlantic-dialogue-on-climate-change-and-security/">event</a> to launch our report on climate change and security. This report was submitted to the European Commission, as the final results of the two years of research and conferences. You can download the <a href="http://www.iiss.org/EasySiteWeb/getresource.axd?AssetID=51287&type=full&servicetype=Attachment">report</a> (PDF) from the IISS' server. Unfortunately for our turn-out, we decided to hold the event during a major snowstorm. We were expecting about 30 people, but the snowstorm brought it down to just a group of 15. However, the small audience made it possible to have a substantive discussion among an expert group of participants.<br />
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If you are going to be in London on Monday, I would encourage you to sign-up to attend the <a href="http://www.iiss.org/events-calendar/forthcoming-events/the-iiss-transatlantic-dialogue-on-climate-change-and-security-final-report/">London event</a> of this at our headquarters. <br />
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The Washington event featured your humble blogger, Andrew Holland, in my capacity as the Research Associate and Programme Manager for the IISS Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security (right, in the picture). I spoke about the main findings and recommendations that were presented in the report. <a href="http://www.cnas.org/node/984">Esther McClure</a>, the Strategy Action Officer for Arctic, Energy and Environmental Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defence - Policy responded to the report and gave an overview of what how the Pentagon is looking at climate change (left, in the picture). She was speaking in her capacity as an expert on the issue, and was not speaking for the US government; her remarks were off-the-record, so all I can say is that she was very good, and presented some interesting ideas. The event was moderated by Günter Hörmandinger, the First Counselor for Environment of the Delegation of the European Union to the United States of America (center, in the picture).`Although you can't read any of Esther's comments, after the jump, I am happy to provide a summary of what I said at the event. <br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<strong>Statement:</strong><br />
<em></em>This is an important statement, and should be broken into its constituent parts. <br />
<blockquote><em>The impacts of climate change combine to make it a clear threat to collective security and global order in the first half of the 21st Century.</em><br />
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</blockquote><br />
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First, it is important that to define what to mean by ‘climate change’. It is unequivocal that the earth is warming, and it has been for at least a century. The last decade was the warmest on record, while each of the three decades before that were also the warmest on record. The trend since the 1970’s is of an average global increase of .2 degrees Celsius per decade. When future climate change is talked about , the expectation should be a similar trend for at least the next thirty to forty years, if not an acceleration.<br />
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There are two important qualifications in any climate predictions: variability and uncertainty are features of the climate system. We should not expect changes to be uniform or smooth, and in fact, year-to-year variation should be expected to increase.<br />
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Second, the impacts of climate change are what present a threat, not warming per se. Warming alone is not a threat. The threat to security comes from the predicted significant changes in natural and human systems – particularly water, food and energy.<br />
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Of these, changes in fresh water resources will be the most visible and significant impacts of climate change on human society. In some areas this will mean drought and desertification. In others, flooding and increasingly damaging storm and rain events should be expected.<br />
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Food supplies will also be negatively impacted by climate change. Without significant, dedicated increases in investment, we should expect significant reductions in food supplies<br />
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The impact on energy systems will be complex, but also likely to be negative. Our modern energy system is built upon long supply chains and trillions of dollars in fixed infrastructure investments. But, our findings indicate that it is remarkably brittle. For example, arctic energy infrastructure is vulnerable to melting permafrost and low-lying oil storage units are vulnerable to rising sea levels. <br />
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Third, “collective security” refers to threats to state stability and to the global commons. The report does not see climate change as a threat to the stability and continuity of any major, developed country. However, it does present significant threats to state stability in weaker states. The links between climate change and conflict are complex, but clear.<br />
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Finally, it is only possible to make predictions for the first half of the 21st Century. Any longer time-frame is pure speculation. Though some will make plausible scenarios for almost any situation, any predictions for the strategic situation more than forty years from now cannot be credible. <br />
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<strong>Key Recommendations</strong><br />
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<ul><li>Adaptation to climate change will be essential – but this should not simply be seen as simply throwing money at it. Properly targeted funding can be helpful in reducing the threats of conflict.</li>
<li>Water must be at the center of adaptation efforts, because of the threats that water shortages present to security. </li>
<li>Military and intelligence organizations have the most experience in strategic planning under conditions of uncertainty. They understand that waiting for certainty often means that you have waited too long. Intelligence communities in both Europe and America should fully examine and prepare for the many scenarios that a changing climate presents.</li>
</ul>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-8123290094433767752011-01-21T17:36:00.000-05:002011-01-21T17:36:59.230-05:00Event Advisory: “The Results of the IISS Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security”Next week, on Wednesday, I will be presenting the results of the IISS Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security at the IISS's US office here in Washington. Esther McClure, a Strategy Action Officer for Energy and Environmental Policy at the Pentagon. The discussion will be moderated by <span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Günter Hörmandinger, the Coundelor for Environment from the Embassy of the European Union. </span></span><div><br />
</div><div><span lang="EN-GB"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span>The event will begin at 4:45 pm on Wednesday, January 26. It should be an interesting discussion that will hopefully highlight some of the areas of differences and for cooperation in the approach of the US and EU to climate and security policy. <div><div><br />
</div><div>Here's a sneak peak:</div><div><blockquote><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Climate change is at the heart of both national and collective security. The earth is unequivocally warming, and no matter what action is taken to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, that warming is very likely to continue for at least the next 30-40 years. This discussion will focus on the role security planners have in preparing for a warmer climate, so that the impacts of climate change – like sea level rise, changes in water resources, or food shortages – do not fuel conflict. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div></blockquote><div>On another note, this will be my swan-song with the IISS. As this program comes to an end, my time at the IISS will also come to an end. </div></div></div><div><br />
</div><div>There is still room available. To join us at the event, please RSVP to <a href="mailto:events-washington@iiss.org">events-washington@iiss.org</a>. I am looking forward to a good discussion with our panelists and our participants. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Next week, I'll post details of what will happen to this blog after I've left the IISS. I will also post the link to the report, when we put that up on the IISS' website.</div></div>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-18210930013340404442010-12-14T19:11:00.000-05:002010-12-14T19:11:33.551-05:00Climate Agreement in Cancun: Important Progress, but Difficult Questions Remain Unanswered<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://unfccc.int/files/inc/graphics/image/jpeg/cop16_650_23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Image" border="0" height="121" src="http://unfccc.int/files/inc/graphics/image/jpeg/cop16_650_23.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">In the early hours of Saturday morning in the Mexican tropical resort of Cancun, international climate negotiators from the 193 countries and observer states came to agreement on what will now be know as the 'Cancun Agreements'. After the very public perceived failure of the Copenhagen summit last year in Denmark, it was very important that this meeting ended successfully. I <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/12/cancun-climate-summit-troubled-by.html">wrote </a>last week that <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;">A failure to come to any agreement in Cancun would probably spell the end of the UN as a negotiating forum for climate change."</span></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;"></span>The agreement text came out of two separate negotiating forums, the "Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol" and the "Ad Hoc Working Group on long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention". The formal agreements, to be found <a href="http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_16/application/pdf/cop16_kp.pdf">here</a> and <a href="http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_16/application/pdf/cop16_lca.pdf">here</a>, respectively. There are two negotiating tracks within the UNFCCC because the parties to the Kyoto Protocol do not include all of the countries that are signatories to the UNFCCC, most notably the United States.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">What to do with the Kyoto Protocol, expiring in 2012, was the source of the most contention during the summit. I <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/12/cancun-climate-summit-troubled-by.html">worried </a>last week that the Cancun Summit could fail under the divide between developed and developing countries, enshrined as a part of the Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto is fatally flawed because it asks everything from developed countries, while asking nothing from developing countries - which include many of the world's largest emitters, like China (#1), India (#4), Brazil, and Indonesia. It was further weakened because the United States, bowing to political and economic reality, chose first not to ratify it, then to withdraw from it. The Cancun Summit ended in success simply because it decided to 'punt' on the issue of whether to continue Kyoto after it expires in 2012. Next year's summit in Durbin, South Africa will be the last conference before Kyoto's expiration, so this question will have to be addressed by then. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Although the Cancun Agreement dodged the question of Kyoto, there are some significant achievements of note. It formally commits the parties of the UNFCCC to ensuring that climate change does note exceed 2 degrees of warming over this century. On mitigation (agreements to reduce emissions), t<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">he Cancun agreement codifies the voluntary mitigation targets agreed to by signatories of the Copenhagen Accord. This is a huge milestone, because it is the first time that all major economies have pledged explicit actions in a UNFCCC document since its creation in 1992. It also made significant steps on a climate financing mechanism for adaptation and mitigation by developing countries. It delegates to the <a href="http://www.worldbank.org/">World Bank</a> the responsibility for creating a "Green Climate Fund" that would mobilize the pledged funding of $100 billion a year in public and private financing promised by 2020. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal">In January 2010, I <a href="http://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-comments/past-issues/volume-16-2010/january/copenhagen-accord-faces-first-test/">wrote </a>in an IISS <i>Strategic Comment</i> that "the success of the Copenhagen Accord had yet to be seen". The Cancun agreement essentially adopts the Copenhagen Accord, including the emission mitigation targets voluntarily submitted by approximately 80 countries and the measuring, reporting, and verification compromise agreements - largely negotiated between the United States and China. The Cancun Agreements successfully brought the Copenhagen Accord into the UNFCCC negotiating process. Therefor, upon further reflection, it seems that Copenhagen, too, was a bit of a success, had it been judged against any standard that wasn't so ambitious to say that Copenhagen as the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6701307/Copenhagen-summit-is-last-chance-to-save-the-planet-Lord-Stern.html">"Summit to save the planet".</a> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At Cancun, negotiators yet again failed to save the planet - the mitigation targets agreed to <a href="http://e360.yale.edu/feature/a_grim_outlook_for_emissions_as_climate_talks_limp_forward_/2289/">could bring</a> up to 3 or 4 degrees of warming over this century - but they did succeed in creating much of the global architecture that one day could help to save the planet. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-54914655182305449242010-12-10T11:59:00.000-05:002010-12-10T11:59:25.941-05:00Cancun Climate Summit Troubled by Copenhagen's Divisions<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">For the past two weeks, government officials, climate campaigners, and the traveling circus that follows international negotiations have descended on the tropical resort island of Cancun on Mexico’s Caribbean Coast. </span><span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><a href="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01780/cancun_1780602c.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" id="il_fi" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01780/cancun_1780602c.jpg" style="padding-bottom: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="460" /></a><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"></span>The Cancun summit was not supposed to come up with a formal global deal on climate emissions. Instead, it was to make incremental progress on agreements for financing of adaptation and mitigation in developing countries, and agreement on “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation” (REDD)</span>. There is also continued hope that the two largest emitting countries, China and the United States, can come to agreement on how to monitor, report, and verify actions on emissions. Action on this is important to the United States, so that they know that any agreements negotiated will be fulfilled. Likewise, it is important to China to resist overly intrusive measures that would compromise their national sovereignty. Hope was raised on agreement on this issue in <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AR1OI20101207">remarks</a> made by China Huang Huikang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's envoy for climate change talks: </div><blockquote>"We can create a resolution and that resolution can be binding on China. Under the (U.N. Climate) Convention, we can even have a legally binding decision. We can discuss the specific form. We can make our efforts a part of international efforts." </blockquote><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">Ultimately, the goal of Cancun was to act as a bridge to the 2011 summit in South Africa, in hopes of negotiating a formal settlement there. </div><u1:p></u1:p> <div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">However, there is an issue that has arisen as the most important and contentious – and threatens to bring down the talks: whether countries will agree to an extension of the Kyoto Protocol after its planned expiration date in 2012. Many negotiators, including the United States, thought that the Kyoto Protocol – signed by President Clinton in 1997, never ratified by the Senate, and formally withdrawn from in 2001 by President Bush – had been finally killed by the Copenhagen Accord last year. <o:p></o:p></span></div><u1:p></u1:p> <div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">The division over Kyoto boils down to the same developed/developing country divide that plagued the Copenhagen Summit last year. By and large, developing countries want to extend Kyoto, and developed countries want to switch negotiations to a treaty that would look like the Copenhagen Accord. The foundation of this dispute is that the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated and agreed under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility”. What that means in practice is that developed countries are responsible for making verifiable emissions reductions, while nothing is asked of developing countries. The United States and EU argue that it is unfair to ask developed countries to reduce their emissions, while large developing countries, including China or India – the 1<sup>st</sup> and 4<sup>th</sup> largest emitters in the world, respectively – are not asked to reduce their emissions. Not only is this inequitable, it is inefficient – because businesses could simply more their production from a place like Europe – where carbon emissions are limited by law, and therefore cost money – to China, where carbon pollution is not limited. In the terms of the climate change debate, this is called ‘Carbon Leakage’ and it implies that global emissions (the only thing that matters for climate change) could actually go up by limiting emissions in one area, but not in another. So far, only Japan and Russia have formally come out against extending Kyoto, but Canada and other countries are also likely to oppose an extension. <o:p></o:p></span></div><u1:p></u1:p> <div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">However, with some developing countries, support for Kyoto has become a symbol of anti-western solidarity. Most developing countries, however, are in favor of extending the Protocol, with some Latin American countries, notably Bolivia and Venezuela, saying they will not support any agreement that comes out of Cancun unless it continues the principles of the Kyoto Protocol. This threat is credible because Venezuela, Bolivia, and Sudan blocked formal ratification of the Copenhagen Accord last year over similar concerns. <o:p></o:p></span></div><u1:p></u1:p> <div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">Another factor in the debate about the Kyoto Protocol is that the United States is not a signatory to the Protocol, and an extension of it would mean that the US is not involved. The American negotiators are insisting that agreement that comes out of Cancun moves beyond Kyoto and recognizes the legitimacy of the Copenhagen Accord and the 2020 emission targets which both developed and developing countries made when they signed onto it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><u1:p></u1:p> <div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">A failure to come to any agreement in Cancun would probably spell the end of the UN as a negotiating forum for climate change. Last year’s Copenhagen summit left a bitter taste with many participants, because of the inability to negotiate among such a large and unwieldy body. Already, forums like the G-20 and the Major Economies Meetings on Climate Change and Energy Security are beginning to supplant the UN. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;"><b>Interesting Links:</b></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">The <a href="http://unfccc.int/2860.php">UNFCCC </a>is very transparent in the negotiations. Anyone wishing to follow today's negotiations can watch it <a href="http://webcast.cc2010.mx/">here</a>. The Cancun Summit's home page is <a href="http://cc2010.mx/en/">here</a>. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">The IISD's reporting service has done an excellent job summarizing each day's conference. You can find it <a href="http://www.iisd.ca/climate/cop16/">here</a>. </span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">Finally, the newspaper doing the best job in their coverage of this is the Guardian, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cancun-climate-change-conference-2010">here</a>.</span></div>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-60321005075585929632010-12-08T11:35:00.001-05:002010-12-08T11:36:31.793-05:00The Melt - Asia SocietyThe Asia Society's "China Green" project has a new video out on their website called <a href="http://sites.asiasociety.org/chinagreen/feature-the-melt/">"The Melt"</a> that gives a very quick, but important overview on how the glaciers in the Himalayas are changing, and the impacts that are being felt by the people who live in that area.<br />
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The video is clearly of very high production quality, and relies not only on interviews of western researchers, as sometimes happen in these sort of productions, but they also sent a film crew to Tibet to chronicle the changes in glaciers.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://sites.asiasociety.org/riversofice/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/PhotoinHand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-163" height="335" src="http://sites.asiasociety.org/riversofice/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/PhotoinHand.jpg" title="PhotoinHand" width="500" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: Asia Society</td></tr>
</tbody></table>I've written about this on our blog <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/01/glaciers-of-himalayas-are-still-melting.html">several </a><a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2009/10/reports-for-himilayas.html">times</a>. Its important to remember that, although the IPCC report was wrong to say that all the glaciers may be gone by 2035, they are melting - at an increasing pace. <br />
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Some quick quotes from the video: <i>"It's mostly about water"</i> <i> "If this keeps going, people and animals will no longer be able to get enough water". </i>The focus on water as the first, and most important impact of climate change on human society tracks exactly with the findings of the IISS. <br />
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Videos and projects like this are extremely important, because they are not only aimed at western audiences. By traveling over to China and interviewing people in Tibet, videos like this can raise awareness within China too about the impacts of climate change. As the two largest emitters of carbon, the US and China are the key players in acting to reduce their emissions - and nations act only when it is in their interest to act. This video makes it clear that China, and Tibet, are already paying the costs for climate change. <br />
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I tried to have the video embedded here, but they have not released the code. Head over to their <a href="http://sites.asiasociety.org/chinagreen/feature-the-melt/">website</a>, and watch the whole 10 minute video. It is well worth your time.Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-34386207753501204602010-11-19T12:51:00.002-05:002010-11-29T18:12:52.384-05:00Europe Can Teach America about Energy Security and Climate Policy<div class="MsoNormal">Yesterday, Forbes.com published a column by Larry Bell, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/18/energy-nuclear-climate-change-opinions-contributors-larry-bell.html?boxes=Homepagechannels">“Disarmament in America’s Energy Security Battles”</a>. I thought it was extraordinary, even by the low standards of opinion journalism, in its blatant disregard for the facts. So, I wrote to Forbe's editors, in order to correct the record. I've copied the letter below. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I am writing in response to Larry Bell’s November 18 column, “Disarmament in America’s Energy Security Battles” printed on Forbes.com. This column is notable for its lack of facts and its assertions against renewable energy that simply do not have a basis in reality. Mr Bell uses hyperbolic language and assertions that are simply not backed-up by the facts.As a favor, then, to Forbes’ editors and readers, I will attempt to put some real facts behind his statements, then you can determine whether his assertions are correct, or just hot air. As the author of “Learning from Europe on Climate Change” in the December 2009 issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Survival</i>, I am well-placed to offer informative, fact-based analysis of energy security and climate policies. I would appreciate it if you would print my response in full. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TOa4aK1X41I/AAAAAAAABfg/ibvJ0D5Zbfw/s1600/Spain+wind_farm1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="230" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TOa4aK1X41I/AAAAAAAABfg/ibvJ0D5Zbfw/s320/Spain+wind_farm1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An unfairly maligned Spanish wind farm</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal">First, Mr Bell asserts that the EU is facing “costly, yet unsuccessful, CO2 emission reduction efforts.” In fact, the opposite is true – the EU has been successful in reducing its emissions, and at low cost. Last month, the European Commission released a <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/g-gas/docs/com_2010_569_en.pdf">report</a> stating that, by 2012 (the date for compliance with the Kyoto Protocol) the emissions of the EU-15 (the 15 Western European countries) will be 10.4% below 1990 levels, and the emissions of the EU-12 (the 12 former East Bloc countries) will be 36.8% below 1990 levels. This means that the EU as a whole will reduce its emissions 17.3% below 1990 levels. Alone among major developed economies, the EU will meet the emission reduction commitments it made when it signed the Kyoto Protocol. In Europe, it is true, the cost of energy – both electricity and gasoline – is generally higher (rates vary greatly throughout the EU), but that is the result of long-standing government policies that encourage energy security, not a recent increases from climate policies. In France, for instance, the<a href="http://www.energy.eu/#domestic"> cost per KWh</a> of electricity is about 19.25¢, while <a href="http://www.eia.doe.gov/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html">in the USA</a>, it is about 10.45¢. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Mr Bell then goes on a rant against the wind industry. It is true that wind energy requires high up front infrastructure costs, but he does not acknowledge that once they are running, there are no fuel costs – which can fluctuate widely – as there are with traditional electricity power plants. He then cites a <a href="http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf">report</a> from Spain, repeatedly <a href="http://www.heritage.org/Events/2009/05/Busting-the-Myth-of-Green-Jobs">pushed</a> by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, that has been widely <a href="http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/05/spain_tall_tales.html">debunked</a> as based upon flawed analysis and untrue foundations. For instance, the report estimates that Spain’s renewable program created only 50,000 jobs, when <a href="http://www.unep.org/labour_environment/PDFs/Greenjobs/UNEP-Green-Jobs-E-Bookp85-129-Part2section1.pdf">official estimates are 188,000</a>. The argument they make is that supporting renewable energy destroys jobs by causing the loss of 2.2 jobs for every 1 created. It is based on flawed analysis, and it just goes to show that you can always find an economist to support your view. It doesn’t make them right, though. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Mr Bell then states that “high wind power premiums” get passed onto customers, while talking about wind farms in Texas. What he doesn’t mention is that in his home state of Texas, the state with most installed wind power – about <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2009/04/27/daily27.html">8 gigawatts</a> – the Public Utility Commission said “<a href="http://powersmack.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/2009scope_elecwind_reduces_prices_extract.pdf">Wind generation has had the impact of reducing wholesale and retail prices of electricity.</a>” <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">Solar power, too, receives Mr Bell’s attention, saying that solar power doesn’t work, because of ‘night’. Of course this is simplistic. He doesn’t mention that night is when electricity demand is lowest. He also doesn’t mention that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/22/first-molten-salt-solar-power">new Concentrating Solar Power</a> (CSP) plants are being developed (in Europe, of course), that will heat molten salt in order to store power so that it can continue producing power through the night.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Next on Mr Bell’s target list is the supposed fact that Germany is canceling planned coal power plants because of “environmental resistance”. What he doesn’t mention is that this is being driven more by free-market realities than by concerns about carbon emissions. Coal prices in Europe are now trading close to <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-17/coal-s-two-year-high-may-force-european-utility-gas-switch-energy-markets.html">their two-year high</a>, at $108.50 per metric ton, due to rising demand from China. In fact, the high price of coal this year has meant that utilities burning coal in the UK have averaged a net loss of 9 pence (14 US cents) per megawatt hour in 2010. Due to these market realities, utilities in Europe are increasingly turning to natural gas, and –yes – renewables for their power generating capacity.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TOa46O9XMYI/AAAAAAAABfk/b3Do-fLNJFQ/s1600/france+nukes.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="188" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TOa46O9XMYI/AAAAAAAABfk/b3Do-fLNJFQ/s200/france+nukes.gif" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">French nuclear power plants</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal">Mr Bell then goes ahead to extoll the virtues of French leadership on nuclear power. It is true, as he says, that France is major nuclear technology leader and exporter, and that it obtains 80% of its electricity from nuclear power. However, we should not mistake this for the effects of the free market. 35 years ago, the French government and<b><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b>Électricité de France (EDF), the then government-owned utility, came together to create a massive, and successful <a href="http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html">nuclear power program</a>. However, it wasn’t due to free markets that this came about. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I agree with Mr Bell that the United States should return to building nuclear power. It can provide low-cost, carbon-free baseload power to large areas of the United States. However, we should not pretend that the free market will supply it. Constellation Energy recently <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/business/energy-environment/11power.html">announced</a> that it would be cancelling the building of a new reactor in Maryland due to cost issues. It could not raise sufficient funds from Wall Street, and it was seeking loan guarantees from the US Department of Energy for $7.6 billion, 80% of the cost of the project. Even then, Constellation determined that the costs of the project were too high. Certainly, free-market people like Mr Bell would not support the government giving loans to build nuclear power?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Finally, Mr Bell talks about America’s “vast deposits of oil, natural gas and oil shale”. True, the shale gas revolution of the last three years in the US has changed us from a net importer to a net exporter of natural gas. At a time when gas extraction is booming in this country, he must surely be mistaken in saying that “our energy developers struggle”. On oil, though, he is wrong that we have vast untapped reserves, either on or off shore. US oil production peaked at 9.6 million barrels per day (mbpd) in 1970. Today we produce 5.4 mbpd, and we use approximately 19.7 mbpd. No amount of extra drilling in this country is going to close that gap – John Hotmeister, former President of Shell Oil, US <a href="http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9007">said</a> that reduced government restrictions could bring 2 mbpd extra online, and most of that would be from opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. The truth is that the United States will never again be a major power in oil production. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">While Mr Bell claims that energy developers in the US are unduly burdened by “expanding government restrictions, regulations and legal challenges”, but he fails to note that the subsidies to oil and gas companies <a href="http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/oil-companies-billions-subsidies-tax-breaks/19541287/">add up to</a> about $4 billion per year. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And there lies the truth – Bell says we should “let free markets, not government, pick the winners.” But, the truth is that Bell wants the opposite – his policies would have the government favor dirty energy over clean-yesterday’s energy over tomorrow's. His policies will have the US cede leadership in tomorrow’s new clean energy economies to Europe and – especially – China. Instead of letting blind opposition to President Obama’s agenda cloud their analysis of America’s future energy options, Mr Bell and Forbes’ editors should instead do a fact-based examination of the actual costs and benefits of proposals. Perhaps also, it would be better to take our advice on energy policy from experts in that field, instead of a professor of Space Architecture who is trying to sell a book. <o:p></o:p></div>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-20852196823785133702010-11-08T18:34:00.000-05:002010-11-08T18:34:14.264-05:00US Climate Policy with a Republican House<div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB">Below is a blog post from IISS intern, Marie Steinrucke, with a good analysis of how climate policy affected the elections, and what that means for policy going forward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve presented it mostly unchanged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m hopeful that there’s space for agreement and compromise on climate policy in the next Congress, but certainly there is some reason for pessimism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TNiI5xrdReI/AAAAAAAABfc/GS_IySe3LmE/s1600/Boehner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TNiI5xrdReI/AAAAAAAABfc/GS_IySe3LmE/s320/Boehner.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Since the Republicans regained control of the house on November 2<sup>nd</sup>, newspapers and blogs have been debating to what extent the GOP victory will affect possible climate change legislation. Opinions are sharply divided between those who believe that the election outcome will be detrimental for climate change action and those who say that the election was only marginally about the issue. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">In analysing the possible effects of the GOP wins it is useful to look at how voting on the Waxman-Markey climate bill affected candidates’ re-election. In his <a href="http://blogs.cfr.org/levi/2010/11/05/cap-and-trade-didnt-kill-the-dems/">blog</a> for the Council on Foreign Relations, Michael Levi asserts that the issue of cap-and-trade mattered only in individual races, but did little for the overall victory of the Republicans in the house. Furthermore, when the bill did matter in individual races, it tended to be in those battles where the Democratic candidate was already in deep trouble. Samuelson and Bravender of <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44617.html">Politico</a> argue on the contrary, saying that many incumbent Democrats, particularly from rural, suburban and industrial districts lost their seats in part due to their vote on the climate bill. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">The big question remains: how does all this affect President Obama’s big plans for energy reform? The truth may be that Obama has already accepted some degree of defeat on the energy front and realizes that sweeping reforms in the energy sector fall in the category of wishful thinking in the current political climate. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/business/energy-environment/04enviro.html?src=tptw">New York Times</a> recently quoted him saying: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it is not the only way.” </i>He was open to introduce smaller policy ‘bites’ in order to attract Republicans. Obama probably knew that any cap-and-trade policy was impossible, at least for now, when it failed to pass in the Senate this summer. The question will be whether Republican members of Congress will accept even small concessions on the energy front or whether they will categorically oppose reform suggestions in a harsh economic climate. President Obama is facing a new Congress in which many newly-elected members do not believe in the concept of global warming caused by humans and the new speaker of the house, John Boehner (R-OH) has labelled energy reform solutions as “job-killing energy taxes.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Proponents of climate change action do have one victory to flaunt after the November 2<sup>nd</sup> slaughter. In California, voters vehemently opposed proposition 23, a ballot initiative that would have reversed state-wide clean-energy requirements. In its reporting on the issue, the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Election-2010/2010/1103/Did-Americans-reject-clean-energy-by-voting-Republican">Christian Science Monitor</a> called this rejection a sign that the election was about housing and jobs, not about energy issues. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Although one may argue about the importance of energy reform legislation in the 2010 midterm election, it remains to be seen how the shift towards a Republican controlled house will affect President Obama’s energy agenda. Will he be able to frame the debate in a way acceptable to Republicans or will they form a wall of resistance? The change certainly means that he will have to unite his own party on energy issues, a difficult task in itself. One can hope that the Obama administration will see its party’s losses as an incentive to re-frame the energy debate to make it more appealing to conservative leaders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-31208042934413002132010-11-05T15:24:00.000-04:002010-11-05T15:24:00.665-04:00Climate Wars: Not if, but When<i>Today, I am republishing a <a href="http://www.iiss.org/whats-new/iiss-voices/?blogpost=82">blog post</a> from Jeff Mazo, the IISS' Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy. He posted it to the IISS <a href="http://www.iiss.org/whats-new/iiss-voices/">'Voices' </a>blog about a presentation given in London by Gwynne Dyer about his new book "Climate Wars". I've met Gwynne several times, and his analysis is always very interesting, even if the prognosis does tend to the pessimistic, as Jeff says below. The difference between Jeff <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>and </i></span>Gwynne's </i></span>prognosis is not only a difference in magnitude, but also the difference between how an analyst and a reporter look at these problems. Why not buy both of their books and see for yourself?</i><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Imagine this: sometime in the next 10–15 years, a tide of refugees heading north from Mexico prompts the US military to seal the border. With an increasing proportion of the US population of Hispanic origin, negative publicity from the 24-hour news cycle and online media such as YouTube leads to 'the greatest social division since the Civil War'. This is just one of the dire scenarios that might arise from climate change set out by journalist and author <a class="oLinkExternal" href="http://www.gwynnedyer.com/" style="color: #003d7d; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Go to gwynnedyer.com/">Gwynne Dyer</a> at a <a class="oLinkInternal" href="http://www.iiss.org/events-calendar/forthcoming-events/climate-wars/" style="color: #003d7d; text-decoration: underline;" title="Go to Gwynne Dyer event">discussion meeting</a> at the IISS in London on 4 November.<br />
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His remarks, based on his book <em style="font-style: italic;"><a class="oLinkExternal" href="http://www.oneworld-publications.com/cgi-bin/cart/commerce.cgi?pid=531&log_pid=yes" style="color: #003d7d; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank" title="Go to One World Publications">Climate Wars</a></em>, painted a bleak picture of a future where water shortages and crop failures lead to mass migration, state failure – 'Somalia × 20' in Africa and the Middle East – and wars between countries that share river systems already stretched to the breaking point.<br />
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If Iraq had a 'real army', Dyer said, it would already be at war with Turkey over the latter's dams on the headwaters of the Euphrates. In South Asia, we can look forward to 20 years of summer flooding followed by excessively dry summers in the Indus watershed as the Himalayan glaciers disappear. War – possibly nuclear – over water was likely between India and Pakistan within the next 25 years.<br />
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Dyer's scenarios are far more pessimistic than anything I discuss in my own <em style="font-style: italic;"><a class="oLinkInternal" href="http://www.iiss.org/publications/adelphi-papers/adelphis-2010/climate-conflict/" style="color: #003d7d; text-decoration: underline;" title="Go to Climate Conflict Adelphi ">Climate Conflict</a>, </em>published in the <a class="oLinkInternal" href="http://www.iiss.org/publications/adelphi-papers/" style="color: #003d7d; text-decoration: underline;" title="Go to Adelphis home page">IISS Adelphi series</a> earlier this year. This is principally because he is looking at worst cases in terms of projections of emissions and their climate impacts, whereas I deliberately chose to take a more conservative approach. I considered a world where, in the next two or three decades, the climate impacts of global warming are of a magnitude similar to the normal background variation.<br />
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I have no doubt that unmitigated climate change will eventually lead to the types of consequences, if not the exact scenarios, Dyer foresees. The question is how soon we can expect them – in 20 years, in 50 years, in 100 years. The scientific uncertainty is quite high and it would be rash to take either version as gospel.</span></div></div>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-8897282546900064872010-10-19T14:39:00.002-04:002010-10-19T14:54:14.522-04:00The Nuclear Energy Debate in Germany and the US<div style="text-align: left;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TL3oh8-psqI/AAAAAAAABe8/bXRBXhGlDXo/s1600/boy-lawnmower-nuke+615.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TL3oh8-psqI/AAAAAAAABe8/bXRBXhGlDXo/s320/boy-lawnmower-nuke+615.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Three Mile Island <i>(Copyright National Geographic)</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><i>IISS-US Intern Marie Steinrucke has put together an interesting guest post on recent developments on nuclear energy in Germany and the United States. I think she brings up some very important points in the debate. </i><br />
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In Europe and the United States recent developments have once again sparked the nuclear energy debate. The results may be counter-intuitive to many people who have followed the discourse in recent years. The German public has been highly critical of the country’s nuclear program ever since its inception in the 1970s, but those who hoped Germany’s nuclear age was coming to an end recently experienced a disappointment <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,715833,00.html">when Chancellor Merkel passed legislation in the German Bundestag to extend nuclear plant lifespans</a> by up to 14 years. Ironically, both proponents and opponents of the lifespan extension argue that their stance is necessary to build up renewable energy capacities in years to come. The right-wing coalition supporting the extension says that nuclear power is needed to support Germany’s transition to renewable energy sources, while the left-wing fears that keeping the reactors on the grid longer will halt innovation in the field of renewable energy.<div><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TL3ox42cDqI/AAAAAAAABfA/VzqlUBEEDWc/s1600/angela-merkel-atom-protest-090510jpg-33f0e61c4843ceac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TL3ox42cDqI/AAAAAAAABfA/VzqlUBEEDWc/s320/angela-merkel-atom-protest-090510jpg-33f0e61c4843ceac.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Germans Protest Nuclear Power <i>(Copyright AP)</i></td></tr>
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In the United States, <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/117025/support-nuclear-energy-inches-new-high.aspx">popular support for nuclear power has increased</a> in recent years and <a href="http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/03/29/the_coming_nuclear_renaissance/">commentators </a>have predicted a ‘nuclear renaissance.’ Yet the failure of one company’s proposal to build a new plant on Chesapeake Bay indicates the difficulties currently faced by the industry. <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/17254442">The Economist reports</a>: “On October 8th Constellation Energy, a power company, gave up trying to persuade the government to reduce its proposed fee for a loan guarantee for a planned nuclear plant on Chesapeake Bay.” In an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/business/energy-environment/11power.html">October 10th article </a>by the <i>New York Times</i> the author blames the economic recession for the slump in nuclear energy projects. There has been a significant fall in the demand for electricity (4 per cent between 2007 and 2009), while the price of natural gas has plummeted, making nuclear energy less competitive. Furthermore, Congress has been unwilling to pass climate change legislation to reduce CO2 emissions, limiting incentives for switching to different energy forms. These factors contribute to the circumstance that nuclear energy is no longer financially attractive to many utility providers in America.</div><div><br />
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The pros and cons on either side of the nuclear energy debate are so complex that most voters choose to either rely on their representative or their gut feeling to shape their views on the issue. For some Americans nuclear energy does not even show up on their political radar anymore. The implications for climate security are predominantly positive in that the production of nuclear energy causes very little carbon emission compared to the production of traditional energy sources. However, the main argument against nuclear power, the problem of nuclear waste disposal, is also compelling. Scientists have made strides towards safer solutions to nuclear waste management such as <a href="http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/531/Sustainable_solutions_for_radioactive_waste.html">deep geological disposal</a> and <a href="http://www.thespacereview.com/article/437/1">space disposal</a>. It is difficult to know whether nuclear power will find a permanent place in energy production or whether renewable energy technologies will eventaully render the nuclear solution passé. In any case, when weighing the pros and cons in today’s problems of energy and climate, nuclear power still seems persuasive as source of large scale, base load power in terms of climate security.</div>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-10924276931613468482010-10-15T14:45:00.006-04:002010-10-15T14:50:52.208-04:00Water Wars - or Water Riots?<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Today is '</span></span><a href="http://blogactionday.change.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Blog Action Day 2010</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">', and this year, bloggers around the world are writing about </span></span><a href="http://blogactionday.change.org/why-water"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">water.</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> To join in, I've put together a post on how water insecurity had led to conflict around the world. I've also added their 'widget' to the bottom of the page for this weekend only - why not sign the petition?</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TLig0uhLFWI/AAAAAAAABew/5NxoLiSoEKc/s1600/Turkana+Soldiers+and+Well.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i><img border="0" height="212" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TLig0uhLFWI/AAAAAAAABew/5NxoLiSoEKc/s320/Turkana+Soldiers+and+Well.jpg" width="320" /></i></b></span></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Oropoi, Kenya - Photo courtesy IRIN</span></i></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In the security sector, water security is sexy as an issue because of the perceived threats of interstate conflict over shared water supplies, like rivers or lakes. Journalists love writing stories about <a href="http://waterwars.pulitzergateway.org/">'water wars'</a>. We've written about </span></span><a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/search?q=water+war"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">this </span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">on this blog before, like when we discussed the </span></span><a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2009/08/strategic-importance-of-water-india.html"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Strategic Importance of Water between India and China</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> or whether </span></span><a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/04/can-india-and-pakistan-share-indus.html"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">India and Pakistan can share the Indus</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. Unfortunately for the hype of the journalists, projects like Aaron Wolf's </span></span><a href="http://www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/database/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> at the University of Oregon or Peter Gleick's </span></span><a href="http://www.pacinst.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Pacific Institute</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> have </span></span><a href="http://www.utne.com/Politics/Water-War-Peace-Conflict-Negotiations-Hope.aspx"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">shown </span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">that shared water supplies have been much more likely to help promote interstate cooperation than to provoke conflict. In fact, in our work on </span></span><a href="http://www.iiss.org/programmes/transatlantic-dialogue-on-climate-change-and-security/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">climate change and security</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> at the IISS we have found widespread agreement among experts that the more pressing threat when we discuss water and conflict is its potential to create or exacerbate local civil and ethnic conflicts. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i><u><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When looking at the causes of any conflict analytically, it is difficult to separate the effects of water shortages from other factors, like food shortages, migration, ethnicity, climate change or other issues that could drive violence. However, the impact of water over energy, development, agriculture, and livelihood makes it one of the most important factors. When water insecurity is mixed with urbanization, migration, pollution, radicalization, and a proliferation of small arms, it is not difficult to see a scenario resulting in conflict.</span></span><br />
<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i><u><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span"></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Water shortages or imbalances of water distribution can be driver of civil conflict in a marginalized society. In terms of terminology, ʹ</span></span><a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/police-bear-the-brunt-of-water-riot/643091/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">water riot</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ʹ is more appropriate that ʹwater warʹ. Examples of small</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">‐</span></span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">level riots - some leading to deaths - can be shown in </span></span><a href="http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=85376"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Nigeria</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, </span></span><a href="http://www.africafiles.org/article.asp?ID=4564"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">South Africa</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, </span></span><a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LO506927.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yemen</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, </span></span><a href="http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/4912710a260e979c9354033039a7ede5.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Egypt</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, </span></span><a href="http://www.indianexpress.com/news/police-bear-the-brunt-of-water-riot/643091/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">India</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, and </span></span><a href="http://laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=354981&CategoryId=14089"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ecuador</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. These water riots can be expected to show similar characteristics to the food</span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">‐</span></span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">related riots that erupted around the world in 2008. Areas of particular risk are those with strong ethnic or tribal divisions, and the effects of water riots may be to drive disaffected and marginalized parts of society away from areas of water stress.</span></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><i><u><br />
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<span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: black;"></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While no one factor (like water, ethnicity, or unemployment) was able to correctly predict when these regions fell into conflict, changes in water security often can be enough to tip a region over the edge.</span></span><br />
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</div></span></div>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-45249785667362983642010-09-27T13:35:00.001-04:002010-10-14T09:34:13.422-04:00Floods Amplified by Military Activity in the Siachen Glacier?On Thursday, September 23 at a Congressional briefing of the House <a href="http://globalwarming.house.gov/">Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming</a>, about <a href="http://globalwarming.house.gov/pubs?id=0023">'Extreme Weather in a Warming World'</a> the Pakistani Ambassador to the US, Husain Haqqani, blamed the extensive floods in Pakistan partly on military activity on the Siachen Glacier on the disputed border between Indian and Pakistan in Kashmir. He said that "Human Activity in the glaciers" is partly to blame for climate changes that brought on the devastating floods in Pakistan this summer. He noted that the Siachen glacier, in particular, is host to a heavy presence of both the Pakistani and Indian militaries, although he noted that Pakistan has <a href="http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/44-president-zardari-proposes-withdrawal-of-troops-from-siachen-fa-06">proposed </a>to demilitarize the area. The Times of India called this <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Floods-in-Pak-caused-by-Siachen-militarisation-Envoy/articleshow/6620650.cms">'an unusual remark'</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Map_Kashmir_Standoff_2003.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="157" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Map_Kashmir_Standoff_2003.png" width="200" /></a>The Siachen Glacier is the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_Glacier">world's largest non-polar glacier</a>. It is 43 miles long, and covers about 270 square miles (including its tributaries). Its heights are occupied by India, but it is claimed by Pakistan to be in their area of Kashmir. <br />
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The Siachen glacier has been at the heart of the long-running Kashmir border conflict between these two rivals. There was an excellent story from four years ago in Time Magazine, <a href="http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501050711/story.html">"War at the Top of the World"</a> that detailed the conflict. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/SiachenGlacier_satellite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/SiachenGlacier_satellite.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NASA's Satellite View of the Siachen Glacier</td></tr>
</tbody></table>There is no question that the glacier is heavily militarized. It is home to the world's highest helipad, and both sides have brought troops. I confess that I haven't seen any scientific studies linking local human activity to changes on the glaciers. However, it would be logical that any local soot (black carbon) emissions could cause significant local melting. As I mentioned in my <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/09/global-alliance-for-clean-cookstoves.html">post about cookstoves</a>, black carbon can cause melting on glaciers because its dark color warms the glacier in the sun, increasing its melting. <br />
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This is certainly an area that merits further study, and if these environmental concerns can help bring about a demilitarization of the volatile border, then some good could come out of this. On the other hand, I do wonder whether this was simply another example of a Pakistani officials going out of their way to antagonize India over Kashmir, as they have been <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/04/next-war-between-india-and-pakistan.html">threatening </a>war over <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/04/can-india-and-pakistan-share-indus.html">water</a>. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-16867465888572108812010-09-24T12:12:00.003-04:002010-10-14T09:36:39.857-04:00Climate Change and the Millennium Development Goals<i>This week, the UN General Assembly is meeting in New York. One of the key topics of discussion this week is a 10 year report on the progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. IISS intern Nathaniel Markowitz has written a guest post on how climate change is affecting the progress towards the MDGs. </i><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TJzMn6XlZrI/AAAAAAAABes/PJ4ZafO8GCU/s1600/UN+MDG+Conf+Opens+2010.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TJzMn6XlZrI/AAAAAAAABes/PJ4ZafO8GCU/s320/UN+MDG+Conf+Opens+2010.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">On Wednesday, September 22, the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/mdg/summit2010/">Millennium Development Goals Summit</a> concluded in New York. With its conclusion, the General Assembly adopted a <a href="http://www.un.org/en/mdg/summit2010/pdf/mdg%20outcome%20document.pdf">resolution</a> titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Keeping the Promise: United to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals</i>. This document stresses that addressing climate change is a lynch-pin for “safeguarding and advancing” progress toward achieving the <a href="http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/">MDGs</a>. It notes that climate change has resulted in “increased vulnerabilities and inequalities and adversely affected development gains, in particular in developing countries.” <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">While addressing climate change is important for realizing all of the MDG, the resolution observes that it is particularly significant for eradicating extreme hunger and poverty (<a href="http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml">Goal 1</a>) and ensuring environmental sustainability (<a href="http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/environ.shtml">Goal 7</a>). Several passages underscore the dramatic and immediate impact climate change has on food security. The document also highlights the threat climate change poses to preserving biodiversity and fragile ecosystems.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The <a href="http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf">United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change</a> (the precursor of the <a href="http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.html">Kyoto Protocol</a>) is invoked as the primary forum for negotiating a global solution. Specifically, it reaffirms the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” which recognizes that a country’s ability to mitigate its contribution to climate change is constrained by its capacities. [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I don’t think I’ve ever seen a UN pronouncement that doesn’t include this phrase! - AH]<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">In addition to the outcome document, climate change was also addressed Tuesday at the roundtable on <a href="http://www.un.org/en/mdg/summit2010/pdf/Background%20Notes%20RT4%20Emerging%20Issues%20Rev%20PGA%20final.pdf">emerging issues</a>. The discussion emphasized that “climate change will particularly impact land productivity and water availability, undermining rural livelihoods, with a disproportionate impact on women and vulnerable populations.” The panel recommends increasing investment in both renewable energy and developing resilience to climate impacts; encouraging implementation of a green economic growth strategy; and enhancing global and regional integration.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Resources/Static/Products/Progress2010/MDG_Report_2010_Progress_Chart_En.pdf"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Here</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> is a full update on how well the world is meeting the MDG targets. </span></span>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-12205754065879985462010-09-21T18:29:00.000-04:002010-09-21T18:29:02.326-04:00Global Alliance for Clean CookstovesToday in New York, Secretary Hillary Clinton announced the <a href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/09/147494.htm">Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves</a> at the Clinton Global Initiative, hosted by her husband Bill Clinton. As well as the launch being an interesting bit of Clinton family cross branding, it could be an important <a href="http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=36040&Cr=mdgs&Cr1=">new initiative</a> that could improve the health of many poor people in the developing world - and help to reduce the threats of climate change in South Asia. As well as providing $50 million in US Government money for the project, the project boast support from across the public and private sectors. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TJkwzgitXRI/AAAAAAAABec/iw_UtNTjPc0/s1600/malicooking.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TJkwzgitXRI/AAAAAAAABec/iw_UtNTjPc0/s200/malicooking.JPG" width="176" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Cookstove in Mali</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Cookstoves are the target for this project because of their danger and their ubiquity. The alliance estimates that 3 billion people rely on traditional cookstoves and open fires for their daily cooking. These cookstoves are harmful to the health of the people doing the cooking, because of the 'black carbon' that they emit. Black carbon can be defined as fuel that has not been completely combusted. It is a common byproduct from burning wood, as well as dirtier fuels like kerosene or low-quality diesel. You can literally see black carbon: it is the black smoke that comes out of dirty stoves or dirty vehicles. The project aims to replace dirty stoves with <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">clean efficient cookstoves (like the one pictured below) in 100 million households by 2020.</span></span><br />
<br />
Reducing black carbon is essential for human health. Then that black smoke gets in your lungs it can cause asthma, lung damage, and premature death. The Alliance says that it <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">causes 1.9 million deaths annually, and women and young children are often the most affected. </span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TJkxBlGS0KI/AAAAAAAABek/39XSn57pPC8/s1600/WoodSaving+Stove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TJkxBlGS0KI/AAAAAAAABek/39XSn57pPC8/s320/WoodSaving+Stove.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Clean-burning Stove</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"></span>Reducing black carbon is also a key tool for mitigating climate change. Though black carbon does not contribute to the traditional greenhouse effect - unlike Carbon Dioxide it does not go in the upper atmosphere -- it is extremely important for local and regional warming. Essentially, the black color of the soot can increase the heat level. When it lands on snow or ice, the darker color will absorb more heat and reduce the amount of glaciers or snowpack. This is very important in the Himalayas, because one of the biggest areas of cookstove usage is in the Indian Subcontinent. More detail can be found in <a href="http://legislative.nasa.gov/hearings/3-16-10%20RAMANATHAN_part1.pdf">this testimony</a> to Congress by VS Ramanathan, a leading scholar on its effects. <br />
<br />
One of the great things about reducing black carbon is that it has immediate effects: when it rains, the carbon is literally washed out of the sky, so this program can have big effects on climate in the short term.<br />
<br />
Take a look at their website here: <a href="http://cleancookstoves.org/">http://cleancookstoves.org/</a>. It looks like it just went live today.Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-62587641984468654452010-08-05T10:44:00.000-04:002010-08-05T10:44:29.324-04:00Climate, Weather and the MediaThere is an excellent blog <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/08/climate_change_0">post </a>on the Economist's 'Democracy in America' blog about the media's handling of two weather events of the last year: the snowstorms and the Russian fires. He presents an analogy of coverage of weather as part of climate change to coverage of the WWII on the Eastern Front: a small German victory in 1943 shouldn't have been mistaken as anything other than the exception to the rule of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">the Red Army advancing implacably across western Russia in 1943-44.</span>"</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"> </span><br />
<br />
I've written <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/08/russias-heat-drought-and-fires-as-seen.html">two</a> <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/08/real-climate-change-weapon_03.html">posts </a>in the last two days about Russia's heat, so I don't have much more to say on that. In the western media, M.S. is right that there has been vanishingly little efforts to link the fires and drought to climate change, but the Russian media has not had such a problem: in fact, one commentator went so far as to blame the drought on the US military's 'climate change weapons'. I should also note that other countries similarly have no problem calling a single event evidence of climate change: Pakistan's Environment Minister <a href="http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\08\05\story_5-8-2010_pg11_9">recently said</a> that global climate change is to blame for this year's flooding and heavy rains. Likewise, Nigeria's Environment Minister <a href="http://www.thisdayonline.com/nview.php?id=175038">said</a> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">“The effects of climate change have been wide spread in Nigeria."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps it is because of the tradition of presenting both sides in a news article that our media is reluctant to cover it in this way - but I think that is a false balance. As M.S. said, if something is part of a larger trend (as these droughts are) then it should be presented in that way. </span><br />
<br />
In addition, there are <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/06/warming-in-arctic-to-cause-colder.html">new studies</a> showing that abnormally cold weather in the northern hemisphere (as we had last winter) may actually be a factor of an abnormally warm arctic. If that turns out to be the case, last winter wasn't actually an exception, it was just another example of the trend: global warming is happening at an accelerated rate, and we should not expect the weather of the future to be analogous to the weather of the past.Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-10721890161301517782010-08-04T09:00:00.001-04:002010-08-04T09:00:02.384-04:00DNI Nominee Clapper on Climate and Energy Security<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFhPodum9fI/AAAAAAAABeM/c5Mx3oP-aDI/s1600/James_Clapper_official_Under_Secretary_portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFhPodum9fI/AAAAAAAABeM/c5Mx3oP-aDI/s200/James_Clapper_official_Under_Secretary_portrait.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>Via <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/07/the-cia-as-executive-agent-on-climate-change/60626/">Marc Ambinder</a>, I see that General James Clapper, the nominee to be the new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), had some interesting things to say about the intelligence community's responses to climate change and energy security. Clapper's <a href="http://intelligence.senate.gov/hearings.cfm?hearingId=4699">hearing</a> before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was held on July 20. The nomination is still pending, and there are <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/08/why-mccains-holding-up-clappers-nomination/60806/">reports </a>that Senator McCain has placed a hold on the nomination, preventing a vote on the Senate floor.<br />
<br />
In the section on national security threats, Clapper was asked to <i>"discuss your view of the appropriate IC [Intelligence Community] roles and responsibilities with respect to the issues of climate change and energy security, and how well the IC has performed in these areas"</i><br />
<br />
I will quote in full the answer he gave in writing to that question.<br />
<blockquote>Global climate change could have wide-ranging implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years because it would aggravate existing world problemssuch as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutionsthat threaten state stability. Since the 2008 publication of the National Intelligence Assessment (NIA) on the national security implications of climate change, the IC has stepped up analysis and collection to look more in depth at climate change implications in individual countries and regions important to U.S. long term interests. The CIA has also created a center to provide all-source analysis on the impact of climate change on political, economic, military and social stability. It is also responsible for the MEDEA program which reviews and declassifies imagery for sharing with the climate scientific community. </blockquote><blockquote>Energy security has also been an important topic for Intelligence Community analysis and collection. To meet demand growth in next three to 10 years and reduce the risk of future price spikes, international and national oil companies will need to re-engage on major projects that were shelved when prices fell in late 2008. Within OPEC, Iraq is a bright spot for oil capacity expansion. Recent developments in the U.S. gas sector, primarily shale gas, have made the U.S. essentially gas independent for at least a decade or two, if not longer. The IC has for some time closely followed energy security developments, warning of longer term trends and highlighting potential opportunities for mitigating negative implications for U.S. national security. </blockquote>After the hearing, General Clapper had more to say in his <a href="http://intelligence.senate.gov/100720/clapperpost.pdf">response </a>to post-hearing questions, saying that <i>"the CIA could serve as the DNI's Executive Agent on Climate Change." </i>To me, it is unclear if this means that the re-organization of the intelligence community's response to climate change, which I<a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/05/house-intelligence-committte-hearing-on.html"> wrote about in May</a>, will mean that all climate issues will be concentrated at the CIA's "Center for Climate Change and National Security". It would be a shame if it meant that they closed the <a href="http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_home.html">National Intelligence Council's</a> office of Climate Change and State Stability, which has done some <a href="http://www.dni.gov/nic/special_climate2030.html">excellent work</a>.Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-79953166629085977552010-08-03T11:01:00.000-04:002010-08-03T11:01:00.047-04:00The Real "Climate Change Weapon"<div class="MsoNormal">Following up on yesterday's post, which showed satellite pictures of the<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span><a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/08/russias-heat-drought-and-fires-as-seen.html">heat, drought and fires in Russia</a>, I see that a widely-published Russian author, Andrei Areshev, deputy director of the<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: black;"> </span></span><a href="http://en.fondsk.ru/">Strategic Culture Foundation</a>, alleges that has Russia's recent hot weather should be blamed on a US military program.<o:p></o:p></div><div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Here is his original article, "<a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=20380">Climate Weapons. More Than Just a Conspiracy Theory?</a>", and here is the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty article: "<a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/Russian_Scholar_Warns_Of_Secret_US_Climate_Change_Weapon/2114381.html">Russian Scholar Warns Of 'Secret' U.S. Climate Change Weapon</a>."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is a laughable conspiracy theory, and should be dismissed out of hand. In a <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2009/02/summary-of-launch-event.html">conference </a>which we held in early 2009, a questioner (who also seemed to be of the conspiracy-theory set) asked whether climate change could be used as a weapon. Our panel, consisting of speakers from the military, diplomatic, and intelligence professions, concluded that it would be very unlikely that climate change or carbon emissions could be used as a weapon. However, they did say that geoengineering does raise some particularly difficult geopolitical problems. Others have raised <a href="http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2283">similar </a><a href="http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2260">concerns </a>about manipulating the climate and weather, through man-made geoengineering. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFgvHViX4JI/AAAAAAAABeE/cJW1WIGT1Mg/s1600/764px-X-37_spacecraft__artist_s_rendition.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="156" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFgvHViX4JI/AAAAAAAABeE/cJW1WIGT1Mg/s200/764px-X-37_spacecraft__artist_s_rendition.jpeg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Though we can dismiss Areshev's argument out of hand, we should not underestimate the power of the argument underneath it. Areshev is wrong that the US Military is intentionally manipulating the climate by using the <span style="color: black;">High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (<a href="http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/">HAARP</a>) or some sort of space-based laser weaponry (which he claims is deployed on the X-37B, pictured at left). </span>However, as the recent<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/">report<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span></span></a>from NOAA<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333;"> </span></span><a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/07/warming-world.html">stated</a>, it is 'undeniable' that the planet is warming, and that the decade 2000-2009 was the hottest globally on record. And, as the IPCC's 4th assessment report <a href="http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms2.html">stated</a>,<i> <span style="color: black;">"Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20<sup>th</sup> century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations."</span></i><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333;"> </span></span> The largest historical emissions of greenhouse gases come from the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region>, and the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> is currently the second largest current emitter (recently overtaken by <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place></st1:country-region>). <span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As I wrote<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333;"> </span></span><a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/08/russias-heat-drought-and-fires-as-seen.html">yesterday</a>, you can never say that any one event is caused by global warming -- we have always seen drought and extreme weather -- but you should expect more extreme weather events like this. If, for the sake of argument, we say that this drought is caused by man-made global warming, then we can say that the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> is responsible for at least part of that warming. Of course, so also is <st1:country-region w:st="on">Russia</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">China</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Brazil</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region>, <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>, and others. All industrial and industrializing countries share the responsibility for deploying this 'climate weapon' over the last century. <span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As the effects of climate change become more apparent, I believe that we will see more cases of blaming the US (or China) for climate change, even if it is simply added to a long list of grievances agricultural protectionism, globalization, colonialism, and others. Earlier this year, we saw Osama bin Laden<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333;"> </span></span><a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/01/20101277383676587.html">accuse<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;"> </span></span></a>the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> of causing climate change. At the time, I<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #333333;"> </span></span><a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/02/bin-laden-and-climate-change.html">wrote:</a> <i>"this leads to a sort-of conspiracy theory of climate change, whereby the emissions of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> and the rich world has purposefully doomed the poor world to an unending series of disasters."</i> I think we should expect to see more of these accusations being made, though it would help their credibility if the accuser blamed <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> industry and transportation, not some James Bond-type space laser. <span style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-32926614126737242642010-08-02T16:58:00.000-04:002010-08-02T16:58:26.744-04:00Russia's Heat, Drought, and Fires - As Seen from SpaceAs the old saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words, and in this case a sequence of pictures shows exactly what's happened this summer in south western Russia, around the Volga River, in the region immediately north of the Caspian Sea. NASA's <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">Earth Observatory</a> satellites do an excellent job of showing views of major events as they happen. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFcfeuhOBqI/AAAAAAAABdc/AU6E2Qq_t1Q/s1600/globallsta_tmo_2010185_lrg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFcfeuhOBqI/AAAAAAAABdc/AU6E2Qq_t1Q/s320/globallsta_tmo_2010185_lrg.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Land Surface Temperature Anomaly, July 4-11 2010</td></tr>
</tbody></table>First, at left we see a <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=44664">global map</a> that shows temperature anomalies for July 4-11, as compared with the same dates from 2000 to 2008. These are the dates of the heat wave here on the US East Coast. Note the extreme dark red in South Western Russia, stretching from approximately the Ukraine border through Russia' Volga region, and in to Kazakhstan. The extreme red indicates temperatures of 12 degrees C (about 21 degrees F) above the average from last decade. Indeed, on July 11,<a href="http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1546"> Russia's hottest temperature</a> in history was recorded in Yashkul, at 44.0°C (111.2°F).<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFcmZYk9fCI/AAAAAAAABdk/mPCbLQuuKRI/s1600/srussiandvia_tmo_2010177_lrg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFcmZYk9fCI/AAAAAAAABdk/mPCbLQuuKRI/s320/srussiandvia_tmo_2010177_lrg.jpg" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Second, at right, we see a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1206325061">s</a></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=44743">atellite vegetation</a> index image</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">, that s</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">hows the damage done to plants and agriculture around the Volga river (pictured running through the center). For location reference, Ukraine is in the bottom left portion of the map, with Kazakhstan in the bottom right. In no area of this map is there any green, which would indicate above average vegitation. The darkest red areas show a reduction by over half. Note that this region is one of the main breadbaskets of Russia, and in some areas <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704905004575405381319151528.html?mod=googlenews_wsj">over 50% </a>of the crop has already been lost. Potential losses from this <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">area have driven w</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">heat futures past <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hLdQzzkk_vLW3OsMLzbo-eZnRKbAD9HBI26G8">$7 a bushel</a> today, taking this grain's prices 67% above June's nine-month low.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFcp0nmrKRI/AAAAAAAABds/BMIBe7_XAF4/s1600/Russia_TMO_2010214.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFcp0nmrKRI/AAAAAAAABds/BMIBe7_XAF4/s400/Russia_TMO_2010214.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;">Finally, at left, we see the<a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=44989&src=nha"> satellite photo</a> of the predictable consequences of heat and drought: fire. The Volga River is labelled, and we see a haze of smoke extending across the entire region, completely covering Nizhiniy Novgorod. Fires across Russia<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/world/europe/03iht-russia.html"> have killed</a> at least 40 people so far this summer. Today, President Medvedev <a href="http://www.rttnews.com/Content/GeneralNews.aspx?Id=1379267&SM=1">declared </a>a state of emergence in 7 regions across Russia, including </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Mari El, Ryazan, Mordovia, Vladimir, and Nizhny Novgorod (which are in this picture). </span><br />
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The <a href="http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_home.html">US National Intelligence Council</a>, in its report on t<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">he national security implications of climate change in Russia, </span>says that <a href="http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_GIF_otherprod/climate_change/climate2030_russia.pdf">Russia's agriculture</a> will become <i>"more vulnerable to droughts and other </i><i>extreme weather" </i>over the next decades as global warming takes hold. To add the usual caveat, you can never say that any one event is caused by global warming -- we have always seen drought and extreme weather -- but you can say this event is an example of what we should expect global warming to do.Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-77411440935715427312010-07-29T17:15:00.000-04:002010-07-29T17:15:33.283-04:00A Warming WorldThe <i>Economist</i> has a very clear and compelling chart up today showing how the world is warming. This chart is taken from NOAA's just released report on <a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2009.php">"The State of the Climate, 2009"</a>. The report was released yesterday, and it says that global warming is "undeniable" and that the 1990's were the warmest on record. The chart below shows that unambiguously. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFHuCOY3UdI/AAAAAAAABdU/t5w9gdeYoSs/s1600/201031NAC928.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TFHuCOY3UdI/AAAAAAAABdU/t5w9gdeYoSs/s320/201031NAC928.gif" /></a></div><br />
<i>[Source and Credit: The Economist]</i>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-75984252498795680132010-06-17T11:34:00.002-04:002010-06-17T11:40:08.055-04:00World Day to Combat Desertification Celebrated<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TBpAdy2SyLI/AAAAAAAABdM/BoY0s6dBs30/s1600/hk_namibia1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TBpAdy2SyLI/AAAAAAAABdM/BoY0s6dBs30/s320/hk_namibia1.jpg" /></a></div>Today is the <a href="http://climate-l.org/2010/06/17/world-day-to-combat-desertification-celebrated/?referrer=climate-l.org-daily-feed">World Day to Combat Desertification</a>. Though this may not get the attention of such days as Flag Day (Monday), Chinese Dragon Boat Festival Day (yesterday), or Father's Day (this coming Sunday), this is an important subject that deserves our attention. The <a href="http://www.unccd.int/main.php">UN Convention to Combat Desertification</a> (UNCCD) entered into force in 1996. It calls for international cooperation to combat desertification and mitigate the effects of drought.<br />
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<div>The process of changing grasslands into desert can be incredibly destructive to the societies that live there, and there is clear evidence that in extreme situations, it can cause conflict. The best example of that is in Darfur. Jeff Mazo explains how this happened in an excellent chapter in his book <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-adelphi-book-climate-conflict-by.html">"Climate Conflict"</a>. Darfur can be delineated as a conflict between agriculturalists and pastoralists. As rainfall decreased, and the Sahara expanded, these two groups came into conflict over land rights. This led to the beginning of a destructive war. As quoted by Mazo's book, UNEP said "There is a very strong link between land degradation, desertification and conflict in Darfur."</div>Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-75480646485165036952010-06-11T15:58:00.000-04:002010-06-11T15:58:22.964-04:00Warming in the Arctic to Cause Colder WintersIn an ironic twist, a <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100611093710.htm">new study</a> shows that rapid warming in the Arctic will make the weather in Northern Europe and Eastern North America much colder. This was the weather pattern that prevailed in December and January of the past winter. The map below, from NASA, shows that temperature were much higher (red) than normal in the high Arctic, while much lower (blue) in Eurasia and North America.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TBKTpujorJI/AAAAAAAABdE/FNPTlMauFBk/s1600/NorthHemLSTanom_TMO_200912.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" qu="true" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TBKTpujorJI/AAAAAAAABdE/FNPTlMauFBk/s320/NorthHemLSTanom_TMO_200912.jpg" /></a></div>At the <a href="http://ipy-osc.no/">International Polar Year Science Conference</a>, currently taking place in Oslo, Dr James Overland of NOAA presented a study that says that a warming of the arctic will have significant impact on winter weather in Europe, Asia, and North America. In fact, Dr Overland said <em>"The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic."</em> <br />
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The loss of Arctic sea ice has long been seen as one of the areas that will have major feedbacks on a changing climate. However, so far as I know, the focus of worries about those feedback has been that a (darker colored) ice-free ocean would absorb more heat than the (lighter colored) ice does currently. This would cause the Arctic to warm, and would prevent the re-building of ice. According to Dr Overland, this is occuring, and that will cause the current warming to be permanent. However, this is the first study I've seen that supposes any effects on global weather patterns of a warming Arctic, and it is disturbing. <br />
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Last year, <em>Time </em>magazine ran an article <a href="http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1920168,00.html">"Is There a Climate-Change Tipping Point?"</a> which said that before we hit a tipping point that the earth would see what was called 'squealing'. I'll quote directly from the article:<br />
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<blockquote>In climate terms, squealing may involve increased variability of the weather — sudden shifts from hot temperatures to colder ones and back again. General instability ensues and, at some point, the center ceases to hold. "Before we reached a climate tipping point we'd expect to see lots of record heat and record cold," says Carpenter. "Every example of sudden climate change we've seen in the historical record was preceded by this sort of squealing."</blockquote>These <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_point_(climatology)">tipping points</a> - which we won't know about unitl after they've passed - are scary. Rapid, sustained changes in the climate are impossible to predict, and as I've said before, uncertainty should worry us.<br />
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Of course, the fact that global climate change could cause record levels of snowfall and cold is a level of complexity that will struggle to make it through the ADD political-media crowd. No points for guessing who will build the next igloo on the Capitol lawn. If it weren't so important, it would be funny that a symptom of a rapidly changing climate is being used as evidence that the climate isn't changing. Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-55882219294230956612010-06-10T11:05:00.002-04:002010-06-10T11:39:41.332-04:00An Aside into Domestic US PoliticsI have spent very little time on this blog delving into the US political debate about climate policy. Frankly, in the short to medium term, it doesn't matter very much for security policy what any nation does. Most scientists say that we're locked-in for the next 30 years or so with an escalating concentration of carbon and the warming that will accompany it, no matter what any of us do. Of course, it is very important for the long-term that the world comes together and figures out a way to reduce our emissions before we boil ourselves. <br />
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All of that is a long introduction to say that today, the US Senate is <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-10/republicans-try-to-sink-epa-carbon-rules-before-energy-debate.html">going to vote</a> on Senator Murkowski's proposal to block the EPA from regulating carbon. This looks to be the kick-off of the long-awaited debate about climate legistion. However, with Senator Graham <a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2010-06-08-graham-says-he-wont-vote-for-the-climate-bill/">pulling away</a> from the climate bill (which he and his staff helped write), it looks like there's little chance of real legislation this year to put on a price on carbon <br />
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One of the frustrating things about working on climate policy in the US is the creeping feeling that the American public doesn't really believe that what you're doing is important. Last October, for instance, we saw a <a href="http://people-press.org/report/556/global-warming">Pew poll</a> that said that only 57% of Americans believe that climate change is happening, and only 36% believed that it was "because of human activity". So, it was encouraging for me to see Jon Krosnik's Op-Ed in yesterday's <em>New York Times </em><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/opinion/09krosnick.html">"The Climate Majority"</a>. His contention is that polls on climate change have asked questions that are needlessly complicated, and that skews results. <br />
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The results of his poll showed that 74% of Americans believe that the planet has warmed over the past century, and 75% said that "human behavior was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred." This is backed-up by a Washington Post-ABC News <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the-numbers/2010/06/most_americans_say_regulate_gr.html?hpid=topnews">Poll</a> that says that 71% of Americans say that the federal government should <em>"regulate the release of greenhouse gases from sources like power plants, cars and factories in an effort to reduce global warming". </em><br />
However, Americans are not as excited to do anything that means that they will have to pay for it. I'll quote directly from Krosnik's article:<br />
<blockquote>"Fully 86 percent of our respondents said they wanted the federal government to limit the amount of air pollution that businesses emit, and 76 percent favored government limiting business’s emissions of greenhouse gases in particular. Not a majority of 55 or 60 percent — but 76 percent. <br />
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Large majorities opposed taxes on electricity (78 percent) and gasoline (72 percent) to reduce consumption. But 84 percent favored the federal government offering tax breaks to encourage utilities to make more electricity from water, wind and solar power. <br />
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And huge majorities favored government requiring, or offering tax breaks to encourage, each of the following: manufacturing cars that use less gasoline (81 percent); manufacturing appliances that use less electricity (80 percent); and building homes and office buildings that require less energy to heat and cool (80 percent)." </blockquote>All of this says that Americans want action on climate change, they just don't want to pay for it. This goes along with the continuing line of <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/04/economistyougov_polling">polls</a> I've seen that says that Americans want fiscal discipline and to reduce the deficit, but they strongly oppose reductions in any specific spending programs or any tax increase. <br />
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More after the jump --<br />
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I have long supported a cap-and-trade program, and I still do. I buy into Tom Friedman's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/opinion/07friedman.html">argument</a> that you need to put some sort of price on carbon, and that will spur vast new investments into clean technologies. However, apparently when Americans hear 'price on carbon' they think 'tax on me'. So, though market-methods, like a carbon tax or a cap and trade might be the most effective way to change behavior and reduce emissions, politically its much easier to have the federal government (the EPA in this case) simply tell buisnesses what they can and can't do. <br />
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EPA regulation also has the political virtue that it does not require a vote in the Senate. The thing is politicians love to have the opportunity to have an issue that they don't actually have to take a difficult position on. That way they can tell different audiences different things about their position, without anyone actually yelling at them. A Senator hates to be put on the spot with a 'yes or no' question: he is happiest when he can sound smart to his constituents in a 10 minute speech, but no one can tell which side he acutally supports.<br />
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Luckily, I think you can go a long way towards reducing emissions from power plants, deterring new construction of coal power, and promoting energy efficiency through EPA regulation alone. Businesses will <a href="http://www.uschambermagazine.com/article/assessing-americas-energy-security?n=w">continue</a> to hate it, and command and control regulations, by their very nature, won't be as <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/15721597?story_id=15721597">economically efficient</a> as a price on carbon would be. However, it will be a step. Once the public grows accustomed to it (and the consequences of a warming planet continue to become clearer), then we can revisit it in a few Congresses and put a price on carbon. In the meantime, we may even have continued our reductions in emissions. <br />
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We all have been talking about not losing out to China on making a green economy, but their governments 'green' policies have been the definition of command and control. <br />
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So, today, the Senate will vote on Murkowski's bill. It will fail, then some sort of 'energy bill' will pass later this year. However, it will be mostly toothless, because there's no money available: Congress has now forsworn deficit spending, but - as we saw above - the public hates new taxes, so there's not much money available to subsidize anything. Climate change is the first long-term challenge of the 21st Century. We weren't going to fix it and be done with it this year anyway, so we will just have to make sure we come back to it every year.<br />
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[UPDATE: the <em>Economist's</em> Democracy in America Blog has two very good posts on the incoherence of recent polls: we want action on <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/06/deficit_anxiety">deficits</a> or <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/06/climate_change">climate change</a>, but we don't want to pay for it.]Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-88836922264940286562010-06-03T13:14:00.001-04:002010-06-03T13:15:19.878-04:00Pacifc Islands Growing - But can that really continue?<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TAfiT_YYyTI/AAAAAAAABc0/PeAr4HdjZ-g/s1600/maldive.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: left; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="101" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TAfiT_YYyTI/AAAAAAAABc0/PeAr4HdjZ-g/s200/maldive.jpg" width="200" /></a>Foreign Policy's <em><a href="http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/">Passport</a></em> blog has a quick post,<a href="http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/03/a_rising_tide_lifts_all_islands#commentspace"> "Pacific islands are actually growing"</a> linking to a new study from the University of Aukland saying that 80% of Pacific Islands have grown or stayed the same size of the last 60 years. The article in question, titled <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VF0-504BT2S-1&_user=10&_coverDate=05%2F21%2F2010&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=680c7aa9c40fe9858c15ed09fcf692ee">"The dynamic response of reef islands to sea level rise: evidence from multi-decadal analysis of island change in the central pacific"</a> was published a couple of weeks ago in<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09218181"> "Global and Planetary Change"</a>. </div>According to the authors, Pacific Islands respond to rising sea levels (an average of 2 mm per year over these 60 years) by rising along with the sea. They do this by growing their coral reefs and capturing sediment. Tuvalu, a country widely expected to be the first to fall beneath the waves, has expanded in size over these 60 years, according to the study. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TAfiwnMwvEI/AAAAAAAABc8/MowTV412--k/s1600/coral.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; cssfloat: right; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" height="150" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_3Z138ER6Cl0/TAfiwnMwvEI/AAAAAAAABc8/MowTV412--k/s200/coral.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">If only this meant that we don't have to worry about entire nations slipping beneathe the waves anymore! Unfortunately, there is evidence that we should not be complacent about this. Of the accelerating amount of carbon emissions being pumped into the atmostphere, <a href="http://www.ocean-acidification.net/OAdocs/FS7_oceanacidification.pdf">about 50%</a> of it is being captured by the oceans. A chemical reaction of the increased carbon with elements in the seawater is causing the oceans to become more acidic, and that acidity <a href="http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1847">is killing coral reefs</a>. So, we should not be so sanguine as to expect that what has worked to preserve these islands over the past 60 years of slow sea level rise will also work in the forthcoming 60 years. We should also be aware that there is an increasing threat that sea level rise will be<a href="http://newsecuritybeat.blogspot.com/2009/02/for-many-sea-level-rise-already-issue.html"> much faster</a> than the 2 mm per year.</div><br />
Last year, I <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2009/06/un-gerenal-assembly-to-consider.html">blogged</a> about the UN resolution, proposed by 12 Pacific island states, about the national security effects of climate change. The <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2009/07/vulnerable-states-maldives.html">Maldives</a> and <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2009/12/action-on-security-in-copenhagen-from.html">Tuvalu</a> have been at the center of international political action against climate change, and they have done good work. I worry that this study will be used by those opposed to climate action as a way to sideline them from the debate. I think they still have some persuasive arguments to make that they remain at risk. We shouldn't stop sending the <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-movie-climate-refugees.html">filmmakers</a>, campaigners, and politicians to the Maldives or Tuvalu yet.Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-57347060214830151522010-05-26T14:58:00.001-04:002010-06-01T14:00:46.816-04:00IISS Conference: The Global Security Implications of Climate ChangeI've reprinted below the Press Release for this Friday's Conference on Climate Change and Security. I would encourage everyone to watch online on Friday!<br />
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The International Institute for Strategic Studies’ <br />
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Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security presents: <br />
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The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) is pleased to announce the capstone conference of the Transatlantic Dialogue on Climate Change and Security (TDCCS), entitled The Global Security Implications of Climate Change, on Friday, 28 May 2009, from 09:00 to 17:00hrs at the European Commission’s Berlaymont Building in Brussels (Schuman Room, 200 Wetstraat / Rue de la Loi Brussels, Belgium). Attendance is by invitation only, or with prior approval. <br />
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Laurence Graff, Acting Head of Unit for International and Inter‐Institutional Relations, DG Climate Action, European Commission, will deliver the Opening Address. Other featured speakers include Sir Gordon Conway, Professor of International Development, Imperial College London and Jamie Shea, Director of Policy Planning at NATO. <br />
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Senior IISS experts, including Nigel Inkster CMG, Director of Transnational Threats and Political Risks, Adam Ward, Director of Studies for the IISS and Jeffrey Mazo, Managing Editor of Survival and IISS Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy, will moderate the panel discussions. Panel topics include: (1) Adapting Water Security to a Changing Climate; (2) Energy Security; (3) Climate Change and Conflict; and (4) Security Planning for a Changing Climate.<br />
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Media covering this event are requested to contact the IISS-US in advance to schedule interviews and arrange provisions for technical requirements. The conference will be streamed live online at: <a href="http://scic.ec.europa.eu/str/index.php?sessionno=1023#">http://scic.ec.europa.eu/str/index.php?sessionno=1023#</a> . <br />
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A full agenda, including all confirmed panelists, is listed below.Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2460306698580713105.post-90917369927909369212010-05-25T09:39:00.002-04:002010-05-25T18:57:49.514-04:00House Intelligence Committe Hearing on Global Climate ChangeVia the Politico's <a href="http://www.politico.com/morningenergy/">Morning Energy Blog</a>, I learned that today (Tuesday, May 25), the Subcommittee on <a href="http://intelligence.house.gov/SubCommittees.aspx?ID=4">Intelligence Community Management</a> of the US House Representatives' <a href="http://intelligence.house.gov/default.aspx">Permanent Subcommittee on Intelligence</a> will hold a <a href="http://intelligence.house.gov/EventsItem.aspx?id=541">hearing</a> on Global Climate Change. The hearing will be closed, so I don't have much information on it. <br />
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I would speculate that the hearing will look at how the Intelligence Community is arranging its resources to look at climate change. Currently, both the CIA and the National Intelligence Council (NIC), within the DNI, have programs looking at climate change. The NIC's unit, on climate change and state stability is led by General Rich Engel, who has <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2009/02/summary-of-launch-event.html">spoken</a> at IISS events in the past. The CIA's unit - which survived a <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2009/10/senate-to-vote-to-strip-funding-for-cia.html">motion to defund</a> it last October - is called <a href="https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/center-on-climate-change-and-national-security.html">"The Center on Climate Change and National Security"</a>, and is tasked with providing "support to American policymakers as they negotiate, implement, and verify international agreements on environmental issues." Previously, the Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence had also had an Energy and Environmental Security section, led by Carol Dumaine (video of her <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jbeUeDmIsI">hear</a>) but that was unfortunately closed up earlier this year. The IISS-US held an event titled <a href="http://www.iiss.org/about-us/offices/washington/iiss-us-events/security-climate-change-and-uncertainty-rethinking-strategic-risk/">"Security, Climate Change and Uncertainty: Rethinking Strategic Risk”</a> with Carol late last year.<br />
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Clearly, with the closing of the Department of Energy's climate unit, and the opening of the CIA's climate shop, there is some reorganizing going on. This will also be a good opportunity for the intelligence community to demonstrate to Congress the <a href="http://climatesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/05/arguing-link-between-climate-change-and.html">utility</a> of making the climate security argument. It is difficult to avoid the political debate about cap-and-trade, but they should get beyond that debate. There is a real need to look at national security impacts of climate change, and the adaptation measures that can avoid it.Andrewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08792994722929685847noreply@blogger.com0