President Joe Biden’s Information Advisory Board now includes top climate scientists.
Biden recently appointed Kim Cobb, a professor of earth sciences at Brown University and lead author of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report to be released in 2021, to a mission to assess the effectiveness of state intelligence operations. announced his appointment to the White House Council. community.
The council made recommendations to the White House that the president has followed and ignored for the past 70 years. Shortly after taking office in January 2021, Biden issued a series of climate-related executive orders, including one requiring intelligence agencies to assess the national security threat posed by climate change.
The result was a national intelligence agency estimate that predicted geopolitical risks would rise as countries increasingly argued about their failure to cut greenhouse gases. This could lead countries to strengthen their borders against high-carbon products and climate migrants. The report also warns that conflicts between nations could increase over water, minerals used in clean energy technologies, and food.
“A cooperative breakthrough in the Paris Agreement may be short-lived as countries struggle to cut emissions and blame others for not doing enough,” the report said.
For years, climate science has been an important consideration for the U.S. Intelligence Service, a sprawling collection of at least 19 agencies, including the Director of National Intelligence, the CIA, and the Department of Energy’s Intelligence and Counterintelligence Office.
“To get the best possible intelligence rating on security threats around the world, we need to integrate the environment in which those threats operate and what might affect them. It’s very clear,” said Under Secretary of Defense John Conger. He is a senior adviser to the Center for Climate and Security in the Obama administration. “This includes things like food security, water scarcity, extreme heat, melting Arctic ice caps, and different weather patterns affecting people on the ground.”
He said there are numerous examples of how the effects of climate change in other parts of the world could threaten the United States. and rising tensions over water scarcity in Pakistan, heat waves and droughts forcing migration in Latin America.
Cobb holds a PhD in oceanography from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. One of her specialties is paleoclimatology, and she has traveled the world to track climate change over the centuries, using coral and cave stalagmites. She found that in her Line Islands in the Northern Pacific she recorded 7,000 years of climate change and that a record-breaking ocean heat wave in 2016 killed 90% of her coral reefs. She also found that climate change may have exacerbated the El Niño event of the past 50 years.
Other members of the Information Advisory Board include: Richard R. Velma, former Ambassador to India and Assistant Secretary of State. And the chairman is Admiral James A. “Sandy” Winnefeld, Jr., a U.S. Navy squadron commander and former Top Gun instructor.
Cobb declined to comment for this story. A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The Intelligence Advisory Board was established by former President Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, at the height of the Cold War.
Eisenhower, director of the Notre Dame International Security Center, launched a council to incorporate the research of civilian scientists and engineers after World War II, and published the book “Privilege and Secrecy: Secrets of the President’s Intelligence.” history,” said Michael Desch, co-author of Advisory body. “
He said it was recognized that many military-related technologies, especially the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb, depended on non-military experts. Eisenhower wanted to make sure his expertise would help inform intelligence agencies and some of his own decisions.
Desch said he believes this is the first time a climate scientist has joined the panel.
“It’s a fascinating part of the intelligence community and if used correctly it can make a difference,” he said. “And I think appointing a climate scientist is an example of thinking about how boards have been most effectively used.”
Reprinted from E&E News with permission of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environmental professionals.
