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Government United States

'The White House Blocked My Report on Climate Change and National Security' (nytimes.com) 294

Dr. Rod Schoonover, who until recently served as a senior analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department, writing for The New York Times: Ten years ago, I left my job as a tenured university professor to work as an intelligence analyst for the federal government, primarily in the State Department but with an intervening tour at the National Intelligence Council. My focus was on the impact of environmental and climate change on national security, a growing concern of the military and intelligence communities. It was important work. Two words that national security professionals abhor are uncertainty and surprise, and there's no question that the changing climate promises ample amounts of both. I always appreciated the apolitical nature of the work. Our job in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research was to generate intelligence analysis buttressed by the best information available, without regard to political considerations. And although I was uncomfortable with some policies of the Trump administration, no one had ever tried to influence my work or conclusions.

That changed last month, when the White House blocked the submission of my bureau's written testimony on the national security implications of climate change to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The stated reason was that the scientific foundation of the analysis did not comport with the administration's position on climate change. After an extended exchange between officials at the White House and the State Department, at the 11th hour I was permitted to appear at the hearing and give a five-minute summary of the 11-page testimony. However, Congress was deprived of the full analysis, including the scientific baseline from which it was drawn. Perhaps most important, this written testimony on a critical topic was never entered into the official record.

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'The White House Blocked My Report on Climate Change and National Security'

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  • Every lie we tell (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @11:16AM (#59017942)

    My favorite quote from HBO's Chernobyl mini series is this: Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth, sooner or later that debt is paid. Reality cares not for your ideological alignment, it will rear its ugly head in one way or another.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by sexconker ( 1179573 )

      Too bad that HBO documentary lied plenty.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by blindseer ( 891256 )

      Here's a lie the Democrats keep telling us, and quite likely themselves, that wind and solar energy can replace hydro and nuclear. The Green New Deal is the path to economic and environmental disaster. We will need to replace these hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants with new hydro and nuclear or the lights go out.

      That doesn't mean we don't continue investment in wind and solar energy, it means an "all the above" energy policy.

    • by Kohath ( 38547 )

      TV screenplay writers are your spirit animal

    • That's true. But how typical is it that the liars aren't the ones that suffer for it, but rather those left holding the bag.

      The scumbag that made the comments on Dr.Schoonover's report are the kind that would eat the seed corn and leave nothing, because they know by the time it's a problem they won't be around to suffer the consequences.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    analysis did not comport with the administration's position on climate change.

    Sounds like a typical self-destructive regime that is doing its thing. Bananas for everybody before the Panama disease destroys them all! Can't wait to hear what their position is about religion, culture or separation of powers.

  • by raftpeople ( 844215 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @11:21AM (#59017978)
    Next time, to avoid getting blocked, leave the contents, just change the title to "Coal, You're My Best Friend!"
  • National threats (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @11:21AM (#59017982)
    Canada is invading! How do you folks in the northern states like those blaring air raid sirens! Seriously though, Trump still holds tariffs over Canada because they are a national threat. THAT is what constitutes a threat to current administration.
    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, it's so unfair of evil dictator Trump to use tariffs. Only every other country in the world gets to use them, but not America when run by a Republican.

      • Use them fine, but stay within the law. How can Canada be considered a national threat at outlined by the terms of the constitution?
        • Canada isn't a threat, the movement of security-critical industries out of the US is the threat.

          I can't tell if you are playing dumb, or if you've seriously never had this explained correctly before. Thanks, news media.

      • by epine ( 68316 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @04:33PM (#59020080)

        Yeah, it's so unfair of evil dictator Trump to use tariffs. Only every other country in the world gets to use them, but not America when run by a Republican.

        I suspect you could more than double your total comprehension of economics in three minutes. Your ROI on watching the following clip would make the infamous Asian Tigers of the 1980s look like slow-drying paint.

        Milton Friedman on Elections, Debt and Sugar [youtube.com] — 3 minutes

        Every housewife in this country pays four to five times the world price for a pound of sugar. If she were able to buy that sugar on the world market it would cost a fifth of what it now costs. Why can't she?

        America is knee-deep in tariffs, and always has been. And when countries sit down, either bilaterally or multilaterally, since WWII America has always been the loudest and strongest voice at the table. America experiences privilege in every treaty of the modern era (less so in their isolationist past, more than a century ago). Any concessions America made at the treaty table were in the spirit of an older brother playing nice with a younger brother; their physical development is so lopsided, if the older brother were to press for every available advantage, the younger brother would simply quit, and they would never play together again.

        It's actually in your own long-term advantage, where your power excess is that great, to leave a voluntary nickel for the other guy. The geopolitical considerations in treaty negotiation are so complex as to be nigh impossible to discuss on Fox News.

        China is a looming threat. To some degree, highly westernised, democratic Japan is a natural ally. Furthermore, Japan knows a thing or two about martial culture. Sometimes a Japanese person brings a knife to a gunfight ... and wins anyway. Check out this guy named Hattori Hanzo.

        Japan could certainly help out in deterring Chinese warm-up aggression against Taiwan (German annexations started in 1938, well before the war). Guess who was the primary author of Japans numerous present-day military restrictions.

        Post World War II, Japan was deprived of any military capability after signing the surrender agreement in 1945. The U.S. occupation forces were fully responsible for protecting Japan from external threats. Japan only had a minor police force for domestic security.

        Japan was under the sole control of the United States. This was the only time in Japanese history that it was occupied by a foreign power. Unlike the occupation of Germany, other countries such as the Soviet Union had almost zero influence in Japan.

        Japan has a notoriously protectionist internal rice market. They actively propagandize their citizenship to believe that rice grown anywhere else would be worse than eating dirt. I've read several accounts written by Japanese chefs who emigrated to America as young adults, fully expecting to great a rice apocalypse, only to discover that American grocery stores are full of diverse, high-quality rice products they've never even heard of.

        On a direct tariff basis, it looks bad. But this hardly holds a candle to how America subsidizes its corn growers through the ethanol program. Which, as Milton pointed out long ago, is deeply rooted in the American sugar subsidy.

        Japan's internal rice cartel is powerful. A Japanese politician who walks away from a treaty negotiation with a broken cartel will not maintain internal power for very long. Probably not long enough to implement any other concessions that might have been made at the bargaining table, some of which surely touch on their weird, limbo military (still with the American chain around its neck), a small but important chit in Americas looming economic showdown with a grown-up China. So this isn't pressed (very hard) and in return, the Japanese pour you lots of warm saki, but very ca

    • Canada is invading! How do you folks in the northern states like those blaring air raid sirens! Seriously though, Trump still holds tariffs over Canada because they are a national threat. THAT is what constitutes a threat to current administration.

      If the complaint you bring up on the Trump Administration is trade policy with Canada then things must be going very well.

  • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @11:38AM (#59018114) Journal
    'Intellectually dishonest' is not anywhere near strong enough terminology for politicizing science.
    There are, on the whole, few things I can think of that are less about honesty and truth than politics; 'selling used cars' comes to mind, as does 'dealing drugs' and 'organized religion'.
    Politics and political agendas should never be allowed to influence, or in this case supress, science, and before anyone says it: this is far from the first time in human history that political agendas have done science a dirty. There is no 'conspiracy', 'liberal' or otherwise involved in this, never has been, never will be. There's a mountain of data to support it, and the mountain keeps getting higher. People who can't understand the science can scoff all they want and it doesn't change the facts, and all the political agendizing doesn't change physics. Remember the Indiana bill that wanted to make the value of pi be exactly 3? This is the mentality we're dealing with here, except on a federal level; is that the sort of thinking you want to align yourself with?
    Real sorry that means you can't get cheap gasoline for your clownishly-large SUV that you drive around with just you in it 95% of the time, America, but the alternative isn't anywhere near as bad as they make you think it'll be.
    • There are, on the whole, few things I can think of that are less about honesty and truth than politics; 'selling used cars' comes to mind, as does 'dealing drugs' and 'organized religion'.

      There's nothing inherently dishonest or unthruthful or even unethical about dealing drugs, unless it involves cheating people.

    • In the scientific community, there is no disagreement behind the physics of AGW (CO2 will cause warming)>
      In the scientific community, there is some disagreement on how much warming will be caused for CO2.

      In the scientific community, there is a lot of disagreement on how to respond to global warming. That's where this guy's report comes in: he is researching security risks as a result of global warming. There is no scientific consensus on that point.
    • Huh there was never an Indiana bill that wanted to make pi exactly 3.
      There was one back in the 1800s that tried to make it 3.2. that came about because a scientist bullied a representative into submitting the bill then when the bill was up for a vote he pushed it using the same methods that the global warming people are pushing that today today.
  • Commented transcript (Score:5, Informative)

    by eaglesrule ( 4607947 ) <eaglesrule@pmLAPLACE.me minus math_god> on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @12:28PM (#59018400)

    Normally I have to ask how is the NYT lying, but actually reading the testimony along with official comments [archive.org]pretty much tells me what I need to know. Then looking at the public repository for hearing transcripts [house.gov] and sure enough, Dr. Schoonover's testimony is missing.

    There is no evidence that coral bleaching is intensifying now or will in the future. Coral reefs have bleached and usually recovered throughout their evolutionary history.

    This bold faced lie sets the standard for all the other comments in the document.

  • Holy shit, the government just directly silenced this guy! I implore everyone who complains whenever a bigot gets banned for spewing bigotry on some business' website where there are rules against spewing bigotry to rage, RAGE against this blatant act of true government censorship! Rise up, cry out, and let me hear your fury in the name of FREE SPEECH!

    *crickets*

  • by clenhart ( 452716 ) on Wednesday July 31, 2019 @01:10PM (#59018722) Homepage

    For a million years, we've had roughly the same CO2 levels. Now it's 30% higher than the last million years.

    https://e360.yale.edu/assets/s... [yale.edu]

    https://e360.yale.edu/assets/s... [yale.edu]

    The change is incredibly fast.

  • Apparently these global warming alarmists can't do proper research before protesting.

    https://www.cityam.com/bad-day... [cityam.com]

    Several hundred climate demonstrators from a group called âoeReclaim the Powerâ descended on the Square Mile to picket what they had thought was the headquarters of Drax, only to find out that the gas and energy group had moved offices more than a year ago.

    The activists had instead chained themselves to a block in Moorgate that is now occupied by Europeâ(TM)s leading renewables generator, Statkraft.

    We have energy available to us today that is both low in CO2 emissions and profitable without subsidies. This is onshore wind, hydroelectricity, and nuclear power. These idiots are protesting against these energy sources for the silliest of reasons. They don't want energy that works because if it works then they have nothing to protest. They are professional protesters that cannot be de

    • We have energy available to us today that is both low in CO2 emissions and profitable without subsidies. This is onshore wind, hydroelectricity, and nuclear power.

      Of which two are affordable. Hint: it ain't nuclear.

      • Call me back when wind and hydro can entirely replace existing carbon-emitting electricity generation AND step up to the task of powering an electric car fleet AND power the replacement for gas/oil heating in northern climates AND power the decarbonisation of various industrial processes (most notably cement production. Those kilns use a lot of energy)

        The numbers simply don't add up. Wind+hydro can (just) cover the first part of the list but there's nothing left in the box to cover the enhanced requirement

  • Dude, this is exactly why WikiLeaks was created.

  • "I always appreciated the apolitical nature of the work."
  • is a misrepresentation. It's a global threat and it threatens first the weakest countries, so it's actually to USA advantage of we consider solely national security.

    Of course there are other important aspects of our life that will take a hit from global warning so to say, but national securtiy is not one of them.

  • Thank you, professor, for your comments today. The Streisande effect will take it from here.

  • I am certainly not surprised. Rising sea levels are still illegal here, so far as I can discover.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]

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