http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2011/09/cia_climate.htmlAt CIA, Climate Change is a Secret
September 22nd, 2011 by Steven Aftergood
Updated below
When the Central Intelligence Agency established a Center on Climate Change and National Security in 2009, it drew fierce opposition from congressional Republicans who disputed the need for an intelligence initiative on this topic. But now there is a different, and possibly better, reason to doubt the value of the Center: It has adopted an extreme view of classification policy which holds that everything the Center does is a national security secret.
Last week, the CIA categorically denied (pdf) a request under the Freedom of Information Act for a copy of any Center studies or reports concerning the impacts of global warming.
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Meanwhile, access by scientists to classified military intelligence data on the environment has actually been improving lately, reports Geoff Brumfiel in the latest edition of Nature (“Military surveillance data: Shared intelligence,” 21 September 2011, sub. req’d). Among other things, the Clinton-Gore era group of cleared scientists known as MEDEA (Measurements of Earth Data for Environmental Analysis) was reconvened in 2008 at congressional request.
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Update: The National Intelligence Council has published a collection of commissioned papers on
“The Impact of Climate Change to 2030″ which do not, however, “reflect official U.S. Government positions.”