During the cold war a key battleground was above and below the arctic. Submarines armed with Nuclear Missiles stood ready to destroy american or russian cities within minutes. For more than forty years the two sides come from today each other using the best military and intelligence technologies available. But unknown to its participants the cold war furnished the means to study one of the biggest threats facing us today. Och changing climate. In one nine hundred ninety two led by the cia seventy elite scientists were given access to top secret data and Intelligence Systems to use for Climate Change study. Named medea and sworn to secrecy that work was encouraged at the highest levels of cover. That of our National Security however to take their work further they needed Additional Information thats held by the cold war adversaries in russian intelligence and science. Putting aside a decades long merciless rivalry the cia and russian intelligence started to work closely together. The potus up and so if this Extraordinary Program now speak for the first time. Russia did get it on the rivalry of the cold war was intense for more than four decades america and the u. S. S. R. Squared off against each other. Unbeknown to its participants at the time of the cold war develop the keys to help us understand the biggest threat to ossify of all. Climate change. Surface to surface missiles the still be at navy has been heavily armed with both up and sit there for the surface and surface to air missiles. In the cold war wasnt only about the number of weapons. And intelligence gathering was at the heart of the cold war. Space provided the ultimate sanctuary for the dozens of spy satellites that orbited the earth. With code names like corona hexagon and land yacht or on the russian side cosmos glass and zennie it. They were designed to peer at the enemy relentlessly in super fine detail in every way fled to matching up. One of. The key targets for american spy satellites was the soviet northam submarine fleet based in civil and events in the arctic circle. Hundreds of Nuclear Submarines around constant missions around and under the arctic ice. Pushes this service and said they were there in the nine hundred sixty s. And one nine hundred seventy s. At that the arctic region and especially the arctic ocean was an area of military operations. Easily in there and even i would say an area of potential conflict this doesnt it at the moment of course access to Research Data was either restricted and or totally banned is that going to get the healy a good in each of. The arctic was the Perfect Place to hide it became crucial to study gather data and control the high stakes game of cat and mouse was played on to the ice and high above in space. Barely a year after the cold war ended a letter arrived at cia headquarters. Its instigator the up and coming senator. Wanted the cia to allow its Intelligence Data and systems to be used for environmental study. He was very specific. He wanted us to look at vegetative ndaa see that parameters oceanographic parameters we were not really that was not really our our focus. Dissolved a senior officer in the cia science and Technology Directorate was chosen to study it. I was interested in the Earth Sciences and i had been working many years the cia on other issues and this was something that. Kind of spoke to my heart though still in opposition to the republicans goes decision to involve his National Security advisor elevated the issue to the highest levels of u. S. Intelligence and the idea was i think theres a lot of information thats available which could answer Research Questions in the scientific world if it could be made available it was my job to help figure out how this could be brought to pass. Senator gore early on had been on committees where he had learned about our conference capability so in his mind said to himself theres some way we could utilize the term was doing use existing capabilities that perhaps we in the. Intelligence community have perhaps it could help. Help the Scientific Community i few months later the doors of the cia. Thank you all very much twenty six weeks ago today the president announced his intention to nominate me for director of Central Intelligence. In the end of all the entire soviet empire has collapsed. When robert gates became an equal powerful director of Central Intelligence enough and ninety ninety one the stage was sent for googles remarkable request to become a reality one of my primary responsibilities was going to be out to move this gigantic american intelligence apparatus from a singular focus on the soviet union in the cold war to a range of new challenges so i had a pretty good idea of the kind of resources we had. The way they had been applied against the soviet target and that we had this huge archive of material and just the notion that uniquely in the world we had been taking photographs of the same places in the arctic for decades. The reaction of the Broader Community to us doing this was a shock and awe. We might not get out of it what were putting into it. At that we might be doing things that cause damage to the interests of the nation there was skepticism. You have to remember that we worked for president bush he was a republican and now hes running against bill clinton and al gore and im running this project the gates gore task force and a number of occasions i was towed stop overachieving on this project and so its difficult but thats pretty stubborn. I mean initially i was told you can bring in three scientists i ended up bringing in seventy. We made the decision that we would have senator gore send the letters of invitation not us because we thought that the scientist might be uncomfortable getting a letter from the cia. Linda zol was forming a close knit clump of elite scientists from every discipline and oceanography atmospherics ecology and dozens of other fields who would be able to work the secret systems and they took. Their mission would be to work alongside the intelligence agencies to see whats the intelligence all kind of some systems could reveal about Climate Change and other ways in which the earth is changing two very different cultures came together it was a meeting of all sorts of people in some cases i didnt imagine even existed harley much less in one room and most of us had got a fuzzy hair and you know were unkempt the way academics are and the group doing the briefing was not used to opening the secrets to such a collection of characters at first it was a bit surreal i think no one could quite appreciate what was afoot i think there was a lot of energy in the room a lot of a lot of feeling that there is potential here for all sorts of. Value to to science that was really the exciting thing for most of us to be involved with it and and then knowing what actually could be done and try to influence what might be done was a very important thing to you didnt have to say yes but as you look at that who you were interacting with than the types of problems you might work on it was very hard to say no. I remember when they first saw the imagery from our satellites their mouths were open they were they were stunned. It was a new way to look at the earth for us the reality is new ways of observing the earth personally always lead to new understanding putting together the ice people with the ecosystem people and with the geologists and the oceanographers in the media ologists all of a sudden you have a synergy of ideas that allow you to look at problems in a new way and this is something you can do in of formal structured way you have to put the best people together and so i think the genius of al gore and linda zol and the Intelligence Community was to recognize well get the very best people and well ask them how this can work ok so its the panel chairs take that direction as the scientists want to understand the potential of the Intelligent Systems and data the job of analyzing the usefulness of the science to the cia felt lindas also deputy norm come on one of the things that i do recall is having a conversation with with one of the arctic scientists i dont remember with whom but. They made the point that our models for the arctic really dont capture whats actually going on there and it looks like change is happening a lot faster than our models predicted and we dont know why that is norbert came to me and said im very concerned that the Arctic Sea Ice is going to melt and melt catastrophic lee and melt pretty fast once you get started and i would like you to ask the powers to that be to start collecting imagery. Over the arctic ocean so we can monitor over time whats happening with the sea ice. The teams chief optics scientist was norbert at one time he was well aware of the complex ways in which the arctic drives the worlds climate. Norbert talked about the fact that Something Like ninety five percent of the oceans are influenced by five percent of whats happening and thats up in the arctic. The americans are starting to get a better beat on how the arctic drives Climate Change science but the nation with truly vast experience of ought to christen action data spanning one hundred years of exploration was russia the arctic isnt that backyard. If you missed us here what if we never stopped studying the arctic ocean the best and as my leisure go every spring youre going to a sophisticated expedition recently if you and we carried out observations in two hundred square kilometer areas every two hundred kilometers is going to be landed on the ice there here is a lot of media examples of good meteorological observations and oceanographic measurements to get like hes going to do you need to go into the media then reentered all the information into a huge database. So our knowledge isnt purely intuitive and a bit of an ashes nanya was its based on lots of data. From college that. Russia has justifiably proud of its optic heritage ever since the one nine hundred twenty s. Hundreds of expeditions was sentenced the depths of the arctic to take readings that great cost in treasure and lifes. Yet but a new moat which s. T. M. New via surveillance and observation patrols over the ice most of my op planes flew a talented shoots of two hundred to three hundred metres along the precisely. Route for them. Those were visual observations in the union look for theodore the game at that time in the one nine hundred sixty s. And one nine hundred seventy s. Deja satellite surveillance didnt yet exist. But we were able to locate blocks of ice recalled their composition if the ice was newly formed or composed of very thick old lands. They were dressed very. Those they lured. The Russian Arctic treasure trove of data would be critical to understanding the nature and scale of the impact of the arctic on Climate Change first though the geo Political Landscape had to change. When clinton and gore won the one nine hundred ninety two president ial election the intelligent Scientific Team suddenly had a huge champion in court. For his part gore had heres an elite climate team in place. It was at that meeting that Vice President gore said. I dont want this group to disappear i want them to be a Permanent Group and i want them to remain. The team was named after a figure from greek mythology the sorceress medea. This is an original can this mission was flown eighteen october nine hundred sixty four. This is the executive order that president clinton signed in one thousand nine hundred five in february. Officially declassifying this and another eight hundred thousand dates tins. And the like to see this was filmed and it was dropped from the satellite and a aircraft with a parrot picked it up you can see. Top secret. As soon as we got the corona data and were looking at corona data of our areas that we were familiar with because our Current Research on ice streams was was focused there we saw that the width of the ice stream changed no this has been a theoretical. Pondering for a while here was the actual evidence here is the data that says ok it changed its wit when the when you know weve nailed it we finally have that have the hard evidence there is tremendous significance and in making releases into the environmental community. It was evident then far more evident today this is one of them. Major societal and scientific issues of our time what is happening to our climate what will happen. What steps can we take. Part of the answer came from the other side of europe some of the highest levels of the russian government been thinking along the same lines as their american counterparts. Just say no when to intelligence you know working in Science Technology in the humanities we thought that within ten years russia would follow all the other countries should be striving for a better world really the future of the biosphere third minister only because it is true it was only bullish the human league would he she best feeling. In the kremlin look for a change surprisingly so too did some in the secretive world of russian intelligence were just your mic at the room with. The systems we were developing they were cutting edge science. And they acquired lots of information about our planet the ocean it your logical conditions arid areas and circum to restaurant space where there were. No so we found it very easy to adapt to the new system. Differential systems. And use military technology to solve completely peaceful issues theres much in the census in the mid next. Three months after moving into the white house in april nine hundred ninety three clinton and gore met their counterparts from the kremlin. To Vice President gore and Prime Minister to an american took on a mammoth range of topics to help russia survive the up peoples including its polluted environment. Yeah theyll get us we will go out i often saw your internal mirrored and getting on well in the formal and informal situations of those guys and im not suggesting that they didnt respect protocol or rules of official meetings for a while but it was still very good player that they were on friendly terms with mr lewis more relaxed settings guy though he will say that they were there almost like brothers at the senior will you can you but ski Vice President gore when he asked Prime Minister chaired american look. You took more pictures of the great lakes we took more pictures of the arrow see why cant we where where it will not jeopardize our our mutual National Security why cant we share this data of the past and then he would say and also the arctic ocean observations i got a phone call from my boss and he said he just received direction from the Deputy Director of the cia bill student that we were going to be participating with al gore to work with our counterparts in the russian g. R. U. To explore possibilities to use our capabilities combined with theirs in support of global Climate Change and to sassed relief and Civil Missions in general i was shocked this was unheard of unheard of we were proposing to bring together United States and russian intelligence officials military officers and scientists from both countries and. Government representatives from the civil agencies like the equivalent of our e. P. A. Are no with their ministry of the environment. Together yet. At the time i was advisor to the president of the Russian Federation on issues of environment and tells you that it was an Incredible Opportunity it was more we were absolutely overjoyed that the americans would go from being enemies for you to harness well even good friends i mean you can see is a bit of ratios the birth of but you know if we could all move mountains together nice to see how much good it nor the glove that was the main source of information on space was a g. R. U. The main intelligence director. General was head of space intelligence he had Defense Ministry and it turned out to be very open. We met and soon knew what we expected of us. We quickly came to an agreement on how to cooperate with them when we stayed in constant touch with the young the complex you do with. It we my general pollock shook and in a very formalistic meeting simultaneous translation taking place in a huge hall with across the table from one another everyone situated very officially with a rigor but i will tell you that over the course of the days in moscow and subsequent meetings in the United States at various locations and back in moscow. It got to be far less formal we got to know our counterparts and talk to them freely and work on problems and language and resolutions alike so the first meetings were very formal but as time went on a became very very productive very ill call informal there was always a rigor to it yes. No would she listen i would say that we just learned how to Work Together with you because there was was there in that the newsgroup could mean everybody had very different mindsets distorts your eyes but so much in common its that we soon made no distinction to be a community could certainly billiton resonant that was a very important factor of communication for us that theyre going and i think something quite remarkable took place they use are pretty near with the core of the image is that. The intensive diplomacy and secret negotiations finally pull fruit. In one thousand nine hundred five the spies scientists and politicians of both sides gathered in a washington d. C. To seal a formal agreement to begin working together and what was initially cold the special initiative and later the environmental working group. Good morning everyone and thank you for participating in this joint us russian environmental seminar im jim baker i mean administrators of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and id like to thank the organizers particularly linda zali and ned austin so for their hard work in getting us to this point general polly shook who i grew to have Great Respect for broke the ice at this meeting he gave a talk and he first slide that he showed in his presentation was a satellite picture from russian. Reconnaissance Satellite Program showing. The construction of a super secret facility that we heard so he showed this picture of it being constructed it just broke the ice everybody laughed we were privileged to have academicians savage from the russian side and academician bond to our who is his deputy of kmita it was my good girl im going to judge them and thats a clear case to sell and thats that weve had a great number of american colleagues here who leave this is because the russian delegation was large one hundred people id say most all of them involved in deodorants or Environmental Issues whats your view with the as in you my disability somebody started to Work Together you and thats your lives they were destroyed we saw that we were very alike because when we were on the same wave schemes in misleading him. I felt that we had a lot in common and that the attitudes of the americans and the russians were very similar. Because you didnt say we were all tackling global issues which you produced and lived in great big countries with Cutting Edge Technology and yet the bushies threatened with the bush to put us through as there was very nice to meet people whose views we shared with the workers not enemies of those that wish to be regular people and that was in good nick if they want to go if they were First Published and indeed. I have tremendous faith in your ingenuity much of what you are doing. Is only because the soviet union had had this very deliberate pattern of repeating hydrographic observations that we could actually say that. What things have been like before so that we could see that thered been a change we were stunned to realize how much data they gathered over forty or fifty years over the whole arctic ocean i think it was Something Like nine hundred thousand pages in there nope book had been rescued because a lot of these were handwritten notes going back fifty years from the icecaps. Bags we were able to calculate averages based on the measurements taken every ten years as that it normally is that you sit the. E. The ball who cheats that gave us a better understanding of changes in the arctic ocean a ten year intervals your excess the janja see that in the work they get the work Care National done they bore sure but what is good when you carved out it was more useful for studying Climate Change and the americans for ongoing monitoring of the war is just an opinion theres no course american Computer Technology was much better than ours ten times better as the better the grammy decided to set up a database the american scientists were Natural Partners and years we could not done it without that really have been that she is just no particular celebrities knew but it wasnt used because of that there is see if. There may have been. Schanzer russia it was both an opportunity to be a sign a Data Analysis methodology of the new and with data interpellation and even extrapolation methods in a kind of second rate a new scientific progress over her notion of the uk. After working closely together for three years the two rival Intelligence Services the chief real trust and i remember thinking wow we are the same professionals weve had the same careers we have the same interests there were no russians and there were no americans there was no cia no g. R. You know we were we were together at that moment i will never forget that moment. The joint work between the russians and the americans especially in the arctic provided crucial data that required analysis to assess its meaning for Climate Change. In one hundred forty four water among persuaded eisenhower to delay the d. Day landings by showing how the tide was shifting on the normandy beaches. Now it fell to monk and his material. Leeks to interpret the data flowing from the american russian collaboration the arctic is changing more quickly than any other region and of course crean and that this time is the principal contributor to global sea level rise. The estimate is that if all of the ninth places would melt it would add nine meters of global sea level. Changes occurring in the arctic caused concern in the American Team that a major problem could occur in the other paul of the us. I think that we dont really know the timescale as well people are thinking to meet is it the end of the century and. I dont think that nasty surprises are to slake impossible the total water the feel of a as associate it with cain and glaciers is about nine meters. And that total sea level is associated with as the arctic is of the order of one hundred meters. However serious the Climate Change threat human a fast invariably took precedence already voted for me or. I would do my best to serve your interests. And i will work to earn your respect. Once george w. Bush took office. Nor would the incoming right of lattimer putin be any better disposed to joint scientific intelligence worked between russia and america. Even those that are gullible this deal in them with the book we were doing back then was so noble lottery and we were very enthusiastic enthusiasm the boom logan over what the mess youve seen it lasted some time to put us there well its just not worry about to go backwards it cyclicals a pretty good were going in the wrong direction of it and they dont quite have the nipple that unfortunately here in the United States. The whole issue of Climate Change. Has become politically polarizing and. And in some ways the political divide has pushed people to the extremes on both sides is me a nuclear what the us would not bless the Climate Change is particularly dangerous for us but the risk as the arctic ice melts is that the permafrost will also melt and that represents half of russian territory you can i would just open it and if it does melt it wont be pretty as we say. Well have to rebuild our infrastructure railways housing cities we mustnt take it lightly it and they should know when what serious. These measurable nuns especially in the arctic and antarctic put the material scientists want ahead of time the main danger to the world in the short term would be an escalation in extreme weather events. A series of weather shocks the world from two thousand and nine to two thousand and twelve russia saw its worst heatwave for a thousand years that indirectly killed fifty five thousand people and more than seventeen million indirectly globally syria saw its worst drought in forty years twenty million in pakistan were left homeless as floods devastated their country and thailand saw more than twelve Million People affected by severe flooding. The media teams extreme weather warning came true faster than anyone thought possible. The fact is that if you have a warmer atmosphere its more energetic theres more energy in the winds and a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor so every storm has more water in it and in fact that were now seeing that we can see it here in the northeast us. And you can see it around the world that were seeing the storms that exist have more water in them and they cause more damage and they cause more floods. The whole temperature distribution shifts towards being more warm so we see more deaths due to heat waves and we see a bigger impact of the warmer weather on crops all over the world. Just because yes thats the theres been a serious and severe earthquakes make it tsunamis huge tropical cyclones tornadoes and storm this of which is so many problems we have to learn to understand but really i mean theres not as about the Climate Change is partly responsible and we must of course take human activity like to a comfortable again like a group of collectors just in the most. If i were to predict where the real issues of the mo in terms of Global Policy would be. Her in just a challenge that africa is going to face with a population of six that could to expand significantly in the next few decades and a very very uncertain climate even at the best of times and so how how are they actually going to make it. As the international risks became clear media started to focus on how they would impact u. S. National security. And world renowned microbiologist Rita Caldwell and the political scientist expert in failing states mark levy recruited in to help. What could predict a very very serious human problem which is compounded by the fact that conditions will very likely be squalid hence. Another impetus for disease to occur and spread some people have predicted massive epidemics with millions much like the one nine hundred eighty influenza epidemic as a result of mega city concentrations of people squalid conditions loss of electric power unsafe water which are the prime conditions a massive epidemics if we have a series of very destructive storms and thats predicted that breaks down the Water Treatment systems in the sewage Treatment Systems then the bets are off you know weve had so many unfortunate records broken in the last five years not just climatic records but political and humanitarian records you know hitting the post World War Two peak for number of refugees in the world for example has cured a lot of people and you know once weve crossed that threshold. Its hard for people not to wonder will how much worse could it get could be have twice as many refugees as this and what would the western european political situation look like in that kind of world were going to need to think ahead. To another reality relating to Climate Change in that some of the bad stuff is going to happen no matter what we do. And people are going to be strongly affected by it and many of those people are going to be in the poorest parts of the world or in the poorer segments of our own societies and the time to begin to to put things in place to ameliorate that is not when it becomes terribly obvious that its occurring but when it can be foreseen. Which is now already. I think that it is particularly characteristic of democracies. That they only act when the calamity of it is upon. And a willingness to sacrifice for an anticipated threat there has always been hard. Climate conferences and treaties came and went. And nine hundred ninety seven copenhagen in two thousand and nine lima in twenty fourteen and a december twenty fifth diem politicians from around the world gathered in paris. They hailed the decision to limit club warming to two degrees. Despite their on the syria despite the best efforts of the International Community holds the state of the environment to still deteriorating worldwide but of those who would use our soul the tree so far that it was the ban on producing the energy using the ozone depleting substances as of the others. But thats the only tangible result of our efforts stephen more than a preview that when you. Raise money of sumo robel cocacola throughout my life and my career as an environmental expert as whistles i have always insisted on adopting my moral approach to nature to conservation and to environmental change you use me with a bit more still thats very important at the budget and i think that this moral stance is going to become stronger and more vital in the coming years some way glow of the will to bridge ratio. What. Yes theres there are there was your brilliance there was no i think media was a hugely important project and i will support such initiatives in. Future borders we have to educate our leaders from really the guts what researchers and scientists always do which is the hopes the sentiment in the new way its. Nature doesnt need humans so we have to come into some sort of relationship with nature and a sustainable relationship because nature will certainly survive it was here before humans were here it will be after humans leave if that is to be our fate but we have to come into a more sustainable relationship with nature and i think Scientific Understanding will lead the way on how to do that. And you have to have knowledge you have to have observations were ever you can so thats why it matter thats why it should matter thats why it should go on. We did our best to figure out a way to do that in our effort. But you know its not a knowledge if youre going to save. The world. As the consequences of Climate Change predicted by medea start to become apparent to us all. Planning for the future requires that politicians and policymakers utilize the best Resources Available in an international effort. Climate change doesnt do better from tears. Our children and grandchildren will be the ones to bad the brunt of the changes ahead. Lets give them the very best chance of doing so. Theres. Nobody mond. Im living has plenty of this alkaline metal to make batteries for cell phones and. One of the poorest countries in south america but libya has the biggest reserves hoping to get rich but Foreign Investors also want a slice of the pie. Three thousand and thirty minutes. The emotion when it comes. To. My first boss was a sewing machine. Icon for all women are. Something as simple as. Is and. Since i was in. The been there. Finally they gave. Me the sewing machine so i suppose it was more appropriate for girls than writing a. Woman back home who are both. In. Basic rights my name is the about of the home and i. Did a. Us republican least a controversial memo alleging. That the f. B. I. President. The memo on friday despite the f. B. I. Is warning that it had grave concerns about its accuracy democrats say the document is misleading and aims to discredit the probe into potential collusion between the sixteen election campaign. Say north korea