Live. During the cold war the key battleground was above and below the arctic waters. 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 to do each other using the best military and intelligence technologies and final. But unknown to its participants the cold war furnished the means to study one of the biggest threats facing us today. On changing climate. In one nine hundred ninety two led by the cia Seventy Eight elite scientists were given access to top secret data and intelligence system. To use for Climate Change study. Named medea im sworn to secrecy that work was encouraged at the highest levels of government. Of our National Security however to take their work further they needed Additional Information that held by the cold war adversaries in russian intelligence and science. Putting aside a decades long muscle us rivalry the cia and russian intelligence started to work closely together. The participants of this Extraordinary Program now speak for the first time. Russia did get it on their 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 to validate the keys to help us understand the biggest threat to our survival. Climate change. Surface to surface missiles the soviet navy has been heavily armed with both up and sit there for it to surface and surface to air missile. 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 cause most glass and zen eat. They were designed to appear at the. Enemy relentlessly in super fine detail in every way flint imaginable. One of the key targets for american spy satellites was to salvage northam submarine fleet based at sea if it had been in the arctic circle. Hundreds of Nuclear Armed submarines around constant missions around and under the arctic ice. Says this earth this means that they are good there in the nine hundred sixty s. And one nine hundred seventy s. That the arctic region and especially the arctic ocean was an area of military operations with game italy in there and even i would say an area of potential conflict as of the moment of course access to Research Data was either restricted or totally banned is that going to get that easily. The arctic was the Perfect Place to hide it became crucial to study gather data and control a 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. Instigator the up and coming senator. Wanted the cia to allow its intelligence day turn systems to be used for environmental study. He was very specific he wanted us to look at vegetative ndaa say that she had physical parameters oceanographic parameters we were not really that was not really our our focus. I was interested in the Earth Sciences and i had been working many years the cia and other issues and this was something that. Kind of spoke to my heart though still in opposition to the republicans decision to involve his National Security advisor elevating 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 cause his 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 do most 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 been much ninety one the stage was sent for goals remarkable request to become a reality one of my primary responsibilities was going to be out to. Moved 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. Guys that 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 and 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. On a number of cajuns i was toad 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 scientists 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 kinds and 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 area 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 picked 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. Who you were interacting with and 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 and the meteorologists 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 cant do in a 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 Intelligence Systems and data the job of analyzing the usefulness of the science to the cia felt linda sauls tempi three 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. Maybe he 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 it gets 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 who is north of atlanta stein a he was well aware of the complex ways in which the arctic dr saw 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 Cross Section data spanning one hundred years of exploration was russia the arctic is their backyard. Ecumenist here is you what you wish we never stopped studying the arctic ocean of us and us in the leisure go every spring or your going to a sophisticated expeditions of new techniques for 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 meat to examples of good meteorological observations and oceanographic measurements that give a gives you the radio to go in the region you then reentered all the information into a huge database. So our knowledge isnt purely intuitive you know whether were nashs nanya was based on lots of data though in Russian College or that. Russia was justifiably proud of its Arctic Heritage ever since the one nine hundred twenty s. Hundreds of expeditions were sentenced the depths of the arctic to take readings at great cost in treasure and lives. Yet but in your mo or chess the new virus of humanity an observation patrols over the ice not so much our planes flew a counter judes of two hundred to three hundred meters along the precise route for them. And those were visual observations in the religion yet not feel good the game at that time in the one nine hundred sixty s. And one nine hundred seventy s. Days satellite surveillance didnt yet exist in the beginning but we were able to locate blocks of ice and you record a composition if the ice was newly formed or composed of very thick old lands. Here there were a story. Or thoughts the lure of. The Russian Arctic treasure trove of data could 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 have a huge champion in court. For his part gore had his 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 think a 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 of these tins. And the like to see this was filmed and it was dropped from the satellite and a aircraft of the terror picked it up you can see. Tough secrets. 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 had 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 the have the hard evidence there is tremendous significance and 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 at the highest levels of the russian government been thinking along the same lines as their american counterparts. See now with really intelligent see how working in Science Technology and 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 in a third minister only nicholas through it was only with the sheer. Beauty she best feeling. While those in the kremlin look for change surprisingly so too did some in the secretive world of russian intelligence were this is. The systems we were developing they were cutting edge science. They acquired lots of information about our planet the ocean geological conditions arid areas and circum to restaurant space where there were. No we were so we found it very easy to adapt to the new system. Differential systems. And use military technology to solve completely peaceful issues. He said this is in the middle of the. Three months after moving into the white house in april nine hundred ninety three continent go met their counterparts from the kremlin. To Vice President gore and Prime Minister to an american took on a mammoth range of talks to help russia survive the op he feels including its polluted environment. Yeah you know get us we will go out i often saw your internal mirrored and getting on well in the formal and informal situations moved those guys and im not suggesting that they didnt respect protocol or the rules of official meetings and for a while but it was still very good player that they were on friendly terms and you lose more relaxed settings guys over people say that they were there almost like brothers of the senior with you penny 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 sas 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 isnt. You know if we could all move mountains together nice to feel much good nor the love that was the main source of information on space was the g. R. U. The main intelligence director general polish was head of space intelligence he had Defense Ministry and turned out to be very open. We met and soon knew what we expected of us. We were quickly came to an agreement on how to cooperate with them and we stayed in constant touch with the young the complex you dont really put. 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 yeah. And then when she listened i would say that we just learned how to Work Together with you because there was that i was in that the music i 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 billet you wasnt that was a very important factor of communication for us that there were and i think something quite remarkable took place there you she said pretty near what the core was in my days through. The intensive diplomacy and secret negotiations finally pull fruit. In one thousand nine hundred five 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 need minister a tour 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 polley 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 were so he showed this picture being constructed it just broke the ice everybody laughed we were privileged to have academicians savin from the russian side and academician bond to our who is his deputy of kmita it was not. Good on them going to just them messick. We had a great number of american colleagues here who only this is because the russian delegation was large one hundred people id say most all of them involved history of answer Environmental Issues what you would go through it is in you my disability somebody started to Work Together and as you give the why does that we saw that we were very alike because when we were on the same waves that he was in my senior. I felt that we had a lot in common and that the attitudes of the americans and the russians were very similar. Because he didnt say we were all tackling global issues of which you produced and lived in great big countries with Cutting Edge Technology and yet the bus system that the bush impressed that i was there was very nice to meet people whose views we shared with the workers not enemies and which through the regular people in that was in good nick if they were to go if there were first that. I have tremendous faith in your ingenuity and tremendous confidence in your vision i wish you a productive and successful series of meetings this week thank you very much for what you are doing. So 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 or the whole arctic ocean i think there 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. Bugs we were able to calculate averages based on the measurements taken every ten years as that it normally is the distant the. Even. The pollute sheets that gave us a better understanding of changes in the arctic ocean ten year intervals your excess the year seven the work they get the work again National Done their voice but why delia is good when you are down here was more useful for studying Climate Change and the americans for ongoing Monitoring Group of the world is just a Senior National course american the Computer Technology was much better than ours ten times better the better the grammy decided to set up a database the american scientists were Natural Partners and years we couldnt have done it without that really have been that she is just now but you have to look at his new book because it was in his book is 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 he made strata lation methods in that by lets see a kind of a creative new scientific progress over her notion of the uk. After working closely together for three years the two rifle 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 and no g. R. U. We were we were together at that moment i will never forget that moment. The coming to work between russians and americans especially in the arctic provided crucial they took the 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 moment the 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. From 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 earth. I think that we dont really know the time scales well people are thinking to meet is it the end of the century and. I dont think that nasty surprises. Are totally impossible that total water the sea level has associated with clean and glaciers is about nine meters. And that total sea level that is associated with and to arctic is of the order of one hundred meters. However serious the Climate Change threat human a fast invariably took precedence whether you voted for me or. I will do my best to serve your interests. And i will work to earn your respect. Once george w. Bush took office the knifes came out among republicans opposed to any program associated with al gore. As funding was cut and it shot down. Nor would the incoming reign of lattimer putin be any better disposed to joint scientific intelligence worked between russia and america. Even the babble was dealing with the book we were doing back then was so noble of you 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 were about to go backwards its cyclical separated were going in the wrong direction abruptly dont give up and you feel 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 mean you clear the us open the plus the Climate Change is particularly dangerous for us. 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 then they should know when they might see us. These measurable nuns especially in the arctic and antarctic put the material scientists warned 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 hit 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 soras 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 just as the theres been searing there isnt severe earthquakes make heads or nominees huge tropical cyclones tornadoes and storms of which its so many problems we have to learn to understand but really i mean theres not as about the Climate Change is partly responsible if we must of course take human activity like into account or begin like a group of cletis just in the most. If i were to predict where the real issues of the mo in terms of Global Policy would be. Her and just challenge that africa is going to face with a population of six ducted to expand significantly in the next few decades and a very very uncertain climate even at the best of times 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. A 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 protests 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 megacity 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 poor segments of our own societies and the time to begin to to put things in place to mirror rate that is not when it becomes terribly obvious that its occurring but when it can be foreseen. Which is now reading i think that it is particularly characteristic of democracies. That they only act when calamity it is upon. And a willingness to sacrifice for an anticipated threat there has always been hard. Climate conferences some treaties came and went. And nine hundred ninety seven copenhagen in two thousand and nine lima in twenty fourteen and a december twenty fifth Team Politicians from around the world gathered in paris. They hailed the decision to limit club warming to two degrees. Despite their lives despite the best efforts of the International Community hopes the state of the environment is still deteriorating worldwide but of those who would use our soldier tree so far it was the ban on producing energy using that also into pleading substances as of theirs. But thats the only tangible result of our efforts Stephen Moore to preview that minya signoff to raise money of sumo rebel cocacola throughout my life and my career as an environmental expert us myself and i have always insisted on adopting my moral approach to nature to conservation and to environmental change you use me with a bit of yoga most of all 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 be ratio. What. Just as there are there with your brilliance there was no i think media was a hugely important project and i will support such initiatives in the future that we have to educate our leaders from really think thats what researchers and scientists all raised in the region if they were. Yes there certainly is in the 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 wherever you can so thats why it matters 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 policy makers utilize the best Resources Available in an international effort. Climate change doesnt the body from tennis. 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. Od dropping bombs on civilians. More troops the situation escalates there is no longer in her scruples. Ruthless calculation military leaders work out the extent of the mask a modern Technological Progress of the conflagration so massacres. Coming from a coaching regime on fifteen minutes on d w. The rooms barely feel. The scars on. The pain still tangible. Some from her gone. Through cities edged by her. They have survived but do they also have a future. I really understand people who say they dont want to stay here. But i also admire people who want to stay here and who decided to create something. A new beginning in peace time for the people making it possible what needs to happen if tolerance and reconciliation are to stand a chance. Out of darkness cities after war. Starting march tenth on d w. This is due to every news coming to long from berlin italy in shock a drive by shooting spree in the city of macho donda leaves at least six people Wounded Police believe the attack was racially motivated a twenty eight year old italian man is now in custody also coming out. Syrian rebels have shot down a russian war plane over italy province and killed the pilot footage appearing on social media claims to show remnants of the crash russias Defense Ministry says its already retaliated with a
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.