Climate Security vs. National Security

Photo by Susanne Miller, courtesy the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

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So here’s an interesting value test in the modern age. What’s of greater importance—keeping secret our secret observations of other Arctic nations, or making available our secret observations in order to transform our understanding of the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice?

The National Research Council asks that hundreds of images derived from classified data be immediately released and disseminated to the scientific community. The images provide otherwise unavailable data of melting and freezing processes associated with climate change.

As things stand now, our ability to project future Arctic ice cover is severely hampered by a dearth of data. Readily available satellite images generally suck because the data are low-res. Data collected from drifting manned stations are unreliable since ice stations fall apart before data collection is complete. Data collected from aircraft flights are low-yield and expensive. 

But the classified images that already exist could illuminate a bunch of important stuff:

Moreover, the National Research Council says the 2007-2008 images would greatly enhance intensive ground-based observations carried out during the Fourth International Polar Year. The 2007 summer sea-ice minimum was a record low—more than 20 percent below 2005’s previous low and nearly 40 percent below the 1979-2000 average minimum. The release of the high-res imagery would enable a lot more investigation into those banner bad years.

In the 21st century, climate security is national security.
 

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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