Intel Analysts to Study Climate Change

U.S. delegate Harlan Walson attends the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at United Nations office in Bangkok, on Monday April 30, 2007. A major climate meeting opened Monday in the Thai capital with delegates addressing how the world's governments can best take action now to avoid the dire consequences of a warming planet. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) (Sakchai Lalit - AP)

WASHINGTON -- Top intelligence analysts are diving into the politically sensitive issue of climate change, but some Democrats in Congress are demanding even more.

The House Intelligence Committee approved a provision late Wednesday as part of a spy budget bill that would require the National Intelligence Council to produce its highest-level assessment _ a National Intelligence Estimate _ specifically on climate change.

The bill, which the House could take up next week, calls on analysts to study the political, social, agricultural and economic risks associated with climate change over the next 30 years.

Republicans rejected the endeavor as an unnecessary distraction from higher priorities.

Yet the Office of the National Intelligence Director said it has begun working on the national security implications of climate change.

"The intelligence community necessarily explores a number of long-term issues that may have an effect on U.S. national security, including potential national security implication of global climate change," spokesman Ross Feinstein said in a statement Thursday.

The research, an intelligence official said, will not address the scientific foundations of global climate change scenarios. "That determination will be left up to the scientists," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity about internal policy issues.

Among questions that some are asking: Will drought and weather changes create mass migrations that could threaten governments? Will U.S. military bases be affected by rising sea levels?

Intelligence agencies long have studied the security and economic effects of social and environmental changes, such as scarce resources, disease, mass migrations and national disasters.

In 2002, there was a National Intelligence Estimate on the next wave of HIV/AIDS; in 2004, one on the geopolitics of energy.

In a statement, Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the House Intelligence Committee's top Republican, questioned Democrats' intelligence priorities, saying the report would divert scarce resources to study global warming.

Republicans, he said, worked to focus on terrorists, rogue nations and U.S. enemies.