This is a cross-post by Jay Gulledge. The original article can be found here.
National security leaders deal with deep uncertainty on a daily basis about everything from North Korea’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon to the location and timing of the next terrorist attack by non-state actors such as ISIS and al-Qaida. Security decision-makers don’t use uncertainty as an excuse to ignore security threats.
Borrowing a page from security analysts, a new report out today by renowned climate experts and high-level government advisors from China, India, the United Kingdom and the United States assesses the risks of climate change in the context of national and international security.
Climate Change: A Risk Assessment by David King, Daniel Schrag, Zhou Dadi, Qi Ye and Arunabha Ghosh first examines different categories of risk, all with significant uncertainties. The general conclusions are:
- EMISSIONS: Without increased political commitment and an acceleration of technological innovation, global emissions are likely to follow a medium to high pathway: continuing to increase for the next few decades, and then levelling off or decreasing gradually.
- DIRECT RISKS: The risks of climate change are non-linear: while average conditions may change gradually, the risks can increase rapidly. On a high emissions pathway, the probability of crossing thresholds beyond which the inconvenient may become intolerable will increase over time.
- SYSTEMIC RISKS: The risks of climate change are systemic. The greatest risks may arise from the interaction of the climate with complex human systems such as global food markets, governance arrangements within states, and international security.
After considering these risks in much greater detail than provided here, the authors concluded with three general recommendations:
1. The risks of climate change should be assessed in the same way as risks to national security or public health.
2. The risk assessment should involve a wide range of experts (i.e. policy analysts and energy experts, political leaders, scientists, and national security experts).
3. The risk assessment should report to the highest level of government (as security assessments do).
I have written before about the need to account for scientific uncertainty as governments plan for a future with climate change, and I was honored to be invited to contribute a short section to this report about how scientists’ attitudes about uncertainty can unwittingly stymie governments’ attempts to assess climate risk.
As I state in the report,
“Scientists who strive to provide useful information about climate change, and decision-makers who seek such information, ‘are linked by a thin thread of climate information that is relevant to their respective endeavors, but they are separated by different needs, priorities, processes and cultures.’ One element that often divides these two communities is the ways in which they characterize and treat uncertainty about future outcomes.”
Consider two types of uncertainty: A “false-positive” is when scientists accept a hypothesis that is actually wrong. Conversely, a “false-negative” occurs when scientists reject a correct hypothesis. Scientists really hate false-positives, but they are not so concerned about false negatives. This mindset is engrained in science because it protects the body of scientific knowledge from being contaminated with misinformation.
On the other hand, risk managers are often more concerned about false-negatives than false-positives. This is why mortgage lenders require borrowers to carry casualty insurance. Since the chances of any one house burning down in a given year could be considered negligibly small, many homeowners elect not to carry fire insurance. But for each house that does burn, this choice results in a devastating false-negative, a risk that mortgage lenders will not tolerate.
The report acknowledges deep uncertainty about the likely outcomes of climate change, but identifies many risks with potentially severe outcomes. And that is what makes climate risk very similar to security risk. Indeed, climate change itself poses many security risks and should be assessed and managed in a similar fashion.
Of course, the “false positive” and “false negative” uncertainty and their use in practice, can play a negative role in decision-making by political leaders. In my opinion, the main mistake – in the implementation of such a scenario – it may be a waste of time. For example, in the Middle Ages the history of mankind is one of the kings of France has formulated certain paradigm: “After us – the deluge!”. The political elite of France – at the time – and supported their king – was wrong, putting the necessary work for an indefinite period. There were other concerns: religious differences, political intrigues and conflicts, financial and economic issues, and so on…To date, climate change in Europe in general and in particular, in France each year have led to mass deaths of the indigenous population of France on a lot of high summer temperatures and favorable conditions for living – in France is – immigrants, particularly from Africa. I believe that the indigenous French without enthusiasm – whenever possible – evaluate the paradigm of his former king … Replace “After us – the deluge!” To “After us – even infernal heat!” – Can be fast, but to come up with and implement the necessary technology to ensure a comfortable stay humanity – oh how difficult. Especially – when the conscious tightening of mandatory implementation processes.
The complexity of balancing between climate science and climate risk management when it comes to false positives and false negatives is very similar to what the cybersecurity community faces. For instance, when it comes to cybersecurity, being able to distinguish legitimate network traffic from that indicative of a cyber-attack can lead to the problem of false positives and false negatives. A false positive would be mistakenly identifying legitimate traffic as some form of attack and blocking it causing system gridlock or denial of service while false negatives may allow hackers into the system.
Similarly biometric sensors used for authentication have to balance between being too rigid and being too accepting. If too rigid, the sensor may not recognize the people it was programmed to and authorized users will not be authenticated. If the sensor is too accepting, it may allow an unauthorized person to masquerade as someone else. This is referred to as the False rejection rate (FRR) and the False acceptance rate (FAR) and using these via an equation one can figure out the statistics for the average attack space. Could this method be crossed over for climate change security?