Issues with US military recruitment

The military provides a model for how institutions can address racism

George Floyd’s killing on Memorial Day has led to demonstrations in all 50 states and across the world, all calling for officials to fundamentally restructure the police state.
But what will this look like?
Efforts to reform the U.S. military in the 1960s and ’70s provide some lessons. Over 40 years ago, protests combined with pressure from a wide coalition of civilians, politicians and soldiers to push an institution to promote meaningful cultural change and to examine an unfair justice system. Change happened from vigilant activism, congressional support and a refusal to accept mere symbolism.
Even though African Americans have always served in the U.S. military during war, it was not until 1948 that segregated units were abandoned. But integration did not mean that discrimination and racism disappeared, and during the Vietnam War, racial tensions escalated. In the span of several weeks in October 1968, two African American majors in the Army resigned because of their assessment of racial discrimination in the military. Maj. Lavell Merritt called the military one of “the strongest citadels of racism on earth.” African American officer Maj. John B. Jones would later say that “the war [was] still in the barracks.”
Problems within the military mirrored broader social issues in the United States. But military institutions also had particular problems, notably a racially biased military justice system. African American soldiers pointed to the administration of “Article 15” punishments, which did not require judicial review. Officers had full discretion to punish soldiers with no oversight and without thorough investigations. African American soldiers received these nonjudicial punishments at much higher rates than their white counterparts, often with more severe consequences. This system paired with lower rates of promotion and a reluctance to recognize structural discrimination eventually prompted uprisings in 1971.
Of all the protests that year, the most severe was one at Fort McClellan, Ala., located outside the town notorious for being the site where white supremacists had bombed a bus full of Freedom Riders in 1961. Over the course of two weeks in November 1971, African American soldiers gathered to protest local bus drivers who had hurled racial slurs at them. But soon their grievances expanded to include practices within the military: unfair discipline practices, unequal rates of promotion and inaction of command when soldiers reported incidents of discrimination and abuse.
Fort McClellan command responded to mass gatherings with blanket arrests, resulting in military police detaining over 100 military service members. In the wake of the uprising, the commander blamed “troublemaking” militant soldiers, rather than the institution’s failure to address racism within the installation.
But the protest garnered national attention, and the Congressional Black Caucus launched ad hoc hearings to investigate racism in the military. Many black officers and enlistees warned that the situation was explosive. They testified that the military failed to enforce off-base housing regulations, which resulted in white enlisted men finding better housing than black officers. Across the military, Congress learned, when soldiers reported discrimination, complaints were swept under the rug and officers refused to take action.
The Department of Defense responded to increased congressional scrutiny by creating the Defense Race Relations Institute (DRRI), which was tasked with developing educational programs for enlistees and officers throughout all military branches. It trained instructors to lead conversations about race at all military installations. These rap sessions served as a way for African American soldiers to speak out without fear of retaliation and provide an avenue to solve conflict.
While it seemed to be a step in the right direction, it neither solved the problem for black soldiers nor did it lessen the frequency of their complaints. Yes, the DDRI did facilitate hard conversations about race, ones that extended around the world. But racial sensitivity training and informal conversations without policy reforms resulted in symbolic, not structural change. While the DDRI brought some issues to the surface, many soldiers insisted that there were not enough significant reforms.
So the uprisings continued and black officers continued to resign. Under pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP, the Department of Defense conducted a study on military justice and race in 1972. The report was deeply flawed. While it uncovered a pattern of disproportionate punishments and more severe consequences for African American soldiers, it refused to acknowledge that the military itself had institutional problems and instead blamed this discrimination on “social” forces. But the report did make some meaningful suggestions to address discrimination, including allocating African American seats on administrative review boards handling discharges, requiring the exhaustion of preliminary rehabilitative measures before imposing an “Article 15” punishment, and granting soldiers the right to a personal hearing before commanders when accused of an infraction.
The combined efforts of the Black Caucus, soldiers and the task force for military justice resulted in significant changes, including guaranteeing defendants’ access to free legal aid, even for trivial offenses, and making public all punishments imposed on soldiers below the rank of staff sergeant. However, military leadership hid behind their reforms as progress and blamed the DDRI for racial tensions remaining high on installations where white soldiers and officers resented black soldiers speaking freely about discrimination. Black unrest boiled to the surface at the Pentagon by the mid 1970s, when DDRI faced budget cuts that resulted in the number of instructors dropping significantly.
The move toward an all-volunteer force after 1973 introduced new challenges linked to minority recruitment. While recruiters celebrated individuality of enlistees and officers in sales pitches, in reality, white officers looked suspiciously at black soldiers’ wearing bracelets and sporting hair styles that echoed black power activism.
Yet, after the Vietnam War ended, the Army intensified its efforts to appeal to African Americans because its research showed that they were more likely to be motivated by military benefits than white Americans, who benefited from privileges in civilian society. This push succeeded in that minorities volunteered at higher rates, especially young African Americans. Between 1972 and 1981, African American representation in the military doubled from 11 percent to 22 percent, and the Army’s ranks were 33 percent black in 1981. Over time, the military’s officer ranks became slightly more diverse as well: While in 1980, 91 percent of new officers were white and 7 percent were black, by 2009, 76 percent were white and 9 percent were black. Military efforts to strengthen African American representation in the officer corps, however, were stymied by federal courts that struck down the practice of allowing promotion boards to consider race in an officer’s record (Saunders v. White 2002).
True change, then, if we look to the military as an example, will require pressure on the institution itself, but perhaps more important, pressure on the courts and the federal government, which set guidelines and rules that shape local policing. Any progress within policing practices will be susceptible to the whims of the courts and the federal government. Racism is systemic, and transforming our institutions will require constant vigilance.
Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly stated that Floyd was killed in Wisconsin. He was killed in Minnesota, and the story has been corrected.


Issues with US military recruitment

A current issue with US military recruitment is the 2016 suspension of the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI), a recruitment program for non-permanent residents with high-demand skills from medicine to languages. Critics state that America has not kept its promise of service in exchange for US citizenship and that scrutiny of immigrants' background checks are unfairly keeping them from serving. As more women enlist, their roles in the US military are ever evolving as policies change allowing them to serve in combat roles.  A loss of trade-related jobs is increasing the number of applicants for US military recruiters. Documents discussing legal action directly attributed to a US President (such as Trump) are not relevant.

Find an article addressing this question on military policies.

Fraud investigation targets recruiting program for Army National Guard, Reserves

A recruitment campaign to boost the Army National Guard and Reserve at a difficult time in Iraq and Afghanistan is the focus of a wide-ranging Pentagon fraud investigation, including allegations of kickback schemes involving military personnel, internal documents show. The alleged fraud involves programs that paid $2,000 bounties to soldiers or civilians who signed up as “recruiting assistants” and brought in new enlistees. Investigators have found evidence that recruiters for the Guard and Reserve who were not eligible for the bounties worked with some recruiting assistants to secretly secure and split up the money. In response to questions from The Washington Post, an Army spokesman said the investigation is ongoing. “If additional allegations of criminal conduct are found, the Army will take appropriate action,” spokesman George Wright said. “Because of the sensitivity of the criminal investigation, providing any further details or comment would be inappropriate.” A subsequent Army Audit Agency investigation showed that more than a quarter of the $339 million in bounties paid over the past six years “were at risk for fraud,” according to an audit briefing given to McHugh on Feb. 2. The transactions involved at least 1,706 recruiters and hundreds of the recruiting assistants — individuals who allegedly made the referrals and applied for the bounties. The alleged schemes involved the sharing of bank accounts between recruiters and recruiting assistants, who sometimes took credit for referring individuals who had already decided to enlist. In one case, dozens of recruiters and recruiting assistants shared a single bank account. “Recruiters potentially stole the identity of personnel to circumvent controls or many have colluded with recruiting assistants to bypass controls,” auditors told McHugh. The document lists several breakdowns in internal control, including a failure to verify relationships between enlistees and recruiting assistants and to determine whether the two had ever met. “Our evaluation showed that for 88 percent of enlistments one or more key internal controls weren’t operating as intended,” auditors reported. Auditors found that the company did not report all instances of “potential fraud or collusion” listed in the firm’s internal records. Company officials referred 25 recruiting assistants to Pentagon criminal investigators, even though Docupak had fired 245 for such conduct, the briefing document states. Docupak President Philip Crane said his company officials reported to Pentagon investigators the wrongdoing that they felt needed to be addressed. He said some of those reports led to criminal prosecutions. He said

A recruitment campaign to boost the Army National Guard and Reserve at a difficult time in Iraq and Afghanistan is the focus of a wide-ranging Pentagon fraud investigation, including allegations of kickback schemes involving military personnel, internal documents show.
The alleged fraud involves programs that paid $2,000 bounties to soldiers or civilians who signed up as “recruiting assistants” and brought in new enlistees. Investigators have found evidence that recruiters for the Guard and Reserve who were not eligible for the bounties worked with some recruiting assistants to secretly secure and split up the money.
More than 1,700 recruiters and hundreds of recruiting assistants are under scrutiny for $92 million in potentially fraudulent transactions — more than a quarter of all the bounty money paid, according to an internal Army Audit Agency document. Investigators have found that dozens of the recruiters apparently shared bank accounts with individuals who received bounties.
Faced with a report on the abuses, Army Secretary John McHugh canceled the programs and ordered a probe of “systemic weaknesses and shortfalls, some of a potentially criminal nature,” according to an internal memo signed by McHugh on Feb. 9.
In response to questions from The Washington Post, an Army spokesman said the investigation is ongoing.
“If additional allegations of criminal conduct are found, the Army will take appropriate action,” spokesman George Wright said. “Because of the sensitivity of the criminal investigation, providing any further details or comment would be inappropriate.”
The Recruiting Assistance Programs, launched in 2005, were billed as an innovative way to supplement active-duty units strained by the demands of the two wars. At the time, tens of thousands of servicemen and women were required to serve extended tours of duty because of the shortfall of troops to relieve them.
The campaign offered bounties of up to $2,000 per recruit to soldiers or civilians who referred enlistees to the Guard or Reserve. Pentagon investigators started hearing allegations that some recruiters for the Guard and Reserve were taking advantage of the program. Over the past several years, investigators have opened at least 17 criminal cases and have called for a broader audit.
A subsequent Army Audit Agency investigation showed that more than a quarter of the $339 million in bounties paid over the past six years “were at risk for fraud,” according to an audit briefing given to McHugh on Feb. 2.
The transactions involved at least 1,706 recruiters and hundreds of the recruiting assistants — individuals who allegedly made the referrals and applied for the bounties. The alleged schemes involved the sharing of bank accounts between recruiters and recruiting assistants, who sometimes took credit for referring individuals who had already decided to enlist. In one case, dozens of recruiters and recruiting assistants shared a single bank account.
“Recruiters potentially stole the identity of personnel to circumvent controls or many have colluded with recruiting assistants to bypass controls,” auditors told McHugh.
The document lists several breakdowns in internal control, including a failure to verify relationships between enlistees and recruiting assistants and to determine whether the two had ever met.
“Our evaluation showed that for 88 percent of enlistments one or more key internal controls weren’t operating as intended,” auditors reported.
An Alabaster, Ala.-based contractor, Document and Packaging Brokers, also known as Docupak, ran the program for the Pentagon. For more than a decade, the company has handled recruiting programs and other promotions for the Guard and Reserve, under contracts totaling $1.3 billion. Docupak received a $345 “administration fee” for each recruit who enlisted under the bounty program.
Auditors found that the company did not report all instances of “potential fraud or collusion” listed in the firm’s internal records. Company officials referred 25 recruiting assistants to Pentagon criminal investigators, even though Docupak had fired 245 for such conduct, the briefing document states.
Docupak President Philip Crane said his company officials reported to Pentagon investigators the wrongdoing that they felt needed to be addressed. He said some of those reports led to criminal prosecutions.
He said the company had a “very thorough risk-mitigation program” that checked enlistee identities and payments against National Guard databases.
“We have been as transparent as we possibly can,” Crane said.
One case of fraud involved Thomas Kaszas
Over nine months in 2007, Kaszas’s partner claimed credit for more than a dozen new recruits and deposited $24,000 in bounties into the joint account. Virtually all of it was later wired to another bank account controlled by Kaszas, the indictment stated. Kaszas pleaded guilty in September 2010 to five counts of wire fraud and was ordered to repay $26,000 to Docupak.
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Issues with US military recruitment

The most satisfied military employees? Black women. Least satisfied? White men.

The Pentagon's decision to lift the ban on women in combat roles might be more than a boost to gender equality. It might also prove a boon, surprisingly, to women's job satisfaction.
PATRICK BAZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES - U.S. Army soldiers listen to a briefing as they prepare to leave on a mission in Ramadi, Iraq, on Oct. 26, 2004. Senior defense officials say Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is removing the military’s ban on women serving in combat.
With all the risk and sacrifice, the military does not seem like an institution that would top career satisfaction surveys. But a study of 30,000 active-duty personnel, published in the American Sociological Review, showed that women consistently reported higher job satisfaction in the military than male counterparts of the same ethnicity. This trend held true for African Americans, Hispanics and Whites, and is the exact opposite of what sociologists see in the private sector.
University of Massachusetts' Jennifer Hickes Lundquist used five measurements of career satisfaction, metrics like overall quality of life, opportunities for advancement and whether they believe they will soon get promoted. Using that data, she found that African-American women were the most satisfied with their jobs, followed by African-American men. Latinas came next, followed by Latinos, and then white women.
White men came in as the least satisfied with their careers, with the lowest rankings by these metrics.
Lundquist thinks this has a lot to do with the structure of the military, where the social hierarchy rests on rank rather than class or gender. "For women," Lundquist writes, "pay and job benefits are more equal in the military than in the civilian labor."
Separate research has found that male and female promotion rates in the military tend to be similar, erasing a gender gap that exists in the private sector. Women are still, however, "grossly underrepresented" among those promoted to higher military ranks such as captain or lieutenant colonel.
A more fair playing field, at least at lower military ranks, would be a boost for minorities and women. It would also be a potential drawback for white males.
"It's not that the military environment treats white males less fairly; it's simply that, compared to their peers in civilian society, white males lose many of the advantages that they had," Lundquist said when we spoke about her research. "There's a relative deprivation when you compare to satisfaction of peers outside of the military."
Lundquist does not dismiss the impact that other factors could have to mitigate women's job satisfaction in the military, especially sexual harassment. She acknowledges that, while negative factors exist, the more positive influence of a level playing field ultimately results in better job satisfaction for military women.


Issues with US military recruitment

MacArthur fellow Margaret Stock: The public ‘doesn’t understand’ illegal immigration

Margaret Stock (Courtesy of the MacArthur Foundation)
To Pentagon staffers, Anchorage-based immigration lawyer Margaret Stock has always been “scary smart.” But as of this week, Stock enters a select group of “geniuses,” more formally known as MacArthur fellows. The MacArthur Foundation awards each recipient a “genius grant” of $625,000 over five years for their past achievements and future projects. Stock’s passion happens to be a combination of two issues that the country is grappling with: immigration law and national security. Drawing upon her experience as an attorney, a lieutenant colonel in the Military Police Corps and a professor at West Point, Stock has dedicated herself to finding simple solutions for the nation’s millions of immigrants. She is best known for the successful implementation of the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program (MAVNI). We spoke with her on the phone.
You’re known for your work that ties immigration policy to national security. When did you start linking the two together?
I’ve been doing immigration law since 1993 when I took on a pro bono case. My theoretical work linking immigration policy to national security rose after 9-11 when we were focusing on toughening up the borders, registering immigrants and keeping people out of America to make us safer. We didn’t realize we were undercutting our security, our civil liberties, and our ability to attract the best and brightest to America. I tried to explain that we need to bring in people who have skills that grow our economy and strengthen our families.
The MAVNI program came out of an idea that you presented in a PowerPoint at a brainstorming conference for the army. What was that idea?
The army was having a huge recruiting crisis. I was invited to a conference to brainstorm ways to improve military recruitment. I pitched the idea to give legal immigrants without green cards a chance at naturalization through military service. In prior wars, we had always enlisted immigrants regardless of their citizenship status.
I thought it was a great idea but was told that the Pentagon crushes great ideas, and it might take five years to get the idea approved. I was a little discouraged but I charged ahead. It became clear to everyone that it was just a policy decision; the legal authority already existed. People always came to a dead end because no one understood immigration law. By May 2008, I got the Secretary of the Army to sign off, which took five months, and by November 2008, it was approved by the Secretary of Defense. So it took less than a year to get the project through the Pentagon.
Did the end result match your expectations?
There was a lot of opposition but not reasoned opposition. A lot of “We have never done it this way before.” When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced the program and said that we could do a one-year pilot program, his office limited it to compromise with the bureaucracy. We had no budget to market it or advertise it, and there was a cap at 1,000 people. The army could get 890 recruits; the navy, 100, and the air force, 10.
What was the turnout like?
There was one guy that called me and… he said “I get you 40,000 Koreans and we all go to Afghanistan to fight for America.” I told him it wasn’t the French Foreign Legion. The program was for immigrants who were health-care professionals or language experts. It was taking ten or fifteen years for them to get green cards. Many were already working for the military, but on a slow track to getting a green card. You have to have a 15-year relationship with a lawyer if you want to get through. I got a ton of thank you cards from immigrant doctors and nurses afterward. The only problem was there was a quota, and there were around 15,000 applying for 890 Army slots. As an immigration lawyer, I was really struck by this. The reason it was so popular was because the legal immigration system is broken. There’s an enormous amount of work and the bureaucracy and paperwork is incredible. MAVNI seemed like a gift from heaven, and we had a huge demand.
Will simplifying the process for immigrants to join the military make the U.S. vulnerable to terrorists infiltrating the armed forces?
The U.S. is already vulnerable to terrorists infiltrating the Armed Forces.  Timothy McVeigh, Nidak Malik Hassan, and Aaron Alexis were all native-born Americans whom I suppose one could say “infiltrated” the armed forces and later committed horrific murders. While one can’t ever make a system perfect, the risk factor from immigrants is lower because they undergo much more extensive security checks to join the military than native-born enlistees.  Simplification of the process does not include eliminating those checks. You’re making two wrong assumptions—first, that immigrants are more likely to be terrorists than native-born Americans, and there’s no evidence of that; and second, that making a process simpler must mean eliminating some security checks, which is also not the case.
The Foundation highlighted two more of your programs when they notified you of the grant. What were the ideas behind them?
The Department of Homeland Security was under fire for not processing military naturalizations fast enough. I said, ‘Why don’t you naturalize everyone at basic training like we did during the Korean and Vietnam War?’ I went back to the military and told them we could save money, improve morale and not have legal problems. I got Homeland Security to test soldiers and naturalize them at basic training in April 2009. It became a formal program by August 2009, and it’s still in place today. Now all the services except the Coast Guard are doing naturalization at basic training.
Also, in 2007, I was getting inundated with immigration questions from the military. I called the president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) to match pro bono lawyers with military members, veterans and their families who have immigration problems. He assigned someone at AILA National to develop the American Immigration Lawyers Association Military Assistance Program (AILAMAP). I screened cases and assigned them to lawyers. We’ve made the program more formalized now. We have a listserv, a Web site, there’s outreach. We have a pro bono associate at the Washington office. That started six years ago, and it’s been very successful.
How did the Pentagon overlook the legal precedent they had to simplify both the immigration and the military recruitment process?
I think people just forgot history, and they didn’t have immigration lawyers at the Pentagon. In World War One, immigrants were 20 percent of the force. During World War Two, we declared war on Germany, and the Germans in the country were supposed to be deported. But instead, we turned them into citizens and drafted them. After the Vietnam War, they created a regulation requiring people to get a green card before they joined the military, and that prevented people from joining. People are power. You don’t want to deport your manpower. But we’ve forgotten about that.
Did you play a part in the Senate’s immigration reform bill?
I did work on it a little bit, but they asked me to comment on it when they had already drafted the bill. I think it’s great but they’re continuing in the trend of making things very complicated. Even people who benefit from the bill will have to have a close relationship with a lawyer for ten to fifteen years. That’s troubling. I think I plan on advocacy to simplify the system.
In the bill, swifter naturalization is commensurate with stronger border security. What do you think about the philosophy behind that?
The bill shows the people don’t understand what’s driving unauthorized immigration. If they make a pathway that allows people to come legally, they’re not going to need as much border security. They’re not going to need the wall, but they’re going to build it because of a compromise measure. It’s going to waste a lot of money.
Your work tends to ask people in power to simplify existing policies. What are things President Obama can do but hasn’t yet?
It’s similar to the MAVNI program where people don’t realize they have the authority to do things. Here’s a big example: Right now there’s a policy that allows Cubans to adjust their status because it’s in our interest for Cubans to not go back and stay in the U.S., but there’s no policy like that for immigrant military families. I think it’s crazy that we have a policy that can deport military families to where they might be hurt.
Also, they’re not letting the youth who benefit from the Childhood Arrivals Program join the military. Obama could issue a memo saying they can join the military but no one’s done that. There’s also the banished veterans issue. They deport veterans all the time for technical violations of immigration law. I’m working on legislation to fix that problem.
How has all your work with the military affected your professional and personal life in Alaska?
My husband was complaining about it because I was getting lots of phone calls. For MAVNI, I spent all my waking hours on it, and I wasn’t paid for a good majority of it. He would joke, “You got three Harvard degrees and can’t you figure out for them to pay for this?” When we were doing taxes, my income was miserably low for a lawyer doing the amount of work I did. I think my husband realized I was passionate about what I was doing, and he should put up with it.
The grant really is gratifying. I can’t explain it well. I didn’t think the MacArthur Foundation gave grants to people like me who work in bureaucratic trenches. The coolest project I’ve done in my life is MAVNI, but I didn’t think the MacArthur Foundation would ever find out about it. I did all the press for it, but I never wanted to be quoted.
What’s next for you?
I’ve worked with Rep. Mike Thompson’s office in California on a bill for military families and have been working with Rep. Mike Coffman in Colorado on the Military Enlistment Opportunity Act. He’s a Republican, a tea party guy. His bill basically puts MAVNI into statute, and it includes more than just medical professionals but other people who are highly qualified.
Does this grant change anything?
I think the great thing about this is not feeling bad about this pro bono stuff. I don’t have to worry about that. I have a really nice husband who’s been supportive, but he’s been tired of me having this hobby. I don’t have to feel guilty about helping even though though I’m not being paid for it. It’s been fairly exhausting at times. The journalists should see my inbox. The e-mails are unbelievable.
This interview has been edited and condensed.


Issues with US military recruitment

Republicans defeat proposal that would cast undocumented immigrants as patriotic Americans

Every time the GOP gets ready to do some “reaching out” to Hispanics, Republicans in Congress have to come along and mess everything up. The latest vivid example comes in an amendment passed yesterday by the House to strip out a provision of the defense authorization bill that would have encouraged the Pentagon to explore allowing DREAMers — young undocumented immigrants who had been brought to America as children — to join the military.
Under current law, only citizens and legal immigrants are permitted to join. This measure had passed the Armed Services Committee with the votes of both Democrats and Republicans.
But the House majority said No. Why would they do that? The answer lies in the symbolism this measure would represent.
In practical terms, letting DREAMers join the military wouldn’t be all that consequential, since we’re probably talking about a limited number of people. There are an estimated 1.8 million undocumented immigrants who would be eligible for deferred status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. How many of them want to join the military? If they’re like other American young people, the number is probably pretty small, on the order of one or two percent. So it would mean only a few thousand potential enlistees. That’s not to mention that the measure wouldn’t have allowed them to join, it would have just instructed the Department of Defense to look into it.
Republicans may be concerned that if you allow undocumented immigrants to serve in the military, then it will be a short hop to granting them citizenship in some future legislation. After all, if someone is willing to put their life on the line in service to this country, it would be hard to argue against making them a citizen, and there’s already an expedited process for legal immigrants who serve to gain citizenship. But why would that be something to be afraid of?
The reason can be found in the fundamentally different ways Democrats and Republicans would like people to see undocumented immigrants. Republicans would rather they be thought of as an undifferentiated horde that only takes from America, stealing jobs from the native-born and sucking up social services. That’s not true of every Republican, but the ones who express any kind of human compassion toward undocumented immigrants (as Rick Perry found out in 2012 and Jeb Bush is discovering now) quickly get accused of being insufficiently “tough” on the issue.
Democrats, on the other hand, want undocumented immigrants to be seen as individuals who want to contribute to America. And there are few better ways to tell that story than to highlight people who were brought here as children, grew up American, and are now willing to serve in the military.
If the Republican view prevails, the logical policy solutions center around border security and deportations. If the Democratic view prevails, then comprehensive immigration reform including a path to citizenship seems like the solution to the problem.
You can see those competing visions in the way the amendment that passed yesterday has been discussed by the two parties. Its sponsor, Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, tried to characterize DREAMers who want to join the military as takers and military service as some kind of gift we generously bestow on the right people. “To take military service jobs from Americans and from lawful immigrants in order to give them to illegal aliens is outrageous and unconscionable,” he said.
Which is strange, because last time I checked, the military wasn’t turning people away because all the slots had been filled; go down to your local recruiting center and they’ll be happy to sign you up.
Democrats will try to draw as much attention to this vote as they can, because it sends the message that not only do Republicans not want these young people here, they don’t even think they’re good enough to fight and die for America. Which is why Hillary Clinton’s campaign was quick to condemn the passage of the amendment, and why the Republican presidential contenders have yet to weigh in.
Whenever they do, they’ll probably feel compelled to support the congressional Republicans. After all, GOP primary voters aren’t particularly interested in what their candidates want to do for DREAMers.


Issues with US military recruitment

Military services seeking innovative ways to attract highly skilled recruits

Military personnel salute Air Force One, with President Obama aboard, before its departure from Andrews Air Force Base, Md., on July 17. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
The military services are looking at innovative ways to change their personnel systems to boost the recruitment and retention of skilled people. The services are considering steps such as starting people at higher ranks and providing career paths that might include going in and out of the service.
On Thursday, the National Defense Panel — co-chaired by former defense secretary William Perry and retired Army Gen. John P. Abizaid — delivered its review of the Defense Department’s 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review and picked up on that idea.
Among its recommendations: “Implementing a continuum-of-service model that allows service members to move fluidly between components and between the military, private sector, civil service and other employment.”
A day earlier, the Air Force released a report titled “A Call to the Future,” which described today’s traditional military personnel model of 20 years of continual service as “a 20th century construct that is not widely replicated in the private sector.”
It talked of a possible new approach noting that “breaks in service — or transitions between full and part-time — need not be punitive in the advancement of our future airmen.”
Maj. Gen. David W. Allvin, director of strategic planning in the office of the Air Force deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and programs, expanded on that in a New York Times interview.
“What if you entered the Air Force knowing you could serve for a few years, then go to work for an innovative tech company, and then return to the Air Force?” he said. “We could enter into partnerships with cutting-edge companies and allow our workforce the opportunity of a more flexible retirement system that allows you to do two different jobs and still get to a 20-year retirement. It might take 35 years, but you would get here.”
Another route in the Air Force’s “Call to the Future” report described “a career development model that provides those in specialized career fields with incentives and promotion opportunities on par with those in more mainstream disciplines.”
The Defense Department has long had a few special programs to attract people who might otherwise not enlist for military service.
Doctors have always been a special category. More recently, programs have been developed for foreign health-care workers and language and cultural specialists who have visas and work permits. Their time in service, which could be a mixture of four years active duty and four years in the reserves, would also lead to U.S. citizenship.
One of the least publicized of such programs has existed for years with military bands, which recognized the need to recruit experienced musicians and start them at a higher rank.
Take, for example, the U.S. Marine Band, “The President’s Own.” Its Web site recently advertised for a bassoonist. The notice says the “playing ability and expertise required are equivalent to those of any major professional musical organization.”
The auditions, which will take place Nov. 1 in the John Philip Sousa Band Hall at Marine Barracks in Washington, “are conducted much like those of major symphony orchestras,” the Web site says.
The person chosen will have the standard four-year enlistment, but unlike most other recruits it will be “for duty with the U.S. Marine Band only.”
More important, the Web site says, “ ‘The President’s Own’ musicians are permanently assigned and may not be transferred to any other unit or location. Upon enlistment, new members are appointed to the rank of Staff Sergeant (pay grade E-6) in the U.S. Marine Corps and receive all pay and benefits commensurate with that grade.”
What about basic training? The band’s Web site’s answer: “Unlike other Marine Corps musical units [and the rest of the Marine Corps], ‘The President’s Own’ has no secondary combat role, and its members are exempt from all such training. ‘The President’s Own’ musicians report to Washington fully trained to perform their primary duties in the accomplishment of the band’s unique musical mission. Therefore, there is no requirement for ‘The President’s Own’ musicians to undergo recruit training.”
The Army Band — “Pershing’s Own” — as well as the Air Force Band and the Navy Band have similar programs, though they require their specially skilled recruits to take basic training before coming to Washington to join their respective organizations.
The recent talk about new pay and career paths is not just an exercise. Budgetary pressures have focused increased attention on rising Pentagon personnel costs, which have forced cuts in training — and thus readiness — and even delayed weapon modernization programs.
The Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, appointed in 2013 to come up with new approaches, recently released an interim report identifying 65 special and incentive-pay categories within the services along with more than 40 health-benefit programs and more than 200 programs and benefits administered by eight federal agencies that support military, veteran, retiree and family member quality of life.
The commission is exploring whether this compensation system could provide valued benefits to service members as well as the job flexibility needed to recruit and retain highly skilled people.
The panel’s recommendations are due by Feb. 1. They are to be made public at the same time they are sent to President Obama and Congress.
Here’s a public discussion worth having.
For previous Fine Print columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage.


Issues with US military recruitment

Elite U.S. troops fear PMS? A deeper look at the Special Operations gender study

Green Berets assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) clear rooms inside a compound during a training mission held Feb. 20, 2015, at Eglin Air Force Base in Northwest Florida. (Photo by Capt. Thomas Cieslak/ U.S. Army)
As the U.S. military moves forward with integrating women in elite combat units, there is still a fair amount of opposition. That remains clear, based on a study newly released by the Pentagon following Defense Ashton B. Carter’s decision this month to begin full gender integration by no later than April 1.
The study, alluded to here in a lengthy new examination of the gender integration effort, found that 85 percent of those surveyed in U.S. Special Operations Command opposed letting women into their jobs, and 71 percent opposed letting women into their unit. The interviews were carried out in summer 2014, but it seems unlikely that views have shifted dramatically since.
Opposition existed in all Special Operations forces, jobs and ranks, with Navy SEALs, Air Force special tactics team members and mid-ranking enlisted troops — non-commissioned officers, or NCOs — generally the most opposed, the study said. It was carried out by the Rand National Defense Research Institute, with interviews completed in 2014 and captured in a reported dated May 2015.
[As the Pentagon opens combat jobs to women, ‘deep-seated’ opposition and a checkered past]
Jeff Butler, a former Navy SEAL who left the military in 2003, said that the majority of the concerns he has heard from his colleagues is that adding women to elite units will alter unit cohesion and cause social disruption.
“The worry is that politicians and military leaders, by pushing this integration, and by drastically changing the social make-up of these all-male units, risk throwing a wrench into a finely operating war machine,” Butler said. “The fear is that the community will have to place so much focus on getting women through the training, dealing with women joining the small units, and all that will come with such a change, that it will detract from their operational focus in a time of war.”
Butler said he believes it can work, but that there will be a period of adjustment. The Pentagon, he added, should listen to the concerns of Special Operations Forces (SOF) leaders at all ranks.
Navy SEALs conduct training in a remote area in California. (Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Martin L. Carey/ U.S. Navy)
“Some of these concerns will no doubt be more important than others, but all will stem from what SOF operators and leadership believe is in the best interests of the community, and its operational effectiveness,” Butler said. “No one should demonize the community for expressing its concerns with the integration. They want what is best for the special operations community, not to hold women back.”
Army Maj. Lisa Jaster, who became one of the first three women ever to graduate from the Army’s Ranger School, argued in an opinion piece published by The Washington Post on Friday that women will overcome the concerns that have long been raised about full gender integration.
“None of these arguments is new,” she wrote. “And all of them ignore the fundamental fact that brute strength is not the only, or even the most important, factor in a successful combat mission. Courage, ingenuity, strategic thinking, levelheadedness, marksmanship and an ability to read people all factor into whether a unit succeeds or a mission goes south. Yes, we will maintain physical standards, and some women will fail, but the ones who succeed will bring new strengths as well, making their units stronger and more agile.”
The Army Ranger School is set to graduate its first two female students, 1st Lts. Kristen Griest and Shaye Haver. The women started school April 20 alongside 380 men and 17 other women.
The Associated Press previously reported on the overall findings. But the release of the full gender integration report now provides a fascinating window into what some of those polled said. It’s clear they didn’t pull many punches, based on the commentary.
Some of the remarks here, separated by category:
Facility concerns
— “At Ft. Bliss, three women shared their own barracks. Men were stacked. Women had time in the shower, in the bathroom. Guys had to wait 20 minutes for a shower. It breeds dissension.” A sergeant first class in the Special Forces
Context: The most significant facilities concern, according to the study: “How do you build a cohesive team when you separate and treat some of the team members differently?”
Fears of women premenstrual syndrome
–
— “I have a wife. She’s very independent. But when that time of her month comes, she’s weaker.” — A Navy SEAL who is a petty officer second class
Context: The report adds that participants discussing menstrual concerns were in the minority. But there were still at least several of them, underscoring the cultural issues the military will deal with as it integrates women.
Pregnancy concerns
— “Now you’re taking someone we rely on. She decides to go out and get pregnant… If she even comes back after that — because now she has a child to take care of — I have lost an asset to the team who is not a one-to-one replacement. There is no one-to-one replacement.” — A staff sergeant in Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC)
Context: This issue has some more practical concerns than PMS, but it also shows certain level of suspicion about when women might not be able to do their jobs.
Concerns about how wives will handle it
Context: “Living in close quarters, working long hours and physical contact that is required during training were were cited as problems for many of the spouses, the study said.
Army cultural support teams get a better reception
— “The intel role (18F) might be viable. I’ve had both good and bad experiences with the CSTs. But when they were good, they were very good.” — Special Forces sergeant first class
— “In certain aspects, I defaulted to FET because they have the medical, intel piece. If you had something similar to those units, once again appeasing both sides, not jeopardizing standards of SEAL teams, we call them the enablers… I think if we utilized nurses, intel, linguists, maybe come up with a pool of certain enablers, I think that could help out SOCOM.” — Navy SEAL master chief
— “We already have CST. It’s a good capability, but it already exists. Don’t force me to take something I don’t need. Don’t evolve CST to ODA.” — Special Forces staff sergeant
Context: The comments show that Special Operations troops who have deployed in combat alongside women in the past, in some cases would welcome doing so again in similar circumstances. But even then many of them are still opposed to women serving as SEALs or in the “ODA” — an Operational Detachment-Alpha, or Special Forces team.
Previous coverage:
Navy secretary criticizes controversial Marine Corps gender integration study
Why the Pentagon opening all combat roles to women could subject them to a military draft


Issues with US military recruitment

Obama’s military strategy should focus on troops, not technology

Frederick W. Kagan is director of the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.
President Obama’s new defense strategy champions the same arguments military downsizers have invoked since 1991: The United States must invest in technology and disinvest in active-duty military personnel. The plan unveiled Thursday by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is based on two such tenets: It must “protect key investments in the technologically advanced capabilities most needed for the future . . . [and] no longer size active forces to conduct large and protracted stability operations while retaining the expertise of a decade of war.” The budget thus eliminates 92,000 soldiers and Marines on the premise that future wars will require new weapons systems but not large numbers of troops. Should America need more troops, this thinking holds, it will be easy enough to find them. Technology takes longer to develop and field.
These well-worn syllogisms are the reverse of reality. Technology development can be accelerated in wartime. The development of capable military leaders cannot.
Military technology rests on the technological status of society at large, especially today, when our military increasingly prefers modifying off-the-shelf solutions to building its own. A failure to invest in military technology does not stop the development of technology useful to the military, though it is an unwise and dangerous strategy.
Indeed, every major war of the past hundred years has prompted, in months, technological innovations that in peacetime would have required years. Even the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — which were not supported by any significant technological or industrial mobilization — spurred the rapid fielding of systems and vehicles to counter improvised explosive devices, the primary technological challenge to our soldiers. It is easier, of course, to build mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles than an F-35 fighter jet. But it need not take two decades to build a stealth fighter or even to refurbish an aircraft carrier, if the equipment is urgently needed.
There is, on the other hand, no way to accelerate the fielding of good military leaders. Certainly soldiers can be recruited rapidly and their training courses shortened. Junior officers can be swiftly promoted, skipping the career steps and educational requirements of peacetime. More senior officers can be drawn from reserves and staff positions. During World War II, entire divisions were recruited, trained and deployed within a year. But the brigade and battalion commanders in those divisions did not know how to command brigades and battalions. The company commanders might not have seen combat. They learned awfully fast in North Africa, Europe and the Pacific — at a very high price in lives.
The development of military leaders cannot be accelerated beyond a certain point without seriously degrading quality. People can learn, adapt and assimilate experiences only so rapidly. Good software or other distributed learning tools help individuals master enormous amounts of information, but there are innate limits.
Military leadership is more than knowledge and technique. It requires fundamental changes in personality, patterns of thought and perception, emotional control and interactions with others. That is as true for fighter pilots as battalion commanders. Inexperienced leaders panic when seasoned veterans would calmly carry on; unseasoned commanders leap to conclusions where salted warriors comprehend the entire situation.
Advanced technology generally exacerbates these problems by flooding hastily promoted officers and noncommissioned officers with information as they fight to retain or regain emotional balance and rational perception. And there can be no real preparation for the loss of soldiers under one’s authority except to live through that horrible experience. The U.S. military is overwhelmingly composed of officers and noncommissioned officers who have developed these human skills in ordered progression of promotions and schooling (which were wisely not seriously disrupted during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq despite strains on the force) and in combat.
The president proposes to let some 92,000 of them go in favor of preserving investments in technology. Those military personnel are a repository of knowledge about how to conduct complex, lethal operations across a wide area in distributed formations. They are not merely the world’s leading experts on counterinsurgency but also the leading experts on exactly the kind of targeted operations Obama’s strategy envisions. There is no more precise weapons system than a highly trained soldier who can hit whatever he aims at but also knows when not to shoot. Over a decade of conflict, our troops have refined formations, doctrine, techniques and theory to the highest level ever. Rapidly reducing the force will flush away much of that expertise before it can be institutionalized.
Advocates of the president’s strategy say that we do not need that human capital or expertise in ground operations because we will never again fight wars that put large numbers of our soldiers at risk. Technology, they say, will make future wars precise, rapid and decisive. We have heard this argument many times since the Cold War ended, from George W. Bush as enthusiastically as Bill Clinton. Yet every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan has ordered tens of thousands of troops into ground combat. Obama himself sent 70,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops have been deployed abroad to wars or peacekeeping operations for 38 of the past 70 years — and nearly continuously since 1989. The argument that next time will be different is unpersuasive.
The question is not whether the United States will again send troops to fight in far-off lands. The question that should weigh most heavily on Congress as it considers the defense budget is what kind of leaders those troops will have and how well prepared they will be.
More opinions on Obama’s defense strategy:
Buck McKeon: Obama’s damaging blow to our military
The Post’s View: Obama’s defense strategy rests on shaky assumptions
David Ignatius: Obama closes the book on the 9/11 era


Issues with US military recruitment

Military to allow transgender members to serve openly

‘We took a look and there will be no challenges with this.’ ” The decision drew immediate rebukes from groups that said it was evidence of the Obama adminstration’s misplaced priorities. “It’s time that we allow the military to focus on its only job — defending our country against its enemies,” Jerry Boykin, a retired Army lieutenant general and executive vice president of the Family Research Council, said in a statement. But Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, welcomed the change and its stated presumption that allowing transgender troops to serve would not harm the effectiveness of military units. “It is long past time that we definitively and affirmatively make it clear that gender identity should have no bearing on an individual’s ability to serve,” he said. The military banned service members with gender issues as early as the 1960s, said Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a gay rights group. By the 1980s, he said, the military was applying its medical regulations more forcefully against people who identified as transgender. Gay rights groups have aggressively pushed back in recent years, pointing to studies and reports that show open transgender service would not be harmful. Among them was a report last year co-authored by former U.S. surgeon general Joycelyn Elders. “There is no compelling medical reason for the ban,” the report concluded. In addition, last month, a senior airman attended the White House’s gay pride celebration in the uniform of his preferred gender, which is a departure from current Air Force policy, groups said. The policy change announced Monday, which was first reported by the Associated Press, comes two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Army Capt. Jacob Eleazer, who joined as a woman and now identifies as a man, greeted the news Monday with relief. For years he has gone back and forth with leadership over his gender identity, at times fearing he would be dismissed. Most recently, he said, he was admonished for allowing officer candidates to address him as “sir.” He said he hopes the decision announced Monday will end the standoff and allow him to serve in the military longer than he expected. “Basically, it means I’m going to have an opportunity to have a career I never thought I would,” he said. “This is really good news.”

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, seen here testifying on Capitol Hill, has directed the Pentagon to lift the ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. The military will have six months to determine the impact and work out details. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
The Pentagon announced Monday that it will allow transgender members of the military to serve openly starting next year, marking an end to a long-standing policy that barred them from the armed forces.
In an echo of the Defense Department’s repeal of the ban on gays in uniform four years ago, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said he had directed the armed forces to devise new rules over the next six months that would allow transgender troops to serve, except in situations “where objective, practical impediments are identified.”
“We must ensure that everyone who’s able and willing to serve has the full and equal opportunity to do so, and we must treat all our people with the dignity and respect they deserve,” Carter said in a statement. He called the military’s current regulations “outdated” and said they were “causing uncertainty that distracts commanders from our core missions.”
Carter also issued a directive that would make it more difficult to discharge transgender personnel over the next six months while the new rules are being established, requiring all such cases to be reviewed by a senior Pentagon official. The Pentagon took a similar interim approach to freeze the discharges of gay troops while it was preparing to lift that ban five years ago.
An estimated 15,500 transgender people serve in the military, but they have been forced to conceal that identity, according to the Williams Institute, a center at the University of California at Los Angeles that studies the gay and transgender populations. Some have found themselves in a precarious position — open to sympathetic peers and superiors but at risk of being discharged if someone who disapproves finds out.
Over the years, military officials have said the ban was necessary to protect troops in “austere environments” where they may not have easy access to medical care. Supporters of the ban have also suggested that transgender people may have mental deficiencies and be at ri sk of suicide.
But pressure has mounted on the military and the Obama administration in recent years as societal views of transgender people have changed, and since the relatively smooth transition after the 2011 lifting of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the policy that barred gays from openly serving.
Gay rights groups praised the decision, which they said was long overdue. They noted that several other countries, including Israel, Canada, Britain and Australia, have successfully incorporated transgender members in their ranks and predicted that a policy change in the United States would be relatively simple.
“It shouldn’t be complicated,” said Allyson Robinson, an Army veteran and director of policy for SPARTA, a group that advocates for transgender troops. In these countries, transgender troops “have served openly for some time, and they’ve already proven that questions about ability or physical capabilities aren’t rooted in practicalities, they are rooted in ignorance and bias.”
The review will include a look at the impact on troops serving in close quarters and how a change in policy might play out in combat zones. At the moment, the Defense Department is also grappling with more general questions about the extent to which women can serve in direct combat roles — an issue that could be complicated by adding transgender members to the mix.
Some in Congress said they want to ensure that the Pentagon carefully considers over the next six months whether there are certain missions or assignments in war zones where allowing transgender troops to serve might be problematic.
“It has to be an honest review,” said a congressional aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “It just can’t be ‘We took a look and there will be no challenges with this.’ ”
The decision drew immediate rebukes from groups that said it was evidence of the Obama adminstration’s misplaced priorities.
“It’s time that we allow the military to focus on its only job — defending our country against its enemies,” Jerry Boykin, a retired Army lieutenant general and executive vice president of the Family Research Council, said in a statement.
But Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, welcomed the change and its stated presumption that allowing transgender troops to serve would not harm the effectiveness of military units. “It is long past time that we definitively and affirmatively make it clear that gender identity should have no bearing on an individual’s ability to serve,” he said.
The military banned service members with gender issues as early as the 1960s, said Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a gay rights group. By the 1980s, he said, the military was applying its medical regulations more forcefully against people who identified as transgender.
Gay rights groups have aggressively pushed back in recent years, pointing to studies and reports that show open transgender service would not be harmful. Among them was a report last year co-authored by former U.S. surgeon general Joycelyn Elders. “There is no compelling medical reason for the ban,” the report concluded.
In recent months, there were signs that the military was changing course on the issue, with the Army, Navy and Air Force adjusting their policies to make it more difficult to discharge transgender members. Shortly after Carter was sworn in as defense secretary this year, he suggested at a town hall meeting with troops in Afghanistan that he was “open-minded” about transgender service.
In addition, last month, a senior airman attended the White House’s gay pride celebration in the uniform of his preferred gender, which is a departure from current Air Force policy, groups said.
The policy change announced Monday, which was first reported by the Associated Press, comes two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.
Army Capt. Jacob Eleazer, who joined as a woman and now identifies as a man, greeted the news Monday with relief. For years he has gone back and forth with leadership over his gender identity, at times fearing he would be dismissed. Most recently, he said, he was admonished for allowing officer candidates to address him as “sir.”
He said he hopes the decision announced Monday will end the standoff and allow him to serve in the military longer than he expected.
“Basically, it means I’m going to have an opportunity to have a career I never thought I would,” he said. “This is really good news.”


Describe a specific geoengineering technique to manage climate change.

Describe solar radiation management as a technique to reduce global warming.  Other geoengineering techniques, such as carbon dioxide reduction, are not relevant. Documents related to temperature are also not relevant.

Explain a specific geoengineering method related to this question.

When geoengineering goes rogue

The Guardian has a fascinating story today about Russ George, a California businessman who has been seeding the Pacific Ocean with iron in order to trigger a 3,800-square-mile plankton bloom. The idea has some promise as a geoengineering scheme to mitigate global warming—in theory, the plankton can suck carbon-dioxide out of the air and bury it down in the deep ocean when they die.
Yellow and brown colors show relatively high concentrations of chlorophyll in August 2012, after iron sulphate was dumped into the Pacific Ocean as part of a controversial geoengineering scheme. Photograph: Giovanni/Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center/NASA
The only problem? George appears to be carrying out this scheme on his own, apparently without permission:
George says his team of unidentified scientists has been monitoring the results of the biggest ever geoengineering experiment with equipment loaned from U.S. agencies like NASA and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. He told the Guardian that it is the "most substantial ocean restoration project in history," and has collected a "greater density and depth of scientific data than ever before".
"We've gathered data targeting all the possible fears that have been raised [about ocean fertilization]," George said. "And the news is good news, all around, for the planet." ...
International legal experts say George's project has contravened the UN's convention on biological diversity (CBD) and London convention on the dumping of wastes at sea, which both prohibit for-profit ocean fertilization activities.
As zany geoengineering schemes to slow global warming go, lacing the ocean with iron isn't a terrible one. Back in July, a research group at Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research found that the technique has potential to bury carbon in the deep ocean. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution estimates that large-scale iron-seeding could help the world sequester around 1 percent of its emissions. That's not nothing.
But scientists still worry about the consequences of artificially mucking with ocean ecology. In 2009, an op-ed in Nature by four researchers warned about possible unexpected side effects from large-scale iron fertilization — for instance, the dead plankton could pull key nutrients out of the ecosystem. Victor Smetacek, a researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute, has said he doesn’t favor large-scale fertilization without further testing.
That's why George's experiment has some people alarmed. And it highlights one of the more subtle risks of geoengineering. Many of the ideas on offer to cool the planet are remarkably cheap. A single nation can't cut the world's carbon emissions on its own. But a single businessman can start seeding the world's oceans with iron. Someday, individual nations or even concerned environmental groups might be able to spend a couple million dollars to spray sulfates into the air to cool down the planet.
The consequences of artificially altering the climate would be hard to predict, but if the techniques are cheap enough, rogue geoengineering will remain a distinct possibility.
Further reading:
--A primer on geoengineering, the techniques, the possible unintended consequences.
--A closer look at the science behind lacing the ocean with iron in order to create plankton blooms.
--Scientists have also found that it's possible for cities to block heat waves with artificial volcanoes. But the side effects could be worrisome.


One problem with geoengineering: Once you start, you can’t really stop

Many of the world's nations show few signs of cutting their greenhouse gas emissions anytime soon. That's why, in recent years, more and more climate scientists have been pondering the concept of "geoengineering" as a way to slow the pace of global warming. When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it cooled the planet nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit. Geoengineering would work a lot like that. (Arlan N.Aeg/AFP/Getty Images) Pros: David Appell So, yes. In theory we could set up a giant hose to spray sulfate particles into the air and cool the planet. We just have to hope that nothing ever happens to the hose. Or, if we start spraying and then discover some horrid unanticipated side effects a few decades out, it will be a lot harder to stop. Further reading:

Many of the world's nations show few signs of cutting their greenhouse gas emissions anytime soon. That's why, in recent years, more and more climate scientists have been pondering the concept of "geoengineering" as a way to slow the pace of global warming.
When Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it cooled the planet nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit. Geoengineering would work a lot like that. (Arlan N.Aeg/AFP/Getty Images)
One popular idea involves spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere to deflect a small portion of Earth's sunlight. Harvard scientist David Keith discussed the pros and cons of the idea at length in a recent interview.
Pros:
But there's one other concern we didn't really touch on in that interview: Once the world starts geoengineering, we can't really ever stop — especially if everyone keeps pumping carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere at the same time. Why? Because as soon as we quit spraying those reflective particles into the atmosphere, the Earth will heat up very, very, very rapidly. And sudden climate change is even worse than the kind we already know about.
David Appell

Once they stopped the solar geoengineering in the models, global temperatures rose by 1.5 degrees Celsius within a decade, and over 2 degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in two decades. (This jibes with the results of a 2009 study on the same topic.)
Why is that so bad? It's worth noting that the speed of climate change matters almost as much as the total temperature swings. Plenty of climate policy experts think a 2-degree Celsius rise in global temperatures between now and the end of the century would prove tricky to adapt to. But a 2-degree rise in the span of just a few decades would be even harder. Many species would have difficulty moving to suitable climates. Farmers would struggle to adapt crops to the heat. Building seawalls to fend off rising oceans is much harder when you have less time to build.
For the record, the JGR researchers also found that global rainfall patterns could go haywire if solar geoengineering was stopped:

So, yes. In theory we could set up a giant hose to spray sulfate particles into the air and cool the planet. We just have to hope that nothing ever happens to the hose. Or, if we start spraying and then discover some horrid unanticipated side effects a few decades out, it will be a lot harder to stop.
This is one reason why many geo-engineering proponents, like Harvard's David Keith (who wasn't involved in this JGR study), argue that the technique would need to be done alongside reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. "Nothing changes the fact that in the long run, the only way to manage carbon risk is to stop emitting carbon-dioxide," Keith told me in October. "But, similarly, nothing we know about cutting carbon-dioxide emissions says that's going to help us deal with the risk of CO2 that's already in the atmosphere, or deal with climate risks in the very short term." In other words, he sees geoengineering as complementary, not a substitute for cutting emissions.
(And yes, the JGR study came out a little while ago—I just missed it at the time. Thanks to David Appell for the recent pointer.)
Further reading:


Geoengineering and the folly of playing God with the planet

There’s this wild, grandiose idea – mostly discussed in academic circles – that we could offset and reverse the effects of global warming by intentionally spraying reflective particles high into the atmosphere.
“[It] would mimic the effects of a volcanic eruption,” writes the Post’s Joel Achenbach. “The thin haze would reflect sunlight, cooling Earth’s surface. Our planet would literally be shinier when seen from space.”
The idea is taken seriously enough that the National of Academy of Sciences released a report today evaluating its merits. The report prudently concludes such geoengineering schemes “pose considerable risks and should not be deployed at this time.”
But I’d go a step further and say it’s an idea that almost certainly will never be practical and could be more dangerous than the problem it’s trying to solve
We do not understand the climate system well enough to predict the disruptive impacts injecting particles would likely have. Although we know with certainty they would result in a net cooling of the climate — just as adding greenhouse gases would ensure net warming — how the effects would play out at the local and regional scale is a huge wild card. It might cause drought in some areas, and bring floods to others.
Our climate models cannot, with reliability, predict the manifestation of regional precipitation changes induced by altering the composition of the atmosphere.
Applying this type of geoengineering plan would require the global community to effectively sign-up for unpredictable climate changes that could benefit some areas at the expense of others. It’s akin to seeking global agreement on the mechanics of playing God with the planet – establishing a world government to set and control a thermostat for Earth, and amicably living with whatever consequences.
Not to mention injecting particles into the atmosphere would not remove the carbon pollution that can persist in the air for decades to centuries with consequences beyond warming, including the acidification of the oceans.
It’s such a scientifically and politically thorny idea that voices on both sides of the climate change debate have passionately expressed opposition to it.
“[T]he geoengineering options most often discussed, like putting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere or orbiting tinfoil strips — these are simply nuts,” Al Gore – one of the most fervent advocates for climate action – told the Post’s Ezra Klein in 2013. “We shouldn’t waste a lot of time talking about them. Some people will anyway, but they’re just crazy.”
“Geoengineering schemes seem like really bad ideas full of nasty consequences (unintentional and otherwise),” writes Chip Knappenberger, who pens frequent columns for the Cato Institute about how the threat of climate change is exaggerated.
The best way to confront climate change is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the root cause of the problem, and better understand and cope with the climate changes we are dealt. We need not introduce new ways to alter our climate and further tinker with our one and only livable planet.
If we can’t reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to sufficiently slow climate change, we may even have another way out. The National Academy of Sciences also issued a companion report that discusses “climate interventions” that would directly remove carbon from the atmosphere. To me, those are much more promising than other particle-injecting geoengineering schemes.
Advocates for particle-injecting geoengineering say it is wise to research it in case climate change accelerates so much, we need to employ it to fend off a planetary catastrophe. I’m not against expending a limited amount of effort to better understand its risks and opportunities but am unconvinced it will ever be a good idea scientifically or politically feasible.
Additional reading:
Short-term fixes for long-term climate problems? Not so fast, experts say
Elite science panel calls on U.S. to study climate modification
In Geoengineering Study, Science Academy Sees Merit in CO2 Removal, Risk in Reflecting Sunlight
Climate Tools Seek to Bend Nature’s Path


You can change the minds of climate change skeptics. Here’s how.

Last week the National Academy of Sciences made headlines by calling for stepped-up research into geoengineering.
Geoengineering comprises technologies designed to counteract human-caused climate change: towering “carbon scrubbers” that would suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; the injection of iron pellets into the ocean to stimulate growth of carbon-consuming phytoplankton blooms; or — my personal favorite— deploying zillions of mirror-coated nanotechnology flying saucers to form a stratospheric solar reflector.
Would such technologies cool the planet enough to stave off the devastating consequences scientists predict if global warming is not contained?
Beats me.
But the NAS proposal might help reduce the simmering temperature of the U.S. climate debate enough to enable constructive public deliberations. The reason is in another study that appeared last week, this one in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
In this study, my collaborators Hank Jenkins-Smith, Tor Tarantola, Carol Silva, Donald Braman and I examined how information about geoengineering might counteract the impact of cultural cognition.
Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to selectively credit all manner of information — from logical arguments to empirical data; from expert opinion to their own sense impressions — in patterns that support their values.
For example, citizens who prize individual self-sufficiency tend to dismiss claims of environmental risk because accepting these claims would license restrictions on free markets. Citizens who favor stable and clearly defined social rankings tend to see environmentalism as an implicit indictment of social elites.
By contrast, citizens with more egalitarian and communitarian commitments tend to be suspicious of commerce and industry, which they blame for unjust social disparities. They will believe evidence that industries threaten public health and should be regulated on that basis.
In our research
Scary stuff.
In the first condition of the experiment, people examined the climate-change study after first reading an unrelated news report about a city council meeting on traffic signals.
In the second condition, people first read a news report that suggested leading scientists had called on nations worldwide to adopt stricter carbon dioxide emissions.
In the third condition, people first read a news report announcing that a leading scientific body — very much like the NAS — had called for more research into geoengineering.
Logically speaking, the information in the second and third conditions was no more relevant to assessing the validity of the climate change study than was the information in first condition. But psychologically, the news reports mattered a great deal.
In the first condition, there was predictable evidence of cultural cognition: People with egalitarian and communitarian worldviews readily credited the climate change study, while those with more hierarchical and individualistic worldviews dismissed it.
The call for stricter carbon dioxide restrictions featured in the anti-pollution news report made these tendencies even worse. By triggering antagonistic associations between climate change and free markets, this news report increased polarization among people with different world views.
The call for geoengineering, however, had a very different effect. The idea that human ingenuity is itself up to the task of managing the environmental risks that human ingenuity creates is a historical theme that powerfully resonates with persons who have individualistic and hierarchical outlooks. And so we predicted that substituting this identity-affirming “yes we can” narrative for the denigrating “we told you so” one, which animates many climate change policy messages, would mitigate rejection of the evidence among the people most predisposed to do so.
That’s what we found. The call for geoengineering made subjects with hierarchical and individualistic values react less dismissively toward the study. As a result, polarization decreased among people who read the anti-pollution news report.
Our study, therefore, calls into doubt the argument of commentators who warn that exploring geoengineering could lull the public into a sense of complacency on climate change.  We found that those who first read about geoengineering were the most concerned about the dangers of global warming.
Of course, there is no guarantee that the effects we observed in this experiment would emerge if we could confront people with similar messages. (We are working on this, however.)
Nevertheless, our study suggests that it would be foolish — not to mention awkward — for those who care about climate change to deny that geoengineering research is exactly what scientific consensus recommends.
Dan M. Kahan
This post is part of our series on science and politics.  The introduction to the series is here.


How a group of conspiracy theorists could derail the debate over climate policy

Two commercial airliners appear to fly close together as the pass over London on March 12, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) But as it turns out, some people believe that a global campaign is already underway to have aircraft spray the air with chemicals — whether to control climate change or for other, more sinister purposes. Agreeing with Cairns, SRM researcher David Keith of Harvard University argues that we can’t simply dismiss the concerns that drive this emotionally charged movement. “The strength of the concern about chemtrails no doubt reflects very real and much more widespread concerns about high-leverage [technologies] in general, and about solar geoengineering in particular,” he explained in an email. Then there are more-general political concerns; chemtrails activists may simply not trust institutions, particularly on a global scale. Cairns notes that the chemtrails discourse seems to resonate with elements of both the right and left wings, albeit for different reasons. Adherents on the left worry about the potential for corporations and other institutions to use chemtrails to harm people and the environment. On the right, meanwhile, are those who worry about individual freedoms and state power or dispute the idea that humans are changing the climate. She argues that these issues of trust aren’t entirely irrational or paranoid and could easily manifest in mainstream debates over geoengineering. “Is it necessarily more irrational to believe that the climate is being controlled, than to believe that one can control the climate?” Cairns asks. Nor should we ignore the chemtrails activists themselves. For the longest time, researchers were aware of the chemtrails narrative, but it hadn’t received much attention in the academic literature. Keith hopes that’s about to change. “I have been urging academic researchers to pay some attention to chemtrails and I am very glad that Rose did so,” Keith says. Unfortunately, Cairns suggests, the potential for the geoengineering research community to publicly engage with chemtrails activists “appears limited” — they may simply not be receptive. As she argues, chemtrails believers’ longtime distrust of the alleged conspirators has reached outright disgust — to the point where unbelievers are labeled as paid liars (or even “mentally retarded,” as she quotes one chemtrails activist). A very tiny subset of the chemtrails activists could have a more chilling effect on the field of geoengineering, Keith worries. He notes that he continually receives nasty emails and voice messages from

Two commercial airliners appear to fly close together as the pass over London on March 12, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
As governments’ efforts to cut greenhouse-gas emissions continue to sputter, some researchers have discussed another possible tool for combating climate change: “geoengineering” the climate. One particular form of it, “solar geoengineering,” would involve reflecting sunlight away from the Earth to reduce future warming, possibly by deploying an army of mirrors or spraying the air with reflective aerosols that would function like a chemical sunscreen.
But as it turns out, some people believe that a global campaign is already underway to have aircraft spray the air with chemicals — whether to control climate change or for other, more sinister purposes.
Meet the “chemtrails” crowd, who posit that governments, scientists and other institutions are using airplanes’ “chemtrails” — basically contrails that are allegedly laced with chemicals — to alter the climate, create extreme weather, poison people, or even control our minds. The chemtrails movement has gained a small but passionate following on the Internet, with people across the ideological spectrum — from left-wingers worried about the environment to right-wingers concerned about abuses of government power. We don’t know the size of the community, but followers generally point to seeming irregularities in aircraft contrails as indisputable proof that illicit weather or climate modification is already happening, right now, and being used to control people and nations, especially poor ones. Chemtrails activist Dane Wigington, for instance, points to videos of an airplane spewing out multiple exhaust trails of different lengths, or airplanes spewing trails of different colors. “This amounts to weather warfare — period,” he charges.
As farfetched (and baseless) as these claims may be, a recent scholarly analysis of the chemtrails movement suggests we can’t write off its relevance entirely — not because its proponents are right, but because of the insights they may offer about a future debate over geoengineering. It might be many years, after all, before any geoengineering proposal seriously enters the policy realm. Still, writes science and technology policy researcher Rose Cairns of the University of Sussex in The Geographical Journal, “Ignoring or dismissing these discourses out of hand as pathological or paranoid is to ignore potentially revealing insights about the emerging politics of geoengineering.”
Solar geoengineering — more formally known as solar radiation management (SRM) — is merely an idea right now, and many scholars aren’t convinced that it’d actually be worth it. But with the National Research Council set to weigh in on various forms of geoengineering very soon, it — and the conspiracy theories involving it — stands to gain more of the public spotlight.
There’s no evidence that the alleged chemtrails are any different than normal contrails, much less that thousands of scientists, companies and bureaucrats have engaged in a global conspiracy that they’ve managed to keep secret this whole time. But the more general concerns that chemtrails believers have about technology’s potential impacts on the climate and the environment, and about government and institutional power, shouldn’t be dismissed so easily, Cairns suggests.
Agreeing with Cairns, SRM researcher David Keith of Harvard University argues that we can’t simply dismiss the concerns that drive this emotionally charged movement. “The strength of the concern about chemtrails no doubt reflects very real and much more widespread concerns about high-leverage [technologies] in general, and about solar geoengineering in particular,” he explained in an email.
Environmental concerns could naturally become central to any mainstream debate over whether to actually use aerosols to undertake SRM. Some scientists have suggested that putting additional aerosols in the air could increase deadly air pollution or damage the ozone layer. It also wouldn’t address emissions of the most important greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. Thus, not only would it do nothing to slow down CO2-driven ocean acidification; it also would mean that if you were ever to stop injecting aerosols into the air, global warming would resume — and quickly.
Then there are more-general political concerns; chemtrails activists may simply not trust institutions, particularly on a global scale. Cairns notes that the chemtrails discourse seems to resonate with elements of both the right and left wings, albeit for different reasons. Adherents on the left worry about the potential for corporations and other institutions to use chemtrails to harm people and the environment. On the right, meanwhile, are those who worry about individual freedoms and state power or dispute the idea that humans are changing the climate.
She argues that these issues of trust aren’t entirely irrational or paranoid and could easily manifest in mainstream debates over geoengineering. “Is it necessarily more irrational to believe that the climate is being controlled, than to believe that one can control the climate?” Cairns asks.
Nor should we ignore the chemtrails activists themselves. For the longest time, researchers were aware of the chemtrails narrative, but it hadn’t received much attention in the academic literature. Keith hopes that’s about to change. “I have been urging academic researchers to pay some attention to chemtrails and I am very glad that Rose did so,” Keith says.
Left ignored, the chemtrails narrative could poison legitimate debate over geoengineering’s merits. Right now the public is still learning what geoengineering is, and people’s opinions about it have yet to fully form, making them vulnerable to misinformation. But how, exactly, geoengineering researchers should address the chemtrails narrative without outright ignoring it isn’t clear.
Unfortunately, Cairns suggests, the potential for the geoengineering research community to publicly engage with chemtrails activists “appears limited” — they may simply not be receptive. As she argues, chemtrails believers’ longtime distrust of the alleged conspirators has reached outright disgust — to the point where unbelievers are labeled as paid liars (or even “mentally retarded,” as she quotes one chemtrails activist).
A very tiny subset of the chemtrails activists could have a more chilling effect on the field of geoengineering, Keith worries. He notes that he continually receives nasty emails and voice messages from chemtrails believers, and he has even received multiple threats of violence that have prompted him to contact the police.
In short, chemtrails itself is a conspiracy theory. But the environmental and political concerns underlying the theory can’t be ignored, as they certainly would arise in any mainstream debate over whether to proceed with geoengineering. And chemtrails believers themselves could become a thorn in geoengineering researchers’ and proponents’ sides for many years to come.


This climate-change hack would reflect more sunlight. Not such a bright idea, study says.

Scientists are pondering what might be called the volcanic solution to global warming. It would be the ultimate desperate measure, a climatological Hail Mary and, possibly, a very bad idea. The only reason it's an actual subject of research is that human civilization has failed to take steps to stave off dangerous levels of climate change.
In 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted in spectacular fashion. The ash fall and lahars killed hundreds of people in the central Luzon region of the Philippines. Molten-hot ash and gas shot into the upper atmosphere, spread out across the globe, reflected sunlight and naturally cooled the planet for more than a year. Researchers say nature may be offering an example of a possible technique for limiting global warming.
People can't command volcanoes to erupt, but they can more or less mimic the effects of a volcano through technology. The basic idea is to use aircraft, or some other means, to spew sunlight-reflecting aerosols into the stratosphere and change the albedo — the reflectivity — of the planet. It goes by many names: solar geoengineering, solar radiation management, albedo management, albedo hacking.
One hypothesized reason for doing something so audacious is that it might benefit agriculture by preventing heat stress on food crops. But a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature came to a different and surprising conclusion. Using historical data from two volcanic eruptions, the researchers concluded that tampering with the atmosphere would have no net effect on crop yields.
The food crops wouldn't suffer as much heat stress as they would without the intervention in the atmosphere, but they also wouldn't receive as much photosynthesis-powering sunlight. The pluses would be offset by the minuses.
“If we think of geoengineering as experimental surgery, our findings suggest that the side effects of treatment are as bad as the original disease,” said Jonathan Proctor, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Berkeley and the lead author of the paper.
But David Keith, a professor of applied physics at Harvard University who was not involved in the new research, said the paper by Proctor and his colleagues should not be interpreted as evidence that solar geoengineering is a bad idea.
"Reducing crop damage is but one of many reasons why geoengineering might make sense as a tool to limit climate risks in conjunction with emissions cuts," Keith wrote in an email. "There are — of course — also many reasons why solar geoengineering may not make sense. Too risky. Too hard to govern. Etc."
He said there's a difference between solar geoengineering and volcanic eruptions. Solar geoengineering would not involve a one-time pulse of material in a single location but rather would be a continuous operation in many places.
No one is preparing to inject aerosols into the stratosphere. Scientists and political leaders don't know nearly enough about the consequences, good and bad, intended and unintended, of such an effort.
The technology doesn't even exist yet. Planes that spew sulfur dioxide exist only in PowerPoint presentations.
There's also the non-trivial question of who, exactly, has the authority and responsibility for changing the sky everywhere on Earth. The planet has seen a rise in nationalism and a fraying of partnerships. President Trump has repeatedly attacked trade agreements and pushed a more isolationist agenda, and he has a history of calling global warming a hoax.
Albedo modification would not be a one-shot deal. It would have to be done constantly. Human civilization continues to pump increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The Paris climate agreement, signed by nearly 200 countries in 2015, commits nations to lowering their emissions, but compliance is questionable and Trump has said he will pull the United States out of the accord as soon as that is legally possible, in 2020.
If and when aerosols are pumped into the atmosphere, by a volcano or some technological gambit, they do not stay there forever. Much of that material migrates to polar latitudes and gradually coalesces into bigger droplets before falling to Earth. To replenish the supply of sunlight-blocking aerosols, future generations would have to be fully committed to the project without interruption. Otherwise the planet's temperature would spike virtually overnight.
“If there is a sudden termination, then it’s like being hit by a heat wave without having made the adaptations,” said Raymond Pierrehumbert, a University of Oxford climate physicist.
Three years ago, the National Research Council of the National Academies of Sciences released a report saying that albedo modification is far too risky to attempt at this time. The authors of the report concluded that any intervention in Earth's climate “should be informed by a far more substantive body of scientific research, including ethical and social dimensions, than is presently available.”
“We haven’t researched it adequately,” Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academies, said this week in an interview with The Washington Post. “There have been models done. There just haven’t been any field experiments done to anyone’s satisfaction.”
She said that efforts to mitigate climate change have been too feeble and that it's past time to understand what options we have in a rapidly warming world.
“It's too late to wait,” she said. "We can’t be this seriously far down the global-warming curve and not be ready to do something about it.”
There might be other benefits or harms from albedo modification. Proctor and his co-authors looked at only one economic sector: food crops. What's unique about this research is that it's based on nature's own experiments with albedo modifications — the two big volcanic eruptions in the past 40 years that had enough oomph to change the global climate. The first was in 1982, when El Chichon erupted in Mexico. The second was Pinatubo nine years later.
The researchers had reason to expect a different result, because the scientific literature previously has suggested that crop yields would benefit from stratospheric aerosols. The tiny particles scatter sunlight and create more diffuse light at ground level. Such diffuse light can penetrate beneath a forest canopy and reach leaves on a plant normally heavily shaded on a sunny day.
But Proctor and his colleagues examined crop yield reports from around the globe and found that soy, wheat, rice and corn yields dropped after Pinatubo's eruption, with corn — which is more responsive to direct rather than diffuse sunlight — affected the most. The researchers used this information to estimate the effects on crop yields in 2050 if albedo modification is used in an attempt to limit global warming.
“In all of this, there are many, many more unknowns than knowns,” Proctor said. “The goal is to chip away at these unknowns one at a time.”
Another form of geoengineering would involve directly removing carbon from the atmosphere. This includes capturing carbon as it is emitted at smokestacks and sequestering it underground. The technologies for doing this are immature and limited by cost, the National Research Council found in 2015, but could be part of a portfolio of responses to global warming.
By contrast, albedo modification is relatively cheap, in theory. It might be done with a large fleet of planes flying at something like 70,000 feet. The fuel in the planes could be modified to burn a high percentage of sulfur, though the planes would probably use special furnaces to burn sulfur and spew it into the air, Pierrehumbert said.
Such a system would require, among other things, public acceptance of the idea of using air pollution to fight global warming.
“It’s just barking mad,” Pierrehumbert said. “It’s just a lunatic idea to think that this is a good thing to have in our portfolio of responses to global warming.”
A better idea, said Alan Robock, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, is to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
“We all know the solution to global warming is — stop using the atmosphere as a sewer for our greenhouse gases,” he said.
Read More:
Short-term fixes for long-term climate problems? Not so fast, experts say.