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Today's Top Stories
1. Adaptation to climate change stymied, says federal committee
2. House's $50.7B Sandy relief bill mainly goes through HUD, FEMA, FTA
3. TWIC reader rule coming in February
4. Americans form greatest percentage of known terrorists crossing U.S. border
5. NASA, NOAA find 2012 among the hottest years on record
6. Audio: NASA, NOAA officials discuss climate change Also Noted: DHS says virus shut down power plant; Java exploit linked to espionage malware and much more...  Follow @fiercegov on Twitter
More News From the FierceGovernment Network:
1. License plate readers quietly becoming prevalent law enforcement technology
2. President takes executive action on gun measures
3. House bill would refreeze federal worker pay
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the next edition of FierceHomelandSecurity will appear on Tuesday, Jan. 22.
Today's Top News 1. Adaptation to climate change stymied, says federal committee
 Politicians, rigid institutions, and a lack of resources are among the culprits that have thwarted adaptation to climate change, the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee says.
The committee's draft report criticizes politicians for a lack of leadership on climate issues, polarization and entrenched political structures. Decisions on how to act, meanwhile, are fragmented across public- and private-sector organizations, and inflexible institutions suffer from the absence of legal mandate to act on climate change, the report says. Uncertainty about future climate impacts also makes action difficult, especially since the information is complex and often doesn't reach decision makers. The report also notes the general lack of climate education for professionals and the public. The committee, established in 2010 by the Commerce Department, consists of about 40 members from academia, the private sector and nonprofits, as well as 15 nonvoting members from the federal government. Entities throughout the public and private sectors have done some substantial planning for adaptation, the report says, but few measures have been implemented. The concept of adaptation applies to a broad range of actions, many taken by states. California has water-efficiency mandates for buildings, Rhode Island requires land-use applications to factor in sea-level rise, and New Mexico has a system for temporary water-rights changes in real time in the even of a drought. Local governments and organizations find it hard to anticipate the impacts of climate change on local scales, though, the report says. Governments at all levels also tend to lack funding and staff for adaptation, another barrier. More research to make explicit the cost-benefit analysis of adaptive measures would help, the committee says. In the past few decades, the United States has managed to emit less carbon dioxide per dollar of gross domestic product, but economic and population growth have meant that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. For more:
- go to the website for the Federal Advisory Committee Draft Climate Assessment Report Related Articles:
Arctic undergoing widespread and sustained climate changes
Wildfires to increase in frequency and strength
Sandy rearranges East Coast landscape Read more about: climate change
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2. House's $50.7B Sandy relief bill mainly goes through HUD, FEMA, FTA
 The House approved $50.7 billion in aid to the ongoing recovery from Hurricane Sandy on Jan. 15.
Along with the $9.7 billion in aid President Obama signed into law Jan. 6, the bill, if it becomes law, will bring the total aid to precisely the $60.4 billion Obama proposed in December. Funds for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Federal Transit Administration make up the bulk of the package. HUD's community development fund, FEMA's disaster relief fund, and FTA's public transportation emergency relief program each would get more than $10 billion. Others set to receive hundreds of millions or billions of dollars include the Army Corps of Engineers, the Small Business Administration (to make direct loans), the Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Interior Department's office of the secretary, the Health and Human Services Department's public health and social services emergency fund, and the Federal Highway Administration. The bill passed 241-180, with 49 Republicans and 192 Democrats in favor. Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) was the only member of his party opposed. The package consists of a $17 billion baseline plus a $33 billion amendment from Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.). The baseline passed 327-91, while the amendment passed 228-192. An amendment to cut all fiscal 2013 discretionary appropriations by 1.63 percent, to offset $17 billion of the aid, failed by a vote of 258-162. Seventy-one Republicans, including Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), voted against the amendment. Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) voted for it, as did Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). The governors of the states hit hardest by Sandy said last month that they together need far more than $60 billion. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) said New York alone needs $41.9 billion and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said his state needs $36.9 billion. Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy (D) pegged his state's disaster assistance needs at $3.2 billion. Still, the governors praised the bill in a joint statement: "We are grateful to those members of Congress who today pulled together in a unified, bipartisan coalition to assist millions of their fellow Americans." The Senate passed $60 billion in aid to Sandy victims near the end of the previous session of Congress. It returns to work Jan. 22. For more:
- go to the THOMAS webpage for H.R. 152 Related Articles:
Congress and Obama approve $9.7B in aid to Sandy victims
The 5 costliest U.S. hurricanes of the past 20 years
White House proposes $60.4B in Sandy repair and mitigation spending Read more about: HUD, HHS, Jim Cooper, House
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3. TWIC reader rule coming in February
 The Coast Guard will in February unveil a proposal for requirements for electronic Transportation Worker Identification Credential card readers, according to a regulatory update published as part of an overview of upcoming federal actions.
Although the Transportation Security Administration has since 2007 required port and ship workers to carry TWIC cards, the federal rule regarding electronic card readers has been slow in coming--meaning the cards have mainly been used as expensive flash passes. A Coast Guard official estimated in March 2012 that full implementation of card readers will require 2 years after finalization of the regulation regarding their use. The regulatory update says the Coast Guard is still developing cost impact estimates of an electronic reader regulation and notes that the main cost drivers are the acquisition and installation of TWIC readers plus their ongoing maintenance. A 2009 advance notice of proposed rulemaking on TWIC readers said implementation would take a risk-based approach based on classification of vessels and ports into one of three risk classifications that take into account the consequences of a transportation security incident. The TWIC program is a requirement under the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002. A November 2012 report from Republican members of the House Homeland Security and Oversight and Government Reform committees said TWIC has already cost $500 million and could total $3.2 billion over a decade. The program "has been crippled by latent programmatic weaknesses," a committee report said. For more:
- read the TWIC regulatory update Related Articles:
Army rejects TWIC for online systems
TWIC electronic readers still years away
TSA makes TWIC renewal easier for some Read more about: TSA, Coast Guard
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4. Americans form greatest percentage of known terrorists crossing U.S. border
 Nearly half of terrorists crossing into the United States to perform violent acts or making an escape from the country afterward were American citizens, and a significant percentage were Canadians, finds a Homeland Security Department-funded study.
The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism-conducted study is based on data gleaned from terrorist (as designated by the FBI) court cases from 1980 through 2004 showing that 264 individuals during that period with a direct tie to terrorism crossed a U.S. border in relation to a terrorist act. Of the 95 individuals for whom citizenship was determinable, 48 percent were U.S. citizens, and another 18 percent were Canadian citizens. Border security managed to thwart just 13 percent of the crossings, and terrorists' favorite port of entry mode was airports, with land ports of entry or seaports constituting a minority of the total. Only a minority of the indicted terrorists had a previous known arrest record: 11 percent were previously arrested in the United States and 11.1 percent were previously arrested abroad. States along the southwestern border--California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas--accounted for only 6 of the 115 cases for which location crossing data was available. The report does note that the data only includes border crossings specifically referenced in court documents related to federal terrorism cases, meaning that it's possible that the data could be nonrepresentative. Related research work conducted by the National Center for Border Security and Immigration based on field work at Customs and Border Protection ports of entry concluded that agents there are concerned mainly with the immigration status of border crossers and customs declarations rather than terrorist detection. Screening-related terrorism in airports, the center learned, is mainly driven remotely by the CBP National Targeting Center, which sends local agents a list of passengers selected for secondary screening. 
For more:
- download the research results, "Border Crossings and Terrorist Attacks in the United States: Lessons for Protecting against Dangerous Entrants" (.pdf) Related Articles:
Unemployment--but not poverty--correlates with terrorism, report says
Researchers struggle to quantify, judge counterterrorism efforts
LaFree: Terrorism mythology doesn't square with the data Read more about: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses, Office of Field Operations
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5. NASA, NOAA find 2012 among the hottest years on record
 Last year was the ninth warmest year since 1880, and the average temperature during the year was 1.0 degrees warmer than the mid-20th century baseline, NASA announced Jan. 15.
NASA compares the average global temperature each year to the average from 1951-1980 to measure global warming. The last time the yearly average was cooler than that baseline was 1976. 2012 was also the warmest year on record for the continental United States. Instances of unusually high temperatures have also become more common. A seemingly small uptick in the temperature can have major effects--as in 2012's persistent drought across the United States--noted James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, during a Jan. 15 press call. "This last year is a good teaching moment, because we can see how big an impact a summer-mean anomaly of two or three degrees can be," Hansen said. The global temperature increase doesn't impact all parts of the globe the same way at the same time. But "eventually your turn comes, and when it does, the temperatures tend to be a lot warmer," added Thomas Karl, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center. While there are many factors at play, Karl said greenhouse gas emissions were enough on their own to drive the temperature rise. NOAA, which measures global temperatures separately from NASA, found 2012 to be the 10th warmest year on record instead of the ninth. "Every approach has slightly different assumptions, and that's why we think it's so important that we've got independent groups going about it slightly differently," Karl said. "It's just too hard to say what is exactly the right approach." NOAA's findings also show 2012 to be the warmest La Nina year on record. La Nina is associated with cooler-than-normal water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. For more:
- listen to the Jan. 15 press call with Hansen and Karl
- go to the Jan. 15 NASA release
- go to the NOAA State of the Climate webpage Related Articles:
Arctic undergoing widespread and sustained climate changes
Wildfires to increase in frequency and strength
NOAA: 2012 hurricane season 'above normal' Read more about: global warming
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6. Audio: NASA, NOAA officials discuss climate change
Also Noted > DHS says virus shut down power plant. Article (Reuters)
> Senator asks if drones can kill Americans. Article (Wired)
> Napolitano glad to coordinate on gun control. Release (DHS)
> Java exploit linked to espionage malware. Article (ZDNet)
> Chicago man convicted for backing Denmark terror plot. Article (USNews) And Finally… Defrosting a 10-story building turned freezer. Images (PerkinsWill) > Federal security concerns and the cloud - January 29, 2013, 11 am ET/ 8 am PT Join FierceGovernmentIT for a webinar while we discuss the extent to which data security concerns act as a cloud computing adoption obstacle, the extent to which the can be mitigated and the resulting impacts those mitigations may have on use cases and deployment. Register Today.
| > Local Supply Chain Capacity in a Crisis: Regional Recovery Resource Exercise and Planning Summit - January 30 and 31, 8 am - 3 pm ET - Arlington, VA Hurricane Sandy reminds us of the importance of local resource capacity planning prior to unforeseen events. Expert panelists at the summit will lead open discussions between public, for-profit and not-for profit sector event participants on resolutions to the most difficult recovery resource delivery challenges. Register Today.
| > Survey: Federal IT Priorities: Top Executives Look to 2013 and Beyond In a recent survey on Federal IT Reform, Senior government IT executives laid out their vision for the coming year, detailing challenges and identifying priorities. To read more about these timely results click here to download the summary today. > eBook: Knowledge Management: 5 Steps to Getting it Right the First Time This eBook sets out 5 simple steps for optimizing customer service and support with an effective, best-practice-led knowledge management initiative. Download today! | ©2013 FierceMarkets This email was sent to ignoble.experiment@arconati.us as part of the FierceHomelandSecurity email list which is administered by FierceMarkets, 1900 L Street NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 628-8778.
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