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Former CIA Director Speaks at Purdue

A former Central Intelligence Agency director visited Purdue to speak about energy and security. Former C.I.A. director R. James Woolsey took part in a lecture series on "U.S. Security in an Insecure World."

In his presentation Monday night at Loeb Playhouse, Woolsey said our national security faces a set of problems, including our energy sources. Woolsey said small random disturbances to the electricity grid can sometimes create a butterfly effect, producing cascading, unpredictable change elsewhere in the system.

"It seems kind of theoretical until you remember that 4years ago August a tree branch fell on some power lines in Ohio and within 9 seconds...80 nuclear power plants-worth of electricity were offline for 1 or more days," he said.

Woolsey said deregulation of the electricity grid has made it more vulnerable.

"A few years ago that tree branch falling in Ohio probably would have taken out a portion of Ohio's electricity instead of 50 million consumers in the US and Canada, and that's because the grid is very overburdened," he explained.

He also said our energy use may cause big problems with climate change.

"None of use by driving SUVs or using coal-fired electricity is trying to sink south Florida and Bangladesh beneath the waves out there 40, 50, 60 years from now, but we may be contributing to that," said Woolsey.

He said it is as if society is smoking six packs a day. Instead of putting tobacco smoke into the air, he said burning oil and coal puts global-warming gases into the atmosphere. Those actions, he said, increase the probability of catastrophic climate changes. Woolsey said people need to be concerned about the atmosphere and future energy usage.