Climate Scientists Ask For Help Fighting Somali Pirates

thebchuckster writes "Scientists are seeking the help of the Australian and US navies to repel Somali pirates who are threatening one of the world's key climate monitoring programs. They hope to deploy about 20 robotic instruments in a no-go area north of Mauritius. The instruments, which record ocean heat and salinity patterns, are programmed to submerge and eventually resurface to upload their data to satellites."

Comments

Re:Why don't we give the pirates a choice

[BitZtream]

Because they learned a long time ago they could take the money ... then act immorally anyway and win on both sides.

Re:Easy solution

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

'Letter of Marque and Reprisal'.

Given that the pirates are using any old junk to mount their attacks, I'm guessing that there would be no economic incentive to hunt them down under the historical mechanism of condemnation and sale. Some sort of bounty-based alternative, in addition to the cost, would amount to offering to pay anybody who can come up with a few rusty Kalashnikovs and a boat full of dead Somalis. What could possibly go wrong?

death penalty for vadnalism?

[decora]

any pirates who would attack scientific intstruments are committing property crime. the death penalty seems a little harsh.

as for the pirates that attack people, well, somalia doesn't really have a government to speak of.

and if you think you can 'solve the problem' by intimidating a few of them, you might want to read about what motivates them in the first place. i.e. there is a massive drought in the region right now, millions of people are starving... as i write this.

if i were in their shoes, and you asked me if i wanted to be a pirate, and maybe eat, i dont know what i would say. you see, i've never been starving to death and watched my whole family die.

in my humble opinion, instead of starting a nother never ending 'war on piracy', we could instead try to stop the corruption and malfeasance that prevent the somalis from engaging in ordinary business activity. i.e. start enforcing international laws regarding the fisheries off of their coasts.

Re:Why don't we give the pirates a choice

[catchblue22]

And your point is? Regardless of how the nation came to be in the state that it's in, there isn't any functioning government there at the moment.

It makes me laugh when I hear neo-cons say "government isn't the solution, it IS the problem". If you want to see what not having a functioning government looks like, go to Somalia. It even has religious extremism.