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NRC Report Links Climate Change To National Security
WOOFYGOOFY writes "The NY Times and Voice Of America are reporting on a study by the U.S. National Research Council (PDF) which was released Friday linking global climate change to national security. The report, which was developed at the request of the C.I.A., characterizes the threats posed by climate change as 'similar to and in many cases greater than those posed by terrorist attacks. 'Climate-driven crises could lead to internal instability or international conflict and might force the United States to provide humanitarian assistance or, in some cases, military force to protect vital energy, economic or other interests, the study said.' If the effect of unaddressed climate change is the functional equivalent of terrorist attacks on the nation, does the Executive Branch, as a matter of national security, have a duty and a right to begin to act unilaterally against climate change irrespective of what Congress currently believes?"
The report, which was developed at the request of the C.I.A., characterizes the threats posed by climate change as 'similar to and in many cases greater than those posed by terrorist attacks'
That's because almost anything that comes to one's mind is more dangerous that terrorist attacks (e.g.: cars, coal power plant emissions, nicotin, alcohol...) Well, I guess alien invasion is slightly less risky. I'm willing to admit as much as that.
Ezekiel 23:20
The thing is you have to weigh up the possibilities of people starving in a century against the probability that a group of muzzies will bomb the subway next week. Whereas ideally you should counter both it is a lot easier for the government to get praise for finding another bomb factory than to carry out actions that might show effects in 20 years time.
After years of horrible persecution of scientists and accusing them of crimes for the results of their research and voicing their opinion, taking us back to the middle ages, perhaps now they will gain a bit more respect. But we're still far from paying them anything near what they deserve, anywhere in the world.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
...over 20 years to conclude that which was obvious. If you were humble enough to trust experts, the impact of AGW was clear for a long time -- the drastic products of AGW are easy to estimate. If 7BN people can't do well right now, it only makes sense that environmental instability would push many into desperation and chaos.
They are only conspiracy nuts when it's not the government thinking these thoughts? Uh... Got news for you jack. The government is people. And so are the conspiracy nuts. So... seriously... how different is it all really? After all, we've got government ignoring, banning and denying science and other facts left and right, day in and day out. Sure, it might make you sleep better believing your god (government in this case) is always watching over you, but really? How much government nonsense do you buy on a daily basis? I never ONCE believed that going to Iraq or Afghanistan was "for our freedom." They were never a threat to that. The only threat there is from the people who want to take it... correction, from the people who have taken it.
All the other hurricanes, cyclones and typhoons (the same phenomenon in different names) don't matter.
Climate change is currently used as a convenient lie to hide the decay of the United States of America and its inabliity to maintain or build infrastructure due to lack of any way whatsoever to raise a sufficient amount of taxes for any purpose other than its military.
BTW the fusion reactor ITER costs a whopping 10 days of US military expenditure to build and run for 30 years.
No offense, but that doesn't say much about politicians.
It does say a LOT about the people of the nation in question however.
germany just called, they have some spare power to sell because of green startups
Can I light a sig ?
Well, I don't know about "extremist", but "alarmist" might be better. "Sloppy" might be best of all.
That climate change has national security implications is kind of a "well, duh" proposition. Of course it has national security implications, through its potentially destabilizing effect on other nations at the very least. Climate change has a huge impact on the military due to its effect on vector borne infectious diseases. Only recently have historians begun to appreciate the huge and possibly decisive impact malaria had on the American Revolution, and to this day the US military has considerable public health efforts to protect the immunologically naive American troops, who grew up in a hygienic temperate environment, deployed in tropical or squalid conditions.
The executive branch has regulatory and monitoring functions assigned to it by Congress, and considerable leeway in implementing policy within the constraints established by legislation. For example it may be tasked with monitoring the spread of agricultural pests -- a topic closely related in several ways to climate change. Within that function it can draft regulations and propose programs which it then submits budget requests to Congress.
So the executive branch has considerable influence on how or even whether the US government responds to the prospect of climate change. It's hardly extreme to suggest the executive branch should have a policy stance toward it. It's just wooly-headed to compare it to terrorism, a totally different kind of security concern with different causes, different effects, and very different planning horizons.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Such a conclusion could be taken to mean that the govt (exec branch, never mind Congress or courts) would be allowed to flounder around and do anything it pleases so long as it can come up with some connection with a theory of global warming. (Such things generally can be reversed if they screw up.)
If this were limited to thinking about geo-engineering to lower the temps a bit it might have some merit, but the actions of 0.3billion out of 7 billion people otherwise might not have such an impact, even if that 0.3 bil use lots of energy. The US is very far from alone, nor is it the greatest contributor to the currently blamed activities, but a blank check to "do something" sounds like a terrible idea to me.
The problems of people building on sand near the beach and lowlying areas have been well known for many years. That there have been no big storms before
since about 1962 has led to a lot of this, ignoring the fact that there is a multidecade oscillation of the Atlantic that eventually restarts the hurricanes hitting
this area. It is perfectly reasonable to figure that yes, it might be a good idea to build fewer such buildings there, rebuild on higher ground, maybe just fix it so
the subways in lowlying areas on Manhattan don't have airvents all over the place, and fix them so maybe they could stand a few hours of waves. Heck: part of that
area used to be swamps. If the storms to be expected are a bit bigger than they might otherwise have been, a "normal" hurricane blowing in off the ocean can do this kind of thing, cold front or not. Read some of the history of the storms of 1878-79 along the east coast sometime: they were described as "tidal waves" because they created such enormous floods along the Delaware Bay, wiping out some of the then communities. The current crop of storms is not that unique. NYC just got a jackpot due to the configuration of the land, which acted as a funnel to catch the wind/water. In the 1950s-60s nobody moaned about global warming causing the hurricanes. They just bemoaned the damages (and fixed things up) but people gradually got greedy for beach property and forgot that there were good reasons why those areas didn't have buildings on them in the first place.
(BTW there are still a few ruins visible from the 1978-79 storms in odd corners, which is how I happened to look that up.)
The real threat is the scaremongering about everything and anything and refusal to question status-quo in order to protect the interests of very few very rich people. Let's face it, US is fueled by fear and paranoia.
Tomorrow is another day...
"Draconian?"
Really?
I always was curious as to how you climate change denialists imagine this ever dark-and-sinister "green agenda." Do you just imagine some dimly-lit, raspy figure tenting his fingers and intoning in a rattling hiss: "Yessss, yessss, just a few parts per cubic inch fewer of carbon dioxide and then they will all payyyyy. Evvvvery time I hear the lamentful wail of a businessssssssman who must adhere to my lunatic whimsssss, I am set upon with a mighty erectionnnnnn. Yessssss..."
Seriously dude, running your car with a slightly lower-volume engine and not being allowed to straight-up vomit toxic gas into the air without paying a fine isn't exactly the same as unlawful search and seizure. I can kind of appreciate the notion that using the specter of global warming as a threat is bothersome to people who don't "believe" in global warming, but lower pollution is pretty well agreed-upon as better for the environment and, you know, people.
If you really think I'm being glib, please tell me what the awful, unthinkable measures you, your family, your friends, or even your employers have undergone that have just torn their lives asunder so as to condemn this apparently-fabricated-by-the-majority-of-the-scientific-community "agenda."
Like switching to energy sources not derived from fossil fuels? How is that draconian? We have to do it at some point anyway because fossil fuels will last only the next few centuries. We might as well switch to alternatives before supply goes down and energy prices go way up. Oh, wait, too late for that. Well, let's switch ASAP before energy prices go sky high.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
What happens if man's efforts consuming 10% of the productive output of the nations of the world produce no effective change?
So you wouldn't have gone to the moon?
What happens if the national effort causes the US to go into a depression that causes a population die off & collapse of average incomes?
Wars do far more damage. This is called investment and is the single best way to stimulate an economy. All that gov't spending? pays people who then buy things thus increasing demand. Is gov't spending the solution to everthing? of course not. But when big big things need to be done, the private sector simply isn't going to do them.
How long will it take to make significant change?
Sometimes you don't know the answers before you start. And waiting makes it worse. Did JFK know we could get to the moon in under a decade? Of course not, he just picked a date based on some basic assumptions and we went to work.
Can the developed nations change and overcome the effect of underdeveloped nations?
If we can invent more efficient and less harmful technologies...we can sell them that stuff
What happens when the United Nations tries to tell every country what to do? Does everyone lose their national sovereignty?
If you can come up with a better plan than the UN for dealing with international issues, by all means. Lots of people have tried.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The solution may be closer than we thought.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Hydro has been investigated to death. It will never provide more than a fraction of the nation's power needs and has significant environmental problems of its own. There are a huge number of exciting energy and fresh water technologies showing up. Great ideas that beginning to not only look feasible, but profitable. Check out this month's article on Cold Fusion in Discover magazine. It seems a number of breakthroughs in CF including a theory as to what is actually happening is getting a very good reception from applied physicists. There is solid evidence that anchored lighter than air win turbines could harvest 100x more power than ground based wind turbines. Solar cells have passed 33% efficiency, and new technologies promise cheap ubiquitous solar collection on an infinitude of surfaces. OTECs placed around the world in deep water along the equator could produce huge electrical energy, vast amounts of fresh water, and equally vast supplies of seafood (diverse ocean based aquiculture.) This doesn't even mention that being on the equator, they would be perfect launch sites for space traffic. We can even take the energy we produce now and us it to generate hydrogen, methanol, and petroleum directly from water and CO2 in the atmosphere giving us unlimited supplies of carbon neutral fuel. By the way, anyone who's worked with sodium hydroxide knows how much water is can suck out of the air. Solar powered portable water supplies wll soon be sent to the driest places in Africa to save millions of lives. When we look for solutions to making the world a richer place, rather than how can "I" enrich "Myself" to the world's detriment, we all become richer.
We now have the means in our grasp to resolve the many problems facing humanity, however it would demand giving up petty political bickering, religious conflict, national self interest, but most of all prying the white knuckled, crypt keeper death grip of the bankers and mega-corporations from our governments and and financial resources. A very few men of vision and courage, backed by global regions and working in concert could forever transform what was possible for being human, but we'd all have to stop being obsessed with our pasts or some silly apocalypse and focus instead on the future. Perhaps even a future worth living in for all people.
Hydro has been investigated to death. It will never provide more than a fraction of the nation's power needs and has significant environmental problems of its own.
You are thinking of a dam - wrong direction - more like a coastal barrier. And in fact, hydro is cheaper than OTEC by a few cents per kilowatt-hour, although your idea of offsetting the cost with fresh water, seafood, and space traffic launch site benefits would be very intriguing.
however it would demand giving up petty political bickering, religious conflict, national self interest, but most of all prying the white knuckled, crypt keeper death grip of the bankers and mega-corporations from our governments and and financial resources
With the correct system, religious conflict has little or no impact. But you are right about prying the pennies from the death grip of the Bilderberg Club.
I'm not really a fan of the executive acting unilaterally, but with an obstructionist House whose committee on science, space, and technology includes a member who claims that evolution and the big bang theory are "all lies straight from the pit of hell" and another that claims that women can't get pregnant from "legitimate rape", I can understand the temptation.
Let's be clear. The people equating statistically improbable disasters - asteroids, aliens all that- to the absolute certain fact that global warming will, if left unchecked for too long, deconstruct civilization are engaging in a type of self soothing via fuzzy thinking. This is what denial is.
The people denying that the threat is imminent and reasoning that it is therefore amenable to current political processes are doing something a little more subtle.
They are creating an imaginary causal linkage between three phenomena which are, in reality, causally unlinked. This is therefore a type of magical thinking.
The first phenomena is the pace at which global warming will proceed. No one knows with certainty how quickly it will proceed or what effects each step of the progression will have on factors effecting national security. What we do know is it's worse than we thought, proceeding faster than we projected.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/02/23/203730/mit-doubles-global-warming-projections/
That pace is in no way related to the second phenomena , the ability of a (gerrymandered) minority of politicians to block urgently needed action at the federal level. Funded by and beholden to the now-classifiable-as-genocidal gas and oil industries, scientifically ignorant and proud of it, the pace of warming is in no way effected by their continued inaction, and nothing about their inaction obliges global warming to back off for our collective sake.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2009/03/17/203822/media-copenhagen-global-warming-impacts-worst-case-ipcc/?mobile=nc
The third phenomena is what level of ecological disaster is going to serve as the trigger point at which the denier population capitulates to reality and assents to urgent, sweeping federal action. Because that level of ecological disaster both exists and will be realized sooner or later.
But that point is in no way causally related to that other point in time, the point of no return, where given our then-current or achievable level of technology, we'll still be able to limit the effects of global warming in order to preserve the habitability of the planet.
There's nothing to say that deniers won't come around too late. There's no guarantee that the level of ecological disaster sufficient to finally get through to deniers will appear on a schedule sufficient for us to solve the problem.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=349
To think vague things like- eventually everyone will come around and then the political process will kick in in time for us to save ourselves- is magical thinking. The forces controlling the pace of, and political resistance to, global warming are unrelated with respect to the time frame needed to act.
The original question is rhetorical but only in the way opposite to that asserted by the deniers here. It IS a fact that the threat posed by global warming falls under the purview of the executive branch who WILL be empowered and in fact have a duty to act unilaterally, without Congressional oversight or approval, in order to preserve the national security of the United States. The only question is when will that time come and how will we know it? Is it now? A little while from now? When it's too late to do any good?
We just squeaked by an election in which one of the parties' candidates was threatening to pipeline in tar sands from Canada and light them on fire. We already know that, if we light on fire all the oil we current have already drilled and sitting waiting to be sold, it's game over for the environment and ourselves. Drilling for more, spending money to obtain yet more and dirtier oil and th
why is it that:
* the country which uses 50% of the world's resources yet has only 12% of the world's population
* that has not signed the Kyoto Accord and has China being forced into a position of making a "big fuss" so that the USA can "save face" (China's next 10 year plan involves carbon emissions reductions far in excess of the Kyoto Accord)
* that has created more wars and destabilised more countries, broken more international laws and blatantly disregarded sovereignty more than any other country in the history of mankind in the name of "oil" and "profit"
why is that this country, rather than take responsibility for its over-use of resources, comes up with yet *MORE* ways to justify continuing down the path of take, take take.
surely they can see that it's not going end, here, right? surely they can see that even if they subjugated or bombed every other country in the world into submission or non-existence, the resource over-utilisation would, like cancer, just continue to consume more and more and ultimately end up consuming itself.
*surely* they can see that, right? so the question is: what do we - the rest of the world - actually do about this?
I know a locust that grows its own food. It doesn't even own a car. It doesn't matter that the other locusts do because this one is doing the Right Thing.
If he does do all that shit, you'll be pissed that he's trying to inflict his morality on you. If he doesn't, he's a hypocrite.
We have a term for posts like yours. "Ad hominem." Closely related is "tu quoque," and in this instance you may actually qualify for both. Troll harder.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
One thing that is ignored here is that intentionally harmful activities have a tendency to balloon out of control while non-human, insentient sources of disasters, particularly climate doesn't quickly get worse when you don't do anything about it.
For example, in the mid 19th century, the Comanche Indians of the central US (who lived in the area of currently day northern Texas and Oklahoma) made a habit of raiding their neighbors, particularly Texas and Mexico (oddly enough, New Mexico was off limits to raids due to some deals that an old governor of the territory had made with the Comanche).
Well, it turns out that the northern part of the Mexico just south of the Rio Grande (abutting Texas) was very vulnerable to such raids and a vast amount of cattle and horses were stolen year after year. The Comanche would steal them, ride them up through Texas into Oklahom and then sell their loot to the Comancheros, traders from New Mexico.
This activity was of such a vast scale that some parts of the trail were over a mile wide, and still visible today.
If Mexico and Texas had gotten together when it first happened (for example, just paying a few hundred "Texas rangers" to go harass the Comanche), then this could have been nipped in the bud and a hell of a lot of suffering prevented. Similar widespread violence happened on the Scottish/English borders before the unification of the two crowns.
This is why intentional actions are dealt with more harshly and vigorously than accidental. You don't wait till a hostile power is committing a 9/11 every month or even every week, before you decide to act. You don't wait till they figure out how to make a profit on the activity or put a system in place for doing it cheaply and frequently.
In comparison, climate change, here, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is not going to get dramatically worse, if we don't do anything about it. For example, they generally forecast the loss of about as much land over the next century from rising water levels (assuming a one meter rise) as are lost each year from desertification due mostly to bad agricultural practices.
(I've just spent about half an hour fruitlessly trying to find some old posts on the matter. I recall there was a slashdot story estimating how much arable land would be lost from a one meter rise in sea level (which was the research's "worst case" by 2100). That was comparable to the amount of arable land lost each year from desertification.)
So in summary, there is more value to nipping in the bud deliberately harmful human actions than there is with a slow moving human-induced natural change that just isn't that significant in the first place.
I didn't create the graph, it's not "mine", but if you take the time to look at it, you'll see that all the major changes to CO2 levels are noted, e.g. ~2200 ppm in the Ordovician, 210 in the triassic, 340 in the cretaceous. It's also painfully obvious that if you look at the overall trends and history that:
1. We are in an unusually cool period that has persisted for around 5 million years.
2. We are in a below-average, but not unusually so, period of low CO2 concentrations.
3. There is no direct correlation between CO2 and temperature.
From those three points, the currently proposed course of action (lowering CO2 emissions) and the reasons for doing so (stave off global warming) are both fundamentally flawed. I don't dispute that man is increasing CO2 levels. I don't even claim that man is not affecting climate, through CO2 and other mechanisms. I'm pointing out that spending resources trying to stop an inevitable fact of our future (global temperature will rise, far more than the amounts people are considering in the context of AGW) is a waste of time, money, and attention vs. ensuring we survive it when it does happen. We're talking 6-8C here, not 0.5-1.5.
Also, your graph sucks harder, as does your reading comprehension. Of course the data is noisy at timescales so short. Of course you can sample a window juuuuuust big enough to demonstrate a presumed correlation, and exclude the rest which conflicts with the presumption. I'll read the PDF, though high levels of atmospheric particulates immediately jump to mind as a more reasonable (and provable) explanation for temperature changes and extinction events than CO2 does.
We might as well switch to alternatives before supply goes down and energy prices go way up.
Why? It makes sense to switch then, when supply goes down and the appropriate fossil fuel price (not energy!) goes up. Due to time value of money, procrastination here can be quite beneficial.
The longer we wait to develop alternative sources of energy, the more immature will alternative sources of energy be when energy prices of fossil fuels start to rise. If the rising prices happen as scarcity of fossil fuels becomes wide spread, we may run into issues of energy scarcity which could present a serious problem to the stability of modern civilization. On a side note, developing alternatives to fossil fuels would have the added advantages of making the world less dependent on the whims of a number of nasty dictators and may make our environments a lot less poisonous.
Also, keep in mind that fossil fuels vary greatly in amount and accessibility. Oil and natural gas will run low before coal does. So a program that switches over completely now does so in the face of high availability of coal.
Coal has a number of drawbacks, compared to oil and natural gas. Notably, coal usually contains a lot of toxic components that are emitted when it is burned. It is also difficult to pack and transport. These issues are the main reasons that many nations have been moving away from coal as a source of energy.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head