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US Secretary of State Calls Climate Change 'Weapon of Mass Destruction'
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Arshad Mohammed reports on Reuters from Jakarta that US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Indonesians that man-made climate change could threaten their entire way of life, deriding those who doubted the existence of 'perhaps the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction' and describing those who do not accept that human activity causes global warming as 'shoddy scientists' and 'extreme ideologues'. 'Because of climate change, it's no secret that today Indonesia is ... one of the most vulnerable countries on Earth. It's not an exaggeration to say that the entire way of life that you live and love is at risk,' said Kerry. 'In a sense, climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.' In Beijing on Friday, Kerry announced that China and the United States had agreed to intensify information-sharing and policy discussions on their plans to limit greenhouse gas emissions after 2020. At home, Kerry faces a politically tricky decision on whether to allow the Keystone XL pipeline after a State Department report played down the impact the Keystone pipeline would have on climate change. However Kerry showed little patience for skeptics in his speech. 'We just don't have time to let a few loud interest groups hijack the climate conversation,' said Kerry. 'I'm talking about big companies that like it the way it is, that don't want to change, and spend a lot of money to keep you and me and everybody from doing what we know we need to do.'"
As a michigan resident I discovered this year that the Democrats have no interest in saving the environment. they wont even shut off the chicago river to keep the damn china carp from infesting the great lakes. Obama himself refuses to let the scientists and the Civil engineers shut it off. by the time they stop their stupid posturing it will be too late.
"by 2020" is too late, way too late to begin to start to talk about things. they need to be talking now not at a date set so that none of the current leaders have to bother with it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's not a weapon if it cannot be wielded. If it is just lashing about indiscriminately then it's not a weapon.
So, the US's Sec of State is self-admitting guilt of committing crimes against the entire planet, leaving the USA now liable in international court for the costs of AGW? I knew the US liberals were self-destructive, but this takes the cake.
Impetuous! Homeric!
Well given that the Chinese carp situation in Michigan probably should be a more important priority for the US than hamstringing human civilization in the name of global warming, I really don't see the stupidity.
As an island nation, most Indonesians live within a few miles of a coast. A typhoon's impact ends within a few miles of a coast. Imagine a hurricane Sandy type event striking half the population centers of the country, not just one or two cities.
John
Haha, it takes a special type of person to fall for such obvious smears, when they are so obviously made up whole cloth.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The Boston Bomber was charged with a law that was on the books prior to 9/11 that used the term. It's kinda awkward, but it certainly wasn't prosecutors trying to abuse the term for PR reasons.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It's not comparable. The effects of climate change advance slowly. Sure, every year more people might be exposed to storms but it takes decades for an area to become uninhabitable. It's enormously expensive and whole countries can be whittled away. Or in US terms, large portions of some states.
That is just simply wrong. There are powerful intrenched interests with their misinformation campaign, and a bunch of sheep who think they're rebels for repeating the tortured logic of others, but that is really the sum total of the opposition to change.
And make no mistake, change is coming. The USA, Germany and China are leading the way in creating alternative sources of energy. The Germans and northern Europeans in particular are figuring out the engineering problems of using renewables on the grid. And the price of renewables is decreasing exponentially. Wind is now cheaper than every fossil fuel save gas, and will be cheaper than gas in five or so years. Solar is a little behind, but exponential is exponential.
Sure there are problems left to solve, but don't let anyone fool you into thinking that nobody cares. In fact, some of the smartest engineers and scientists in the world are figuring this out, and there is plenty of government and industry money to do "right" by the next generation.
If there's one major problem, its that the issue is a political football, but in the end, the smart money will move on, and the fluff heads will be left with wild conspiracy theories about how coal/oil was better all along, and a bunch of communists destroyed a perfectly good industry.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I guess we now have solid proof that Rush Limbaugh is a Slashdotter.
I guess I am if I throw another log in the wood stove today...
Burning a log is just part of the normal carbon cycle. You do know that the CO2 in the log returns to the atmosphere anyway, right? Maybe it would take 10 years instead of 5 minutes; however, the CO2 remains out of the carbon cycle only if you bury the wood underground.
The whole point is that CO2 was sequestered out of the atmosphere over billions of years, and stored underground in oil and coal. Now we're dredging that up and returning it to the atmosphere.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Regardless of whether or not mankind is fully, partially, or trivially responsible for climate change. Calling it a weapon of mass destruction is fully moronic. It's a distortion of reality for the sole sake of sensationalizing the issue. It's not worth tainting the argument for the sake of getting the point across.
/tongueincheek
Now it's just a matter of time before we start arresting people for starting bonfires or driving to work. Gas guzzler, hybrid, or all electric you'll all be terrorists wielding WMDs!
Alright, so driving at 120 MPH on the highway increases our chance of accidents, scientists agree.
What to do about it? Please show me the scientific and engineering studies that prove that a particular course of action is appropriate. I am tired of the knee-jerk reaction that blithely assumes reducing velocity is the way to go. There are many possible alternatives, including doing nothing at all. A proper cost/benefit analysis is needed, before we decide to make everyone walk everywhere.
you clearly have no idea what carp do to a water system. Where I live they took over in the past 30 years, 90% of the normal fish are gone, It really is a major problem and here we have a simple way to keep them from in essence destroying all the fish in our biggest natural waterways. I was actually unaware of the issue in the OPs area but as someone who knows first hand how damaging carp can be, I have to side with him. Why should we focus on the large picture when we cant even focus on the small (comparatively speaking)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Yes, they're slow, but the effects can locally be violent as change happens. Warming of the ocean's waters could add energy to storms, or increase their frequency. I'm not saying Manila will be underwater next year due to the rising oceans, only that climate change increases the chances that it will be hit hard by a typhoon.
But as someone else pointed out below, if it can't be wielded, it's not a weapon. It could have the same destructive effects as a weapon, but it's not a weapon.
John
Everybody can agree the climate is changing, in a warming trend. However, the breakdown in logic is the immediate correlation that it must be human caused. The fact of the matter is the world's climate changes all the time, in massive geological cycles.
We must be good stewards of our planet, this is also undeniable.
The problem I have with "Global Warming" fanatics, is they have flawed logic (human caused) an then go into bizarre, egregious means to deal with it like carbon credits, and whatnot. The fact of the matter is we should definitely work to be more responsible for our world--but NOT because it is in a warming trend. We should do it simply because IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO. By disassociating the reason from morality, and tying it to a flawed premise (human caused) we are hurting the entire effort--and meanwhile corporations and the government continue to act irresponsibly.
I'm for rational, logical use of our planet. We are creatures of this planet, just like every other creature. We should treat it carefully, only using our share. We are not here to "preserve" the planet, as it is here to be used. But we should use it properly, wisely, and in a manner that helps future generations of all planetary denizens (human and all others).
tora
Ok. the carp can be a problem, but the OP is whining about how the politicians in Michigan aren't doing anything about a river that is in Illinois.
The Germans and northern Europeans in particular are figuring out the engineering problems of using renewables on the grid.
Use nuclear. Problem solved.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I dont agree with AGW, but using only rush limbaugh as your source even makes me cringe
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
1) Why were the hippies the only ones that were capable of seeing what a threat there is?
2) Why are people in need of convincing? There's a lot of very convincing science (done by non-hippies) available.
3) How did they hijack it, exactly? Are you the kind of person that accuses others of being 'fake geeks' or 'fake gamers'?
We wouldn't have this problem if people and government were less interested in short-term profit than long-term health. Don't pin it on a small segment of a smaller sub-culture.
That's the comedic joke. There are no real options.
The only one I can see really having any effect is a mass deployment of existing nuclear technologies, focusing the entire resources of the western world on solving the fusion problem, and a massive research project to develop super-capacitor or other high density electrical energy storage technology.
People can shout about other alternatives, wind, solar, whatever, but none of the people shouting have training in thermodynamics. I've crunched the numbers for myself. They tell me one thing: We're fucked, and nothing has the energy density to replace oil.
Sadly, none of the things that will make a difference are going to happen, and all the politicians spout is hot air, and lustily dream about taxing carbon - because see my original point, there are no real options.
The leadership isn't there because we don't have an energy crisis yet. The climate will change and populations will adjust.
In the mean time, I am investing heavily in fossil fuels. Teach your kids math and physics. Lack of both in the schools has us in this mess.
..don't panic
Just because it can't be wielded doesn't mean it can't be used as a tool of warfare.
More likely, climate change will be the cause of warfare, not a weapon thereof.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I get what you are saying, There WAS mass destruction, by definition it makes sense. however I do see the point you are making its like the democrats claiming racism when one disagrees with obama, If you throw a word around too often for the wrong reasons, it loses its oomph
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The sad thing is that we know it isn't that special. There isn't a rare mentality that goes with that "credulous about attacks on those I disagree with". At worst it's slightly more pronounced on the political right-wing(though it's very very pronounced among those that hit "high-RWA" characteristics).
You'll have to excuse the great unwashed masses (sometime called "the middle class") for being a bit skeptical after being told by our Dear Leader that with a cap and trade system, electricity prices would "necessarily skyrocket". Every cost for the transition from coal and oil is being dropped on the (former) middle class in every scenario.
Let's try doing the hard thing, putting the greatest minds to work figuring out how to do this without violating the civil rights of the people, instead of coming up with half-asses "solutions" and imposing them at the point of a gun.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
No one is proposing hamstringing human civilization that I can see. We're talking about moving into the 21st century by shifting to energy production that is based on sources that will last far longer than fossil fuels will last. By reducing the amount of warming and ocean acidification, we're helping ensure future economic prosperity. I suppose change is just scary to some people.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Now we just need to convince the Arctic ice, Antarctic ice, and Greenland ice sheet to stop their damn melting. Please do tell them about the fraudulent data they're using.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
And Republican politicians have no interest in an actual free market or personal rights. Welcome to American politics, where politicians say they are for something, but are really just out for their own self interest.
So, Kerry was implying federal intervention in international affairs.
The original poster was saying the Feds wouldn't intervene in a situation involving purely national affairs.
It sounds to me like they have a solution that involves restricting the river technologically, but the Democrats don't like technological solutions, they prefer regulatory solutions and taxes.
It's said that the rabbit proof fence had the hidden purpose of segregating aboriginals to the west, it certainly screwed with their traditional movements, perhaps there's more than just misguided efforts to control carp motivating some of the people who want to construct the dam. The dam may well be a worthy project, but from the POV of stopping carp from spreading it simply won't work. All it takes is for some well meaning parent to tell their kid it's time to release the "wild gold fish" he caught, back into the wild.
"by 2020" is too late, way too late to begin to start to talk about things.
Now is also way too late, invasive species are a different kind of problem to AGW, "the fish has already bolted" so to speak, you're past the point of no return, the disaster happened decades/centuries ago and you are now into damage control.
Disclaimer: Science based tree-hugger since the 70's, neither for or against a dam I know very little about, just saying that it probably wont work as you hope even if it was built yesterday, this is because the time for action was in the distant past when people released the species into N.American waterways.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Then why is it that the EPA is regulating carbon dioxide emissions for wood burning stoves and furnaces?
There's nothing about CO2 in there. Those regulations are about dirty and poisonous emissions. Carbon monoxide and particulate emissions; black smoke. Nothing to do with global warming. All about keeping the air breathable in densely populated areas.
An ideal wood burner would emit just water and CO2.
Wood burners can be made very efficient nowadays; by channelling the air flow in clever ways, you can get more complete combustion meaning more heat, cleaner emissions and less ash. These regulations just make sure that the wood burners you'll be able to buy do that.
Sounds like you are falling for an obvious diversionary tactic. Kerry is in Indonesia. Indonesians are pissed at the USA for spying on them. Kerry decides to talk about climate change and lobs around hyperbola like "weapon of mass destructions threating your way of life!!11ONE!!!1"
Yeah, and all the best designers for dams and canals are from there, it's true. What your startlingly naive comment doesn't take into consideration is that it's ALWAYS been there, and the cities that we've built on the coasts in the last 50 years HAVEN'T been underwater. This is a new thing. They weren't designed for it.
But sure, take the coastal cities of the world out of the equation. The costs are still enormous, and still real. Agriculture, storms, unpredictable weather, weather patterns shifting substantially (snow where there wasn't snow previously, no snow where there used to be lots of snow), coral bleaching, ocean acidification, desertification...the list is really long. This is to say nothing of the stuff that we don't even know is coming; I suspect that we've failed to capture the entirety of the problem. The things that we ALREADY know about will cost a shit-tonne of money. The stuff that we DON'T know about are going to be even worse because it'll be impossible to prepare for them in any way.
Cost-benefit analyses really start to fall apart at this point.
The thing is, there are lots of little things that we can do, individually and societally, that don't cost much but slowly make a big difference. They've started adding sails to really big cargo ships. It's free energy. It helps. I walk to work, drive my car very little, and try to be good about my own personal energy usage. I use less energy now than I have ever before in my life. It wasn't a step down in my quality of life in the least. I live close enough to home that I can walk home for lunch now. I have fewer, nicer things.
Collapsing economies and cave-dwelling are a line that we've been sold by interests that have a stake in us not changing. I provide less revenue for oil companies than I used to. Because I pay a little more for better things, I don't dispose of things as often. As a consumer, I'm much less lucrative than I was 10 years ago.
And I guess you have a clear and viable plan on what to to with the waste?
[Carp] should be a more important priority for the US than hamstringing human civilization in the name of global warming
There are sound reasons why AGW is high on the Pentagon's threat list
, where as carp are not even listed, despite the political will of a number of anti-carp politicians. Sure there's politics behind the wording and positioning of threats on the pentagons list too, but that doesn't mean AGW not a serious threat to all modern civilization(s) in the form of mass migrations, water wars, global crop failures, collapse of fisheries due to coral beaching, etc, etc
A current example: If you get your news from the mass media (particularly the US branch), you can be forgiven for not noticing that the Syrian civil war was triggered by internal mass migrations. In 2009-2011, 2M people in a country of 20M abandon their farms and headed to the cites putting strain of infrastructure and employment. The cause was not some madman dictator's attempt at social engineering, nor had people suddenly work out said dictator was mad because face book had arrived. It was triggered by the worst drought ever recorded in the "fertile crescent" (historical records span several millennia in Syria since this is the same region humans invented agriculture). A US diplomat stationed in Syria at the time went so far in his warnings as to correctly predict the city where the war would start (source: Snowden cables). It's no coincidence that many of the nations who experienced "the Arab spring" had previously been experiencing high food prices and in some major cities, large food riots. The mass media story was "Facebook done it".
As to hamstrings - Did building the hoover dam "hamstring the US". If not, then why do you think this will "hamstring the US".
Every coal plant on the planet was built and sometimes re-built within my 54yr lifetime, and they will all need to be re-built in the next 50yrs. Replacing them with modern renewable plants (be they rooftop or centralised) in a similar timeframe is a no-brainer as far as the environment and public health are concerned. If not for the novelty of the "renewables" most people wouldn't really notice the transition (same as I didn't really notice them building all those power plant until the early 90's) . The people with billions invested in coal mines have seen the writing on the wall and are running the same good old fashioned anti-science propaganda techniques that the gas light companies used on Edison and Edison in turn used on Telsa. That very human behaviour is not going away any day soon.
The other side of that human behaviour is that every adult on the planet (including me) is granted to fall for propaganda, education helps, particularly in the philosophies of Science and Epistemology but as we've seen with AGW, a good education and above average intelligence do not add up to a bullshit proof suit
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
If they were fit to eat they wouldn't be a problem.
And you thought that I was going to say something vulgar and metaphorical about Mr. Kerry....
No, I'm reminded of the atomic-pile simulation that used to be taught to kids. You remember, the one where there is a big floor filled with set mousetraps. And each trap has two ping-pong balls ~gently~ placed on the spring. A single ball is tossed in, and ~zap!~ a trap goes off, more balls are released, more traps go off, a few here and there, and then the big crescendo... balls flying everywhere.
Climate change is like that. We are just seeing the beginning now. It's small enough that stupid people can convince themselves that it's not happening. But as the Siberian tundra melts, and the 100,000,000 year old methane stored there gets released, and the polar ice caps melt, and the changing salinity alters the north-south oceanic current flows, and the mean temperature of the tropic regions rises to 140 degrees F for an average day.... well, balls flying everywhere.
A billion dollars here and there tossed at a global problem of this magnitude of problem is nothing. A billion dollars is about the size of the heavy-metal music industry, a heaping spoonful of the toilet paper industry, and most of the "Hello Kitty" trinket industry.
National Geographic recently published a series of maps of what the Earth would look like in 100 or so years from now when the ice caps have melted. Indonesia was gone. John Kerry is just giving them a 'head's up" warning.
NG also missed out on the fact that most of the earth except for the polar regions will be bright yellow instead of green. Yellow as in areas where nothing will grow and nothing will live. You probable live in one of these regions now. Best to spend the next decade ignoring the bozospeak coming from corporate and governmental entities. Instead find a place on those maps that presently has temperate weather, internet access, indoor plumbing, and civilized people.
Move there; move your family there. And as the decades go by and all the billions of doomed people start to realize that they deserve to be in that place instead of you, well, prepare yourself to have to deal with them like they are all one big surplus giraffe.
Gnome Sane?
Yes we ARE experiencing the third coldest winter on record so far in the US. It's almost like global weather patterns are shifting... Weird... Perhaps it's due to the Jet Stream getting all weird, due to a rise in temperature.
It's people like you that necessitated moving from "global warming" to "climate change", because you don't seem to understand that warming causes changes.
I live in the Pacific Northwest. Global Warming doesn't mean I magically get awesome summers. It doesn't mean the end of rain. It means drier summers, but WETTER winters. More heat means more evaporation, means more moist air hitting the mountains, but due to the increase in temperatures I get more water instead of snow.... Which incidentally means less snow pack. Less snow pack means less stored water (we count on the snow pack releasing water throughout the year into the rivers for our steady yearlong supply).
It's not hard to realize this. You just need to look at the data, think a little bit, and stop being stubborn.
The USA has implemented cap and trade over 20% of its economy. Energy prices have come down in this part of the USA relative to the rest of the country, for both factories and consumers. Furthermore, the part of the USA has seen relative economic growth compared to the rest of the USA. It is because of RGGI, similar carbon regulations in other parts of the world, and the history of such programs, that economists think that the cost of climate action will be negligible. The true alarmists are the ones preaching economic Armageddon.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
and my point was that if the people cant focus on a small issue with a known solution, why should we focus on the unknown, with no known solutions?*
* If we all do just the small things, it adds up to the big things i guess is what I am trying to say
solutions that dont involve everyone living in huts.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
See also: sulfur dioxide cap-and-trade - again, successful, with no industries killed.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The Hoover Dam cost $824 million in 2013 dollars to build and averages 4,200,000 mWhs of electricity per year.
The Ivanpah Solar Plant cost $2,200 million and may generate 493,110 mWhs of electricity per year.
So, this plant cost nearly three times as much in constant dollars while generating one tenth as much energy. To get to Hoover Dam scales, we need to build another 29 Ivanpahs at a cost of $63.8 billion dollars. Which gives us one more Hoover Dam worth of energy, which is 1/1000th of total US energy use (Hoover Dam is about 4.2 billion kWhs while the US used about 4,095 billion kWhs last year.)
So, for the low, low price of $68.8 trillion , we can supply the electricity for the US via Ivanpah style power. That just might hamstring our economy...
The problem is programs like "cap and trade" designed to punish companies that are productive thus destroying industry and jobs. Crazy programs like that are what conservatives oppose.
Cap and trade isn't designed to "punish companies".
Its designed, by conservative economists, to let companies make money by doing the right thing.
Watch this Heartland Institute video