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Pentagon Unveils Plan For Military's Response To Climate Change
An anonymous reader writes Rising sea levels and other effects of climate change will create major problems for America's military, including more and worse natural disasters and food and water shortages that could fuel disputes around the world, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Monday. From the article: "The Pentagon's 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap (PDF) describes how global warming will bring new demands on the military. Among the report's conclusions: Coastal military installations that are vulnerable to flooding will need to be altered; humanitarian assistance missions will be more frequent in the face of more intense natural disasters; weapons and other critical military equipment will need to work under more severe weather conditions. 'This road map shows how we are identifying — with tangible and specific metrics, and using the best available science — the effects of climate change on the department's missions and responsibilities,' Hagel said. 'Drawing on these assessments, we will integrate climate change considerations into our planning, operations, and training.'"
Can we get through Ebola, first, and then worry about...
The government should be able to multi-task more than one problem at a time, yes?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
...but plans for climate change. The neutering of America's military is complete. Thank you John Kerry.
Because it's already too late. Even if we stopped CO2 production entirely, today, all of this stuff would still happen. The CO2 we're producing today is just compounding the problem for our grand children. Short of discovering cold fusion tomorrow and mass producing small devices with unlimited power that could change the CO2 back into a solid, we're screwed.
If i recall correctly, similar reasoning was adopted by Mr. Homer J. Simpson while addressing his car's engine issue as he proceeded to string a strip of duct tape over the blinking warning light.
The problem is, the government is not doing what it can do, because it is afraid of offending people in a world where Political Correctness is going to kill millions.
Ebola is easy to stop. We have oceans to protect us. All we need to do is stop allowing the 25,000 VISAS from affected countries from being used to gain entry. But t hat is too politically incorrect, so instead we're going to infect our troops by building hospitals there. Don't tell me that it is "low risk", because that is what they said in Dallas. And one million dollars for the first patent later we having stopped anything.
Here is an idea, lets use Military to kill people and break things, and if we can't stomach that, bring them home. That is what they do.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Ebola is easy to stop. We have oceans to protect us. All we need to do is stop allowing the 25,000 VISAS from affected countries from being used to gain entry.
1. Person from Ebola Land travels to Europe or some other non-US country, and exposes a person who is not from Ebola Land, who then travels home to the US.
2. US citizen travels to and from Ebola Land.
There are many different ways that Ebola can reach out and touch people who are not from Ebola Land, shutting down foreign visas is not the solution.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Funny to see a branch of the US government that actually has to deal with reality.
Well, the fact that CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas is well established and easily tested. And fact that humans are responsible for the increasing atmospheric CO2 levels is likewise pretty thoroughly established: levels are increasing at a rate of about 60% of human CO2 emissions, and carbon isotope ratios are shifting to more closely match those in fossil carbon reserves at a similar rate.
Meanwhile alternate sources of warming have pretty thoroughly been ruled out where the current crisis is concerned. There are several theories as to causes for global thermal fluctuations, some more firmly supported by evidence than others, but NONE of them can explain the anomalous heating of the last several decades - solar output has not increased. Nor has cosmic ray incidence, nor any other explanations. Many of those theories seem solid and greatly improve our models of historic climate shifts, they just can't explain the recent sudden surge in global temperatures, because the forcing factors they postulate haven't actually changed recently.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Though folks are trying to quash debate, much like the catholic church did to Galileo.
Yes, a state Attorney-General conducting an inquisition in an attempt to silence a prominent climate scientist is very much like what the Church did to Galileo.
And debate on the causes...
Seriously?! The causes are fairly well understood. If you can cite anything from the last 5 years which debates the causes please do (it goes without saying, I trust, that "cite" means a citation to a paper published in a recognised scholarly journal).
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
2) Mandatory 21 day Quarantine, solves the issue.
The problem with draconian over reactions like this is that they just make the problem worse. A mandatory 21 day quarantine incentivizes people to lie about where they have traveled, and to lie about their health condition. It is a disincentive for a traveler that slips through the net, and then gets sick, to seek medical help.
Lie about it, get caught, and go to prison for 3-5 years.
So if you lie, because you don't think you are infected, and then get sick the next day, you should keep your mouth shut and avoid medical help, so you don't go to jail.
Life if you spread Ebola after lying and somehow survive.
So if you think you have Ebola, and also think you have infected others, then your primary focus should be to avoid any contact with authorities, and discourage your friends and family from seeking help as well.
Why do we have to have finely nuanced approaches that don't work is beyond me.
Because the "nuanced" approaches are working well, while your draconian approach is idiotic and counter-productive.
Lie about it, get caught, and go to prison for 3-5 years.
That's not the way things work in the real world. Move along and let the adults discuss the issue.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
There are many different ways that Ebola can reach out and touch people who are not from Ebola Land, shutting down foreign visas is not the solution.
Exactly. That's why I don't encrypt passwords on any of my machines. Passwords can be brute forced so they're not a solution.
I also have no locks on my doors. Someone can use C4 to blow them up and render them useless. Locks aren't a solution.
Sometimes, even if you can find some way around the proposed idea it doesn't mean the idea isn't good, just that it isn't complete. Nobody said it was. But shutting down travel directly from ebolaland is an obvious first step.
Do you have ESP?
Nothing really works well when a life threatening disease is on the loose, but it is pretty clear that the virus has no room for human sensitivities and an approach to stopping it should not either.
The most pragmatic thing to do (if stopping the disease is the dominant priority) is to immediately impose draconian quarantines:
1. Have you been anywhere outside of the country? Then you get a 21-day quarantine.
2. Have you potentially been in contact with someone who might have ebola? Then you get a 21-day quarantine.
Would this this hurt the global the economy were all countries to enact it? Probably.
Will it stop the Ebola outbreak? Probably.
Right now, the politicians are trying to keep people calm while they cross their fingers and weigh their options. However, don't think that full, national-guard-imposed, shoot-on-sight quarantines are coming world wide if the virus keeps spreading outside of Africa.
You can sense the BS with all the public service announcements that Ebola is hard to catch because you have to come in contact with the bodily fluids of an infected symptomatic person and then touch a mucus membrane. (Under their breath, the doctors note that you should also stay three feet away from an infected person sneezing.) So now you have the potential for doorknobs, handles, etc. to be coated with Ebola-infected saliva that is viable for days, and you expect people to not every touch a mucus membrane (during allergy season) unless they have just washed their hands.
In short, you are naive or brainwashed if you are not worried right now. I am not saying panicked, but you should be worried.
What about San Francisco?
Neither?
Then most coastal US military bases are probably fine too. There might be some on a couple pacific islands that are having a hard time... but I believe the last time I checked every single one of them was due to erosion and not the rising of global sea levels.
Furthermore, what are we talking about as of now?... 7 centimeters or something? Any harbor that could be made viable or non-viable by 7 fucking centimeters was an accident waiting to happen in the first place. I'm quite sure that the vast majority of harbors have far more robust tolerances.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.