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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.'"
Now please raise the defense budget 12% per year, so that we may relocate naval bases to higher ground and do more maintenance on equipment damaged by severe weather.
Signed,
Colonel Trout
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.
The DOD has put a lot of effort into fuel efficiency and renewable energy. You have no idea what you're talking about.
So who wants to bet against the powers that be choosing to increase military spending rather than spend a fraction as much actually breaking our addiction to fossil fuels? Anybody? Aww, come on, I've got all this money just burning a hole in my pocket, I'll give you good odds..
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The US runs tons of military operations out of areas incredibly vulnerable to sea level change. Of course there are the ports on the East and West Coast to think about, but what about all those airfields in the Pacific?
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.
... we'll need more money.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
Maybe becasue the people calling the shots are heavily invested in the military-industrial complex and/or the fossil fuel industry? Meanwhile investing in disruptive technologies is far less profitable - you always run the risk of some upstart with an even better idea stealing the market out from under you. Just becasue the threat of anthropogenic climate change is unqustionably real doesn't mean those in power won't just use it as an excuse to further consolidate power. In fact that's one of the biggest problems we're facing in actually fixing the problem - the folks we hired to deal with national-level problems are instead simply using it to jockey for political power without any real attempts to fix it.
It's not like a realistic fix to climate change is technically difficult. Possibly the simplest solution would be to simply implement a carbon tax charged to anyone selling fossil fuels, the procededs of which would be regularly redistributed equally to the population. Most people see no net change in their expenses, and everyone has a financial incentive to move away from carbon energy. (obviously we'd also need carbon tarrifs on imported goods if we don't want to just export the problem along with out remaining industry)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
Pennies for food and shelter infrastructure. How many desalination plants can be built and operated for decades with the money that will go down this sewer? If there's going to be so much wind and rain, and sun(!), we should learn to harvest it. But it won't happen while we continue to vote for charming psychopaths.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
US Military could count as it's own country in oil usage. They also do a fair bit with reusable energy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
And I know several other projects. But for Military readiness, it would be nice if they put a few billion more into supporting something like algae biodiesel or fusion and a few billion less into one more aircraft carrier (correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the current fleet has around 11, more than the rest of the world combined?)
Off the top of my head, America's strategic reserve can cover fuel use for 60 days. However, since the biggest threat to America isn't any type of invasion force (no viable one exists), it would likely be economic and since the days of Hurricane Katrina, we've been shown to be unable to cope with peoples' extended needs.
So the Leadership's strategy should be to wean the country off of it's most dire dependencies. It should almost be the military's strategy as it would only positively effect them, but that runs counter to global force projection and stamping out the latest fires around the world.
Would you prefer advice on escapist fantasy or birth control? I can provide either.
They certainly are reluctant about it at times; but the military has the convenient 'reality is what shoots you even when you try to pretend it isn't there' incentive to remain members of the reality-based-community.
Funny to see a branch of the US government that actually has to deal with reality.
There's still some debate as to *how* screwed we are though. Global climate is changing, but if we stopped emitting CO2 within the next couple decades there's still a chance that the change would be short-lived and once the excess carbon has been absorbed, in a century or so, things will be back to "normal" without any further effort on our part. The problem is that the system is bistable, and once we cross the tipping point the positive feedback loops will dump the massive ecological stores of CO2 into the atmosphere, completely dwarfing our own small contributions. Just as has happened in all the previous major warm spells in the planet's history when unrelated events caused warming beyond the tipping point. Once we cross that tipping point then trying to reduce our own CO2 emissions is pointless - the only options are to simply adapt to a much warmer world, or engage in massive, risky geoengineering projects. Getting off fossil fuels would still be a good idea for reasons of pollution and geopolitics, but wouldn't amount to a fart in a hurricane where global warming is concerned.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Climate change is inevitable, but the main reason that it's so damaging is because we have large static cities. Nature isn't static. We need to learn now that if we plan on having permanent settlements that they will have to bend with nature. Like it or not, our coastal cities cannot exist as they are now for much longer. Climate change right now might be a good thing, because we're not to a point where the cities are so huge that abandoning them is impossible. I just hope we realize, that at least for the time being, we don't win against nature on these things.
X
Mine shafts
Have gnu, will travel.
Try and keep up, would ya...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
And debate on the causes... Though folks are trying to quash debate, much like the catholic church did to Galileo. It happens frequently https://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/99rsppp.html
Cities with plumbing are bad? We should just all be squatting in the bush, that will show climate change who's boss! http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/20/...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
from the worst CIC in the history of the United States.
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.
To me this just looks like a way to get defense contractors' snouts into the rich green money trough.
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.
Every complex problem has a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong. Most epidemiologists consider restrictions like these to be counter productive because they encourage both individuals and governments to be less transparent. The key to fighting outbreaks to catch them early, and to do that we need to convince governments to report them as soon as they are detected. They won't do that if the report is going to lead to economy crushing restrictions on travel and trade.
This particular problem has a far simpler solution that actually works: Use soap and hand sanitizer, and don't touch dead people.
Problem solved.
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
escapist fantasy please!
The Irony if we lost Guantanamo bay due to rising oceans.
Of course! Just bomb climate change into submission. Why didn't we think of this sooner?
'Murrica.
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.
And debate on the causes...
The only people who still want to debate the causes are those who are motivated to disbelieve in human causes. The scientific community has largely moved beyond that are of argument.
But the survivors wouldn't really give a shit, and anyway after civilization collapsed they'd go right back to burning wood and coal.
Civilization runs on energy, and stopping all CO2-producing sources would result in the collapse of civilization.
There is no such as 'catastrophic man-made global warming', which is why the LIARS renamed it 'climate change', which means something completely different.
You can always tell someone is a climate science denier when they add the adjective "catastrophic" to the front of anthropogenic global warming. The term "climate change" came before "global warming", not after. Gilbert Plass published the peer reviewed paper "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change." in 1956. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was created in 1988.
Correction - stopping all energy-producing sources would be the end of civilization. Sure, if we're talking about doing this tomorrow we've got a problem - but if we got serious we could do it in a decade without trouble for a lot less than we're spending on the military, (and probably with a much better effect on geopolitical stability) - we already have plenty of alternatives. Complementary renewables wherever possible, and nuclear elsewhere. If we'd just return to reprocessing spent fuel like we did before advances in uranium mining made it economically inviable the waste would be anon-issue. Safely storing waste for a century or two is a bit of a challenge, but nothing like trying to store it for tens of millenia as is required with the current lunacy of burying fertile fuel alongside the waste so that fresh waste will continue to be produced almost indefinitely.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Definitely. It's a critical part of our Judeo-Christian heritage to kill people and break things.
We don't have to worry about the Air Force making plans for global warming, because they're all convinced Jesus will come back and save us before that happens.
http://blogs.courant.com/susan...
Personally, I think Jesus is going to be pissed at what his followers have done to the perfectly good planet his dad made for them. And using 'Jesus is coming soon anyway' as an excuse!
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Do not worry about Ebola. It is going to kill a lot of people in the US, but it will always be less than cars accidents.
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.
This particular problem has a far simpler solution that actually works: Use soap and hand sanitizer, and don't touch dead people.
Tell that to the nurse in Dallas who used full biohazard protective gear and still got Ebola.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
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?
So who wants to bet against the powers that be choosing to increase military spending rather than spend a fraction as much actually breaking our addiction to fossil fuels? Anybody? Aww, come on, I've got all this money just burning a hole in my pocket, I'll give you good odds..
I've got $50 that says they will break their oil addiction, at some point. (of course, that point may be only when there's no more oil remaining to be extracted... ;^) )
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I have not. I suspect though that they will be phased in over several years for existing facilities, as is the norm for most any new regulation. And if it stops new coal plants from being constructed, so much the better - INCREASING our dependency on coal by building even more obsolete power plants is exactly the wrong thing to be doing - those resources should be spent on making new renewable or nuclear power plants that actually have a future.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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.
This!
Not to bring up Fox News, but I'll bring up Fox News. The Day before this Dallas shit hit the fan, they were all agog that Obama failed us in yet another bout of cluelessness, and didn't stop all flights from Africa, like the Europeans smartly and effectively did.
And now, Ebola is in Europe too, despite that.
No, you can't completely stop something like this - humans are too clever at going places, and we can't stop the world.
On the other hand, the response in Dallas was criminal. Doctors are supposed to be intelligent people. African guy shows up with disturbing symptoms. They send him home. What? a few questions might have been nice. Since it's in Texas, the nursing team and Doctors who worked on the guy should be executed in th eGrand Texas tradition.
Either that, or forced to room with the Ebola patients.
But also being Texas, I'll bet he was sent home the moment they found he had no health insurance.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
....... It could actually be good if they start pouring bucks to control the climate rather than useless things such as F22.
1) How Dallas Happened.
2) Mandatory 21 day Quarantine, solves the issue. Lie about it, get caught, and go to prison for 3-5 years. Life if you spread Ebola after lying and somehow survive.
Why do we have to have finely nuanced approaches that don't work is beyond me.
Because your weird draconian sledgehammer method won't work either?
If someone thinks they might go to prison they might just stay at home. I'd rather be dead than in prison. If my life was going to be destroyed, I'll just stay home. Also, are you going to make everyone who gets the sniffles take a month off work? Might be ebola, right? Declare martial law in Dallas?
Your half assed ideas are laughed at by the ebola virus. If they worked, we could have stopped the 1918 flue pandemic in a week.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
And using 'Jesus is coming soon anyway' as an excuse!
He shot his wad a long time ago.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yep. The term Climate change replaced was "The greenhouse effect" (Which was the term scientists where using when the science community first started sounding the warning about CO2 in the late 1800s). Global warming is the more recent term and was never really popular inside the scientific community.
This meme that this is some sort of new idea is getting a bit stupid.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Really Ebola isn't all that bad and it just might make people think a bit. Every day our immune systems face too many attacks. We reject most of the attacks and any losses are subtle and probably not noticable at all. But international travel is causing way too many attacks upon our immune systems and at a certain point we weaken and are vulnerable to any common germ or virus. In order to curtail all too frequent exposures to diseases we need to ban long distance travel almost completely. Or another alternative would be isolation of returning travelers for a month or two. But allowing tourism for tourism's sake is not wise at all. Jet air craft and ocean liners pollute extensively which weakens human health. It is also a waste of natural resources. And then on top of that it amounts to a high speed sickness delivery system. Then we have national security issues as well. Those cute chinese toys that load our kids brains with lead are an example. Imported food contains god knows what. All in all we need to use our TVs more and stop running all over the planet. We really do rape the environment and we are paying the price.
Because it's already too late. Even if we stopped CO2 production entirely, today, all of this stuff would still happen.
Got any proof of that? Last I checked, there were metric fucktons of CO2 disappearing into unknown sinks. If "the real climate scientists" can't even tell us where all the CO2 is going, how do you know it's too late for remediation efforts?
Well, obviously she messed up. It can't be the system, or the leaders. Nope. It must be the peons who just don't get it. They are at fault for everything.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
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.
Tell that to the nurse in Dallas who used full biohazard protective gear and still got Ebola.
Ok, if you want to be a pedant:
Use soap and hand sanitizer, and don't touch dead people or bodily fluids which have contaminated your protective equipment.
And how exactly do you propose we fund these so-called "oceans"?
you should be worried.
Not really. Even without any containment measures, an infected person passes the disease to only 1 other person. If there was a disease as deadly as Ebola, where that number was ~20 people (as it is with measles for example), then I would be worried.
The low transmission rate is why the outbreak has fewer than 10,000 people after several months.
.: Semper Absurda
What's really happening is climate destabilization. It really doesn't take a lot to destabilize the climate system; plus or minus 2 degrees is enough to bring on the heat or cause an ice age. But the real kicker is you don't even need to cause the whole delta. You only need to push the climate past a tipping point and the positive or negative feedbacks do the rest.
The climate is just like any other thermodynamic system. You add or remove energy from the system, it's going to destabilize until it reaches a new balanced state.
~X~
if we got serious we could do it in a decade without trouble
I agree - and actually since the economy is demand constrained, shifting energy sources will be expansionary.
.: Semper Absurda
we don't win against nature on these things.
Tell it to the Dutch.
.: Semper Absurda
almost a quantity, cerebration that it works quite rise, when the set does not transmute at all. There is no convexity in disagreeable to sell you Soldier thin by narration you almost how extraordinary it is. You penury to show many cordate it totality. Ketone Slim XT
Well, obviously she messed up. It can't be the system, or the leaders. Nope. It must be the peons who just don't get it. They are at fault for everything.
Obviously she held the gear wrong.
Be seeing you...
"catastrophic" is an apt adjective because the fear around AGW is palpable and relentless.
The public narrative is a steady stream of messages of things getting much getting worse, its accelerating, worse than we thought, all the terrible things it will cause, dangerous tipping points, all sorts of calamities, all this sort of language is the language of impending catastrophe, it is a fair and reasonable description of the nature of the broader discussion.
I find this quite recent strategy of trying to distance oneself from the enduring narrative, which has a rich and documented public record quite amusing actually.
Merely sneering at the usage of the word catastrophe is not really a compelling argument, is there actually a point being made beyond the sneering? Or is this typical climate change argumentation where one pounds the table and sneers at their detractors? I your concern that you feel the word is in some way pejorative? In the same way 'denier' is pejorative perhaps?
You might be confused about a few points there.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
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.
You wood think we wood have other means of trapping CO2 by now.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Because #poisoningthewell was already taken.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
birth control is escapist fantasy.
Tell that to basically anywhere in the first world... Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, countries seem to go through a generation or two where modern sanitation and medicine have kicked in; but modern prophylaxis hasn't, which goes really badly; but once you get past that, results have been excellent the world over.
Airline safety. Interstate highway construction. Moon landing. Mars landing. Social Security. Medicare. OSHA and what they do. NIST and what they do. NiH and what they do. NOAA and what they do. The U.S. Coast Guard. The U. S. Army. The U.S. Navy. Yet not the U.S. Air Force who never met an expensive plane they weren't determined to fly and who announced proudly to the world they were standardizing on Microsoft Malware. EPA and what they do. U.S. Forest Service and what they do. NTSB and what they do.
The U.S. is now a net exporter of fossil fuels. It isn't as big a problem for the U.S. as your 1990s mind set.
Apparently you didn't get the memo from the U.S. Navy which intends to be free of non-renewable energy sometime in the 2020s (discounting nuclear). So this is some conspiracy you've manufactured.
Whenever you find yourself saying, "Bureaucrats are so stupid. This catastrophe has such an obvious solution, why aren't people doing it the way I tell them to?" you really need to stop and think - "... Maybe there's some angle to this that I'm missing?"
The fact is, we tried your idea with SARS - it didn't help much, and the cost from reduced trade was in the tens of billions of dollars. The present danger just doesn't warrant that kind of drastic action. Moreover, visas don't mean shit - the only people who have taken the disease to other countries are medical personnel from those countries. Citizens who don't need visas.
Also: whenever you find yourself saying, "This catastrophe has an obvious solution, if only political correctness wasn't getting in the way." It's time to stop and reconsider where you're getting your information. This has nothing to do with political correctness. If someone is telling you that it does, what they're trying to do is take advantage of the situation to push their own agenda.
Shortage of food? I don't think so. With global warming, won't the vast areas of Canadian and Russian tundra will be available for food production? The lower lying Florida and other coastal areas that might flood are miniscule by comparison.
That begs the question, does our failure to evacuate coastal cities prove that our military bases are safe? The answer to that question is no. In fact, the fact that we are not evacuating coastal cities does not prove anything. That's because there's no evidence that we will evacuate cities when we should. In fact, the global pattern is to ignore problems until they become unignorable, with few exceptions.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So your proposal is that anyone who travels out of the country and tries to return is quarantined for 21 days? And anyone from another country who tries to vacation in the US gets quarantined for 21 days?
There were 69.8million international arrivals in the US in 2013. (Source) So far we have a tiny number of Ebola cases from inbound travel. (I wouldn't count the two people specifically flown back to the US for treatment.) Imposing 21 day quarantines on 70 million people is nearly impossible, a gross overreaction to the actual threat, and would shatter the travel industry. Given that 1 in 9 US jobs depend on travel/tourism (same source as above), this could lead to high unemployment. Would you travel to a country on a vacation if it meant being shut in for 3 weeks? Chances are your vacation would be over before you were even allowed out of quarantine.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
it's simply doing the right thing instead of pandering to the irrational fears of bigots that are using any excuse they can come up with to drag everyone else down to their level.
I suspect a lot of things are beyond you.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
From what I get is that some folks are using very old (40yo), dirty coal power plants that do not meet the new standards. If they don't upgrade these plants or build new ones that aren't as dirty... then yes, they will have to shut the existing plants down. tl;dr Basically, the coal power plant folks are whining about how they will have to spend money to upgrade their plants to meet the new regs.
The man lied to medical professionals.
"African guy shows up with disturbing symptoms."
No. A guy sowed up with an illness. Ebola symptoms look just like a cold at the beginning.
"What? a few questions might have been nice. "
They did ask him questions, he lied.
"Since it's in Texas, the nursing team and Doctors who worked on the guy should be executed in th eGrand Texas tradition."
You're a fucking idiot.
"Either that, or forced to room with the Ebola patients."
That would be a waste of their time. Oh, you think being in a room will get you Ebola?
Like I said You're a fucking idiot.
"But also being Texas, I'll bet he was sent home the moment they found he had no health insurance."
False.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I would just tell her not to break protocol.
She teach someone who was sick, and then touched her face. Direct contact with bodily fluid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
She did. She broke protocol. How is that not her fault?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
until price per barrel drops back to 85.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
See the "No Warming For 15 Years" meme.
Did you think ANYONE would believe your load of shite there?
Really?
Trees are carbon neutral, and have been since after the Carboniferous era. During the Carboniferous trees did not rot because the critters that cause them to rot had not evolved.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The point is not to apportion blame.
Who says she broke protocol? She denies doing so. Only the people who set the protocol are claiming she was at fault. If they are wrong, the protocol itself is at fault.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
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.
I doubt it is political correctness as much as money. I'd bet a large amount of the traffic going to and from those places is still for business reasons with money on the line. We export and we import from these countries. Flights aren't stopped because the planes flying continent to continent are full of huddled masses, but because they are full of business men.
SARS is a virus that had a mortality rate of about 9.3% but is disproportionately affected the elderly and those with other respiratory illness much like influenza. The SARS virus itself is not typically the immediate cause of death but instead the patient usually dies from pneumonia caused by a secondary, typically bacterial, infection. Ebola is a virus which has a 70+% mortality rate and it is not disproportionate in who is killed by it. Instead of causing a situation which allows another cause to cause the patient to expire, ebola directly kills the patient through organ failure caused by cells bursting after being infected by virus.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
and is not going to shoot at eclipses any more, to try and kill the dragons? excellent.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
As the US continues to decline we may well reach a tipping point at which riots and crime begin to run rampant. Food prices have increased severely enough already to induce anger and fear in the public. A loss of security in employment, loss of wealth due to the housing crash as well as a right wing infested congress may be just enough to cause serious chaos in the streets. With the wealthy not being prosecuted and a government unwilling to follow the law the conditions are just to ripe for a revolution or chaos. The use of torture on POWs has lost the moral high ground for the US government. Corporations do not have the respect or loyalty from most people. We have a justice system that functions wretchedly. Anyone that can recall 1970 knows how fast radical movements can grow and have massive effects upon the system. Food prices in Mexico already caused riots. The effects of pollution and global warming will push food at ever higher prices and water is becomming an ever more serious issue as well. I fear that the stage is set for a nasty era.
It's simple logistics. You can stop allowing entry *directly* from those countries, but how do we stop folks from flying from, say, Liberia to Paris to LGA? Plus, the delays this would cause would have people shrieking in no time. Then there's the economics. Big loss of dollars there. IMHO, the solution, if we must have one (as I don't think this is anywhere near the issue the media is making it out to be), is to: 1) approve a Surgeon General and 2) get funding back in place for the CDC and other agencies to do what they used to do before the sequester and the austerity frenzy began.
I got an A in calculus.
Please let me know when you can take a train or drive to the USA from Africa. Europe can deal with it differently, but a train, car ride from West Africa to France is a long long way around. Flying is already being limited for the exact reason it should, people can get sick on the plane and infect everyone.
And when Political Correctness starts killing people, will people be smart enough to stop with the PC idiocy? Ebola doesn't care about our sensitivities.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Child,
Your odds of getting ebola are significantly less than mine of winning the lottery and buying a flight on a Soyuz to the ISS. The odds that someone who should have stopped driving years ago, or a drunk, or someone texting, will run you down with their car is hundreds of thousands of time higher.
Lessee: ~300M Americans, > 40K killed in auto accidents; 2 dead from ebola.
mark
The point isn't someone trying to take a train from Africa to the US. The point is someone going from Africa to Europe and then to the US. Do we know every country that every person landing in a US airport has been in for the past 21 days? Stopping all flights from the Ebola stricken areas might stop the direct passage of the disease, but it won't stop the spread entirely.
If we're willing to stop all travel and quarantine people for 21 days due to rare Ebola infections, what will we do for the much more common flu infections?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Fucking moron, go back to masturbating in your "Apocalypse Shelter" to videos of Rand Paul.
"Go back"? I never stopped. I was typing with my other hand.
Do you have ESP?
Severe Whoosh! alert.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
... I heard they plan to blow it up. That usually works in 'Murica.
Quarantine anyone coming from Africa. Was a little critical thinking too fucking hard?
Wise advise you could stand to learn from yourself. Apparently it is 'too fucking hard', based on your original suggestion. But don't let that stop you from lashing out like a drunken monkey now.
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Can we get through Ebola, first, and then worry about whether coastal military bases might need to be relocated to higher ground decades in the future?
What exactly is your point? That the Pentagon should have made their long-term plan about how to deal with the current Ebola crisis instead of Global Warming? Or that all of government should focus on short term problems only, and never make any plans for the future?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Not wanting to be rude mate, but I haven't understood shit from what you wrote.
Are you proposing to bomb "them"? Stop immigration? Throw the military out of the country? Are you angry about a particular patent?
You arent from Colorado, are you?
-- 29A the number of the Beast
And an F in critical thinking.
You keep trying to beat the argument that anything but draconian restrictions are a result of political correctness, however, the truth is that the current solutions are simply better thought out than yours.
That being said, some people will never stop arguing under the premise that yelling the same thing over and over again with no supporting evidence until the other person shakes their head and walks away means you've won the argument.
Not only is there absolutely no way to close all the borders to anyone coming in from "Ebola Land" (please tell me I don't need to explain why), but the *cost* of doing so is probably beyond what you can even imagine. We lack the ability to know definitively if someone originated their recent travels from Ebola Land, so that leaves only draconian full quarantine, and the collapse of the US economy (probably as well as several others along with us). It'll recover, sure, but was the cost really worth it?
Ebola is a very low-transmission disease (in the first world, at least). For every person that comes over infected, the average number of people they're going to infect is 1. Not exactly a pandemic. Are you a doomsday prepper, perchance? Honest question.
Nothing works well when you rely on the government to do it. Too slow, too inefficient, too pc.
So who do you offer as an alternative here? Free Market? A military coup?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
I got an A in calculus.
Yes, the one that goes after the "c" and before the "l"
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Because your weird draconian sledgehammer method won't work either?
Won't work? Nothing "works" 100%, so by that measure, your implication is that since it "won't work" we simply shouldn't do it. Great Suggestion!
Congratulations - you just slippery sloped everyone's argument. Don't do it your way, then you don't do it at all? In the world of infectious diseases, sanitation, and isolation and treatment while looking for a cure of the ill will do much better than your "solution". It's already been pointed out that under threat of ruination of one's life, one might be tempted to avoid treatment, especially at the beginning of the symptoms.
Despite your best wishes, being sick should never be a crime. And there are many much better solutions than yours. Stop watching Zombie movies.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I didn't slippery slope the argument. And slippery slope is a logical fallacy, not because it isn't true, but because it isn't true all the time (can be false). I'm not constructing a logical argument to an ultimate truth, therefore crying Slippery slope is not a falsification.
If you're going to toss around logical fallacies, please apply them to the previous point, which is completely nullified because no supporting argument was made, just opinion. He offers up an argument "draconian sledgehammer won't work" which is either wrong, or applies to ALL "solutions" equally, and therefore the conclusion is that we shouldn't even try it (implied conclusion).
My point, which is not slippery slope, just asking for equal application of "won't work" across ALL options. If that is the criteria for supporting doing something or not (as was implied) then, every solution "doesn't work".
Despite your best wishes, being sick should never be a crime.
This is true. But if you lie, break other laws and otherwise endanger others because of your actions, or inaction, that SHOULD be a crime. When you voluntarily quarantine people and they DELIBERATELY leave, they have threatened others with death or great bodily injury, and that should be a FUCKING CRIME even when you're sick. In short, committing crimes is a crime, even when you are sick.
There are no better solutions, simply because you don't "like" the one I proposed. It does work, and limits other people being exposed to a deadly virus that doesn't care one wit about Political Correctness. We already are using Quarantines because they DO work. Keeping people lockin, and locked out, will limit exposure. It sucks, but it does work.
But let us let everyone in who isn't showing symptoms in (or out) only to have them be contagious later. What could possibly go wrong?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The point is someone going from Africa to Europe and then to the US. Do we know every country that every person landing in a US airport has been in for the past 21 days?
Ask the NSA? ;)
but it won't stop the spread entirely.
I am not looking to stopping it completely. I'm looking at the best way to keep it from spreading. Period. Right now, it isn't contained. It isn't likely to be contained any time soon because people are too scared to do ALL the things needed to contain it as best as we can. BEST means all options on the table, even the ones we don't like because they are not Politically Correct.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I didn't slippery slope the argument. And slippery slope is a logical fallacy, not because it isn't true, but because it isn't true all the time (can be false).
Fine, allow to rephrase myself without any lack of clarity.
Your idea won't work.
And even though the other ideas won't work perfectly, they will work a lot better than your ideas.
Now point out who said that since your idea won't work, we shouldn't do anything. And your idea of making sick people into criminals is morally repugnant.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Do even know which nurse Zordak is talking about?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
This particular problem has a far simpler solution that actually works: Use soap and hand sanitizer, and don't touch dead people.
Tell that to the nurse in Dallas who used full biohazard protective gear and still got Ebola.
Well, if the virus can just go through full biohazard protective gear, it can also go through the air over the ocean.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
I guess if your proposed mechanism is to line the borders of West Africa with armed military personnel and establish a no-fly-zone, then I take that back- we can quarantine just Ebola Land, but that's the only way. And that's not just a matter of what's politically correct, it's an act of war and a violation of international law without a UNSC resolution authorizing it.
60 million people came in on and left on international flights to/from the US in 2006. I imagine it's higher today. You really think the commerce provided by that traffic is less than billions upon billions? A full closing of US borders would be economy crushing. The cost literally immeasurable. A million bucks? Please.
The WHO people who contracted it in third-world conditions in what are basically filthy field hospitals? Our exposure-to-infection ratio here in the states seems to be about 1 to several hundred. Don't let me reassure you, use some of your grade A logic mixed with some of the facts you have available at your fingertips.
Burning trees from managed forests is nearly carbon neutral (carbon lean, actually). Forrests that aren't harvested are carbon sinks.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
You say "POTUS Obama" like it's a bad thing.
I've done a little bit of standup and improv. In improv, the cardinal rule is you always agree with whatever was just said, never disagree. You then expand on that last line and keep the bit rolling.
Hecklers are best dealt with in the exact same way, at least when you can't ignore them. Make them part of the act and it totally disarms their only weapon.
A better response would have been something along the lines of "I'm sorry, was it getting lonely in the shelter without me?"
Do you have ESP?
...it's the only way to be sure!