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Today's Top News
Climate Change Seen as Threat to US Security
WASHINGTON — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.
Activists dressed up as aliens protest outside the Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB) in June 2009, where a high-level climate change conference was taking place. (AFP/File/Jay Directo) Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.
Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.
An exercise last December at the National Defense University, an educational institute that is overseen by the military, explored the potential impact of a destructive flood in Bangladesh that sent hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming into neighboring India, touching off religious conflict, the spread of contagious diseases and vast damage to infrastructure. “It gets real complicated real quickly,” said Amanda J. Dory, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, who is working with a Pentagon group assigned to incorporate climate change into national security strategy planning.
Much of the public and political debate on global warming has focused on finding substitutes for fossil fuels, reducing emissions that contribute to greenhouse gases and furthering negotiations toward an international climate treaty — not potential security challenges.
But a growing number of policy makers say that the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest.
If the United States does not lead the world in reducing fossil-fuel consumption and thus emissions of global warming gases, proponents of this view say, a series of global environmental, social, political and possibly military crises loom that the nation will urgently have to address.
This argument could prove a fulcrum for debate in the Senate next month when it takes up climate and energy legislation passed in June by the House.
Lawmakers leading the debate before Congress are only now beginning to make the national security argument for approving the legislation.
Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a leading advocate for the climate legislation, said he hoped to sway Senate skeptics by pressing that issue to pass a meaningful bill.
Mr. Kerry said he did not know whether he would succeed but had spoken with 30 undecided senators on the matter.
He did not identify those senators, but the list of undecided includes many from coal and manufacturing states and from the South and Southeast, which will face the sharpest energy price increases from any carbon emissions control program.
“I’ve been making this argument for a number of years,” Mr. Kerry said, “but it has not been a focus because a lot of people had not connected the dots.” He said he had urged President Obama to make the case, too.
Mr. Kerry said the continuing conflict in southern Sudan, which has killed and displaced tens of thousands of people, is a result of drought and expansion of deserts in the north. “That is going to be repeated many times over and on a much larger scale,” he said.
The Department of Defense’s assessment of the security issue came about after prodding by Congress to include climate issues in its strategic plans — specifically, in 2008 budget authorizations by Hillary Rodham Clinton and John W. Warner, then senators. The department’s climate modeling is based on sophisticated Navy and Air Force weather programs and other government climate research programs at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The Pentagon and the State Department have studied issues arising from dependence on foreign sources of energy for years but are only now considering the effects of global warming in their long-term planning documents. The Pentagon will include a climate section in the Quadrennial Defense Review, due in February; the State Department will address the issue in its new Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.
“The sense that climate change poses security and geopolitical challenges is central to the thinking of the State Department and the climate office,” said Peter Ogden, chief of staff to Todd Stern, the State Department’s top climate negotiator.
Although military and intelligence planners have been aware of the challenge posed by climate changes for some years, the Obama administration has made it a central policy focus.
A changing climate presents a range of challenges for the military. Many of its critical installations are vulnerable to rising seas and storm surges. In Florida, Homestead Air Force Base was essentially destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Hurricane Ivan badly damaged Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2004. Military planners are studying ways to protect the major naval stations in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego from climate-induced rising seas and severe storms.
Another vulnerable installation is Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that serves as a logistics hub for American and British forces in the Middle East and sits a few feet above sea level.
Arctic melting also presents new problems for the military. The shrinking of the ice cap, which is proceeding faster than anticipated only a few years ago, opens a shipping channel that must be defended and undersea resources that are already the focus of international competition.
Ms. Dory, who has held senior Pentagon posts since the Clinton administration, said she had seen a “sea change” in the military’s thinking about climate change in the past year. “These issues now have to be included and wrestled with” in drafting national security strategy, she said.
The National Intelligence Council, which produces government-wide intelligence analyses, finished the first assessment of the national security implications of climate change just last year.
It concluded that climate change by itself would have significant geopolitical impacts around the world and would contribute to a host of problems, including poverty, environmental degradation and the weakening of national governments.
The assessment warned that the storms, droughts and food shortages that might result from a warming planet in coming decades would create numerous relief emergencies.
“The demands of these potential humanitarian responses may significantly tax U.S. military transportation and support force structures, resulting in a strained readiness posture and decreased strategic depth for combat operations,” the report said.
The intelligence community is preparing a series of reports on the impacts of climate change on individual countries like China and India, a study of alternative fuels and a look at how major power relations could be strained by a changing climate.
“We will pay for this one way or another,” Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired Marine and the former head of the Central Command, wrote recently in a report he prepared as a member of a military advisory board on energy and climate at CNA, a private group that does research for the Navy. “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we’ll have to take an economic hit of some kind.
“Or we will pay the price later in military terms,” he warned. “And that will involve human lives.”
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55 Comments so far
Show All"The demands of these potential humanitarian responses may significantly tax U.S. military transportation and support force structures, resulting in a strained readiness posture and decreased strategic depth for combat operations,” the report said."
I'm not sure whether to laugh, cry, or gag.
They are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it lists on its end prior to sinking.
Poet
Gosh,
Just a few months ago the Repuke NeoCon position of the turds in the government was that: "Climate change is normal, and we are just in a cycle. Don't worry, be happy." And DHS said that the biggest threat was "environmental terrorists" like Greenpeace and Earth Liberation Front.
Now the Think Tank morons admit that Global Warming is Real, and only look at it in terms of a military response. It should becoming clear to us now that the biggest threat to all of us is actually Conservative Think Tanks that form disastrous political machine policy. NeoCons don't do anything for a love of country or people, but only for a love of person gain at the expense of everybody and everything else.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
the biggest threat to us and future generations is our way of life - modern Western Industrial civilization. The neocons are dangerous, but so are the liberals who keep pretending (or hoping) that we can continue on with this unsustainable system by just tweaking things here or there.
Read "Endgame" by Derrick Jenson. He explains it all much better than I could in this short little post of mine.
Military intervention. Where have I heard that before?
I'm sure glad I didn't have children. What kind of world would they inherit? And do we need more consumers adding to the huge strain of our already overloaded ecosystem?
We humans need to cut our numbers way back. And more than that, we need to cut our consuption of natural resources way back. We need to learn how to give back to Mother Earth. We're always taking, giving nothing back but garbage.
We need to change, and learn to live in harmony once again. It's not impossible. We lived sustainably for approximately 199,950 years. It's only in the last 50 years that we started to tip the scale out of balance.
So we can do it. It's nothing new. Only 2 or 3 generations ago we were living in balance. We just have to remember, and relearn what we already know. We don't really need all this stuff and all this traveling with a motor under our butts.
We just need to mellow out and plant little home gardens and play music and sing songs, and appreciate the beauty and wonder of our earthly home.
right now climate change is posing a 'real' threat to china and japan who have just suffered a major typhoon and earthquake....................
"the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought . . . "
what?
declare war on Mama Nature?
Don't joke. This is what the US needs to do, and now. Retool the MIC away from killing innocents and "protecting" American interests abroad. Out with the GWOT, in with the war on climate change.
What needs retooling first, friend, is the laughably silly notion that a "war" is the answer to any problem.
(Last time I looked, poverty was still winning the war declared on it back in the 60's. Same with drugs.)
What is this obsession with "war", and HTF do you apply it to climate?
Man is no match for Mama Nature's storm troops or her underground.
First lets acknowledge that China uses more Coal than the US, Japan and Europe put together and get past the notion that we can do anything unilaterally about Climate Change if man made proves to be true.
Secondly all you Oregon Report deniers are going to have to come to grips with the real problem in our enviornment and realize that population is by far the only effect we can really have on the enviornment.
Henry -- It's a bit off the subject which is climate change (man made or not) and the military "strategic response", but I searched for "Oregon Report" and all I could find were various reports detailing how Oregon should cope with the effects of climate change.
Are you speaking of the old "Oregon Petition" that is recycled periodically by those who can't face the fact of what humans have done to the earth?
This one? : http://debunking.pbworks.com/Oregon-Petition
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/what-if-the-oregon-petition-names -were-real/
Much of that Chinese coal provides energy to produce goods with American brands and sold in American stores. So we have simply outsourced our CO2 emissions and pollution. China may actually be ahead of the US in deploying renewable and nuclear energy.
genicon
I don't know why it took them this long to bring it up. The Pentagons report on global warming came out in 2004.
Maybe we were too busy blowing things up and destoying Iraq to worry about it.
You got it. It didn't fit with the Cheney/neocon paradigm of oil security and US/Israeli hegemony. The neocons muzzled NASA, NOAA and EPA, too.
This climate change/global warming lie has gone too far and I'm gonna help bust this thing open. First of all Obama and Al gore are profiting heavily from this scam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhtNa7lHWO8 so it behooves them to push it as far as they can. Al Gore is being sued by the founder of the weather channel and 30,000 scientists for this lie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHW7KR33IQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3njsgrCuCc but they tell you there's a consensus! Al Gore's light bill was $30,000 at the time when he brought out his documentary. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/Story?id=2906888 furthermore I live in Alaska and last summer was the coldest since 1980 http://www.adn.com/news/environment/story/518517.html so to hear that the polar bears are dying of thirst and to hear about our ice caps flooding while we were buried in snow was ridiculous. This lie could only be perpetuated in a dumbed down society completely out of touch with their surroundings. And NO the sun is not causing the warming because there is NO WARMING there have always been climate changes but we used to call them seasons. Also the reason why it's always getting warmer in big cities is because of the blacktop and because they keep getting bigger with more blacktop which conducts heat! This is the big inside joke! NASA reports on this now mysterious phenomenon! http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=22694 if you still have a working brain and are concerned about where this country is heading then join us at http://thcforum.ning.com/
If you live in Alaska, maybe you have heard of Barrow, where for the past 20 years, every summer has been warmer than the previous. The permafrost now thaws every year and they are plagued with mosquitoes, something not seen in this region in many 10s of thousands of years.
And maybe you did not read this weeks admonishment by USGS that by their benchmark glacial studies in AK and WA, the agency now admits that there is global warming.
But we can't let a little science get in the way of your flat-earth agenda.
global warming - from the outside or inside?
Well, isn't it just like the Pentagon and the New York Times to be thirty or so years behind the science? Yes, there was a cold winter in some places; however, the overall temperature of the earth's atmosphere has risen nonetheless.
The specific content of this report by NYT is five years old, anyway. Knight Ridder published the leaked document out of the Pentagon describing the very contents of this article, posted on CD in 2004: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0224-01.htm
Zinni, no chicken hawk - wounded in Vietnam, is a perfect example of an officer or professional in the US government with better education and experience than the two chickenhawks then presiding in the white house. He knew Iraq and so much else was BS, but was forced by duty to do their bidding.
The military officer corps and the MIC probably contain the largest team of scientists and engineers on the planet. Very few will be be AGW deniers as they are able to do the math and understand he evidence. Time for a mission change. Turn them loose on clean energy, infrastructure, protecting the oceans, and climate change.
bbr-001 sez:
"... with better education and experience than the two chickenhawks then presiding in the white house."
****************
Didn't you mean "chickenshits"?
Poet
If conservatives have their way, we'll pay with human lives.
Now that Diego Garcia is threatened, it's time to worry about global warming.
I wish I had thought of that!
Sadly what this article seems to be saying is that global warming may be a threat to the continued operation of the Pentagon in the manner to which they have grown accustomed. What might happen if that title were literally true--if global warming were perceived as a threat to national security?
Might we see headlines like "Military Tells Coal and Petroleum Industries--Cease Operations or We Will Do It For You". How about "CIA Seriously Studying the Prospect of Regime Change in the Management of Polluting Industries"? Or (my personal favorite) "Obama Declares War on Polluting Profiteers"?
But who are we kidding? Since the military and intel establishments are an extension of the multi-national business community (as are almost all elected officials) we will never see them bite the hand that so abley feeds them.
Poet
It is time to look forward at solutions, however when is the time to hold people responsible? The so-called "leaders" of the US, both in government and in the corporations that control the government, should be held responsible for refusing to deal with climate change for DECADES! Bush, Clinton, Bush etc...and the filthy rich CEOs and their highly paid executroid minions, who have been making money while knowingly willfully polluting. What happens to them?
Welcome to the world as created by the industrial-military complex. In the words of GW Bush, "You boys did a heck-of-a-job."
To all the climate collapse deniers:
First off, the money-makers will be making money whether we keep the status quo or not. They'll get rich off oil, solar, weapons, and everything in between.
Secondly, which would you rather be wrong about? That climate collapse is real, or the opposite? That does not even seem like a choice to me.
And, even if everything is hunky-dory, there is no shame in re-tooling towards cleaner, less invasive (pun intended) ways of energy collection and use. You may not believe in climate collapse, or that we have anything to do with it, but how do you feel about pollution, radiation poisoning, and chemical soup in every cell of our bodies? Harder to argue against, aren't they?
The only people who need be affected economically by a wide-scale move to clean energy are the owners, and if done right, that could even be minimized. (Not that they deserve it, neccesarily, but so they'll quit squawking and get the hell out of the way.)
US elites welcome global warming with open arms for its potential to increase the scarcity and value of the prized Security jewel in the elites' bag-o-excuses to militarize and otherwise enslave/oppress the people.
Global warming, as a product of US elites' mindless, heartless, soulless destructivity, may be news today, but at the same time US elites' perverted reaction to global warming is entirely predictable as their evil is truly ancient and easily understood by the people, who are generally far more intelligent, ethical and grounded than elites.
The evil side of human nature is within us all, only we in the USA lack a cultural tradition to sledgehammer the evil when it attempts to emerge through our public institutions. The best thing for individuals to do is shift our exchange/association away from all power centers and toward our local communities where it belongs. To be "part of something bigger" is to be oppressed/enslaved. To be "part of something smaller" is to be emancipated/empowered.
Your last paragraph describes the most effective way to prepare for climate change.
Wisdom!
I'd like to think they get the picture and intend to save of human progress what can be saved from the climate change scenario we face.
BUT, more than likely, they are maneuvering to preserve what can be saved of elite-ruled empire, or, they are re-positioning themselves in front of whatever money that's about to be thrown at climate change, or, some corporations are beginning to see that war gets in the way of global commerce killing the goose that lays the golden eggs and they need a new horse to ride (pls excuse the mixed metaphor). MIC is sweating that there are no more enemies who will fight us in the manner for which we are prepared.
But we are at the top of a climate cycle, and Mother Nature is going to hit us hard and repeatedly as the reversal plays out, leaving us, assuming we just tinker with the status quo, with no time or resources to fight it or profit from it. It will be, indeed is, a survival situation.
What are We waiting for?
Now is the time to install a missile shield around the US. Get those new nukes ready and increase the number strength of The Troops™, triple the size of the police force, BECAUSE Our National Security is under threat!
Maybe We just need to blow up some nukes in the atmosphere to prevent Global Climate Change? Better yet, kill off all human Beings. That way nobody will get hurt by Nature.
The best news in about a million years is that the most idiotic institution on the planet, the Pentagrom becomes as useful as athlete's foot or cold sore.
Hopefully the ensuing climate change will take out all those responsible for it in the first place, either through complacency, or active perpetration. That will be a feast to see all those uniform bearers die out.
I created a bumper sticker that reads: Imagine Useless Weapons. How prophetic is that? All those military retards and their supporters shall receive Mother Nature's reaction to their blasphemy of polluting the planet for the mere idiotically perceived threat of anybody invading the Homeland.
The future is 'Homeland - No Security' and I will celebrate the incoming messages of eliminated armed forces all over the planet. Speaking about dancing on a grave! It will be a celebration to witness the removal of cerebral incompetence.
Some 'bad' news are actually great news! Down with militarism! Down with imperialism! The next mushroom shape objects will be the shrooms that will grow out of the heads of the militarists, their enablers and supporters.
Only the remembrance of what my mom told me since I remember, "BE NICE!" keeps me from expressing what I really think about those deluded fascists called 'armed forces'. No matter where they reside on the surface of this formerly so beautiful planet.
'Go to Hell' has become the answer to the question were the military should be heading. I would rather die than to serve a fascist agenda.
"Well, Billy, it's really simple. See, those pinko, single-payer, socialist, tree-huggin', evolution-pluggin' faggot climate-changers hate us for our freedoms. They're tellin' everybody that we got this here 'climate problem', hopin' we'll be distracted so they can do their homo thing all over this great land of ours an' get the gubmint to pay fer everyone's medical whatsits. Yeah well I'll blow their goddamn fairy heads off before I'll give up one goddamn ounce of my American lard-assed ignorance on this one. The Pentagon'll straighten out that climate thing. Just you wait. Yer messin' with real Jesus-fearin', Jesus-lovin' men when yer messin' with America. We never planted no flag on Iwo Jima just so some faggot climate could take away OUR democracy, no sirree. We got goddamn God on our side, you betcha. We'll bomb that goddamn commie climate back to wherever the hell it came from. Now shovel me up another helpin' a' that chicken fried steak an' turn on Bill O'Reilly, willya?"
Jeevee
TARrorest language is a waste of reading time: We become what we think about.
Father Greene,
Praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster (the Lord) and pass the ammunition! It's good, goddam, god-fearing religious zealots like you and me who can save us all from eternal damnation and dangerous city-folk thinking. Why read up on a subject, when you can just tune in Rush the Druggie on AM radio and start holy wars all over the world?
It's those dern Liberals again! They believe in Liberty for Christ's Sake. Have you ever heard of anything so useless as a man who stands up for citizens or for the downtrodden? Not with my taxdollars, nosirie! My tax dollars are for Banker Bailouts and Wars for Oil Company profit. And I like this police state. But those Dern commies wanna have free speech on their internets.....
Those dern Libs wants to socialize everything (including health care; sorta like the Bushmonkey socialized Banking and poperty ownership his last few months in offfice..... well, never mind. I wouldn't admit votiin' fer him anyway, cuz I gotts ta always votes for the winner you see...)
Cuz I'm a redneck, redstate Republican winner... that's what I is.
Sarah the Oil Whore for 2012!
Hell yeah, TJ!
We assume intellectual positions of utter despair or total political cynicism when contemplating "the end of the world as we have known it," because we don't want to take responsibility for our lives on this planet. We either just don't get it, or pretend that we don't get it, because we're afraid of the consequences of doing the only thing--that we all realize on some level--will work: that is, to ACT, to MAKE our leaders do the right thing, even in the face of all the forces arrayed to defend the status quo. We sit on our collective butt and flap our lips, wondering out loud why our leaders don't do what we have not dared to directly DEMAND of them. We sit on our haunches at our master's side and lick his hand, no matter how cruelly he mistreats us.
Tom Blees, in his terrific book "Prescription for the Planet," lays out a concrete plan to achieve zero emissions of greenhouse gasses by 2050 using currently available technology. And the kicker is, the cost to implement his program won't be horrific, and we will enjoy cheap, abundant energy to power our electrical grids and transportation networks indefinitely. Painlessly.
But... (the big "but") we're going to have to get together and insist on it, or it simply won't happen. As Frederick Douglass put it, "Power never yielded anything without a demand." If we don't demand a liveable--even utopian--future along the lines of what Mr. Blees describes, we will end up living in a future militarized dystopia as described in this article. One that is extremely profitable and pleasurable for a certain select few, but a groaning, miserable hell-on-earth for the many.
Your choice.
The National Security State won't have to rely on the invented or wildly exaggerated threats like Communism, Socialism or the GWOT (Global War on Terrorism) - which is losing its bogyman cache anyway. They will have a real threat, which is even better with the myriad manifestations of global warming. Hooray!
THERE IS NO scientifically valid mechanism or CORRELATION BETWEEN CO2 LEVELS AND EARTH’S TEMPERATURE.
A new class of profiteer has emerged, either in it for pure profit (and a whole ‘industry’ is emerging) or for political benefit. Hundreds of climate scientists have twisted their results to support the 'climate change theory' in order to protect their research funding or their standing amongst the 'mainstream' peers. All the main players –from politicians and scientists to big corporations and the United Nations– benefit from instilling fear into billions of human beings over the unproven theory of man-made global warming.
The new system, where a huge, very diversified group tries to make a profit from ‘producers’ is called CARBON TRADING. At last, the banksters, bullshititians and cronies have found another very comfy commodity to exploit and freeload from and keep the rest of the population in struggling occupation: CARBON DEBT. NOT Carbon CREDITS will be traded, but Carbon DEBITS.
Remember that the core of our morose system is DEBT itself (see the first half of Zeitgeist Addendum http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912 ). Carbon Credits are Debt For The Masses.
The scams get more and more elaborate, the truth gets more and more fragmented and skewed.
Climate Change is happening, but don’t believe all the political and corporate media hype. Causalities and climate science with integrity point away from CO emissions as the cause of Climate. Population growth, pollution, war, water depletion, deforestation, agricultural soil destruction and destruction of ecological systems will make human future hell.
However, CARBON EMISSIONS BEAR NO CAUSALITY to Climate Change. Carbon ‘Credit’ Trading will do nothing to better the planet but will be a feast for systemic parasites like banksters, politicians, corporates and polluters. It’s the Scam Of The Century.
For reference: http://nov55.com/gbwg.html or http://mises.org/story/2795 or view the "List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming” on Wikipaedia.
Our economic system is based on infinite growth yet reliant on a planet with finite resources.
Our decision-making is based on finite wisdom yet exploited by infinite profiteering
Ignorance is correctable, stupidity is not.
But SISS is correctible. That's pSychologically-Induced Stupidity Syndrome, a phenomonon whereby people are prevented by neuroses, psychoses and characterological dead ends from seeing what is clear to the uninfected.
Hi Yachtie,
Am I to understand you are a climate denier? I agree with you that Carbon trading is looking like it's going to be another wall street scam, but surely a guy with a name like Yachtie knows that the mythical Northwest passageway from Europe to Asia through the middle of Canada is now WIDE OPEN. It's not just open for icebreakers like in the 40's (which took six months since they got frozen in) IT'S NOW OPEN FOR SUPERTANKERS. Ice shelves the size of STATES are breaking off in Antarctica and the temps are soaring in Alaska. Barrow and many Alaskan towns are sinking.
I used to have a nice 45 foot motor yacht and loved nothing better than to fire up the twin diesels and go cruising at one mile to the gallon. Then seven hurricanes in one year made me realize the water temp in Florida was approaching 90 degrees most of the summer. My engines wouldn't cool the damn water was so hot. And as you know, hot water fuels huge storms like the one that took out Air France and caused Continental to lose control this week.
I think your theory about a scientific conspiracy to fake the data is absurd, if I understand your post.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Whatever, Dude.
But reading your references, I note the following from Wikipedia:
"Since 2007, no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion. A few organizations hold non-committal positions.". - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
Time to quit moaning and get off the pot.
Here’s the short answer, yachtie:
The overwhelming majority of scientists in most related fields agree: human-caused climate change is real, happening and dangerous. Lies spread by Exxon and other companies whose profits have depended on causing climate chaos, as well as people who don’t like the political implications, have taken on a life of their own among science-ignorant people. The lies persist despite being proven untrue over and over. Go to
www.greenfyre.wordpress.com/denier-vs-skeptic/denier-myths-debunked/climate-denial-crock-of-the-week/
If you’re lying, stop. You’re endangering humanity and millions of other species. If you’re just plain convinced, please do some reading on the other side before spreading more denialist lies you will come to regret. If you’re affected by mental illness please seek treatment.
And here's the long answer:
"A lie gets halfway around the world before truth has a chance to put its pants on." Winston Churchill.
Here's a question for you, yachtie: lying, stupid or crazy? Are you an oil or coal company shill, are you profoundly ignorant about science or do you have some diagnosable emotional illness that prevents you from perceiving reality?
Even if "hundreds of climate scientists" had altered results--a ridiculous claim with absolutely no basis in truth--it would still mean nothing because THOUSANDS of scientists and tens of thousands of graduate students have taken part all over the world in studies in dozens of fields as diverse as climate, geology, entomology, palynology, botany, chemistry, physics and others, all adding up to overwhelming evidence that human-caused climate change is real, happening now, and will cause catastrophic changes that may doom civilization if nothing is done. The idea that there's an international conspiracy that big is as absurd as believing that Santa Claus and his space-alien flying reindeer killed Kennedy by flying a commercial jetliner into his car. (which is not true, by the way, just in case you were wondering.)
The data for warming is clear, as most of the scientists on your Wikipedia (not 'paedia') list agree. No credible alternative explanation for it has been proposed and survived even cursory review. The many web-based arguments are either pre-debunked nonsense the truth just can't catch up to with one pants leg on, (in other words the media reports equally that 2+2=4 and 2+2=37.893--when they mention that 4 part at all.) or are just plain lies. See
www.greenfyre.wordpress.com/denier-vs-skeptic/denier-myths-debunked/climate-denial-crock-of-the-week/ .
Some of them just disagree with small parts of the IPCC report; some of them think the IPCC projections are off (in fact they ARE off; the overwhelming majority of recent studies indicate climate change is happening much faster, much higher and going to get much worse much sooner than the IPCC said.) Some of them are operating far outside their field; some are paid by oil and coal and other climate-denying companies or industry organizations; some are thinking warming is going to be good; some are counting on technological change to magically save us without effort. in fact, most of the changes they count on are unlikely, and even if they happen we have to make stopping ACC a priority or they won’t help.
Whoa...easy tiger(s) with comments below.
I knew I would stir up controversy.
I am not a climate change denier, not a petro shill, not mentally compromised or all the other attributes narrow minded and ideological infused comments want to suggest.
I do acknowledge (if you read my comment fully) the destruction and impact of climate changing parameters of modern civilization and, as GeniusMonkey points out, even if everything is hunky-dory, there is no shame in re-tooling towards cleaner, less invasive(pun intended) ways of energy collection and use. I do believe in climate change, feel strong about pollution, radiation poisoning, and chemical soup in every cell of our bodies.
But there still is substantial controversy about CO2 correlation to Earth's warming. You have to distinguish between meme and verifiable facts. Even if it is inconvenient. And I will vow to do the same.
I'm not impressed by anger and name calling, it does not help the discussion. But I appreciate and take note of the references you provided. After all, that is what discussion is about.
Still, all this does not alleviate the looming scam of Carbon Trading. I wish the main part of my comment would have received the scrutiny of the CO2 debate. But then again, we all know how tax scams work (see comments of http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/03-6#comment-1270381 and it's harder to debate tax.
My concern is that vetted interests, often from opposite ideologies and convictions, will exploit this and that a vast array of environmental problems are believed to be solved by this debt creation as an uncomfortable means to maintain the squandering of the planet and theft on generations. Business as usual.
I admit that I do not have an alternative suggestion in means of intervention by governance apart from proper environmental laws. My hope is -and maybe I am too much of an optimist here- that the looming economical collapse and collective awareness of the underlying issues will change consumerism, one of the core problems of the ecological mire we are in.
In regard to my name and further conjecture: I have a little old sail boat without fossil fuel power.
yachtie,
I did read your comment fully and I do distinguish between fact and lie. Do you?
Climate denialism is an evolving technique, a diabolically clever, shifting defense-in-depth. (Even so it is so untenable it would soon be history if not for the overwhelming amount of money and media behind it. And lobbying, aka legalized bribery.) Even the Cheney-Rove administration was finally forced to admit it's happening; they just fell back to the 2nd line of trenches, which is that it's happening but we're not doing it. That has the advantage of being not quite as absurd a position. Still absurd, just not quite as. Let me be clear: There is NOT substantial controversy about the link between CO2 and climate change. There is in fact virtually no real controversy except that manufactured in corporate media for science-ignorant people.
The evidence is overwhelming that human-spewed CO2, methane, water vapor and other greenhouse gases are causing climate change and will cause catastrophic desertification, sea-level rise, storms, warming and other changes unless we dramatically change our lives very soon and both reduce emissions and sequester atmospheric carbon. The best ways are: conservation, solar, wind, and increasing organic matter in soil. Other changes can also help; see climateprogress.org and look up "wedges".
I'm glad you see the wisdom of Pascal's Wager in this: what we lose if climate change isn't real but we act as if it is, is nothing--NOTHING--compared to what we lose if climate change is real and we act as if it isn't.
And I do agree with you about carbon trading probably being a scam that is unlikely to do enough to save civilization. Waxman-Markey is tragically, apocalyptically weak and should be tossed out so we can start over and do it right. Carbon tax, or simply mandated reductions, including agriculture, for example. Politically unlikely, to understate the case, but just wait. Look for thousands dead in heat waves and hundreds more in floods the same year we start seeing 4 or 5 Katrinas every year.
Might I suggest: one way to see your hope come true is to stop either lying or being fooled (I don't know you and don't know which is true for you) by corporate-conservative propaganda, and spreading their lies. Delaying our transition to an ecological society by such lies will only lead to inefficient crash programs, panic and militant nationalism, racial and ethnic scapegoating, and global chaos and war--and once that happens, there are no limits to the waste of energy, production of gases, destruction of land and cities and practical solutions. Might I also suggest permaculturing, joining the Transition Town movement, getting into therapy and looking into Joanna Macy's The Work That Reconnects to deal with despair and depression that all this causes.
Jeevee
Let's settle for TRUTH, not propaganda. Have you seen the book
"Virus of the Mind"?
John M. Broder sez:
" experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies ... for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change."
This statement is false, for, in October 2003, Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall produced the report "An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for United States National Security."
The last sentence of the report sums up the future awaiting us: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life."