Panetta Labels Climate Change a National Security Threat 397
skipkent writes "Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared global warming a national security threat [Wednesday] during a speech before an environmentalist group in Washington, D.C. 'The area of climate change has a dramatic impact on national security,' Panetta told the Environmental Defense Fund last night. 'Rising sea levels, severe droughts, the melting of the polar caps, the more frequent and devastating natural disasters all raise demand for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.'"
This is not new (Score:3, Informative)
He's saying what's been said many times before, e.g. this from 2009 about the Pentagons simulations:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html?pagewanted=all
"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."
"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. "
Possibility of GW known since the 1970s/SCEP (Score:2, Informative)
Warning, your videos have been rigged (Score:3, Informative)
There are all kinds of problems with the videos you presented. See here for a very clear step by step instructions and video showing what your videos are claiming to show, have results that have been fabricated:
Real CO2 in a bottle experiment [wattsupwiththat.com]
The problem is you and so many others not actually understanding the effects that CO2 really has, and only believing in a simplistic view of warming promoted by your cult leaders.
Re:Possibility of GW known since the 1970s/SCEP (Score:3, Informative)
Re:War On Climate (Score:5, Informative)
The EPA has [theind.com] a SWAT team. Plenty more examples come up if you search for "EPA SWAT team," too.
Re:War On Climate (Score:4, Informative)
The EPA will get it's own SWAT team.
Eh ,why not? The NOAA has one. In fact the EPA might already have one [wsj.com]. Guns and badges for everyone. Makes 'em feel all important and stuff
Re:AGW ? (Score:4, Informative)
Only in some conditions for some plants see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photorespiration
Higher temperatures above a certain point decrease efficiency, to differing levels for different plants, and can lead to death or decreased yields. This could well render California's wine industry economically unsustainable with only a few degrees change see http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/june/wines-global-warming-063011.html.
It is true that to sea level rises will be minor, more a problem for a few cities on coastal swampland and some protected habitats but this is not the damage that real scientists have been most worried about, at least for America. If you got your idea on climate scientists opinions from newspapers understand that the often twist the subject to use fear to sell the paper and are often too scientifically illiterate to know when they crossed the line form exaggerating into lies. This is a problem they also have with everything form climate yes and diet advice eg super foods and medicine eg cancer drugs and even computer science (have you read a computer security article in a normal newspaper recently?).
The real problems are smaller but still important like the desertification that is currently happening in places like Texas, Global warming increases average rainfall but also makes it more "patchy" and increases evaporation. Also how do you like hurricanes? Because increased surface temperature and sea level moisture directly drive stronger storms in the American "hurricane ally" http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/hurricanes-and-climate-change.html. How a bout a bit of malaria or Lyme disease ect, as increase temperatures will drive the movement of biting insects. Note that none of these are a global doom scenario but go tell a Texan farmer the drought was not important, even if they do not believe in global warming reality is not a matter of opinion and the pain it has caused them is very real.
Re:Warning, your videos have been rigged (Score:5, Informative)
Here's Bill Nye's response [billnye.com] to WattsUp's experiment, explaining why they failed to reproduce results that have been successfully reproduced over and over and over again [physicsforums.com] by other scientists, organizations, and amateurs.
What's sad is that the AGW skeptics give so much link-love to this bungled demonstration, that the other experiments get pushed down in the google results. AGW Skeptics are a lot like evolution-deniers in this regard, who also push anti-evolution nonsense to the top of all google results. It must be nice to have so much free time to promote this propaganda, while real science is so careful, nuanced, and time-consuming it gets lost in the politics.
You can't see things that aren't there. (Score:2, Informative)
Flooding in New York is most likely to come from a Tsunami caussed by that rock hanging by a thread in the Canary Islands.
The Alarmist In Chief recanted last week and said they were all exagerating, which was covered by, oh, wait, slashdot.
Maybe get him to read this:
http://politics.slashdot.org/story/12/04/25/1325241/gaia-scientist-admits-mispredicting-rate-of-climate-change [slashdot.org]
Re:No one sees... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:War On Climate (Score:5, Informative)
And back before the FBI was created, when federal law enforcement was almost exclusively contained within the Treasury department,* whether or not any federal agents should even be armed to begin with, was a controversial political issue.
Now of course the armed FBI (and the IRS, BATFE, ICE, DHS, and...) is accepted as perfectly normal. Shows how far down the drain this country has already gone, doesn't it?
_____
* Because the Federal Government doesn't actually have any constitutionally-granted "police power" to begin with. This power was meant to be retained by the States. Go ahead and try to find it in the enumerated powers clause of the Constitution (Art. I, sec. 8). All the Federal Government can enforce, constitutionally, is tax law. This is why, up until the 1940s, all Federal "law enforcement" was framed as a tax issue. The ATF is actually a tax-enforcement agency, and was part of the Treasury Department until it was moved to the DOJ in 2002 (Pub.L. 107-296, 116 Stat. 2135 (Nov. 25, 2002)). The first federal restrictions on firearms are actually just taxes (72nd Congress, Sess. 2, ch. 757, 48 Stat. 1236 (June 26, 1934)). The first federal marijuana law (Pub. 238, 75th Congress, 50 Stat. 551 (Aug. 2, 1937)) was just a requirement to purchase tax stamps. And so on.
I see... FUD (Score:5, Informative)
This issue has been investigated to death by the following organizations:
4.1 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee
4.2 Science Assessment Panel
4.3 Pennsylvania State University
4.4 Independent Climate Change Email Review
4.5 United States Environmental Protection Agency report
4.6 Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Commerce
4.7 National Science Foundation
No scientific wrong doing has ever been found. The quotes that the tinfoil heads have used to show that "Phil Jones admitted manipulating data" were taken out of context and completely misunderstood. So please go take your willfull ignorance and hang out with the young earth creationists and the flat earthers, and stop interfering with the rest of us while we try to save our asses and your sorry ass from this building world disaster.
Re:Possibility of GW known since the 1970s/SCEP (Score:4, Informative)
I have been hearing that Global warming will cause the seas to rise for 30 years. And yet the concrete piers in the gulf are still at the same level as they were 30 years ago.
This is the worst sort of nonsensical argument. You equate scientific predictions of sea level rise with a sea level rise that is so large that you would be able to observe and notice it with the naked eye by casual and randomly timed observations when you go to the beach. Did you take measurements? Did you account for tide level when you were there? Were you a kid with a totally different sense of scale 30 years ago?
No scientist ever predicted a rise so large over the last 30 years that casual observation would be able to observe it. The reality is that the predicted sea level rise has matched the reality quite closely. During the last thirty years that you referenced the three-year-average sea level has risen by about 5cm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Recent_Sea_Level_Rise.png [wikipedia.org]
The scientific predictions I am aware of predict that the rise will accelerate over the coming century. Some effects, especially big systemic effects lag behind the cause. For instance it takes time for rising CO2 to trap the amount of heat to increase average ocean temperature (which requires a gargantuan amount of energy that is really beyond most humans ability to grasp) then it takes more time for the warmer water to undermine the Antarctic and Greenland Glaciers, but if they do start to fall apart in a big way the Army Corps of Engineers will have to really scramble to keep Huston dry.
Re:War On Climate (Score:2, Informative)