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.'"
No one sees... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:War On Climate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:AGW ? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse [wikipedia.org]
Now go ahead and slaughter me for not posting this AC. I can spare the karma for people who disagree. Feel free to ignore that the science is really split on how the global feedback mechanism actually works. Feel free to ignore that the oceans have not risen and buried Houston, like they said they would for years...
Re:War On Climate (Score:5, Insightful)
What does this translate into, in real terms? You know, contracts for Halliburton, Bechtel and the gang?
Waiting for the hypocrisy to start (Score:3, Insightful)
When anyone who isn't a climate change "expert" voices skepticism on climate change, all the believers pile on, outraged, about how the person isn't qualified to be making such statements, how they're abusing their position/authority to sound like they know what they're talking about, &c.. (Remember Bjorn Lomburg?) So I'm sure we'll see the global-warmers express similar outrage about this, right?
And... "national security threat"? This is the same government agency that thinks that bearded malcontents hiding out in desert caves is a "national security threat." This is the same agency that spent decades fighting the "national security threat" posed by tiny little countries like Vietnam and Cuba going communist. I seem to remember an awful lot of progressives dismissing the lunacy of the War on Terror and the Cold War. So I'm sure they'll dismiss and mock this latest attempt by the U.S. military to imagine or invent new threats, right?
Right?
Re:AGW ? (Score:1, Insightful)
...the oceans have not risen and buried Houston...
Yeah, that's too bad...
Re:War On Climate (Score:1, Insightful)
A new study has shown that there is a direct link between between the number of professional left politicians and the rate of change of global warming.
this is explained by the massive amounts of CO2 and methane they exhail.
Re:War On Climate (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The EPA will get it's own SWAT team.
2. Green subsidies will be moved to the defense budget.
Talk about human nature! Gullibility. (Score:3, Insightful)
And that is human nature, and precisely why nothing ever gets done before it's too fucking late to make any difference whatsoever.
And THAT is human nature. The ability to believe dire warnings that benefit someone else without any proof whatsoever.
Man in inherently gullible, as you so aptly demonstrate. Those few simply asking for some small bit of proof are so often shouted down by the panicky mob insisting something "must be done" "for the children".
On the other hand the willing suspension of disbelief that is part of human nature makes it easier to enjoy movies so we have that going for us.
War On Climate Change (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the "War On Climate Change" ... get it right.
The only "obvious" solution is a complete government take over of all things that produce CO2 ... in other words ... socialism. People, Factories, Vehicles, ect ... all property of the state and may only be used if they give the ok, but not before they make you feel horrible about it.
Who cares that the US Debt:GDP has surpassed 1:1 and that true unemployment is well over 16% ... let’s focus on the climate and stop worrying about that whole economy thing.
Re:No one sees... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, damn it. False equivalency. One side lies about it for political gain, the other is desperately trying to get the public to understand that it is a scientifically accepted truth that must be dealt with.
Tell me, in what way would flooding in NYC and global famine not affect our security?
Deus (Chevy) Volt!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Be Very Afraid: The Church of The Climate is getting it's own Armed Inquisitition.
Life Imitates Super Bowl Ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml54UuAoLSo [youtube.com]
Re:No one sees... (Score:5, Insightful)
"That group of politicians are self-serving liars, but this group is benevolent and trying to help everyone!"
I knew there were still people like you out there, but I thought we'd pretty much fixed this kind of ignorance on Slashdot. I guess we've got some more work to do.
Here's a hint: neither side gives a shit about you. You're not even a pawn in their little game. At best, you're the chair they rest their fat, sweaty ass on while they play the game and get rich and powerful. That you believe you're on the same side or working towards similar goals is, quite frankly, pathetic.
If you want to see politicians who aren't stepping on every man, woman, and child to get a little higher up, look for the ones who've been marginalized as fanatical zealots and kooks. After all, in the game of politics, anyone who isn't crushing everyone else to get more money, power, and glory must be a lunatic.
Re:No one sees... (Score:2, Insightful)
Which side is the one lying about it for political gain? The side that's trying to: Create all sorts of new taxes, laws, and regulations; expand their bureaucracies, create entirely new ones, and massively expand their budgets; hire swarms of new bureaucrats and "experts," who will come up with even more and more reasons for more taxes, regulations, and bureaucrats? You did mean that side of the debate, right? :)
Re:No one sees... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes Yes because no one really checked
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/03/climate_change
!!!
and the initial reluctance to release the raw data had noting to do with the huge effort it took to get permission form all the thousands of individuals and governments who produced it
www.newscientist.com/article/dn20739-ok-climate-sceptics-heres-the-raw-data-you-wanted.html
and no one ever went back and re collected it for public release either!!!
and the freedom of information requests where all completely innocent too!!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/25/freedom-information-laws-harass-scientists
Re:War On Climate (Score:5, Insightful)
What do environmental groups need with fucking GUNS and private cops?!?!
I wonder if there's any way to petition our elected officials, to pass legislation banning agencies from having their own police force and weaponry...? I mean, as far as gun play and all, I'd trust the FBI or Secret Service over these other home brewed forces. IF the EPA needs protection going on a raid...they should maybe have to coordinate with the FBI...keep it simple and separate.
I don't like the idea of these unelected departments making and enforcing all these rules...but at least lets start and be reasonable and take the 'teeth' out of them a little by mandating they can't have their own weaponized goon squads....
Re:No one sees... (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying shit like that is the equivalent of saying that if we don't have mandatory internet ID and censorship, that pedophiles and terrorists are inevitably going to break into our homes in the middle of the night and rape our daughters, and take control of the nuclear power plants and run them up to 1000% causing Chernobylfukushimas at every generating station, respectively.
Both are hyperbole, and do nothing to get logical folks considering your point of view. Try being rational and practical instead of religious and fanatical for a change, and I bet you'll find people are a bit more receptive to your ideas.
Re:No one sees... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which side is the one lying about it for political gain?
The side that is LYING!! Truth is REAL. I know that it's trendy to deny it these days, but there are such things as objective facts. All of the science proves that global warming is a fact. You don't like it? Too fucking bad, go cry me a river. Your opinions hold absolutely no sway over fact. You can disbelieve climate change, you can disbelieve evolution, you can disbelieve the moon landing, you can disbelieve that passenger jets brought down the Twin Towers, you can disbelieve gravity. But none of that fucking matters. Because truth is true whether you believe it or not.
And tell me, how is there "political gain" for the Democrats in raising taxes and creating regulations? How does it help them? Cause from where I stand, they'd be able to win a lot more power if, like the Republicans, they simply denied objective fact and promised tax cuts for everyone. They don't do that. Instead they accept the truth and try to deal with it.
Fuck you for waging this war on objective truth. We cannot survive without science, and we cannot have science without objective truth.
Re:No one sees... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Possibility of GW known since the 1970s/SCEP (Score:4, Insightful)
The average sea level rise in the last few decades has been about 3mm/year. So the sea level rise in the last thirty years has been about 3 inches since 1980. Your situation may vary due to geology. In Alaska sea levels are falling due to uplift of the land.
Take out a 3mm allen key and ask yourself, would you be able to eyeball that much change from year to year, given that the diurnal tides at Galveston are over two feet, and vary by several inches depending on weather and the moon. That's not counting the effect of wind and waves, which have to be averaged out.
You *can't* eyeball this magnitude of change without special instruments, even if it happened overnight, and you'd still need a long sequence of measurements to know what you are looking at. The practical effects of recent sea level rise are statistical, rather than directly observable.
Re:No one sees... (Score:5, Insightful)
Which side is the one lying about it for political gain?
The side that doesn't have facts supporting its position.
Was that a trick question?
Can we next debate whether or not smoking tobacco is bad for your lungs? [staticflickr.com]
Re:No one sees... (Score:5, Insightful)
While your assumption is very simplifying, and thus attractive, I don't think it's correct. The reality is that politicians feel corrupt to us because they live in their own echo chamber, and they do believe a lot of things that are just plain stupid because of that. They listen to the wrong people, the people who have the loudest voices, and choose who to ally with based on what they think is right, or in some cases what they think is beneficial to them.
Saying that they are just looking out for themselves is oversimplifying. Saying that nothing they say is ever valid is incorrect. It's comforting either to think that politicians are basically good, and looking out for us, or basically evil, and trying to screw us. It's much harder to live in the real world, where they are much more complicated than that, and require our involvement if they are to serve us.
Re:Waiting for the hypocrisy to start (Score:2, Insightful)
"It's okay when people agree with me, but it's not when they don't."
Point is, the global-warmers will be citing this bureaucrat's "acknowledgement" that they're right as an authoritative statement, to give weight to their side of the issue in political debates. Yet that's as much of a fallacious "appeal to authority" as citing an economist on climate change might be.
And I don't trust anyone when it's obvious their statements are being used as justification to steal my money and take control of my life, liberty, and property. You should always look at someone's motivations when they're trying to convince you of something. I'm sure you do when you look at the environmental skeptics, right? Try applying the same analysis to the government scientists and regulators on the other side of the debate and see what you find.
Re:No one sees... (Score:1, Insightful)
how true.
you seem like you already have your mind made up, but I'll give it a shot:
"All of the science" so far has been collecting data and making models that fit that data. Until you get a couple decades more data and find one of the model's predictions were right, all you've got is the hypothesis of warming - no scientific method, no objective truth.
Higher taxes + more bureaucracy = bigger government = more power. How do you not see how this helps them? Good Republicans are for smaller, less powerful government.
Re:No one sees... (Score:3, Insightful)
Higher taxes + more bureaucracy = bigger government = more power. How do you not see how this helps them? Good Republicans are for smaller, less powerful government.
I'm going to ignore your lies about the science. It's settled, and it doesn't matter that you choose to ignore it. But I will respond to the quoted bit, because it's an oft repeated bit of bad logic.
How, exactly does big government help the Democrats?
Republicans benefit from cutting spending because it gives them an excuse to cut taxes, and those tax cuts go to the 1%, who then return the favor by giving enormous kickbacks, er, donations to the GOP. And at the same time, they get to gain the clear electoral advantage that comes with cutting taxes, ensuring that they get to keep their nice, cushy jobs.
But how does bigger government help the Democrats? When they raise taxes, it decreases their chance of getting reelected, and doesn't put any money in their pockets. Why would they do it, if they didn't really believe it was necessary?
Re:War On Climate (Score:1, Insightful)
For most Americans it does not really mean very much whether these guys get more contracts. In real terms it means that anyone who says or writes anything against climate change, especially human caused warming, will be labeled a terrorist. Anyone bearing the label will not be able to get on an airplane, because terrorists are put on the “no-fly list”. If that doesn't stop such individuals from speaking out against this climate change terrorism, they will be whisked away to wherever the government houses terrorists these days. Guantanamo?
Re:I see... FUD (Score:0, Insightful)
One of the inquiries you listed cleared the CRU because the statue of limitations had passed before they finally looked into the issue seven years after it was brought up. I'd hardly call that as "clearing up the issue". Of cource the EPA is completely partial and wouldn't have a side to pick either. I'm sure the rest of what you listed all get government money for continuing on the lies already as well.
You don't like what I originally pointed out because it completely colapses and invalidates ALL worldwide climate research as based on lies. Just because you don't like it doesn't make it not true. It makes it a very effective debating point for me because no one seems to be able to dispute it. The fact that you didn't dispute it, except with fake "inquiries" and name calling shows how weak you are at debating the truth.
There is only one ignorant person here. I listed how climate research is actually done, you listed a bunch of name calling.