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.'"
So easy for all of us to solve this, and yet, .... (Score:4, Interesting)
If we want this solved, America is the solution. We are the largest importers. At this time, we should put a tax on ALL GOODS, both local and imported, based on the CO2 (and later add other pollutants) that is emitted from an area. The CO2 should be measured by satellite and it should be a case of (co2 out - co2 in).
The important part is that the tax is then based as a % of CO2 PER GDP (unleveled) or a combination of CO2/GDP and CO2/land size (deals with farming which can add a lot of CO2).
If America was to do this, it would impact the world over. Basically, nations that have been working on lowering their emissions will have lower taxes. Those like China which continue to cheat, would have top taxes applied to them.
Ideally, ALL nations that care should do this. They will encourage all other nations to move quickly towards dropping their emissions.
Since the economy is fragile, the maximum tax should start low and build yearly. That gives nations time to adjust.
Re:Possibility of GW known since the 1970s/SCEP (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The American Way (Score:4, Interesting)
Then you have central and southern America which are heavily populated and they will likely have issues with water as well. With the overpopulation that exists there now, ppl will leave to go to Argentina, or northern America. Northern Africa will have massive wars as it dries up further.
Re:Possibility of GW known since the 1970s/SCEP (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually it goes further back than that. In the 1950s climate scientists, reasoning by extrapolation, expected the next climate swing would be toward cooling. If you do a Google Scholar search you'll find papers starting around 1956 suggesting (tentatively) that anthropogenic CO2 generation would drive climate the other way, toward warming. Scientific consensus shifted over the next two decades toward a warming trend.
My wife was a physical oceanography grad student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic in the early 80s. I distinctly recall her telling me about a symposium in which CO2-driven AGW was discussed. It wasn't controversial -- nobody outside of geophysics and climate research had heard of it. Nor was the position that global warming wasn't happening controversial, although it was increasingly a minority opinion. Over the next two decades I watched the back and forth as evidence for warming per se was challenged, then vindicated in the pages of the journals she read and in geek publications like Science News. It wasn't until about a decade or so ago that the term "global warming" started taking off in the popular press.
Then there was Al Gore's *An Inconvenient Truth*, which was a blow against actual science having any influence in the public debate on pollution. It's not that the movie was scientifically inaccurate on the whole, although it was stated in much more positive terms than scientists are comfortable using. It's that a lot of people had been taught to hate this man, and for those people scientists and science as a whole was tarred with the brush of partisan distrust as well.
Re:No one sees... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, in your earlier post you basically said that everyone who disagrees with you is lying for political gain, and everyone who agrees with you is a sincere communicator. Don't you see a serious logical problem in that? If you don't, I'll make it explicit: just because people agree with you, that does not mean they are kind, sincere, or even right.
Let me explain how politics works. People will attempt to gain power wherever they can. It doesn't matter if AGW is 110% real, and serious threat with fires erupting on the equator, people dying of starvation, and oceans rising to the Rocky Mountains. Politicians are STILL going to try to use it to their advantage.
We see this all the time. In the 1950s, communist spies WERE a reality. A guy named McCarthy twisted this fact to destroy his political enemies. In the 2000s, anti-American terrorists WERE a real threat. A guy named George Bush used this fact to invade a completely unrelated country and destroy its government.
It doesn't matter if an issue is real or not. If it has captured attention, people will try to use it for their advantage.
Re:No one sees... (Score:4, Interesting)
NASA does climate research with data from North America only, not valid on world wide scale.
BwaHaHa!!!!! Do you seriously believe that? And Phil Jones is the only scientist to see the unmanipulated data? What a crock of shit.
Re:No one sees... (Score:5, Interesting)
You seem confused so I'll break it down for you:
Small list of observed facts:
-Carbon Dioxide, Nitrous Oxide, and Methane Gas are all greenhouse gasses.
-Human behavior at this time includes producing or releasing these gasses.
-Government regulators in the United States have mandated that cars run at reduced fuel efficiency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
-Our records indicate that average temperature over time has increased.
-There are lakes of methane hydrate crystals on the ocean floor.
-Changes in temperature and pressure can cause heavier-than-water liquids and solids to change phase in to lighter-than-water gasses.
This is a theory:
-The recorded change in climate is caused by the human release and production of greenhouse gasses.
These are hypothesis:
-A tipping point exists where the Earth's climate will cease to be habitable to human life.
-We have passed, or are approaching this point.
-Human influence on climate is significant.
Re:No one sees... (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, in your earlier post you basically said that everyone who disagrees with you is lying for political gain, and everyone who agrees with you is a sincere communicator.
That's a very misleading way to phrase it. You're implying that I believe that the liars are lying because they disagree with me. That is false. I believe that they're lying because all of the evidence shows that they are. I disagree with them as a consequence of that fact.
I'm quite happy to admit when I'm wrong. Example: I voted for Bush, twice. I believed Iraq had WMDs. I believed that the United States wasn't torturing detainees. Go back to my pre-college years, and I was even a creationist! By 2006, the evidence of torture and lack of evidence of WMDs was such that I had to admit that I had been wrong, so I abandoned the GOP that had misled me so. And I was wrong about another thing: I thought at the time that a lot of other people would follow me, and that the GOP would collapse under the enormity of their lies. O, how wrong I was. Most of my former peers simply blinded themselves to the truth. Others rationalized by deciding, "Well, sure, I supported the bad guys, but the other guys are just as bad, so it's okay!" That's a defense mechanism, used by a brain that doesn't want to face its former mistakes.
Re:I see... FUD (Score:0, Interesting)
A study by the Mexican Mafia, the Crips and the Bloods as well as several paramilitary drug running operations show that there is no excessive violence on the southern U.S. border and that U.S. cities on the border are safer than any others.
The quote, "I'm going to kill you and fuck your eye sockets and then shit down your neck" was taken completely out of context.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Re:No one sees... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you spent a week or two among [Republicans], away from your friends of a similar mindset and comfort zone, where you are forced to interact with them on a minute by minute basis?
Yup, a week, two weeks, my entire childhood, every single holiday since then. Try listening to your aunt talk about how the Jews are using Hollywood to brainwash society, while your Jewish mother sits awkwardly in the corner. Try watching your supposedly devout Christian father argue that torture is good. Try arguing with your uncle that his daughter, your cousin, is not a "race traitor" just because she's dating a black man. Do all that for decade after decade, and then come back to me and say that these people can be reasoned with.
Sometimes people really are just too far gone, and society's only option is to move on without them.
Re:War On Climate (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Why not, DuPont has Xe/Blackwater, the Gutterment has the NDAA. All the American citizen has, is the vote, for all the good that it does. The only person we can look up to is the elected Sheriff and look what THEY (The Hierarchy Enslaving You) are doing to Arpaio.
Re:War On Climate (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, the tax stamps were themselves a sham Constitutional workaround. You couldn't actually get them and even if you could, you were basically admitting to a crime.
Re:No one sees... (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish the Democrats would yank the window around. The sad fact is that they don't.
Twenty years ago, the Republicans supported cap & trade as a free market alternative to the Democrats' policies. Today, they've renamed it "cap & tax" and it's politically toxic. Their new alternative is to do nothing because they don't even acknowledge the scientific truths that they did years ago.
Twenty years ago, the Republicans supported the individual mandate as a free market alternative to the Democrats' policies. Today, it's a "government takeover of health care" that will institute "death panels". Their new alternative is to sell state insurance across state lines, meaning that all insurance companies would move to the state with the most lax regulations, meaning the quality of care would drop like a stone.
Twenty years ago, Medicare was a beloved program and considered untouchable. Today, the Republicans, including their presidential nominee, have announced their intention to end the program, replace it with one that covers only a fraction of seniors' medical costs, and give the savings to the super rich in the form of the largest tax cut in decades.
Twenty years ago, waterboarding was an evil torture technique used against American servicemen in WWII. Today it's a useful "enhanced interrogation" technique.
Twenty years ago, a ban on assault weapons was a reasonable compromise in gun control. Today, even after the near assassination of a Representative and murder of several bystanders, we can't manage to pass a law against extended magazines -- weapons that have no purpose other than mass murder.
The only area in which the Democrats have gained any ground is gay rights. Sorry, but truth doesn't get through to people. The average American is way too stupid to recognize a logical fallacy when he hears one. You can either lose every argument and watch the country go down the shitter, or you can fight fire with fire.