Forget the partisan political standoff on whether climate change is a real and urgent problem that must be addressed by reductions in fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions. That's the tiresome, seemingly irresolvable argument between Democrats and environmental advocates, who follow the data and see the need for carbon caps to mitigate environmental damage, and Republicans and their conservative business base and enviro naysayers, who contend the climate change issue is hokum regardless of the evidence.
The Pentagon and the National Intelligence Council, which conducts government-wide intelligence analysis, have just rendered that argument an irrelevant anachronism.
The no-nonsense Council studied the data and last year, while George W. Bush was still president, issued its first assessment of the national security implications of climate change and its consequences. Made public this month by The New York Times, it identifies serious trends and consequences that are already underway. These include: melting glacial ice, rising seas, expanding deserts, and extended cycles of horrific storms and droughts; increasing competition among neighboring countries for water, arable land, food sources and forests; and widespread environmental degradation, poverty, and increasing wars for resources and survival.
Rising seas due to glacial melt and loss of the polar ice cap, which the council's report says is now occurring faster than anticipated just a few years ago, already pose threats to key naval stations and military operational capacity at home and abroad. The trend also will spur international competition in the Arctic for access to energy deposits and fisheries.
Environmental disasters around the world from storms, floods and other calamities will increasingly tax the Pentagon's ability to deliver relief aid in coming years, the Council and Pentagon warned. And wars over natural resources will have significant impact on international stability, national security and immigration problems.
Worse, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies believe that climate-induced crises could cause governments to tumble in social turmoil, destabilizing countries and regions and stoking terrorism.
One example of the ripple effects, the Council warned, is the war in the Sudan and the accompanying land-grab and genocide of 250,000 people in the Dafur region. That conflict may more accurately be seen as a reflection of the competition for arable land and water between southern black tribes and the Muslim north as the desert expands north from southern lands. Other states -- Somalia, for example -- have been more vulnerable to terrorism due to famine and resulting governmental breakdown exacerbated by warlords.
As if to amplify that warning, a recent Foreign Policy magazine report reviewed how dependent the hostile states of Pakistan, India (both nuclear states) and Bangladesh are on once-regular, but now declining, winter snows and spring ice melt from the Himalayas. The mountains' waters have long replenished water supplies across Asia for human consumption and vital agriculture among their vast and hungry populations. But dwindling snow and glacier melt now restrict water resources, stoking conflicts and agricultural catastrophes. Irregular monsoon flooding in Bangladesh, with accompanying disease and immigration outflow into India, is also expected to worsen.
The climate assessment from the military and intelligence communities should finally prompt Congress, and particularly Republican opponents, to get past their myopic stalemate and pass legislation to reduce greenhouse gases. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise when the military, intelligence agencies and the state department have finally connected the dots between documentable climate change, global warming, societal breakdown and the threats that can spread from there.
Gen. Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine and now a consultant doing research for the Navy, capsuled the multiple threats of climate change in one report this way: "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, and that will involve human lives."
OK,fine,Let's say we all agree with every word you've written.Is God making it warmer or is man the cause?
A large majority in the world agree that it is a man made problem,while a likely majority in Chattanooga believe that the warming is God's work.
Don't waste a lot of ink telling us the world is warming,all but the unconscious already know that.Tell us whether God did it,or whether fossil fuels and profligate consumption are to blame.
WARNING:If you tell us we did it,we won't believe you and we may say unkind things about you.If you tell us God did it,we will know you are wise and that you probably deserve a raise.
"...environmental advocates, who xxxxxxmanipulate the data..."
Fixed it for you.
"Rising seas due to glacial melt and loss of the polar ice cap, which the council's report says is now occurring faster than anticipated just a few years ago"
Untrue/out-of-date
Actually I'll not even bother. The facts do not matter to zealots. I encourage everyone to really check into the claims made by "CO2/Global Warming" alarmists. The facts do not support the conclusions, and there are multiple instances of outright fraud. More and more distinguished scientists are changing their tune after checking the data themselves, and much back-pedaling by previously "authoritative" sources is underway. The entire slimy edifice is starting to crumble, but then that is what usually happens when people start from particular opinion and then look for/manufacture data to support the conclusion.
nucanuck,
I'll give you one thing, if the alarmist's would come right out and say that their ideas are based on nothing more than faith, they might at least have some credibility. Trying to cloak an idea, supported by faith alone, under the banner of science really isn't very convincing, and does great harm to real science. AGW alarmists like to disparage "flat-earthers" and "creationists" but the sad fact is, they are of the same cloth.
SCOTTYM
If world population (demand) continues to expand,and newer fossil fuel discovery costs (supply) continue to escalate,we will soon have rationing by price.
Additionally,if long term government quantitative easing continues to erode the dollar relative to other currencies, the added price burden on America will be greater than elsewhere.
My point being that no matter your thoughts on AGW,we must find ways to reduce fossil fuel consumption and/or reduce/stabilize population growth.If we don't,the cost of energy will take an ever larger percentage of our income.
Carbon reduction is in the best interest of the world,and even more so for the US.
Here's an honest question...
If the "seas are rising," why is it that longstanding fixed objects, such as old beachside hotels, are no closer to the water's edge now than they were 50 years ago when first built?
Also, why is lower Manhattan, for example, not nearly underwater?
Why is Key West just as big an island today as it was 50 years ago?
Walden
Your questions are easily answered with a modicum of research/reading.
nucanuck- Please enlighten me.
Walden,
I can help with that. The reason that sea level rise is unnoticeable to the human eye, is that, on average over the last 1000 years or so it has been rising about 3mm per year which is tiny. If that trend were to continue for another 100 years, you'd only have about a foot of sea level rise. Not so scary, and difficult to notice in a human lifetime. Of course the level has been trending down for the last 3 or 4 years, which is even stranger.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_ns_global.pdf
Thanks SCOTTYM. Doesn't sound like a looming crisis to me. The Leftists need to generate hysteria around any issue in order to enact their statist legislative agenda.
Walden,
Bingo!
Reality check: Nature is a physical, relentless, non-linear process that goes on and on and on and has a very long history (billions of years). In that time frame, complex species have originated, existed, and become extinct (probably 98% no longer exist). Our own species has existed for a few hundred thousand years, in which time, it has been estimated that about 100 billion humans have lived and died. We dump about 30 billion tons of carbon based pollutants in the air each year and Nature deals with it. Although water vapor, at any point in time and space, has a greater effect as a greenhouse gas, it comes and goes, whereas carbon based gases accumulate over time. My point is that Nature doesn't care about our politics or religion or anything else. If we make our environment too toxic for our species to survive, a new Homo Sapien species will evolve that is more adaptable (maybe in a few hundred thousand years) and Nature will just keep on going until in about 5 billion years from now, the sun expands as a Red Giant and consumes our earth forever. Keynes was right, in the end we're all dead. Forever!
una61,
Many very good points. One thing though, about the carbon building up in the atmosphere. The total amount of carbon released by humans is tiny compared to the total carbon flux through the planetary cycle. The residence time for individual CO2 molecules in the atmosphere is more on the order of 5-10 years and not the 1000's of years we have been lead to believe. Very little of the CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere is due to human influence. A slight imbalance in the natural carbon cycle can produce accumulations that dwarf the human contribution.
There is 50 times as much carbon in the oceans as there is in the atmosphere. Slight changes in ocean temperature can release or take up vast amounts of carbon, as is shown in the ice core data. Temps go up, then carbon follows, temps go down, carbon follows. The alarmists have the cause and effect backwards.
In today's main page: ocean temperature highest on record.
Why should that concern us? Well, for one thing it will disrupt the fishing industry and I for one like fish. Thousands of other ocean ecology creatures will also be effected.
To me, it doesn't take a genius scientist to figure the obvious. If you keep pumping tons of garbage into the air and water, something is going to happen. True, we Americans can't control the world but as a leading contributor we surely can be a better example than in the past few years. To stick our head in the sand is really just stupid.
EaTn,
You aren't falling for the idea that CO2 warms the oceans, are you? Or that the oceans are warmed by the atmosphere? When the oceans warm it is all due to increased solar radiation reaching the surface. There is no other way to do it.
Also, you are aware that those satellite based sea surface temperatures refer only to the top 1mm of the oceans, right?
1.06 F above the average since 1880. Of course, that is comparing apples and oranges as these types of satellites weren't around before the late '70s, and before that temperatures were derived from buckets of water pulled over the sides of ships underway, or later from the intake systems of more modern ships, neither of which can be considered scientific measurements. Once we have a few hundred years of satellite data, these numbers will be much more authoritative. Till then it is high resolution, broad coverage, space-based data being compared to random old bits of poor data collected by sailors in a very sparse pattern, using non-scientific procedures.
Here is a good graphical representation of current conditions. The numbers are the anomaly above or below that theoretical average. Plus, it looks pretty.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2009/anomnight.8.20.2009.gif
SCOTTYM-- I'm not falling for anything; I don't trust anyone who has a personal interest in juggling numbers, either pro or con. However, I do trust common sense. Like I said before you can't keep throwing junk at something and it not eventually stick. God made this planet to operate smoothly with an ever growing population having some responsibility to keep it clean.
"I don't trust anyone who has a personal interest in juggling numbers, either pro or con. "
Exactly!!
EaTn
"An ever growing population" on our planet would be like a fish pond with ever more fish.A maximum carrying capacity will be reached and maybe,overshot.
Argueably,world population has overshot now.We are using up resources at an unsustainable rate.We will either reduce consumption and/or reduce population to achieve equalibrium.
I don't like to think about how that will come about.
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