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.
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.
[…]
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.
[…]
“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.
And you thought health care, the economy, swine flu shots, and why oh why won’t Paula Abdul be on American Idol were the only things to worry about.
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“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.”
These “Policy Makers” are the one’s who will profit from this fear mongering.
Lets just go ahead and say it, This story is bullshit! Climate change, no one has a clue what the future holds so everyone makes these fantastic guesses. Enough already.
#2: Bullshit on your comment. Climate change is happening. That is an observable, measurable fact. The why (manmade vs nature) and if us reducing our lifestyle will ‘fix’ it is what the ruckus is about.
Don’t get mad Uncle Dave, just saying the story is BS. The climate is changing, it always does. I can get behind reducing emissions to make the air easier to breathe. That is a worthwhile cause. Stories that say the United States has to lead the way to reducing global warming emissions… Bullshit!
We don’t need to be spewing crap into the air to get energy, this is true, but America needs to lead the way to cleaner emissions?
Seems what I’ve heard so far is clean or free energy is being pioneered elsewhere, probably due to the environment of suppression here in the good ol’ USA.
Why are so many people in the USA still denying that climate change is even happening?
Nobody can deny that some unsuitable people are set to make a profit from it. That is democracy and capitalism at work.
Come on guys! You have got rid og his predecessor and, as expected, his replacement was not so obviously in the pay of Big Oil.
What is so hard to understand? We generate more CO2 than was being generated before. This means that the properties of our atmosphere have changed. Changed properties mean changed climate. We don’t know where it is going to end. We just know which way it is going.
News flash Uncle Dave: Climate change is happening, has always happened and will always happen! Such an idiotic use of the phrase. Now if people/media would correctly say “man-made climate change”, then maybe it would ring more accurately, and people might take it more seriously.
The only reasonable doubt I have is the fact that we have been actively measuring such a small window of this change, compared to the age of the planet. Everything beyond our earliest ability since we actually started measuring and compiling all this data, is extrapolation at best or a complete guess at worst. If another ice age is on the way, are we as humans really going to stop it? If all the volcanoes in the world decide to erupt and spew out more carbon than the entire population could produce, bringing about global warming, are we in any position to really do anything? We are just another species on this planet, despite what religion tries to tell us that we have “domain” over the planet and it’s creatures.
I am not an absolute skeptic, it’s just that I refuse to make a hard and fast conclusion until much more data comes in. The sky is not falling. Other than that, it make complete sense to reduce consumption and be more self aware of what we do to the planet and it’s ecosystem. But we don’t all need to become greenie, vegans driving only hybrids, to show how much we “care” about our planet.
#7, Don’t forget the Cow Farts! Nice post 🙂
America is always to blame for everything. Personally, I’m getting tired of the climate change argument. Doesn’t matter what the science says, the politicians are gonna do what they need to do to get rich. Yes, that’s you, I’m talking about Mr Gore.
Now about Paula Abdul – I’ve never seen even a single episode of American Idol. Not a one. But I have seen Paula Abdul and I can tell you this: Victoria Beckham is no Paula Abdul. Abdul is not the brightest lamp on Broadway. Beckham just drinks the kerosene.
The US needs to lead the way? Horseshit! China, India and Russia need to lead the way. We’ve been leading, but no one on the other side of the globe seems to give a shit.
When that Canada place warms up some more it will be worth invading.
Climate change is real. I don’t dispute that, watch the weather channel and you see it change every day. But the idea that global warming causes a few ice cubes in a drink to melt, bringing on an apocalypse is paramount to Noah declaring on Current TV that it’s time to prepare everyone and have Congress fund a “Cash for Arks” program as a way to save everyone. It’s fun to watch people get duped with this thing, and watch egos soar into the Stratosphere, no, Exosphere. They run around like idiots and you try to talk to them and they can’t hear you. Just try to tell them that the earth keeps spinning around in circles, and the earth cools down every night while they sleep, so they don’t have to worry the next day. Just try to tell them that those “blankets” they claim are in the sky fall to earth when it rains, exposing the Earth to freezing space, see how they respond and ask them if Spot still runs. These buffoons can’t understand anything because they keep following their cult leaders to the point of either drinking poison, most likely alcohol as it’s most readily available, for salvation, or following them as they are led off a carbon blanket.
And so, boys and girls, if the United States DOES lead the way, there will never be “food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change” anywhere in the world, because the Carbon Credit Taxes will protect EVERYBODY…
How Do I Make Money From This?
#14 don’t bother criticizing, MONITISZE!!!
“sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia”
Oh, you mean the places in the world that hate the U.S. most? Cool, we can just let them pray to their gods and/or let the U.N. take care of it on their own…
“that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response”
How do other countries DEMAND an American humanitarian response???? How about we say, “Go fuck yourselves!” and take care of our own problems?
It’s time we stop being the world police and just take care of our own interests. Put the military on the borders of the U.S., kick out the illegal aliens, and tell everybody of the world to fix their own fucking countries….
minus the “S”
Paula Abdul is leaving American Idol? Why doesn’t anyone tell me these things?
We have 700 military installations around the world… time to down size and get our own house in order…
I own some (soon to be) beach front property in Maine… Any one interested?…
Still havent figured out how to make money off the BS that carbon trading is… Where do I feed the Dollar Bills into the Tree?..
Nuke Em! Problem solved!
(nuclear winter!)
Don’t look to do nothing conservatives to cope with this impending environmental issue. This is a job for forward thinkers, scientists and world leaders to tackle.
The key is ignore them and take deliberate action on behalf of our future generations.
# 12 username said,”…It’s fun to watch people get duped with this thing…”
Agreed. The problem is by the time they figure out the truth, all the rest of us will be too screwed to stand up straight. And not in a good way!
On the other hand, this would be another excuse to keep the military.
i fall to see why it would be a nightmare..
we and many other nations have had the ability to modify the weather for decades. the process to do this has been known since the 1920’s.
all you need is a [rather large] Ion generator to produce positive ions and you can get rain clouds to form.
conversely, if you produce negative Ions, you can disperse clouds.
(-you can see how this would be very handy)
an antenna array setup like our HAARP
array is all that’s needed. 😮
iirc, a russian physicist set one up down in mexico to help with their drought problem with great effect.
Water,being an electric dipole easily falls prey to such manipulation. (this is also why clouds “hover” -as gravity is an electomagnetic process as well)
-this is also in part, why the whole “CO2 is the cause of all our weather woes” argument falls flat on its face under scrutiny.
-weather solely is driven by electrical & magnetic forces, for which Solar activity is hugely responsible
i’m sure here in the U.S. we will be the last country on earth to teach/admit this as it is converse to the political dogma of our government
(and of course, “The Church”)
lastly, every single atom in the universe owes it’s existance to the electrical forces at its core.
-thus controlling “nature” is as simple as controlling the electrical forces within it.
-why we intentionally ignore this fact is a debate for another thread.
-s
The part about sub-Saharan drying out due to global warming was funny. Global warming will move the tropical rain belts north into sub-Saharan Africa.
The current cooling trend on the other hand could and will cause droughts if they continue.
Yah gotta keep up with which way the climate is trending. Global warming seems to be old news. How long will the present cooling trend will last? I don’t know.
The only military problem will be the imposition of a Global Government upon the other countries when they want no part of it.
Why does the US have to lead the way, if China is the leading emitter?
And having developing countries keep their growth down to reduce their emissions, won’t that make them more angry?
Everybody sing along…
Oh, we got trouble! Right here in River City! …