NATO to consider climate change impact and military build-up in Arctic seas
As global warming opens up new shipping lanes and access to valuable resources, countries are firming up their military presence in the Arctic.
The increasing militarization of the north means Arctic affairs and climate change are both likely to land on the agenda at NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland on July 8 and 9th, according to political observers.
Ahead of the summit American conservatives are urging the U.S. to get the Arctic on NATO’s agenda and arrive at an agreed strategy for the region.
“Economic, oil and gas, and shipping opportunities are increasing in the region—as are Russian military capabilities,” policy analysts Luke Coffey and Daniel Kochis wrote in a mid-June brief for the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation.
“Although the Arctic region has been an area of low conflict among the Arctic powers, NATO should consider the implications of Russia’s recent aggressive military behavior,” the analysts noted.
The sabre-rattling is not limited to the United States.
Ahead of the summit, “Canada has been asked to participate and lead a defensive NATO military deployment in the Baltic Sea region in efforts to establish a credible deterrence against potential military offensives by the Putin regime,” noted documentary filmmaker Marcus Kolga in an op-edpiece in the Toronto Star.…
Obama’s Green Policies Threaten America’s Energy Security
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The threat of a devastating cyber attack on the U.S. electrical grid is increasing due to the Obama administration’s politically correct policies that spend vast sums on green and smart grid technologies while failing to secure power grids from cyber attack.
A report by the Manhattan Institute, a New York think tank, warns that the push to integrate wind and solar electrical power into the $6 trillion electric utility system has created new vulnerabilities that other nations could exploit in a future cyber war.
“Electric grids have always been vulnerable to natural hazards and malicious physical attacks,” writes Mark Mills, a physicist and engineer who authored the Manhattan Institute report. “Now the U.S. faces a new risk—cyber attacks—that could threaten public safety and greatly disrupt daily life.”
The U.S. electrical power network is not made up of a single grid, but a complex web of eight regional “supergrids” linked to thousands of local grids. Under a drive for improved efficiency, government policymakers and regulators in recent years have spent tens of billions of dollars on so-called “smart grid” technology. But the efficiency drive has not been matched with new technology that will secure grids against cyber attacks.
Utility owners also have resisted improving cyber security over concerns doing so would increase operating costs and force unpopular rate hikes. Yet the failure to take steps now to deal with future threats could prove catastrophic.
The threat, according to the report, is not the current state of security but the future use of greener and smarter electric grids, interconnected and linked to the Internet. “These greener, smarter grids will involve a vast expansion of the Internet of Things that greatly increases the cyber attack surface available to malicious hackers and hostile nation-state entities,” the report warns, adding that cyber attacks overall have risen 60 percent annually over the past six years and increasingly include the targeting of electric utilities.
A recent survey by Cisco Systems revealed t…
Sen Whitehouse: It’s a ‘problem… that the uniformed military has been reluctant’ to ‘fight’ climate change
After claiming that climate denial in the US “hurts” American soldiers deployed overseas, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse says it’s a “problem” that America’s “uniformed military has been reluctant” to engage in the “fight” against climate change. Whitehouse also says that the Navy is “starting to evaluate their base commanders on how well they communicate the risk of climate change”.
SENATOR SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: “The problem has been that the uniformed military has been reluctant to put its voice into– or its image into this fight. So, you’ve got the civilians, you’ve got the Quadrennial Defense Reviews, you’ve got the intelligence estimates, you’ve got the statements from our head of CINCPAC back when Admiral Locklear that this was the threat in the Pacific more than any other likely to disrupt things in a way that would disturb American interests. But, it’s hard to put a panel of people in uniform in front of the Environmental and Public Works Committee and say, you know, I’m a general, I’m an Admiral, I’m the head of the Marine Corps, we’re telling you–. What the Navy has done that’s been really interesting, Ray Maybus said he’s starting to actually evaluate his– you know, the military lives by evaluation– they’re starting to evaluate their base commanders on how well they communicate the risk of climate change about the base. So, if you’re the base commander of Norfolk, or of Naval Station Newport, or of– what is it, Cherry Creek Marine Air Station in North Carolina– you are suddenly have on your checklist of what you’re evaluated on how well you’ve communicated what the risk of climate change is. And, for those bases, for Navy bases particularly, it’s a really real risk. They’re on the sea. Sea level rise is going to swamp what they do. It’s really practical. So, when people hear it from as trusted a source as a uniformed military officer it will make a big difference, and they have not been very forward about it from the uniform side of the military. DOD has been good. Mabus has been the best.”
Time to Wake Up
Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
June 17, 2016…
CNN Reporter Laments That Terrorism Overshadows Climate Change
CNN Reporter Laments That Terrorism Overshadows Climate Change [VIDEO]
‘Every time we go on one of these foreign trips… the White House wants to emphasize something else’
— gReader Pro…
Climate Activist: Civil Unrest from Weather, Food Scarcity Played Role in Arab Spring, Syrian Conflict
…(CNSNews.com) – At a discussion on climate change and food security on Tuesday, an advocate of their connection to national security said both played a role in the unrest and violence taking place across the Middle East and in parts of Africa, and claimed they also affected the French Revolution and the parting of the Red Sea as told in the Old Testament.
“We can look at Syria and what happened with Syria and the movement of populations into Damascus, the disaffected people – the rise, certainly, of conflict there,” Jon White, president of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, said at the Center for American Progress (CAP) in Washington, D.C.
“You can look at the Arab Spring and the fact that the changing in food prices, again, drove people to be disaffected and uneasy, and led to overthrows of governments in Tunisia and other places,” said White.
White also the influence of extreme weather and food scarcity can be seen as far back as the French Revolution in 1789 and conflicts recorded in the Holy Bible.
“Even going back to the French Revolution there is indications that climate-induced food scarcity and price changes – they were a catalyst for events that happened in the French Revolution,” White said.
“But then, if people still don’t really don’t get some of these conflict, climate food issues, I just go back and say, have you ever heard of the parting of the Red Sea?” White said.
“But how did we get to the parting of the Red Sea?” he asked. “Well, it all started off with a guy named Joseph that many of you might recognize from Joseph and his Technicolor Dream Coat, who was able to predict, to interpret a dream that said there’s going to be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of drought.”
Kerry off to Greenland ‘to bring attention to the dangers of climate change’
ABOARD THE HDMS THETIS, Greenland (AP) — Sailing through fields of large icebergs aboard a Danish naval vessel, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry brought his tour of the Arctic to Greenland on Friday, visiting the Northern Hemisphere’s largest glacier to bring attention to the dangers of climate change.
Hazarding a brief June snow and hail flurry in Disko Bay off Greenland’s third largest city of Ilulissat, population 4,500, some 220 miles (350 kilometers) north of the Arctic Circle, Kerry was meeting with scientists researching the dramatic erosion of the Sermeq Kujalleq Glacier that is contributing to global sea rise. The icecap has receded 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) since 2001, with a large increase since 2002.
A number of factors, including increasing air temperatures, the rise of black carbon emissions that discolor the ice and make it absorb more heat, and the introduction of warm sub-surface water from the Gulf Stream which erodes the ice sheet from below, have all contributed to the retreat of the glacier, which is the most active outside Antarctica in terms of iceberg production.
“There is profound change throughout the Arctic region,” said Kerry, clad in a green thermal parka and aviator sunglasses as Her Danish Majesty’s Ship Thetis cruised around the bay. “There are combined forces having this impact, but we also know that human beings, by the choices we are making to provide our power, our energy, are having a profound negative impact. There is a gigantic transformation taking place.”…
British warships in Persian Gulf overheat due to ‘climate change’
Six British warships stationed in the Persian Gulf are breaking down because the water is too hot. This week, members of the British Navy testified to the UK’s Defence Committee that their Type 45 destroyers keep losing power because of high ocean temperatures. When the ships’ turbines get overheated, they can’t generate as much energy, resulting in electrical failures.
The makers of the billion-dollar warships, including Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems Maritime, claim that the ships were not designed to be used in that kind of environment for an extended amount of time, although they are supposedly engineered for a wide range of temperatures from sub-Arctic to tropic.
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This news might be just the kind of thing that wealthy governments need to hear. Because if there’s anything that will motivate a country to take action around climate change, it’s when climate change starts to interfere with their ability to effectively kill other humans.
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Obama Navy Chief: We’re greening Navy & Marine Corps partly ‘because we’re closet tree-huggers’
Assistant Secretary of the Navy Dennis McGinn says that he and the Obama team are greening the US Navy and Marines Corps “not just because we’re closet tree-huggers or anything like that — we are –” but instead to field the most “capable Navy and Marine Corps team we possibly can”.
SECRETARY MCGINN: “It’s unfortunate that years ago energy was so politicized. But, I think we’re getting over that very, very quickly, and people are realizing that we’re doing this not just because we’re closet tree-huggers or anything like that — we are — but it is because we are in the business of fielding the most expeditionary capable Navy and Marine Corps team we possibly can, and that is an enduring principle.”
The US Navy & Cutting Edge Energy Innovation in the Defense Sector
Atlantic Council
April 12, 2016
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Navy to require climate change reporting from vendors – ‘Requiring big vendors to report their output of climate-changing greenhouse gases and work to lower it.’
Tuesday, April 12, 2016 3:17 pm | Updated: 3:45 pm, Tue Apr 12, 2016.
“We’ve got skin in this game,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told a Silicon Valley conference on tech, government and climate change, noting that the Navy is facing rising ocean levels and a surge of interest as ice melts in the Arctic.
The move seeks to leverage the Navy’s $170 billion budget to encourage contractors to cut their overall output of climate-changing carbon.
The policy announced by Mabus did not immediately commit the Navy to cutting off companies with high emissions Companies and governments typically use such emissions reports as a factor in choosing suppliers
Flashback: Watch: CIA chief: Obama didn’t bomb ISIS oil wells ‘because we didn’t want to do environmental damage’
Flashback November 23, 2015: Mike Morell, former deputy chief of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Obama, says the Administration didn’t want to bomb ISIS oil production because of the ‘collateral damage’ it would have caused to the environment. Morell: “[W]e didn’t go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn’t want to do environmental damage… So those are the kinds of tough decisions you have to make.”
MIKE MORELL: “So this is one of the collateral damage questions, right? So prior to Paris, there seemed to be a judgement, right, I don’t sit in the the Sit room anymore, but there seems to be– there seemed to have been a judgement that look we don’t want to destroy these oil tankers because that’s infrastructure that’s going to be necessary to support the people when ISIS isn’t there anymore, and it’s going to create environmental damage, and we didn’t go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn’t want to do environmental damage, and we didn’t want destroy that infrastructure, right?
CHARLIE ROSE: “So we hit oil on the trucks.”
MORELL: “So, now we’re hitting oil on the trucks, right? And, maybe you get to the point where you say we have to also hit oil wells. So those are the kind of tough decisions you have to make.”
Charlie Rose Show
11/23/2015…
Declassed Bin Laden Letter Invokes Obama, Attacks Capitalism, Defends Global Warming Alarmism
Former spelunking enthusiast and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s propaganda letter to the American youth who “support real change” disparages capitalism, defends global warming alarmism and even attempts to invoke President Barack Obama and Thomas Paine.
The letter was one of dozens the Director of National Intelligence declassified Tuesday as part of ‘bin Laden’s bookshelf,’ a collection of the documents seized during the mission that killed bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan in 2011. The collection released Tuesday is the second trove of documents translated and provided to the public.