In 1983, U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) called climate change "a cause for concern," which was an understatement. By the 1990s, special interests, politicians, media, and other untoward took over United Nations and national global warming responses.
In an AUGUST 08, 2009 article 'Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security' global warming (aka, climate change) is seen as a direct threat to national security: "The world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to the national interest."
"Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and a leading advocate for the climate legislation, said he hoped to sway Senate skeptics by pressing that issue to pass a meaningful bill." "[Senator Kerry] did not identify those senators, but the list of undecided includes many from coal and manufacturing states and from the South and Southeast, which will face the sharpest energy price increases from any carbon emissions control program." Of course the congressional left Democrats and President Obama did nothing to alter the course of global warming.
"The Department of Defense’s assessment of the security issue came about after prodding by Congress to include climate issues in its strategic plans — specifically, in 2008 budget authorizations by Hillary Rodham Clinton [D] and John W. Warner [R], then senators. The department’s climate modeling is based on sophisticated Navy and Air Force weather programs and other government climate research programs at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."
By 1974 there were 54 operating nuclear reactors in the United States with another 197 on order. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1974 predicted that by the end of the century 50% of all U.S. electricity generation would come from nuclear power construction on existing orders. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974. Less than half of the reactors on order in 1974 under the NRC were ever completed. Politicians and coal, natural gas, and oil special interests took over the U.S. energy sector to grow use of fossil fuel -- global warming trends became more firmly established.
'The Wall Street Journal: Dismissing Environmental Threats Since 1976', AUGUST 02, 2012 -- Judging by political and media responses to issues of curtailing the threat of global warming, there would appear with consistency that few adequately communicate catastrophic events. "To forestall policy on climate change, the Wall Street Journal editorial board routinely downplays scientific consensus, overstates the cost of taking action, and claims that politics, not science, motivate those concerned about the climate. But an analysis of more than 100 editorials from 1976 to present shows that the Wall Street Journal used these same rhetorical tactics in previous decades on acid rain and ozone depletion and they did not stand the test of time." Still protecting Wall Street Journal investments in self interests, a September 2011 Wall Street editorial claimed that Al Gore and other "climate-change advocates" have "tried to bully anyone who keeps an open mind," which "is true of many political projects, but it is or ought to be anathema to the scientific method."
For more than two decades scope and goals of global warming mitigations have been sidetracked by political process of deceit, misrepresentation, and corruption. Currently, with dictatorial powers in hand, left Democrats have furthered predicted the demise of human races. Media has intentionally played an important part misrepresenting the critical nature of need for quick global warming mitigations responses. Current major obstacles to securing a future for human races is President Obama, biased media, and a dedicated small but politically influential coal, natural gas, oil energy interests.
CHANGE IS NEEDED
Without changes now, human races are terminated 2050-2055.
Saving human-races tasks are both time and government funding critical. 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. Currently, U.S. National Guards are now acting as forest and brush firefighters within some states.
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 and all water systems, 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. Near term resulting number of lives lost will be in the millions.
An exercise in 2008 at an educational institute explored the potential impact of a destructive flood in Bangladesh that sent hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming into neighboring India, touching off religious conflict, the spread of contagious diseases and vast damage to infrastructure. “It gets real complicated real quickly,” said Amanda J. Dory (Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense) who is working with a Pentagon group assigned to incorporate climate change into national security strategy planning.
Much of the public and political debate on global warming has focused on finding "green" substitutes for fossil fuels, eliminating nuclear energy, and furthering unproductive negotiations toward an international climate treaty. A growing number of policy makers say that the world’s rising temperatures, surging seas and melting glaciers are a direct threat to national interest. Public review of global warming threats and security challenges are inadequate.
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 -- not addressing global warming issues now and "kicking the can down the road" will make mitigations more expensive later. Lawmakers leading the debate before Congress are only now beginning to make the national security argument for approving legislation. If replacement nuclear energy is properly phased-in, significant energy price increases may not occur.
In 2009, said Senator Kerry, “I’ve been making this argument for a number of years, but it has not been a focus because a lot of people had not connected the dots.” Former conflict in southern Sudan, which killed and displaced tens of thousands of people, is a result of drought and expansion of deserts in the north. “That is going to be repeated many times over and on a much larger scale,” Senator Kerry said. He said he had urged President Obama to make the case. Former Vice President Al Gore has also urged President Obama to respond to global warming.
The Pentagon and the State Department have studied issues arising from dependence on foreign sources of energy for years but are only now considering the effects of global warming in their long-term planning documents. In February 2009, the Pentagon included a climate section in the Quadrennial Defense Review.
Military and intelligence planners are now aware of the challenge posed by global warming. Many of its critical installations are vulnerable to rising seas and storm surges. In Florida, Homestead Air Force Base was essentially destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Hurricane Ivan badly damaged Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2004. Military planners are studying ways to protect the major naval stations in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego from climate-induced rising seas and severe storms. Another vulnerable installation is Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that serves as a logistics hub for American and British forces in the Middle East and sits a few feet above sea level. Global relocation now of some U.S. naval facilities may be required. Ocean level rise effects all coastal cities and ocean coastlines.
Global warming temperature rise has a profound effect upon marine life cycles and thus continued human existence. Needed is a great deal more clarification of impact of marine changes upon human food chains.
A lack of rain and has brought the worst drought in more than 50 years to America's Midwest that usually provides over half the corn and more than two-fifths of the soybeans to world markets, and counterproductive corn-ethanol to U.S. cars. The impact of the sustained drought goes beyond farming. Rivers in the Midwest are actually drying up, including a 100-mile stretch of the Platte River in Nebraska. In the Mississippi -- which carries 60% of the nation’s grain, 22% of its oil and gas and 20% of its coal -- the drought has dropped water levels so far that barges have been forced to carry less cargo as they try to navigate the shallow waters. River flows are maintained by groundwaters and are part of the water-cycle.
It is questionable if Midwest High Plains aquifer can sustain current irrigation rates much into the 2020s. The Colorado River is managed and operated since 1922 under numerous compacts, federal laws, court decisions and decrees, contracts, and regulatory guidelines collectively known as the "Law of the River." Satellite data aids in surface and groundwater level identification. Largely missing from media reporting is the management of California’s groundwater resources, which in dry years provide nearly 40 percent of the state’s water supplies. Changing regional water systems requires time.
Arctic Region melting presents new problems for the military. The shrinking of the ice cap, which is proceeding faster than anticipated only a few years ago, opens a shipping channel that must be defended and undersea oil, natural gas, and undersea methane resources are already the focus of international competition. Further warming of Arctic Region's huge amounts of natural methane and carbon emissions are ocean-current temperature dependent and land surface air temperature dependent. Arctic Region natural methane and carbon emissions form a powerful reinforced positive feedback loop that is directly temperature and regional emissions related, which also results in (catastrophic) increased global warming.
Global warming by itself has significant geopolitical impacts around the world and will contribute to a host of problems, including poverty, environmental degradation and the weakening of national governments. Assessments warn near term storms, droughts and food shortages result from a warming planet in coming decades will create numerous relief emergencies. “The demands of these potential humanitarian responses may significantly tax U.S. military transportation and support force structures, resulting in a strained readiness posture and decreased strategic depth for combat operations,” a military report said.
Increased population and gross domestic product (GDP) directly increase energy used and increased greenhouse gases. In 1750, world population was estimated to be 700 million. Current global population is 7 billion and it is expected to exceed 9 billion before 2050. Energy demand is growing explosively to meet human needs and aspirations worldwide. Much of this demand is currently being met by fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, oil). Historical energy use is unsustainable. Because most greenhouse gases come from the use of fossil fuels, the central task of a global emissions-reduction strategy must be to quickly transition to existing technology of high capacity clean nuclear energy. Natural and human global greenhouse gases are to peak by 2020 and decline thereafter.
NOTE: Global greenhouse gas emissions must, before 2050, have an atmospheric content of carbon, methane, and nitrous oxide that averts catastrophic climate change and averts end of human races.
President Obama and left Democratic promotion of "green" alternatives to nuclear energy has been ineffective correcting 250-years of global greenhouse gas emissions. Unbiased media should report on the more than two decades of motivations for politically promoting "green" unsound, ineffective, and unsustainable diversions from proper nuclear energy responses.
Top ten world energy consumers by country in 2012 - units in million-billion BTUs (see energy unit Quads): United States 57.227, China 50.690, Russia 18.132, Japan 13.031, India 11.891, Germany 8.556, Canada 8.360, France 6.728, Brazil 6.335, Korea 5.891, and total Worldwide is 293.110. Nuclear energy production is 5.8% of total world energy production. Current and past coal, natural gas, and oil energy production has significantly added to atmospheric carbon content that increases global warming.
By continually producing hydrocarbon (coal, natural gas, oil) energy infrastructures there results exceeding 'global carbon budget.' Exceeding global energy infrastructure catastrophic conditions are established about 2017. To alter the course of global warming events, there now must quickly be reductions of human and natural greenhouse gases with reductions of coal, natural gas, and oil infrastructures.
Over the coming five-years, the least-cost and only global warming option to lowering global warming is by steadily transforming global energy systems to nuclear energy zero greenhouse gas emissions, which in turn lowers human and natural carbon-cycle gas emissions.
Unfortunately, too many world leaders, national politicians, and media remain committed to continuing coal, natural gas, and oil energy dependence. Necessary planned successful social and environmental responses to global warming temperature increase are essential, many, and varied and involve lives of more than 9 billion people. No nation maintains a viable organization to respond to countering global warming temperature increase. Not in place is the needed central organization to coordinate implementation of identified needed energy, social, and environmental responses.
For Congress to participate in preventing 2017 exceeding of 'global carbon budget,' Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC's) membership is to be replaced by four senior nuclear specialists and one presidential appointee. Revised scope of revised NRC membership is to include supervisions of U.S. 'Nuclear Fuel Cycle' and rapid expansion of U.S. nuclear energy. Global and U.S. plans for global warming reduction are to be produced by intelligence agencies with the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).
