You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Home Front: Politix
Bill ties climate to national security
2007-04-09
This is gonna clause some problems!
The CIA and Pentagon would for the first time be required to assess the national security implications of climate change under proposed legislation intended to a national defense issue.

The bipartisan proposal, which its sponsors expect to pass the Congress with wide support, calls for the director of national intelligence to conduct the first-ever "national intelligence estimate" on global warming. The effort would include pinpointing the regions at highest risk of humanitarian suffering and assessing the likelihood of wars erupting over diminishing water and other resources.
Not a bad idea, along the same lines of our being prepared for an invasion by Canada. Some staff officer in training will get to write a NIE on global warming as an exercise.
The measure also would order the Pentagon to undertake a series of war games to determine how global climate change could affect US security, including "direct physical threats to the United States posed by extreme weather events such as hurricanes."
COL: "Okay, people, gather 'round the Big Board. We're going to game the 'global climate change' scenario today."
CAP #1: [ whispering to CAP #2 ] "Kee-rist, not this again."
COL: "Captain, you got something you want to share with us?"
CAP #1: "Umm, no sir, looking forward to the exercise, sir."
The growing attention to global warming as a national security issue could open new avenues of support for tougher efforts to limit greenhouse gases, according to specialists.

"If you get the intelligence community to apply some of its analytic capabilities to this issue, it could be compelling to whoever is sitting in the White House," said Anne Harrington , director of the committee on international security at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington. "If the White House does not absorb the independent scientific expertise, then maybe something from the intelligence community might have more weight."

The measure, sponsored by Senator Chuck Hagel , a Nebraska Republican, and Senator Richard J. Durbin , an Illinois Democrat, comes as other international bodies are taking steps to designate global warming as a high international priority for their budgets and staffing. The United Nations Security Council has put climate change on its agenda for the first time, warning that global warming could be a catalyst for new conflicts around the world. The council said it would hold a high-level meeting on the issue later this month.

"The traditional triggers of conflict which exist out there are likely to be exacerbated by the effect of climate change," said Emyr Jones Parry, Britain's UN ambassador.

The push in the United States to treat global warming as a national security threat follows the same path as previous efforts to treat the spread of AIDS as a security threat. The disease was long seen as exclusively a health issue until intelligence officials warned that it could ravage military forces across Africa and draw the United States into conflict.

Growing concerns about the implications of global warming have also led some Republicans and Democrats to give the issue far more prominence in policy circles. "For years, many of us have examined global warming as an environmental or economic issue," Durbin said in little-noticed remarks last month. "We also need to consider it as a security concern."
That's are far as I could stand to read
Posted by:Sherry

#6  My, how Hagel has grown in office...
Posted by: Raj   2007-04-09 20:12  

#5  Nebraska should be ashamed for sending this POS to the Senate. I voted against Boxer and Di-Fi, so I'm only ashamed of the idjits that voted them in
Posted by: Frank G   2007-04-09 18:25  

#4  If you mandate enough activity, then the actuality eventually becomes self perpetuating. Bureaucracy U's Empire-building 101.
Posted by: john   2007-04-09 18:20  

#3  1% increase over the next fifty years. How do you wargame that?
Posted by: rjschwarz   2007-04-09 17:58  

#2  This is just Chapter 'Next,' The USN aalready has to run their ASW drill plans therough all sorts of contortions because there is a fear that the sonar interferes with whalesong.
Save a whale: harpoon a fat chick.
Posted by: USN, Ret.   2007-04-09 17:42  

#1  "The measure, sponsored by Senator Chuck Hagel,..."

I knew it. I just KNEW this idiot must be involved, before I even got to the end of the 2nd paragraph.

Where's that noose...

Posted by: Dave D.   2007-04-09 16:55  

00:00