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One for the Climate Change denier's...and more
laker1963
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Arctic a growing security issue for U.S.; CIA shares spy photos of ice cap
Published:
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 | 3:45 PM ET
Canadian Press Lee-Anne Goodman, THE CANADIAN PRESS WASHINGTON -
The CIA normally concerns itself with terrorism and other threats to U.S. security, so the recent revelation that it is routinely monitoring the Arctic's rapidly shrinking ice cap, and now sharing spy satellite photos with climate-change scientists, caught some by surprise.
The little-known CIA program has been restarted after being shuttered by the George W. Bush administration for several years. The CIA is once again giving a select group of environmental scientists access to classified data about the Arctic, just as it did during the 1990s.
The data include thousands of high-resolution images taken by spy satellites that American scientists couldn't access without the program. It's something the Canadian government, incidentally, has been doing for years.
Nonetheless the news has caused Fox News commentators to scoff at the CIA, accusing it of "spying on icebergs instead of terrorists" and therefore failing to "keep Americans safe."
The ExxonMobil-funded organization National Center for Public Policy Research also objected, saying the program "diverts intelligence assets to climate research."
But national security experts ranging from Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, to retired military generals and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are insisting that climate change in the Arctic does indeed pose national security threats to the United States.
"An area that we're beginning to pay attention to, which is not in the headlines, is the Arctic," Clinton said in a recent interview with Newsweek magazine.
"With the melting of the ice, with sea lanes opening that were never there before ... with five countries ringing the Arctic ... With Russia saying that they are going to have an expedition next year to plant their flag on the North Pole. With Canada saying, 'No, you'd better not.' This is an area that we have to pay real attention to."
A Canadian Arctic expert agrees.
"What is happening in the Arctic is a transformation the likes of which we have never seen before," Robert Huebert, an international relations professor at the University of Calgary, said Tuesday.
Indeed, the shrinking ice cap has the potential to profoundly affect geopolitics as Canada and other northern nations try to position themselves to reap enormous economic benefits. Those efforts include increased military presence in the region by the countries involved.
"The fact that we're starting to see a really substantial military build-up means we've got a very, very unsettled situation in the Arctic right now," Huebert said.
The U.S. National Intelligence Council has said that sea lanes in the Arctic could be free of ice during the summer months as soon as 2013, while also pointing out that Canada and Russia stand to be the world's big economic winners in the wake of climate change.
But Denmark, the U.S. and Norway are also scrambling to ensure they benefit from improved access to potentially vast energy and mineral resources and shorter maritime shipping routes.
There are already tensions. The United States and Canada scoffed at a Russian submarine expedition three years ago that planted the country's flag on the seabed under the North Pole.
The U.S. dismissed the Russian move as legally meaningless, while Peter MacKay, Canada's foreign affairs minister at the time, called the expedition "just a show" and added that Russia could not expect to claim territory under the rules of "the 15th century."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the APEC leaders summit last fall in Singapore, the Russian ambassador to Canada Georgiy Mamedov told The Canadian Press in a recent interview.
"Medvedev assured your prime minister that we have no demands on the Arctic, that we will play by the rules, that we are bound by the same United Nations agreements you are," Mamedov said.
Mamedov said Russia wants to work with Canada and its partners in the Arctic and put past tensions behind them.
Between them, Canada and Russia account for 75 per cent of the Arctic Ocean's coastline. Both countries claim the channels between their Arctic islands and northern coasts as "internal waters" where foreign vessels require permission to enter.
The United States scoffs at those claims, insisting the Northern Sea Route and Northwest Passage are "international straits."
That's where a pitched battle looms between Canada and the U.S. in the years to come, Huebert says.
"The Northwest passage is a Mom and apple pie issue for Canada, whereas most Americans have never heard of it," he said.
"For Canada, the Northwest Passage is as important to us as security issues are to Americans, as important as the right to bear arms is to Americans."
In the months and years to come, Huebert added, Canada has to prove to the U.S. it can also protect American interests in the Arctic.
"The U.S. will never come out and publicly accept our position ... but the more that we work and prove our ability to control the Northwest Passage, the more comfortable the Americans will be with our position," he said.
© The Canadian Press, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 | 3:45 PM ET
Canadian Press Lee-Anne Goodman, THE CANADIAN PRESS WASHINGTON -
The CIA normally concerns itself with terrorism and other threats to U.S. security, so the recent revelation that it is routinely monitoring the Arctic's rapidly shrinking ice cap, and now sharing spy satellite photos with climate-change scientists, caught some by surprise.
The little-known CIA program has been restarted after being shuttered by the George W. Bush administration for several years. The CIA is once again giving a select group of environmental scientists access to classified data about the Arctic, just as it did during the 1990s.
The data include thousands of high-resolution images taken by spy satellites that American scientists couldn't access without the program. It's something the Canadian government, incidentally, has been doing for years.
Nonetheless the news has caused Fox News commentators to scoff at the CIA, accusing it of "spying on icebergs instead of terrorists" and therefore failing to "keep Americans safe."
The ExxonMobil-funded organization National Center for Public Policy Research also objected, saying the program "diverts intelligence assets to climate research."
But national security experts ranging from Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, to retired military generals and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are insisting that climate change in the Arctic does indeed pose national security threats to the United States.
"An area that we're beginning to pay attention to, which is not in the headlines, is the Arctic," Clinton said in a recent interview with Newsweek magazine.
"With the melting of the ice, with sea lanes opening that were never there before ... with five countries ringing the Arctic ... With Russia saying that they are going to have an expedition next year to plant their flag on the North Pole. With Canada saying, 'No, you'd better not.' This is an area that we have to pay real attention to."
A Canadian Arctic expert agrees.
"What is happening in the Arctic is a transformation the likes of which we have never seen before," Robert Huebert, an international relations professor at the University of Calgary, said Tuesday.
Indeed, the shrinking ice cap has the potential to profoundly affect geopolitics as Canada and other northern nations try to position themselves to reap enormous economic benefits. Those efforts include increased military presence in the region by the countries involved.
"The fact that we're starting to see a really substantial military build-up means we've got a very, very unsettled situation in the Arctic right now," Huebert said.
The U.S. National Intelligence Council has said that sea lanes in the Arctic could be free of ice during the summer months as soon as 2013, while also pointing out that Canada and Russia stand to be the world's big economic winners in the wake of climate change.
But Denmark, the U.S. and Norway are also scrambling to ensure they benefit from improved access to potentially vast energy and mineral resources and shorter maritime shipping routes.
There are already tensions. The United States and Canada scoffed at a Russian submarine expedition three years ago that planted the country's flag on the seabed under the North Pole.
The U.S. dismissed the Russian move as legally meaningless, while Peter MacKay, Canada's foreign affairs minister at the time, called the expedition "just a show" and added that Russia could not expect to claim territory under the rules of "the 15th century."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the APEC leaders summit last fall in Singapore, the Russian ambassador to Canada Georgiy Mamedov told The Canadian Press in a recent interview.
"Medvedev assured your prime minister that we have no demands on the Arctic, that we will play by the rules, that we are bound by the same United Nations agreements you are," Mamedov said.
Mamedov said Russia wants to work with Canada and its partners in the Arctic and put past tensions behind them.
Between them, Canada and Russia account for 75 per cent of the Arctic Ocean's coastline. Both countries claim the channels between their Arctic islands and northern coasts as "internal waters" where foreign vessels require permission to enter.
The United States scoffs at those claims, insisting the Northern Sea Route and Northwest Passage are "international straits."
That's where a pitched battle looms between Canada and the U.S. in the years to come, Huebert says.
"The Northwest passage is a Mom and apple pie issue for Canada, whereas most Americans have never heard of it," he said.
"For Canada, the Northwest Passage is as important to us as security issues are to Americans, as important as the right to bear arms is to Americans."
In the months and years to come, Huebert added, Canada has to prove to the U.S. it can also protect American interests in the Arctic.
"The U.S. will never come out and publicly accept our position ... but the more that we work and prove our ability to control the Northwest Passage, the more comfortable the Americans will be with our position," he said.
© The Canadian Press, 2010
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Comments
The hoax of man-made global warming is being exposed. Recent evidence of the doctoring of data by top climate scientists with political agendas to make it show warming that wasn't there and hide recent cooling is just the tip of the iceberg, one that is not melting as alarmists have been proclaiming. Let's review a few related facts.
Temperatures have always fluctuated naturally on this planet. Looking back over the past 100 years, the earth warmed from 1900 to around 1940. There was global cooling after that until the late 1970s.
It warmed again in the 1980s and 1990s, with that warmth peaking in 1998. There has been no warming since then even as CO2 has increased during the entire period. Eleven straight years of increasing CO2 and we're still cooler than 1998.
As of the 2009 growing season, the U.S. has now gone a record 21 straight years without a widespread drought in the Corn Belt. Soybean yields this year are easily a record. Corn yields were just shy of a record because it was actually too cool in the Upper Midwest. Climate models from man-made warming alarmists have consistently predicted increasing droughts along with yield-reducing excessive heat.
As a meteorologist who understands these models and appreciates our challenge to get the weather forecast right, it has amazed me that the public has been so easily bamboozled into believing the exaggerated 50-year cataclysmic climate forecasts.
Would you keep believing the same weatherman if he was wrong 11 forecasts in a row, then tried to sell you on his "long range" forecasts?
The problem is that the source of these errant forecasts and flawed interpretations are biased scientists, working with leaders of groups with the same thing in mind. Their goal is to have a significant influence on governmental policy as it relates to regulating carbon dioxide. A key element to success has been manipulated data and propaganda.
"Climate change" to "climategate"
Global warming has been twisted into a powerful issue that has attracted millions of loyal followers who believe the "debate is over," as Al Gore stated. Realizing that the warming had stopped after 1998, they even changed the name to "climate change."
"Climategate," as it's now being called, is just evidence of what some of us scientists have known. We have been witnessing an unprecedented, coordinated campaign to prove the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming and blame greenhouse gases using "whatever works" strategies.
The urgency to pass costly legislation has to do with shoving it through while many still have the illusion that it's worth the hefty cost and that the planet is still warming. Ironically, cap and trade in full force and doing what they claim it will to the earth's temperature would make a difference of only a tenth of 1 degree over the next 50 years. The natural cooling since 1998 is far greater than that.
The 2009 hurricane season was quiet, the third in the last four years to be below preseason forecasts. This, after very active 2004, 2005 and 2008 seasons, shows more evidence of the natural variability. Atlantic basin activity is not determined by global temperatures, but from a natural 25-year cycle.
The sunspot count continues to be at the lowest level in a century. Looking back in the past, there appears to be a strong link between an inactive sun and a cooler earth. The sun is the source of incoming heat on this planet. It has cycles that we haven't been around long enough to study and understand clearly.
We do know with certainty that all of the many temperature fluctuations in the past were caused by natural cycles or events. These natural cycles will continue with or without human beings. That's why temperatures have gone up and down the past 100 years, even while man-made CO2 has gone up every year.
One legitimate C02 link: Plants
The biggest legitimate link involving CO2 is with plants. We know that increasing CO2 increases plant growth and crop yields. CO2 is essential to all life forms on earth. Treating it as pollution is about as absurd as believing we can predict our climate 50 years from now. We also know that the warmer our planet has been in the past, the more life it supported. The most devastating blows to creatures on earth from temperatures came from cold.
Powerful evidence of life doing better because of increased CO2 and warmth comes from digital satellite observations that were processed, refined and compared to changes of satellite-based maps of vegetation collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's series of AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer) sensors. The digital satellite observations were processed into maps by NASA's Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies project.
The time frame for this comprehensive study is significant. It studied the years of greatest warming this century. The scientists concluded: "Between 1982 and 1999, 25 percent of the Earth's vegetated area experienced increasing plant productivity."
They assumed that "increasing CO2 caused plants to grow better" but "carbon dioxide fertilization couldn't be solely responsible for the change; climate change must be playing a role as well." Part of this was from more sunshine in the tropics and part of the increased plant productivity was from warmer temperatures in the high northern latitudes.
I believe in reducing all forms of real pollution, recycling, conservation and developing renewable energy. I also believe strongly in telling the truth. The truth is that CO2 is not pollution and that man did not cause much of the global warming that occurred in the last 100 years.
Don't believe the cleverly constructed presentations using distorted data from agenda-driven groups. They consider their hidden interests to be more important than the truth. They often use well-intentioned and credible people to help perpetrate the scam. Don't believe them.
We need to hold our policymakers accountable for their decisions, basing them on truth and the best interest of our country and planet. Don't believe me, either. Educate yourself on the subject, verify that everything stated here is the truth, and then believe it.
Mike Maguire is an Evansville meteorologist
And no, I'm not saying that there are people running around Antartica trying to blow off massive chunks of ice as 'evidence' of global warming, but I find it very interesting that so much of the scientific community was up in arms over this book. "Sixteen of 18 top U.S. climate scientists interviewed by Knight Ridder said the author was bending scientific data and distorting research." Yeah? And? It's fiction, obviously meaning it's not true...so why all resentment towards it? It's just something I find interesting.
Vulchor, I really do not understand why you feel you have to come onto a cigar website daily to antagonize people. You do not contribute without attacking and it really is getting old. I don't really care what you think of me or my beliefs. I have read through many older threads here and it seems you like to make your arguments and attack people at the same time. If you disagree with me that is ok. We are all entitled to our own beliefs. But can't you do this without attacking people or being so antagonistic? I was talking about a fictitious book and how much I enjoyed it so you decided to attack my religious beliefs. I just don't get it.
Although I do not feel your statement solicits a response I will give you one. My religious beliefs are based on many facts as well as faith. Jesus was scientifically and historically shown to be a real person. The kings, disciples, and other figures in the Bible have been shown through scientific and historical research to be real people. Many events in the Bible have scientifically and historically been proven as events that did occur. I have plenty to back up my religious beliefs and this is the end of the discussion.
That being said Vulchor, we can disagree and be friends at the end of the day. Maybe you do not intend to come off so harsh but sometimes you really do and I am not the only one to take issue with it. Personally, it doesn't hurt my feelings or ruin my day. It is just kind of annoying sometimes.
"Long ashes my friends."
I am not perfect and make mistakes just like everyone else. I am not trying to slam my belief system (religious or politically) down anyone's throat here. As a collective group we come from all walks of life and need to respect each other is all I am saying.
Vulchor, I enjoy your contributions to cigar related threads. I realize we might disagree and that is ok by me. I still consider everyone here a BOTL.
C'mon Puro, that is not a very good analogy at all. Or do you think YOU are the ONLY honest person in the world, and EVERYONE else is to be mistrusted?
It just seems insane to me to pass legislation here in the U.S. that will reduce the GDP according to the CBO, during hard economic times based on science that is far from proven. Seems very irresponsible to me.
i've known a lot of athiests that make the change at the endof their lives when they realize it's not about religion or tradition but about a relationship