U.S. Military Could Collapse Within 20 Years Due to Climate Change, Report Commissioned By Pentagon Says

This is just grantmanship: a plea for more money. Will the army that won in two world wars be unable to cope with a couple of degrees of average temperature rise? Armies have to be adaptable and this lot of adaptations should not be too demanding

Starvation? Note that the big problem for farmers is glut, not shortage (of grains etc.)  Note also that global warming would increase rainfall, not lead to drought.  So crops would thrive

The report is imagination run riot, not a scientific study of the issues


The report says a combination of global starvation, war, disease, drought, and a fragile power grid could have cascading, devastating effects.

According to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes.

The senior US government officials who wrote the report are from several key agencies including the Army, Defense Intelligence Agency, and NASA. The study called on the Pentagon to urgently prepare for the possibility that domestic power, water, and food systems might collapse due to the impacts of climate change as we near mid-century.

The report was commissioned by General Mark Milley, Trump's new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, making him the highest-ranking military officer in the country (the report also puts him at odds with Trump, who does not take climate change seriously.)

The report, titled Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army, was launched by the U.S. Army War College in partnership with NASA in May at the Wilson Center in Washington DC. The report was commissioned by Gen. Milley during his previous role as the Army’s Chief of Staff. It was made publicly available in August via the Center for Climate and Security, but didn't get a lot of attention at the time.

The two most prominent scenarios in the report focus on the risk of a collapse of the power grid within “the next 20 years,” and the danger of disease epidemics. Both could be triggered by climate change in the near-term, it notes.

“Increased energy requirements” triggered by new weather patterns like extended periods of heat, drought, and cold could eventually overwhelm “an already fragile system.”

The report also warns that the US military should prepare for new foreign interventions in Syria-style conflicts, triggered due to climate-related impacts. Bangladesh in particular is highlighted as the most vulnerable country to climate collapse in the world.

“The permanent displacement of a large portion of the population of Bangladesh would be a regional catastrophe with the potential to increase global instability,” the report warns. “This is a potential result of climate change complications in just one country. Globally, over 600 million people live at sea level.”

Sea level rise, which could go higher than 2 meters by 2100 according to one recent study, “will displace tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people, creating massive, enduring instability,” the report adds.

The US should therefore be ready to act not only in Bangladesh, but in many other regions, like the rapidly melting Arctic—where the report recommends the US military should take advantage of its hydrocarbon resources and new transit routes to repel Russian encroachment.

But without urgent reforms, the report warns that the US military itself could end up effectively collapsing as it tries to respond to climate collapse. It could lose capacity to contain threats in the US and could wilt into “mission failure” abroad due to inadequate water supplies.

More HERE





World’s largest ice sheet growing

The West Antarctic ice sheet, the biggest mass of ice in the world, has been growing since the end of the nineteenth century.

Marc Morano featured a post about a fascinating Chinese study from Dr. Patrick Michaels at the website of CFACT’s friend and ally the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The forthcoming study by six Chinese authors is scheduled to appear in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.  The study concludes that Antarctic ice exhibited a “significant negative trend” during the nineteenth century, then a “significant positive trend” throughout the 20th.

This doesn’t help the narrative for those seeking to spread climate alarm one bit.

Here’s the latest example:  Artist Thomas Starr of Northeastern University has been placing fake historical markers in New England towns.  “Gazebo relocated due to recurring flooding caused by sea level rise, March, 2058,” reads a plaque on a gazebo in Durham, New Hampshire. He calls it the Seacoast Remembrance Project.  Starr’s plaques have been garnering the laudatory media write-ups we’re sure you’d expect.

Hey Durham Town Council, want to sell us the land your lovely seaside gazebo’s on at a generous discount?  We’ll take the problem off your hands.  It is doomed after all.

That sea level has been slowly rising at only 1 to 3 mm per year since before the industrial revolution, with no sign of meaningful acceleration, does not make it into the articles.  Hysterical sea level claims are not based on reality.  Dangerously rising seas exist only in the virtual world of climate computer simulations.

Those ever-faulty computer models project extreme Antarctic ice melt.  That it has not actually occurred does not seem to matter.  They even stoop to attributing extra high tides caused by natural lunar cycles, combined with ground level subsidence, to sea level rise.

Pity the tide gauges don’t show it.  Sorry Miami, your occasionally wet streets were not caused by electrical generation, air travel, bovine flatulence, or even SUVs.

Dr. Michaels speculates that the media will have no appetite for a study showing Antarctic ice gaining.  What do you think?

We’ll do him one better.  If they do cover it, they’ll try and spin it as justifying global warming alarm!

We factored the situation into our own computer models.  They project shamelessly disseminated climate propaganda.

Let’s see whose projections pan out.

SOURCE





The Green New Deal’s solar absurdity/b>



Those who support the Green New Deal (GND) want what they claim to be the only real solution to the global warming problem which is solar power, and other so-called renewables to save our planet from the ravages of fossil fuel.

They insist our dependance on fossil fuels can be ended by having the world become fully dependent on green energy they wrongly claim to be environmentally friendly, producing no pollution. None of which is true or possible. But their real motivation for the climate change delusion is to shift control of all energy from oil and gas companies to the government. It is a move toward the socialist goal of the Green New Deal.

With the exception of hydropower all so-called “renewable” energy is expensive and inefficient. They are only thought to be economical and competitive through massive government subsides which are hidden in our tax burden. Let’s try and show the real costs of rooftop solar power.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Lawrence Livermore Laboratory says that as of 2015 the total energy consumed in America was the energy equivalent to 17 billion barrels of oil, 38% is used for electricity , 29% for transportation and the remaining 33% as onsite power for business and industry. Only 11% is used domestically. Fossil fuels provide 82% of that power, nuclear 9% and hydropower 2.5% (IBID). Of the renewable energy sources preferred by the GND, biofuels such as ethanol in gasoline provides 5%, wind power 2%, and solar one half of one percent.

Yet in light of these government generated statistics the GND calls for all fossil fuel burning power plants to be shut down over the next 12 years, along with all Nuclear plants as anything radioactive is considered inherently evil. In addition it demands that as many hydroelectric power plants as possible be closed to protect fish spawning grounds. (No this is not a joke). Finally it eliminates gasoline powered vehicles switching to electric cars and public transportation.

According to the 2017 Solar Electric Handbook (www.solarelectricityhandbook.com/solar-radiation.html) the maximum amount of sunlight hitting one square meter (roughly a square yard) of the Earth’s surface, delivers 1000 watts of power (that would light 10, 100 watt bulbs). But the shifting angles of the sun drops that number to 600 watts. Commercial photovoltaic cells can only harvest 15% of that energy dropping us to only 90 watts under ideal conditions or lighting about one 100 watt bulb.

But the sun does not shine at night so we are down to 45 watts. But solar collectors only take up a little over 50% of the land area of a solar farm bringing us to 25 watts, and then average clouds, smoke and dust could drop us all the way down to zero.

 The average output across the US of a typical solar power facility is in fact between 5 and 7.5 watts per square meter (Electric Power Monthly , U.S. Energy Information Administration , Dec.22,2017. https://www.eia.gov.electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?/t=epmt_6_07_b)). Is the problem getting clearer, but wait there is more.

Photoelectric cells used to create electric energy consume more energy in their production than they collect. The complex steps required to create raw quartz used to eventually make the wafers that become the collectors surface, require 3370 kilowatt hours of energy per square meter of collector material produced (Williams,E.D.,Ayres.R.U., and Heller,M., “The 1.7 Kilogram Microchip: Energy and Material Use in the Production of Semiconductor Devices”, Environ.Sci. Technology., 36, 5504-5510 (2002). )

But wait there is still more. Solar energy can’t be turned on and off to meet shifts in energy. The sun shines during the day but power needs peak in the morning and evening. Less energy is collected in winter than summer due to shorter days and lower sun angles. One solution is to have backup fossil fuel power plants and now you are paying for two systems instead of one and the use of fossil fuel continues. The other solution is to store extra energy in batteries. A typical lead-acid car battery has a storage capacity of one kilowatt hour, according to McGraw-Hill’s Handbook of Batteries

(Linden,D.,Reddy, T.B..,Eds., Handbook ofBatteries, Third Edition,McGraw-Hill, New York , 2002, Chapter 23).

A total replacement of fossil fuels by solar energy and a battery storage component would require many trillions of such batteries. Lithium batteries would offer more storage but at twice the price.

While a solar farm can be built anywhere, sunny areas of the country are not evenly distributed requiring transmission lines from the sunniest areas to the less sunny areas. As the distance increase the cost of solar skyrockets.

Finally the land areas required for solar farms are extraordinary. Using the most generous capacity numbers for photovoltaic cells in the sunniest areas, a 1000 megawatt solar farm (the standard output of most fossil fuel plants) would require 51 square miles which is the approximate area of San Francisco (Land Requirements for Carbon-Free Technologies, Nuclear Energy Institute Policy Paper, July 9 2015, https://www.nei.org/CorporateSite/media/filefolder/Policy/Paper/Land_Use_Carbon_Free_Technologies.pdf?ext=pdf)

Where is the land to be sacrificed in the name of the GND to come from? In fact there is not enough land in the United States to harvest the Solar energy to play a major role in the nations energy requirements .

Solar energy is too expensive for most countries or individuals to afford. The World Bank says that over 1.5 billion people live without electricity.

(World Bank Group, Access to Electricity (% of Population)Sustainable Energy for All Database, https://data World bank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS)

Although coal is vilified while producing a third of the world’s energy, it’s use continues to increase as it costs only 7 cents a kilowatt hour (Coal International Energy Agency https://www.iea.org/about/faqs/coal/.). Natural gas costs are even less at 6 cents a kilowatt hour. The costs reported for solar operations have dropped to 16 cents a kilowatt hour, but government subsidies come to 24 cents a kilowatt hour giving it a real cost of 40 cents (Hansen,M.E., Simmons,R.T., Yonk,R.M., The Unseen Costs of Solar-Generated Electricity, The Institute of Political Economy, Utah State University,April 2016,www.usa.edu/ice.)

Few Americans could afford this to save the planet let alone people living in poor countries. Both widespread solar energy and the Green New Deal are but a fantasy of those who truly wish to destroy the nation as envisioned by our founding fathers.

SOURCE




A cardinal has drunk the Kool-aid

The archbishop of Luxembourg said this week that climate change is the most important issue faced by the Vatican synod on the Amazon, so its final document “should be very strong” on ecological issues.

“If our planet is destroyed, we can shout as much as we want about married priests or women priests, but there will be no priests needed anymore,” said Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the president of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) and a vocal ecological activist.

“So, it’s the most important problem and it’s a problem with the greatest urgency,” the cardinal told Jesuit-run America magazine.

Hollerich stressed the need for “ecological conversion” on the part of everyone, declaring that he no longer uses plastic bottles, buys fair-trade coffee instead of Nespresso, and has changed his diesel car for a hybrid one.

“We bishops have to change our lifestyle, and if we older people succeed in doing it, then the younger ones can do it too,” he said. “But if I cannot change my own lifestyle, how can I say to young people to do so?”

In late 2018, the Luxembourg archbishop signed an appeal calling on government leaders to take immediate action to overcome the “devastating effects of the climate crisis.”

The appeal called for keeping global warming below 1.5º C as well as a shift toward sustainable lifestyles, respect for indigenous communities, and the implementation of a “financial paradigm shift” in line with global climate accords.

This paradigm shift entails “putting an end to the fossil fuel era and transitioning to renewable energy” as well as rethinking the agriculture sector to ensure it provides healthy and accessible food for everyone, with a special emphasis on promoting agroecology, it said.

Following last May’s European elections, Hollerich said he was delighted with the successes of green parties while lamenting the rise of populist-nationalist groups.

“It is positive that in several places numerous young people voted for ecological parties, which means that the themes of environment and creation can become important in the future,” Hollerich said, noting that “as a Church” the victory of the green parties “makes us happy.”

Populist victories, on the other hand, would have been even “worse” if not for the pope’s constant call for a more welcoming attitude toward migrants, Hollerich said at the time.

The Italian vote does not mean that Italians are rebelling against the pope, the archbishop insisted, because “the Holy Father’s message and our message as a Church comes from the Gospel, and it is not a political or media message.”

“Then again, there are Catholics and Catholics,” he said.

Cardinal Hollerich told America he was most struck during the synod by “the violence the indigenous people have to experience. It’s violence against the rainforest and at the same time violence against the ethnic groups, violence against people.”

He said he also hopes the synod’s final document will include “something about the ordination of married men, and new ministries for women.”

SOURCE




Household recycling nightmare.  Italy is a warning

I have seen the future of household recycling; it wasn’t a dream — it’s a nightmare.

A five-coloured rainbow of daily rubbish duties for the householder; constant sorting in the basement; living under the threat of having your garbage left behind because you failed to follow the rules; being bossed about by a council worker in hi-vis rejecting your rubbish; rules that your garbage must be in transparent plastic to allow inspection, or costly biodegradable bags for organic waste; and colour coding that is an immutable law unto itself.

In addition to daily duties for household waste there are the supplementary collection days for old clothing and large items and garden waste that can take months to organise.

Last Monday’s report from Infrastructure Victoria that sees a future for Melburnians separating materials into organics, plastics, paper and cardboard, glass, metals and “regular” waste is part of a global shift to recycling and sorting by the householder to make the rubbish handlers’ job easier.

Scott Morrison has adopted a personal campaign to encourage recycling as an industry, to cut waste, reduce landfill and help the environment.

But the prime ministerial vision is at an industrial level. On his visit to the US he attended the opening of Anthony Pratt’s cardboard factory in Ohio, which is recycling waste paper, and the largest recycling plant in North America, also Australian-owned, where glass, rubber and plastic are turned into building materials.

This is a vastly different view of recycling than the idea that households have up to six bins to sort a family’s waste.

I have lived it in a mountain village in Italy — what evolved was a complicated, increasingly costly and endlessly time-consuming rubbish collection system.

Ten years ago there was a weekly garbage collection for everything. Then the commune — the council — introduced large communal bins to take bottles and paper for recycling as the system of waste management changed across Italy. (The irony being this is a country where corruption and inefficiency would regularly create mountains of garbage on the streets of Naples and the illegal dumping into the sea of everything from toxic waste to radioactive materials.)

Because the collection of our garbage was often delayed, the communal bins filled with all sorts of waste so the council moved to control garbage by increasing household sorting.

This summer in the little mountain village in the Abruzzi — and across Italy — there will be five separate rubbish bins; every household must put out or bring in a rubbish bin every day of the week and spend every evening sorting the rubbish to avoid contamination that would see collectors leave it behind.

There are five categories of rubbish, each with their own colour-coded bin, which must have its own designated bin-liner of a specified type.

The categories are organic (a five-litre brown bin and biodegradable bag); glass (a 10-litre bin and green transparent plastic bag); paper and cardboard (10-litre blue bin with transparent bag); plastic and metal (10-litre yellow bin with transparent bag) and; “secco”, loosely described as “hard” rubbish (a five-litre grey bin with a transparent bag).

Of course, all bins can’t be collected on the same day. Each is collected on a set day of the week.

But because organic waste has to be collected more often, the collection days shift and you must keep a daily calendar. No bin is collected on Sunday but you need to put one out Sunday night.

Typically there are three organic — food scraps from the kitchen — collections a week, with two as close to the weekend as possible but never guaranteed. There is also a sorting issue: plastic trays from the supermarket that have had meat in them can be placed in the organic bag, as can kitchen paper towels. But nonetheless, there’s a risk it will be deemed incorrect and left on your doorstep.

Likewise, glass and plastic collections are in transparent bags so they can be inspected to ensure there is no sheet glass or unwashed containers.

My neighbours this summer, up from Rome for their annual holiday, had their rubbish rejected three days in a row because they used black plastic bags. The garbage man told them that I was “from Australia” and even I knew the rules.

The real problem is “secco” such as CDs, DVDs and toothpaste tubes, but there is a limit to how many CDs you are throwing out and our village simply shrugs its shoulders and says “secco” is for “too hard” waste. It ends up the rubbish of the rubbish.

Apartment dwellers without a basement are cursed; they must store five bins or are given keys to small communal bins appropriately coloured and locked.

The cumulative result of rejected rubbish, a lack of public bins, confusion over categories and a reluctance to store putrid rubbish is that sneaky piles of trash appear around the place, and in the rural areas woodstoves and fires have the distinct smell of burning plastic.

My wife reckons I’m obsessed but I think it’s a modern recycling equivalent of fear of missing out — missing out on having our stinky rubbish removed.

SOURCE 

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