GWPF Newsletter - Pentagon: Global Warming No Longer A National Security Threat

The Climate-Change Doomsday Just Got Cancelled

In this newsletter:

1) Pentagon: Global Warming No Longer A National Security Threat
Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller, 19 January 2018
 
2) Reminder: Bonkers Pentagon Tells Bush: Climate Change Will Destroy Us
The Observer, 22 February 2004

 
3) The Climate-Change Doomsday Just Got Cancelled
Editorial, Investor's Business Daily, 19 January 2018
 
4) Francis Menton: U.S. Regains The Ability To Identify Real National Security Threats
Manhattan Contrarian, 19 December 2017
 
5) The World’s Oil Kings Are Under Threat From U.S. Shale Revolution
Bloomberg, 18 January 2018
 
6) And Finally: Greenpeace Still Making Fake Wind Claims
Gaia Fawkes, 19 January 2018

Full details:

1) Pentagon: Global Warming No Longer A National Security Threat
Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller, 19 January 2018

The Pentagon released a National Defense Strategy that for the first time in more than a decade does not mention manmade global warming as a security threat.

An 11-page summary of the new National Defense Strategy makes no mention of “global warming” or “climate change,” according to a keyword search by the Huffington Post. The document reflects the Trump administration’s focus on “energy dominance” over climate.

The National Defense Strategy, signed by Defense Secretary James Mattis, doesn’t have much to say about energy issues, except that the U.S. would “foster a stable and secure Middle East” and “contributes to stable global energy markets and secure trade routes.”

The Pentagon released the strategy document Friday, and officials were clear that it would make no mention of global warming. The Bush administration added global warming to the defense strategy in 2008, but the issue gained top-tier status during the Obama administration.

The Trump administration released its “America First” security strategy in December, which called for “[u]nleashing these abundant energy resources— coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear” to boost the economy and aid U.S. allies.

That plan de-emphasized policies aimed at fighting manmade global warming, a complete u-turn from national security under the Obama administration.

“Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system,” reads the National Security Strategy, released in December.

“U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth, energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy security interests,” reads the plan.

Full story
 
See also GWPF coverage of climate change & national security
 
2) Reminder: Bonkers Pentagon Tells Bush: Climate Change Will Destroy Us
The Observer, 22 February 2004

· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war 
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years 
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism



Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.

Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.

Full farce
 
3) The Climate-Change Doomsday Just Got Cancelled
Editorial, Investor's Business Daily, 19 January 2018

A new study published in the prestigious journal Nature finds that all those global warming doomsday scenarios aren’t credible. Not that you would ever know based on how little coverage this study is getting.

The study, published on Thursday, finds that if CO2 in the atmosphere doubled, global temperatures would climb at most by 3.4 degrees Celsius. That’s far below what the UN has been saying for decades, namely that temperatures would rise as much as 4.5 degrees, and possibly up to 6 degrees.

Basically, the scientists involved in the Nature study found that the planet is less sensitive to changes in CO2 levels than had been previously believed. That means projected temperature increases are too high.

Of course this is just one study, but it supports the contention climate skeptics have been making for years — that the computer models used to predict future warming were exaggerating the impact of CO2, evidenced in part by the fact that the planet hasn’t been warming as much as those models say it should.

Why is this important? Because all those horror stories told over the past decades are based on predictions of  temperature increases that are much higher than 3.4 degrees.

A 2008 National Geographic series, to cite just one example, contended that scientists are warning that the global average temperature could increase by as much as 6 degrees Celsius over the next century, “which would cause our world to change radically.” Oceans, it said, would become marine wastelands, deserts would expand, catastrophic events would be more common.

The Obama administration’s EPA put out a report in 2015 claiming that climate change would triple the number of extremely hot days in the U.S. by 2100, increase air and water pollution, cause $5 trillion in damages for coastal property, and result in tens of thousands of premature deaths.

The EPA assumed a global temperature increase of 5 degrees.

The Nature study blows a hole in these and other doomsday scenarios that have been peddled for decades by everyone from Al Gore to Prince Charles.

In other words, it’s big news.

And don’t be surprised if scientists end up revising peak warming down even further. That’s been the trend up until now, after all. Back in 1977, the National Academy of Sciences said temperatures would shoot up 6 degrees C by 2050 because of CO2 emissions. In 1985, James Hansen claimed that doubling CO2 levels would boost temperatures up to 5 degrees, and other computer models at the time put the upper bound at 5.5 degrees.

As it happens, though, on the same day the Nature study was published, NASA released its latest report on global temperatures, declaring that 2017 was the second hottest year on record, with 2016 the hottest.

Guess which story made front page news?

The New York Times put the NASA story on its main webpage, and ignored the Nature study entirely.

Full post
 
4) Francis Menton: U.S. Regains The Ability To Identify Real National Security Threats
Manhattan Contrarian, 19 December 2017 

If the U.S. had shut down fracking over concerns about climate change it would have been dependent on OPEC and Russia like Europe and the UK are now.

Maybe Donald Trump is just not your type of guy, and certainly not the guy you would want to be President; but keep in mind who was the alternative.  Before these things fade into the memory hole, bring back to mind a few of the wildly incompetent policies of the previous administration.  Looking around today for a candidate as the policy of the previous administration that could be the very most wildly incompetent of all, with a very real potential to put the security of the country in serious jeopardy, my leading contender is the decision to declare “climate change” to be a top-priority national security risk.

Do you remember Obama doing that?  It wasn’t that long ago.  In his second inaugural address in January 2013, Obama declared that “no challenge – no challenge – poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.”  Then, over the next couple of years, he ramped up the claimed “challenge” of climate change from mere “greatest threat to future generations” to an “immediate threat to national security.”  Think about that for a minute — how would it even work?  Suppose the temperature goes up a few degrees over the next few decades.  Does it mean that we don’t have an army any more?  Does it mean that our weapons won’t work?  

Nevertheless, in a National Security Strategy document in February 2015, the Obama administration declared climate change to be “an urgent and growing threat to our national security,”  Then in May 2015, Obama gave a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut.  Excerpt:

I am here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country.  And so we need to act, and we need to act now.

Supposedly, something like sea level, or maybe wildfires, or maybe floods — all completely speculative — would somehow make the country harder to defend.  Meanwhile, when Obama talked about “acting now,” what he meant was restricting production fossil fuels in the United States.  What did he think was the fuel that powers the planes and ships and missiles, let alone powering the economy that provides all the logistical support to keep the military functioning?  

As far as I could tell, he had no idea.  In the name of “national security” he would hobble and ultimately shut down our own oil and coal and gas industries, leaving us to go begging for the necessary fuel to — where?  OPEC?  Russia?  Venezuela?  You really need to be delusional not to be able to distinguish the real national security threat here from the imaginary one.

As you probably know, in a new National Security Strategy document released yesterdayPresident Trump reversed this ridiculous policy of President Obama.  The new document does not contain any section explicitly dealing with “climate,” but it does have a section titled “Embrace Energy Dominance.”  Key quote:

Access to domestic sources of clean, affordable, and reliable energy underpins a prosperous, secure, and powerful America for decades to come.  Unleashing these abundant energy resources—coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear—stimulates the economy and builds a foundation for future growth. Our Nation must take advantage of our wealth in domestic resources and energy efficiency to promote competitiveness across our industries. . . .  

Climate policies will continue to shape the global energy system. U.S. leadership is indispensable to countering an anti-growth energy agenda that is detrimental to U.S. economic and energy secu- rity interests. Given future global energy demand, much of the developing world will require fossil fuels, as well as other forms of energy, to power their economies and lift their people out of poverty.  The United States will continue to advance an approach that balances energy security, economic development, and environmental protection.

Bullet dodged, at least for the moment.

Now, perhaps on reading this, you remain skeptical that hobbling U.S. fossil fuel energy production could jeopardize national security by making the U.S. dependent on the likes of OPEC or Russia for fuel needed to run the military or the economy.  If so, I would urge you to pay attention to what has just been occurring in the UK.  The UK is thought to have substantial natural gas-bearing shale formations (full extent unknown due to lack of exploration) that could be tapped to supply fuel for the country.  However, during the whole time of the shale gas revolution in the United States, the process of horizontal drilling and “fracking” for gas has been essentially shut down by regulators over concerns of environmentalists.  The first exploratory well after the moratorium finally got going just this August.  From the Financial Times, August 17:

Drilling has started on the first UK shale well for six years even as debate intensifies among geologists over how much gas is available for fracking. Cuadrilla, the company leading the push to bring US-style shale gas production to the UK, said on Thursday it had begun drilling a vertical well expected to reach 3.5km beneath its site near Blackpool, Lancashire. . . .   

Fracking has been on hold in the UK since 2011 when two small earth tremors were blamed on exploratory operations by Cuadrilla at another site near Blackpool. Cuadrilla was given the go-ahead by the government last year to resume drilling, reflecting ministers’ hopes of replicating the shale revolution that has cut US gas prices and bolstered American energy security.

Lacking a home-grown, land-based gas supply from fracking, the UK has been relying on gas from the aging North Sea fields, as well as gas that comes from the Middle East and also Norway via pipelines across Europe.  Both of those sources then suddenly experienced supply disruptions in the past couple of weeks.  From the Telegraph, December 13:
Around 40pc of the UK’s domestic [natural gas] supplies have been wiped out until the new year due to the emergency shutdown of the North Sea’s Forties pipeline, operated by Ineos. Supply from Europe has also been constrained by the explosion at a hub in Austria and technical problems in the Norwegian North Sea.    

Time to crank up the vast reserves of solar panels?  No, dummy, those don’t work in the winter.  Wind turbines also have zero ability to step up in an emergency.

Full post
 
5) The World’s Oil Kings Are Under Threat From U.S. Shale Revolution
Bloomberg, 18 January 2018 

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown in the world’s biggest oil market. Middle East producers who for decades reigned as the undisputed leaders of oil sales to Asia are sensing a threat to their dominance, which is goading them to review age-old habits.

Before the U.S. shale boom and the biggest price crash in a generation, buyers eager to feed their galloping economies had little choice but to purchase their supply even if terms weren’t desirable.

Refiners have long grumbled about Middle East producers providing pricing for long-term oil cargoes in a timeline that’s out of sync with when individual “spot” shipments are traded. That complicated policy makes it difficult to compare the relative costs of various crudes.

Now, easier access to cargoes in a world flooded with oil and the end of a ban on U.S. crude exports is giving buyers more of a say and forcing sellers to focus on customer needs. Competing supply from the Americas to Europe and Africa to countries such as China and India are eating into Middle Eastern producers’ market share, putting them on the defensive.

“Middle Eastern producers are getting more cognizant that there’s a lot of arbitrage supplies coming to Asia,” said John Driscoll, the chief strategist at JTD Energy Services Pte. “With increased competition for market share in Asia, Middle Eastern producers face pressure to review their marketing strategies and official selling prices and ensure that they’re buyer-friendly.”

A refiner now wanting to buy spot supply of Russian or African crude loading in March for delivery within a month will have access to its cost right away. Yet it won’t be able to make a comparison against Abu Dhabi oil because the emirate’s producer lets customers with long-term contracts know the cost for March cargoes only in April.

As for shipments from the U.S. and Europe’s North Sea that take almost two months to arrive, buyers will still be able to lock in prices sooner than they would be for long-term Middle East shipments.

Full post
 
6) And Finally: Greenpeace Still Making Fake Wind Claims
Gaia Fawkes, 19 January 2018 



Eco-warriors at Greenpeace are still claiming wind energy prices have fallen by 50% despite promising the Advertising Standards Authority they would no longer do so. The pressure group was involved in a major green lobby ad campaign promoting wind power fronted by actors Peter Capaldi and Emma Thompson. Posters – including one which went up in Westminster tube station – claimed: “The price paid for electricity from offshore wind farms has fallen by 50% over the last five years.” Wrong – in most cases the prices paid for electricity from the UK’s offshore wind fleet have not fallen at all…

Following an upheld complaint, Greenpeace told the Advertising Standards Authority last month it would no longer make the claim. But a video featuring Emma Thompson holding a giant “50% off” sign next to an offshore wind farm is still being shown on the Greenpeace Facebook page. Thompson claims the non-existent price drop is: “it’s better than the Harrods sale”. The caption reads: “Wow – the cost of offshore wind has HALVED in the last two years!”

A spokesman for the Global Warming Policy Forum, which made the successful complaint, said:

“The ads are deliberately misleading MPs and the wider public into thinking that existing wind farms have been cutting their prices. In fact, the allegedly lower prices are only related to auction bids in so-called Contracts for Difference which apply to tentative future wind projects that will not start generating until 2021/2022 and may in fact never be built — or never generate at these low prices. As a recent study has shown, the capital costs of new offshore wind do not appear to be falling and may even be rising as they move into deeper waters.”

When will Greenpeace keep its promise to the regulator?

Update: It would appear that Greenpeace have finally pulled the video after this GF story

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.