World Peace Through Green Tape?

I guess the current administration has decided to help the goal of world peace through executive action. How? It seems intent on wrapping up national defense in environmental and cultural green tape. With enough tape, the mighty engines of war fighting will grind to a halt. And peace will break out all over.

One bit of this nonsense about the new "climate change" mandate for military planners, weapons acquisition persons, training commands, etc is covered by my radio co-host CDR Salamander  here:

We are moving to full Soviet clown show where political cargo cults are being forced on military planning - not because military professionals see it as important, but because The Party demands it.

I wonder if we could get a study of the fiscal and preparedness impact this sort of "environmental symbolism" has and will cost us.

I'm sure a number of underemployed/unemployed attorneys stand ready, however, to assist with the preparation of all the environmental impact statements (EIS) that will be needed for Marines and soldiers digging foxholes and prepping firing positions in both training and combat.

I wonder if each mortar round fired needs its own EIS or if a series of such firings can be covered by a blanket EIS. I also wonder if EISs need to be filed to cover incoming rounds?

Pretty sure there are a number of currently unemployed archaeologists who can help perform "cultural resource investigations" that will be needed to make sure such digging doesn't disturb historically sensitive things:

Section 106 of the NHPA requires all Federal agencies, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission FERC or Commission), to take into account, prior to authorizing an undertaking (, the effect of the undertaking on cultural resources listed or eligible for the National Register (historic properties). The agency must also afford the Council an opportunity to comment on the undertaking.

I guess we should be asking potential enemies to provide environmental impact statements concerning their potential attacks on the U.S. - I'm sure the Iranians, North Koreans, Chinese and Russians will be happy to comply with descriptions of what a several megaton weapon might do the the U.S. environment. Perhaps,  pending those filings, we can get an "international court" to issue an injunction on wars brought by such states. Wasn't something like that done after Russia invaded the Ukraine? No - well, I'm sure that was oversight.

It might prove a little tougher to get those nasty "non-state" actors to comply though . . .

Speaking of which, has anyone seen the ISIS "cultural resource" filings on the destruction of ancient sites?  I'm pretty sure we didn't get one from the Taliban before they blew up those Buddha things.

Of course, that was 2001, so the NYT et al can blame Bush.

Not so sure about the environmental impact statements this climate conscious administration must have prepared for Libya, covering withdrawal from Iraq and our reentering Iraq, and the impact on climate change of drawing "red lines" while watching Syria implode. Perhaps the Executive Branch has put those some place off line.

Ah, those wars of choice.

Among other distractions, there is the irony of Opening All Military Occupations, Positions to Women and then having a debate on whether women should be required to register for the draft like their male counterparts.

Culture wars of choice.

Disaster Prep Wednesday: New Direction in Climate Change Research

A really good, down to earth look at climate change from MIT professor Kerry Emanuel:

Research aimed at predicting future climate activity has primarily focused on large and complex numerical models. While this approach has provided some quantitative estimates of climate change, those predictions can vary greatly from one model to the next and produce doubts in the projected outcome.

In this Faculty Forum Online broadcast, Professor Kerry Emanuel ’76, PhD ’78 discussed a new approach to climate science that emphasizes basic understanding over black box simulation. After Emanuel presented a brief overview of climate research, he took questions from the worldwide MIT community via video chat. ***

In 2006, Emanuel was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He is the author of What We Know about Climate Change, a book The New York Times called “the single best thing written about climate change for a general audience.”

The video is from a couple of years ago.

Nice to hear someone discuss doing "something that makes sense." A nice little head nod to TANSTAAFL with coal.

Why is this in a Disaster Prep Wednesday post? Risk management means being willing to weigh evidence and determine whether action is required as a result.

Note: Sometimes the video does not show up in my draft or preview screens. If the video isn't working, you can find it at the first link and I'll try to fix it here later.

Geological Wonders: Natural Methane Seeps Off U.S. Atlantic Coast

Source

Reported as "Widespread methane leakage from the sea floor on the northern US Atlantic margin", then noted here:

Researchers have discovered 570 plumes of methane percolating up from the sea floor off the eastern coast of the United States, a surprisingly high number of seeps in a relatively quiescent part of the ocean. The seeps suggest that methane’s contribution to climate change has been underestimated in some models. And because most of the seeps lie at depths where small changes in temperature could be releasing the methane, it is possible that climate change itself could be playing a role in turning some of them on.
***
For a handful of the seeps, the researchers were able to take pictures with a remotely operated submersible. They found carbonate rocks associated with the seeps that would have taken several thousand years to form. But some of the seeps are shallow—and are at the critical depth where hydrates fall apart—so they could be sensitive to rising ocean temperatures on much shorter time scales, says Carolyn Ruppel, a co-author of the new study and chief of the gas hydrates project at the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. “There are reasons to believe that some of the present seepage has been triggered by changes in oceanographic conditions,” she says.

Proving that climate change is directly responsible could be difficult, Berndt says. In January, he and colleagues published a study in Science on methane seeps in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of the island of Svalbard, where temperature changes are occurring more rapidly. Berndt found evidence that the seeps there had existed for at least 3000 years and saw no evidence that the ocean sediments had been heating up—and releasing methane—on the decades-long timescales associated with climate change. At the very least, though, he says, the Atlantic Ocean study shows that ocean and climate modelers should start to incorporate methane inputs from many more types of seafloor terrains around the world. “We have this extra source here,” he says. “Not much attention has been paid to it.” (emphasis added)

Just about anyone familiar with coal fields and oil and gas geology is going to tell you that there are pockets of methane beneath the earth's surface, some of which finds its way to the surface - sometimes in unusual ways. For example, there is the Flaming Geyser around which a Washington State Park is formed:

The park is so named for a flame which burns through a concrete basin, fueled by a methane gas pocket 1,000 feet below the surface. When the pocket was discovered by prospective coal miners in the early 1900s, the test hole hit gas and saltwater, shooting water and flames 25 feet into the air. The same methane pocket seeps gas through a mud hole to create the "Bubbling Geyser" nearby. Both "geysers" can be found along a short hike.

Nor is this unique - geysers in Yellowstone National Park release small amounts of various gases:

Most geyser basins are either acidic or alkaline, and in some, like Norris, acidic and alkaline springs flow side by side. Some of the thermal features emit strong or obnoxious smells and even deadly odoriess gases. These gases, released at the surface after the pressure lowers, include carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, methane, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, ammonia, argon, radon, as well as other noble gases such as helium, neon, krypton, and xenon.

Even the famed NYTimes reports on the issue of coal mines and methane, as in this article:

Coal mines will always have methane, often in explosive concentrations, geologists and engineers say.
***
The gas, like coal, is a molecule made of hydrogen and carbon, and it is produced from the same raw material as coal, ancient piles of biological material, by the same processes. Much of the natural gas sold in the United States is drawn from coal seams.

In undisturbed coal deposits, the methane is loosely attached to the coal molecules when the deposit is under pressure; when the area is opened up by miners, the pressure is reduced and the methane bubbles out.

“Methane is ubiquitous on the coal mines,” said Neville A.H. Holt, a chemical engineer at the Electric Power Research Institute, in Palo Alto, Calif.

Methane feeding bacteria

In short, down under us in the ground beneath our feet and under the seas, the same raw materials that make coal and methane exist - so there should be no surprise that some of the gas thus create might find to reach the surface.

As stated here:

It wriggles up through fissures in Earth’s crust. It emanates from landfills. It is the primary component of cow burps and natural gas. This colorless, odorless gas is methane, and it is one of Earth’s most abundant—and, in some ways, most elusive—energy resources.

Produced primarily by living creatures breaking down organic matter, methane is the largest hydrocarbon source on Earth, making it the most common member of the chemical family that includes such fuels as petroleum and propane. Despite its abundance, however, methane remains difficult to use as a fuel because it is a gas under normal conditions, making it notoriously hard to store or transport.

Asserting that these seeps are due to climate change shouldn't be too surprising, either, since that's how the materials got under the sea in the first place.

We do not live on a planet with a static climate.

If you need proof of that, I suggest, once again, you go look at the history of glaciers.

National Energy Security: Keystone Pipeline vs. "Environmental Security"

There is a debate - of sorts - going on over whether the Keystone XL pipeline is a good or bad thing. For those of you who may not have followed the story, the pipeline is designed to transfer crude oil extracted from Canadian oil sands to refineries in the U.S.

After roughly a gazillion environmental studies on the impact of said pipeline on the Great Plains and its underlying aquifers and the double-crested Nebraska imaginary vampire vole, the pipeline has won approval from nearly everyone, including the Department of State (see here).

Nearly everyone does not include some environmentalists or, apparently, the President and some leading Democrats, who are now arguing over about the "national security" implications of the pipeline - as set out in this piece from the Oil and Gas Journal's Nick Snow, "Witnesses disagree on Keystone XL’s potential US security impacts"

Witnesses at a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing sharply disagreed on whether the proposed Keystone XL crude oil pipeline would help or hinder US security.
***
Retired US Marine Corp. Gen. James L. Jones, a former presidential national security advisor who now co-chairs the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Energy Project and Task Force on Defense Budget and Strategy, said in his written statement there is no doubt that the Keystone XL determination will be of strategic importance to the US. America’s Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain, primarily to secure continued free passage of crude oil through the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz to global markets, he reminded committee members.

“I would like to pose what I regard to be a pretty fundamental question: Why would the United States spend billions of dollars and place our military personnel at risk to ensure the flow of energy half a world away, but neglect an opportunity to enable the flow of energy in our very own backyard—creating jobs, tax revenue, and greater security?” Jones said.

He called the Keystone XL cross-border permit decision “a litmus test of whether America is serious about national, regional, and global energy security, and the world is watching.” Jones said the proposed pipeline is integral to US and North American energy security, which in turn is paramount to the nation’s prosperity and leadership.

“America’s ability to prosper and lead in a dangerous and uncertain world that needs us is quite clearly a preeminent matter of national interest,” he maintained. “I think that is why Congress has voted consistently, and in a bipartisan manner, to move forward with Keystone.”
***
Karen A. Harbert, president of the US Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, said the group looked at how much of the total global oil supply is in the hands of potentially politically unstable countries in its latest indexes of US and International Energy Security Risks. It found that since 1980, crude output from free countries has been stuck in the 17-20 million b/d range while production from partly free and not free countries has grown, she indicated.

“At a time when North Sea oil output is falling, large emerging economies are growing into large oil consumers, putting pressure on spare oil production capacity globally,” Harbert said in her written statement. “Political instability in many producing countries is also on the rise, and greater output from a closer friend and ally like Canada is needed and welcome.”
***
But two other witnesses argued that global climate change poses an even greater threat to US national security. They called for policies which discourage the use of fossil fuels and encourage development and deployment of alternatives.

The recently released Quadrennial Defense Review 2014 warned that climate change impacts could increase the frequency, scale and complexity of future military missions while undermining domestic military installations’ capacity to support training activities, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune testified.

James E. Hansen, who retired in April 2013 after 32 years of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies to devote his time to educating the public about climate change dangers, said that taxing oil, gas, and coal’s carbon emissions and rewarding consumers who move to low-carbon and no-carbon sources would make Keystone XL unnecessary.

“The annual reduction of oil use alone, after 10 years, would be more than three times the amount of oil” it would carry, he said in his written testimony. “By eliminating the need for the pipeline, the danger of oil spillage on American soil is also eliminated.”(emphasis added)

I am having trouble with the "climate change" as a threat to national security issue as presented in the QDR. Here's what the QDR 2014 says about climate change:

Climate change poses another significant challenge for the United States and the world at large. As greenhouse gas emissions increase, sea levels are rising, average global temperatures are increasing, and severe weather patterns are accelerating. These changes, coupled with other global dynamics, including growing, urbanizing, more affluent populations, and substantial economic growth in India, China, Brazil, and other nations, will devastate homes, land, and infrastructure. Climate change may exacerbate water scarcity and lead to sharp increases in food costs. The pressures caused by climate change will influence resource competition while placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world. These effects are threat multipliers that will aggravate stressors abroad such as poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and social tensions – conditions that can enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence.

Notice anything missing?

If it were me looking down the road, I would have put in some sort of time line concerning the effects of climate change. Are the oceans rising dramatically tomorrow or over the next 200 years? Is the QDR suggesting that "water scarcity" occurs because water is somehow destroyed or that there is a failure to plan for desalination, reservoirs and other means of recycling water? If the former, the science is bad. If the latter, then the failure to plan for projected scarcity seems to be the real issue, not just the use of a pipeline that will transport oil to the U.S. instead of to other countries via "risky oil tankers" on the high seas.

Be that as it may, much of the "debate" remains one of "near term" versus "long term." One pipeline is probably not the place to have that discussion. I think General Jones put it well in his testimony:

What we need more than symbolic, over-politicized debates on particular projects is a more strategic approach to U.S. energy and climate policy — one that promotes energy diversity, sustainability, productivity, and innovation. We can’t do that until we organize ourselves better to make and execute a bona-fide national energy security strategy

If you are interested in a good military/political analysis of the world's energy issues, I highly recommend you read General Jones's testimony:

Jones Testimony3

You can find Dr. Hansen's testimony here. The Sierra Club representative's testimony is here. General Jones testimony. Ms. Harbert's testimony. All are PDFs.

EPA Rules on Coal Burning Plants: An "ideologically driven fight to tear the capitalist heart out of western civilization"

Earth's Ice Age

No mincing of words in this Investors Business Daily Editorial, "New Rules On Power Plants Will Kill Coal Industry":

The administration finally has released its rules for curbing CO2 emissions from U.S. power plants. Far from being a plan to clean up the environment, it is in fact a road map to de-industrialization and poverty.

The tough new rules that will limit carbon dioxide output from new power plants immediately drew protests from the power industry. No surprise. But if Americans really understood what Obama is doing, they'd be up in arms, too.

Far from being an economically sensible plan to reduce U.S. pollution, this proposal will sharply raise the cost of energy to all Americans, while doing little to improve our environment.

As we face the remainder of the 21st Century, one can but hope that real science will begin to overcome the nearly absolute baloney that is driving us down the path set out by the anti-human zealots who set up these programs that are working - as designed- to bring our country to its knees while doing nothing that makes real sense.

Am I in favor of bringing back the old days of pollution? Not at all. But neither can I support the idiocy of this batch of people who seem driven to take us back to pre-industrial days while ignoring scientific research that poke large holes in their fundamental core beliefs.

Which, I suppose, as others have noted, this is not a scientific debate at all - but a form of a religious attack, which is why the supporters of this ruinous nonsense seems so unswayed by evidence that is contrary to their beliefs.

Want more?

"Gas Leaks in Fracking Disputed in Study", which the the NYTimes cumbersome way of noting that a scientific study has reported that not much methane escapes from fracking operations (see also WaPo's  "Fracking may not be as bad for the climate as we thought").

From the UK Daily Mail, "World's top climate scientists confess: Global warming is just QUARTER what we thought - and computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong":  Referring to the famed IPCC, the Daily Mail notes the things that the "leading" climate change crowd has not or cannot explained, if their concerns are, in fact, as "scientifically settled" as has been argued by people who refer to simple folks like me as "deniers" worthy of being declared some sort of climate "heretics" -

But they cannot explain why world average temperatures have not shown any statistically significant increase since 1997.

They admit large parts of the world were as warm as they are now for decades at a time between 950 and 1250 AD – centuries before the Industrial Revolution, and when the population and CO2 levels were both much lower.

The IPCC admits that while computer models forecast a decline in Antarctic sea ice, it has actually grown to a new record high. Again, the IPCC cannot say why.

A forecast in the 2007 report that hurricanes would become more intense has simply been dropped, without mention.

This year has been one of the quietest hurricane seasons in history and the US is currently enjoying its longest-ever period – almost eight years – without a single hurricane of Category 3 or above making landfall.

As I have said before, there is evidence that the world has warmed - we no longer have massive glaciers covering Canada and the upper U.S. and most of Europe (see map above) but those glaciers disappeared long before industrial man arose.

Is the world warming now? Hard to tell from the most recent, accurate real reports (as opposed to computer-based theories).

Before we drive ourselves back to the Dark Ages, I would suggest we take a long pause. After all, what if all these "true believers" are wrong?

Just for fun, some facts from our friends at the USGS about glaciers (emphasis added):

• Glaciers store about 69% of the world's freshwater, and if all land ice melted the seas would rise about 70 meters (about 230 feet).

• During the last ice age (when glaciers covered more land area than today) the sea level was about 400 feet lower than it is today. At that time, glaciers covered almost one-third of the land.

• During the last warm spell, 125,000 years ago, the seas were about 18 feet higher than they are today. About three million years ago the seas could have been up to 165 feet higher.

So, just how many coal burning plants were around 125,000 years ago? How about 3 million years ago?

Just saying . . .

Update: The quote in the post header? Read the IBD editorial.

The Next Ice Age Cometh, But Slowed By Man?

With a hat tip to Instapundit and a link to my earlier post Sea Levels and Ice Ages, now comes a new scientific report, "Human Carbon Emissions Seen by Researchers Holding Back Ice Age":

Human emissions of fossil carbon into the atmosphere and the resulting increase in temperatures may be holding off the next ice age, according to research from Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.

“We are probably entering a new ice age right now,” Lars Franzen, a professor of physical geography at the university, was cited as saying in an online statement today. “However, we’re not noticing it due to the effects of carbon dioxide.”
***
. . . “If we accept that rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to an increase in global temperature, the logical conclusion must be that reduced levels lead to a drop in temperature.”

There does seem to be a sort of logic in that.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

          --- Robert Frost

Sea Levels and Ice Ages

For those of you contemplating buying beach front homes in the next 100 years or so, here's a cautionary report that seas are rising faster than previously projected, "Could Estimates of the Rate of Future Sea-Level Rise Be Too Low?":

Sea levels are rising faster than expected from global warming, and University of Colorado geologist Bill Hay has a good idea why. The last official IPCC report in 2007 projected a global sea level rise between 0.2 and 0.5 meters by the year 2100. But current sea-level rise measurements meet or exceed the high end of that range and suggest a rise of one meter or more by the end of the century.

For those of you still following the "English" system, one meter is a little over 3 feet.

For those of you seeking some geologic background, consider this:

During most of the last 1 billion years the earth had no permanent ice. However, sometimes large areas of the globe were covered with vast ice sheets. These times are known as ice ages.

So, "no permanent ice" for a billion years or so, but now it is a crisis? Well, if you live along the sea, as something like 80% of the world's population does.

I am not a climate change denier, as I have repeatedly stated. But I am interested in how often the earth's climate has changed and when.

"KYA" means "thousand years ago"

Around 15,000 years ago much of North America (okay, almost all of Canada and a big swath of the northern U.S.) was covered by a big glacier. See the graphic I have liberated from the Illinois State Museum that shows the retreat of that glacier ice, leaving us, among other things, the Great Lakes.

One thing

Ice ages are recurring periods in the Earth's history, usually thousands or tens of thousands of years in length, when the entire Earth experiences colder climatic conditions. During these periods, enormous continental glaciers called ice sheets cover large areas of the Earth’s surface. Ice ages are separated by warmer periods called interglacial periods. Several ice ages have occurred throughout our planet's history. The last ice age peaked about 18,000 years ago, after which the Earth again began to warm.
***

Recent cycles of advancing and retreating ice sheets have occurred approximately every 100,000 years. Each cycle consists of a long, generally cold period during which the ice sheets slowly reach their maximum size, and a relatively short, warm period during which the ice sheets rapidly retreat.

We are now in a warm period that has lasted more than 10,000 years, which is longer than many of the previous warm intervals. If the pattern of glacial cycles holds true, scientists believe the Earth is soon due for another cold period. In the 1800s, global temperatures began decreasing during a period known as the Little Ice Age. Currently, patterns indicate that the Earth is nearing the end of an interglacial period, meaning that another ice age is predicted in a few thousand years.

So, short term planning would suggest not buying land on low-lying barrier islands or in south Florida. Longer term planning would suggest stocking up on down vests.

Then there is the Milankovitch theory:

These three factors—tilt, orbital shape, and precession—combine to create changes in climate. Since these dynamics are operating on different time scales, their interactions are complicated. Sometimes their effects reinforce each other and sometimes they tend to cancel each other. For example, 11,000 years from now when precession has caused the Northern Hemisphere summer to begin in December, the effect of an increase in solar radiation at the perihelion in January and decrease at the aphelion in July will exaggerate Northern Hemisphere seasonal differences rather than soften them as is the case today.

Oh good, something to look forward to.

UPDATE: Wondering why this post appears on a maritime security blog? Ships being built today and planned for in the near term and the naval and Coast Guard force the United States must include thinking about such matters as a changing coastline in the U.S. and abroad.