When defense pork-loving lawmakers aren’t bashing climate science and pooh-poohing the idea of climate change as a scientific conspiracy, their corporate owners are eying potentially lucrative resources under the north polar ice cap:
(WaPo) — None of this means a shooting war is likely at the North Pole any time soon. But as the number of workers and ships increases in the High North to exploit oil and gas reserves, so will the need for policing, border patrols and — if push comes to shove — military muscle to enforce rival claims.The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 percent of its untapped natural gas is in the Arctic. Shipping lanes could be regularly open across the Arctic by 2030 as rising temperatures continue to melt the sea ice, according to a National Research Council analysis commissioned by the U.S. Navy last year.
Which means we can raise the earth’s temperature even more and uncover more oil and gas reserves to raise the temperature more and … well you get the idea. And, as an added bonus, the nation we’ll most likely compete with is Russia. So we get richer energy companies supported by the US taxpayer, and a nuclear armed adversary that can be used to scare the daylights out of everyone in the US starting at age three. It’s a conservative wetdream come to life.
Plus , we might get to test the Ewing and Donn hypothesis: an ice free arctic ocean is the trigger for the next ice age.
http://www.moraymo.us/1990_RaymoRindRud.pdf
@Machintelligence
Whut?
Please, point out the page, paragraph and line that supports the idea that an ice free arctic is an ice age trigger.
All I saw in that article was that it would lead to a 15-20 degree increase in winter temperatures, and loss of ice on the Canadian archipelago.
The introduction clearly states that they formulated that hypothesis in 1956, and have since abandoned it ‘in large part because no evidence for an ice-free Arctic could be found for the last few glacial cycles’.
Are you lying, lazy or stupid?
PS That reads very aggressively, I should’ve had my morning coffee first. If tone offends, I apologise.
Suido, adding that second comment was a classy thing to do. We don’t see much decency on the Internet, and I appreciate your small part in not taking part in that.
Interestingly enough, the department of defense – and especially the Navy – seems to be one of the few government organizations who appear to take climate change seriously. After all, as Admiral David Titley pointed out, all their bases are at sea level, so keeping an eye on sea level might be a good idea.