On front lines of climate change
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share thisFor climate change deniers who preach the fossil-based gospel of "Drill, baby, drill" and deride alternative energy advocates as unpatriotic Chicken Littles, Glenn Kunkel is an inconvenient man.
Like legions of activists who trust the fact-backed word of scientists over the empty rhetoric of energy-industry apologists, Mr. Kunkel is convinced that the greatest threats to American national security over the next 20 years are our dependence on fossil fuels and the social, political and economic effects of climate change.
Unlike the overwhelming majority of the aforementioned activists, Mr. Kunkel is a Marine combat veteran with two tours in Iraq and a war wound on his resume. Questioning his patriotism and bravery is a politically risky business, particularly for neoconservatives who claim unwavering and exclusive support for our men and women in uniform.
A new battle
In an age when anti-intellectualism is a badge of honor, smearing scientists is easy. Start slinging mud at soldiers while a pair of wars slog on, however, and you'd be better be ready for a fight.
Medically discharged from the military, Mr. Kunkel has joined a small but growing army of veterans uniquely suited to frame energy independence and conservation as national security issues. He and four other veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan made a Thursday stop in Scranton on the 21-city Operation Free Veterans for American Power bus tour.
These veterans, all in their 20s and 30s and deeply committed to serving their country, have seen firsthand the terrible price we are paying for enriching our enemies and shortchanging the environment. They and their allies are pushing for a new Manhattan Project that would harness American ingenuity and perseverance to change the way humanity creates and consumes energy.
"We've got to deal with these problems now," said Michael Breen, a former Army captain who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now pursuing a juris doctorate at Yale.
"Twenty years from now, I don't want our children to have to make the same sacrifices we've made."
Science vs. rhetoric
It will be an uphill battle, at least in the beginning.
For decades, Big Tobacco had no trouble finding doctors willing to say smoking doesn't cause cancer. Big Oil has its own stable of scientists who swear manmade climate change is a hoax. Renowned talk-radio climatologists like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage have convinced millions of listeners who vote that global warming either isn't happening or has no connection to human behavior.
Is it really possible to reach people who trust the unchallenged bloviations of pundits over the peer-tested research of a huge majority of the world's most respected scientific minds?
"The best analogy I've heard is let's say I go to nine doctors and they tell me I have brain cancer, but the tenth doctor tells me I have a sinus infection," Mr. Kunkel said. "Who am I going to trust, the first nine doctors who all came to the same diagnosis, or the last guy? I may not want to have brain cancer, but there it is."
Remember Benedict Arnold
It's hard to argue with such simple logic, which is why the veterans can expect to be targeted personally, even though such attacks risk blowback. When those with weak arguments can't beat the opposing message, they beat up the messenger.
State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe did just that in response to an e-mail inviting elected officials to meet with Operation Free veterans. The Butler County Republican declined with the following load of bile, which I swear I'm not making up:
"As a veteran, I believe that any veteran lending their name to promote the leftist propaganda of global warming and climate change in an effort to control more of the wealth created in our economy through cap-and-tax-type policies, all in the name of national security, is a traitor to the oath he or she took to defend the Constitution of our great nation!
"Remember Benedict Arnold before giving credibility to a veteran who uses their service as a means to promote a leftist agenda. Drill Baby Drill!!!"
While any American who has served deserves our thanks and respect, It's fair to point out that Mr. Metcalfe was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, and in Germany during his four-year, peacetime stint in the early '80s. Isn't it just possible that combat veterans who have bled and shed blood in the Middle East have a more informed perspective?
How about the Pentagon, State Department, CIA and a host of nonpartisan security think-tanks? Each of these hotbeds of "treason" has identified climate change as a national security priority.
In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican, veteran and former secretary of the Navy, said: "Leading military, intelligence, and security experts have publicly spoken out that if left unchecked, global warming could increase instability and lead to conflict in already fragile regions of the world.
"If we ignore these facts, we do so at the peril of our national security and increase the risk to those in uniform who serve our nation."
Is he a traitor, too?
Light the way
Of course not, and that brand of desperate, infantile mudslinging isn't going to stick with fair-minded folks, anyway. What just might is the testimony of a small but growing army of inconvenient men and women uniquely qualified to say:
n National security is and must ever be a nonpartisan issue. We are all Americans. Our enemies and the elements don't discriminate based on party registration or political ideology.
n Sending trillions to oil-producing nations who fund the very terrorists who target us and our allies is madness. Our dependence on these nations compromises our strategic integrity and moral authority.
n "Drill, baby, drill" is an empty slogan, not an action plan. There is not enough oil under American soil to achieve energy independence, and it could take 20 years to get at it, anyway. By then, it will be too late.
n Climate change is real. Our energy and climate problems will take years to solve, but we must act now. If we don't, future wars and natural disasters are all but assured.
n Those wars and natural disasters will breed fear and resentment among those most affected, and terrorist groups will have an endless supply of new recruits, assuring more and wider wars.
n Americans have always risen to great challenges and can lead the world in the development of cleaner energy and increased conservation while creating millions of jobs and strengthening the economy.
n If we do not light the way, no one will.
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, is a proud hugger of trees and veterans. E-mail: kellysworld@timesshamrock.com
15 posted comments
S. Fred Singer, Ph.D.
President, The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP); Distinguished Research Professor, Institute for Humane Studies, George Mason University."It has been my history to get these ideas that are unpopular at the time but end up having some veracity. It certainly keeps me prominent. Twenty years ago I said that global warming would be the most mistreated scientific argument of our time. Global warming is an exaggeration issue, predictably blown out of proportion by the political and professional climate in which it evolved.”
Patrick J. Michaels, Ph.D
Research Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia; Senior Fellow, Cato Institute; Virginia State Climatologist.
“Some actions could lessen our ability to adapt, or at least some of us. If electricity prices are driven up, making air conditioning less affordable, who will suffer the most? The poorest among us who can least afford higher prices, and who thereby would suffer more heat related deaths. When the weather gets hot, people need to avoid heated rhetoric and engage in some cool thinking.”
Robert C. Balling, Jr. Ph. D.
Former Director, Office of Climatology and Associate professor of Geography, Arizona State University
“The United States is very close to adopting an international agreement that would ration the use of energy and of technologies that depend upon coal, oil, and natural gas and some other organic compounds. This treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.”
Frederick Seitz, Ph.D.
President Emeritus, National Academy of Sciences; Chairman Emeritus, George C. Marshall Institute“Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators -- and many scientists -- seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. … The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperature-wise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman's forecast for next week.”
Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D.
Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyI could do this all day Bren.BTW, how many signatories are there (currently) on the "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism" petition? Last I checked it was up to 750 scientists.
---------------------------------------------------------------Arthur B. Robinson is founder, president and professor of chemistry at the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, where he conducts research on protein chemistry and on nutrition and predictive and preventive medicine. He also sells the Robinson Curriculum, which is a self-taught home school curriculum for grammar school children through high school.[1][2] "Teach your children...to acquire superior knowledge as did many...in the days before socialism in education."He is a Christian.He is currently the editor and publisher of the newsletter Access to Energy[3], which was originated by Petr Beckmann.With his son, Noah E. Robinson, Ph.D., Arthur Robinson authored the Molecular Clocks: Deamidation of Asparaginyl and Glutaminyl Residues in Peptides and Proteins [4] which includes a review of the scientific literature on deamidation; His work has been discussed in later publications on this subject.[5] Robinson and coworkers formulated the amide molecular clock hypothesis in 1970. [6]An American Spectator article concerning Dr. Robinson's unique history.[7] includes discussion of his association with Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling (Chemistry, 1954 and Peace, 1962), who referred to Robinson as "my principal and most valued collaborator." However, Robinson's research revealed "highly embarrassing" results proving conclusively that Pauling's data on vitamin C was false. According to the article: A sharp divergence of political opinion between the two men also became apparent. A few years after he won the Nobel Peace Prize, Pauling also won the Lenin Peace Prize. He told Robinson that he was more proud of the Soviet than the Norwegian award. For his part, in the spring of 1978 Robinson had given a speech at the Cato Institute, then in San Francisco, deploring the government funding of science as harmful to the independence that is essential to scientific inquiry.[7]Robinson is the senior author of the Oregon Petition, a petition of over 31,000 people that identified themselves as scientists or engineers (in 2008), intended to show that a "scientific consensus" does not exist on the subject of global warming.[8] Robinson is a signatory to A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism, a petition produced by the Discovery Institute that expresses skepticism about the ability of natural selection to account for the complexity of life, and encouraging careful examination of the evidence for "Darwinian theory".
Link: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/10/al-gores-inconvenient-truth.html
We can hardly deny its existence or overlook that it hasn't grown appreciably since the ban on CFC's took place.
What I found in my research is, the same arguments that were used by the opposition in 1987, are being used today. I consider myself as much a capitalist as the next guy but wouldn't be wise to listen to the scientists who are convinced that trouble awaits us unless we attempt to reduce our CO2 emissions ?
I think "Cap and Trade" goes to an extreme but a little "conservation" can't hurt ? Can it ?
I obviously had other things on my mind because the news didn't bother me. Maybe it crossed my mind that it was just a bunch of crazies who had too much time on their hands.
Critics immediately attacked the theory.
The discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985 apparently proved the critics wrong. Human-generated CFCs were indeed destroying Earth's protective ozone layer. The ozone depletion was far worse than Molina and Roland had predicted. No one had imagined that ozone depletions like the 50% losses being observed by 1987 over Antarctica were possible so soon. Despite the continued opposition of many of the skeptics, the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement to phase out ozone-destroying chemicals, was hurriedly approved in 1987 to address the threat.
In the last 20 years, the use of human-generated CFC's has markedly declined. The results ?
The 2008 ozone hole was larger than the 2007 hole. The 2009 hole is waning slightly from the 2008 observation.
The hole moves and shifts overhead like a unseen gigantic amoeba and on Oct 9 officials in southern Chile warned residents that the hole had extended itself over Punta Arenas and warned children to stay indoors and avoid exposure to the very hi-level UV rays.
Having an intense dislike for Al Gore, it pains me to say,"Better safe than sorry ?
(Sources-Stephen Leahy , Science Daily, The World Data Center For Remote Sensing Of The Atmosphere and Earth observatory NASA
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3313785/Weather-Channel-boss-calls-global-warming-the-greatest-scam-in-history.htmlThen then there was this little gem from two months ago...."Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense."
Link: http://article.nationalreview.com/?
q=ZTBiMTRlMDQxNzEyMmRhZjU3ZmYzODI5MGY4ZWI5OWMGiven that tempuatures have been falling for the last 10 years straight, then I give you credit for at least towing the party line by referring to this personal fairytale of your's by the more recent moniker of "climate change" rather than the laughably named, prior version referred to as *snicker* Global Warming. Sure, let's decrease our dependence on foriegn oil. Let's tap the Bakken Formation and it's billion's of barrels of technically recoverable crude. One cannot instantly diversify a nations energy supply overnight, and while people invest in renewable energy (like I do) let's keep the crude flowing while we invest in alternative forms that, in even a best case scenario, are still years away from implementation.