By Kevin Mooney — Inspector Clouseau call your office!!
At a time when it should have been prioritizing counterterrorism efforts and embassy security needs, The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) instead focused its energy and attention on global warming hysteria. When discredited politically correct ideas seep into policymaking areas that directly impact America’s national security, it is time to worry.
Under a directive from President Obama in 2009, the CIA’s Center on Climate Change and National Security was created to investigate intelligence and security challenges that could potentially flow out of global warming.
Judicial Watch has the low down on a report the CIA filed that bases its key findings on discredited global warming “science.” In the aftermath of recent scandals and intelligence gathering failures that now beset the agency, there is an opening here for concerned members of Congress to inquire about the opportunity costs of federal government’s fixation with global warming.
A summary statement from the CIA study uncovered by Judicial Watch reads as follows:
“Scientific evidence indicates that the global climate is moving outside the bounds of past experience and can be expected to put new stresses on societies around the world, prompting examination of a variety of plausible scenarios through which climate change might pose or alter security risks for the United States. It goes on to offer an improved understanding of the links between climate and security as well as the ability to anticipate potential security risks arising from ‘climate phenomena.’ ”
The report goes onto forecast disruptions in water, energy and food supplies that could open the way to international turmoil. But it leaves a few key items out of its equation. For starters, over 1,000 scientists across the globe now question the very premise of man-made global warming theories that now drive public policy. Moreover, the latest research shows that the planet is actually cooling, and not warming. The cooling could persist for the next 30 years, if not longer, according to the research data.
There is a strong case to be made that the threat to U.S. national security comes not from global warming per se, but from the anti-energy global warming policies that undercut America’s geopolitical standing.
Take the Keystone Pipeline, which would transport oil from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada to refineries in the Southern U.S. Operating at the behest of environmental extremists, the Obama Administration refuses to approve construction of the pipeline even though it would provide the U.S. with a cheap reliable source of energy in a friendly, stable part of the world.
The Keystone Pipeline is estimated to generate in excess of 250,000 permanent jobs for U.S. workers and add more than $100 billion in annual total expenditures to the U.S. economy, according to figures compiled by the office of Sen. James Inhofe. The pipeline would also have the capacity to provide the U.S. with an additional 700,000 barrels of crude oil each day.
But instead of moving with a project that would help free the U.S. from dependence on the Middle East, while opening new job opportunities, Team Obama is allowing junk science to prevail over sound policy. And not just for the American economy, but also the U.S. military. Section 526 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 prevents the U.S. Air Force from obtaining fuel from the oil sands on the basis of you guessed it – global warming.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau, the fictional character played by the late Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther films, was dismissed as an incompetent, dim witted bumbler by his adversaries. But he always got his man, and always settled on the correct investigative path.
To compare the CIA with Clouseau, may be a bit of an insult to Clouseau. After all, he did correctly identify which high society figure in the original film was in reality the notorious “Phantom” – the jewelry thief who was after the Pink Panther. (See the movie, I’m not going to tell you)
The good news is that the CIA is disbanding the Center on Climate Change and National Security. The bad news is that the agency still clings to global warming dogma even after the “climategate” made it clear that politically motivated researchers have been manipulating and distorting scientific data in an effort to prop up theories that no longer hold.
In a statement emailed to a New York Times blog, Todd Ebitz, a C.I.A. spokesman, made it clear that U.S. officials would continue to waste resources on falsified science.
“The C.I.A. for several years has studied the national security implications of climate change,” Mr. Ebitz said. “As part of a broader realignment of analytic resources, this work continues to be performed by a dedicated team in a new office that looks at economic and energy matters affecting America’s national security. The mission and the resources devoted to it remain essentially unchanged.”
Has no one at the CIA heard of “climategate” and the emails leaked to the Internet from University of East Anglia in Great Britain?
The late Herbert Lom, who died earlier this year after playing such prominent part in the Pink Panther films, had the appropriate comment.
“Clouseau!!”
Kevin Mooney is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government. You can follow Kevin on Twitter at @KevinMooneyDC.
