Thursday, February 25, 2016

Obama Orders Pentagon, Generals and Admirals to Make Climate Change Job One

Obama Orders Pentagon, Generals and Admirals to Make Climate Change Job One | Somewhat Reasonable:
Military triumphs and catastrophes have often hinged on how well (or luckily) armies and navies employed, avoided or benefited from weather and other natural events.
Severe storms helped the British navy defeat Spain’s Armada in 1588.
George Washington knew horrid weather meant the Hessians would not expect an attack across the Delaware River on Christmas 1776.
Napoleon captured Moscow before leading his Grande Armée’s exhausted, starving, freezing remnants back to France through a bitter 1812 Russian winter.
Hitler’s army never even reached Moscow; it was decimated by disease, starvation, bullets and frigid cold at Stalingrad 140 years later.
Eisenhower’s Normandy invasion plans anticipated a full moon that would illuminate bomber targets and bring low tides to expose German mines and obstacles along the beaches. Instead, overcast skies limited Allied air support – but persuaded the Nazi high command that no invasion would occur for several days.
So senior officers stayed in Germany, leaving their army unprepared for D-Day, June 6, 1944.
Throughout history, commanders discovered that trying to predict the weather – or their enemies’ resolve – was fraught with peril.
Even today, accurate weather forecasting is a highly uncertain science, even a few days in advance, especially for hurricanes or winter blizzards in Mid-Atlantic states where winds, storm tracks, temperatures and moisture are affected by the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico and Arctic.
But now President Obama wants to compound his social experimentation with the military, by ordering the Pentagon brass to focus not on imminent weather events surrounding battle plans – not on threats from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, ISIL, Hamas and other real hot spots – but on climate change years or decades in the future. 
He wants to replace Remember the Alamo with Remember the Climate!
Mr. Obama has issued an executive order directing the Department of Defense (and all other federal government agencies) to make preparing for global warming impacts a top priority, and treat climate change as our most serious national security threat.
He even warned 2015 Coast Guard Academy graduates that “denying” climate change is a “dereliction of duty.” 
You can’t make this stuff up.
The EO directs the Pentagon to order all military commanders, down to battle planning levels, to include climate change analyses in combat planning, training exercises, intelligence gathering, weapons testing and procurement, fuel types and use, and practically every other aspect of military operations. 
This could include restrictions on the type and duration of training flights, amphibious landings and tank maneuvers..."

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