HE'S BAACK - AT 10:34 A.M. ET:  John Kerry won't go away.  Maybe he thinks he's got a shot in 2024.  Now he has a new gimmick - the effect that "climate change" will have on national defense.  This is a rehash of an old Washington rule that, if you want anything to get done, attach it to national security:

WASHINGTON -- Massive crop devastation, melting glaciers, water shortages, millions of displaced people -- all of these will drag the US military into conflict if global climate change goes unchecked, a Senate panel was warned today.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, convened by Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, focused on what so far has received only modest attention in the climate change debate: the effect it is bound to have on national defense.

It's received modest attention because the crowd that's pushing the "climate change" agenda has only minimal interest, if that, in national defense.

Sadly, some military officers are going along with Kerry.

The whole thing is so cynical.  Anyone who knows anything about the military knows that weather is always a factor in military operations, and is taken into consideration.  I've seen military briefings - many Urgent Agenda readers have as well - and they normally begin with the weather in the region under review.  And yes, weather can change military history.  Reference the great Pacific typhoon of 1944, Typhoon Cobra, which extensively damaged an American fleet under the command of William F. Halsey Jr. 

If there is, indeed, climate change, in will not occur in the next ten minutes.  It will probably affect some military calculations, just as increased storm activity affects aviation.  Can climate change start wars?  Well, theoretically, almost any change can provoke economic consequences that can lead to conflict.  But again, there is really nothing new about this.  Climate change, if it actually occurs, might increase tensions in one region, but make other regions more fertile and hospitable, leading, maybe, to lesser tensions.

Climate change is the cause of the year on the left.  Wait.  It'll be something else next year.  Nominations?

July 23, 2009