Climate Change vs Terrorism and the Costs of Inaction

[yosemitesam]

I came across an interesting article today that I’d like to share.
Particularly considering all the Iraq war posts in other threads. Yea, I’ve looked in on those threads
but have spared you folks my sniping, considering my last few comments were more emotion that thought… and believe it or
not I do try to be thoughtful about what I write here.
Besides it’s tough to convey my skepticism about how natural and ‘self-evident’ it’s become that we can invade and destroy cities and their populations with little more justification than - hell, that’s how it’s always done - demolish and dominate your perceived enemy… yippy and rah rah and count the profits.
I don’t buy it.
If we possess more military and WMDs than everyone else combined and had more economic and political power than everyone - why worry about Chinese competition for the oil - deal with it -
wasn’t “competition” the hall mark of Free Market somewhere back there in pre-history?
And look at us now, the bully big shot… We ain’t number one any more, in more areas than I care to think about, since I do love this country. These days way too may parts of the world have been taught by our own premeditated actions to hold our nation in contempt - as for people who hate us down to their core… Pre-Bush-Cheney-Neocons, that may have been a few hundred… a few thousand extremist… now it’s millions who have suffered grievously at our bloody oily hands.
How our proud nation of a free We The People has fallen. :down:
With that introduction, here’s some further food for thought.

Climate Change vs Terrorism and the Costs of Inaction Posted May 19, 2013 | Jim Baird | The Energy Collective

At the turn of this century drought set in in the American Southwest, which persists to this day. Without water, all living things cease to exist. Even as the Southwest and other parts of the planet are parched by a warming planet, other parts are saturated by moisture that originally was evaporated from overheating dry latitudes and the oceans. The resultant storms and flooding also extinguishes lives. September 11, 2001, four passenger airliners carrying 227 passengers and crew were hijacked by 19 Al Qaeda terrorists. Two of the planes, were crashed into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, which subsequently collapsed killing 2,606. A third plane was crashed into the Pentagon killing 125 and the fourth was crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after its passengers tried to overcome the hijackers. Nine days later President Bush declared a “War on Terror". The New York Times 10 year retrospective estimated the cost to America of 9/11 was $3.3 trillion. According to the New York City comptroller's office report one year after 9/11 the cost of replacing destroyed and damaged property totaled $55 billion. Included in this figure however was $29 billion for loss of life and injury thus the actual physical damage was $26 billion or 0.79% of the total cost of the War on Terror 10 years in. {...}

In 2005 Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans killing at least 1,833 people while damaging and destroying $81 billion worth of property.

{then he discusses an alternative energy system "Sea Surface Cooling System" Utilizing OTEC (ocean thermal energy conversion).}

In the 8 years since Katrina, little has been done on either the hurricane or thermal runaway fronts even as billions have been spent on the War on Terror. According to the 2012 Annual Global Climate and Catastrophe Report of Aon Benfield, a global provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, last year produced $65 billion in damage due to Hurricane Sandy,$35 billion in damage due to the drought in the Midwest/Plains and Super Typhoon Bopha killed more than 1,900 people in the Philippines. All, or most of this, could have been prevented by sapping the oceans surface temperature to produce power and by moving water from Canada, already blessed with an overabundance which is predicted to increase by as much as 30 percent this century due to climate change, to the areas of drought. The U.S. accounted for nearly 90% of all the world's insured losses in 2012. Largely preventable disasters caused economic losses of $200 billion, which is just above the 10- year average of $187 billion...

Our response to climate change to date has been effectively to surrender our shorelines and coastal cities without a fight. The War on Terror has created tensions between both friends and foe and has impeded international trade and commercial aviation. A War on Climate Change could provide all of the renewable energy and water we can use, reduce the threat of tropical storms and sea level rise as well as terrorism, which is currently focused on and is financed by Middle Eastern oil. Any terrorist with sufficient intent and discretion can cause significant damage without anyone's prior knowledge or ability to respond. In the alternative Nature is constantly telegraphing her intentions and yet we do little to nothing. Perhaps we need to brand Mother Nature a “terrorist"?...