Retired Military Officers, the Pentagon, and Climate Change

It’s a tangled web, with the usual money as the background.
The Washington times says, “Sponsors of Pentagon’s alarm-raising climate study could benefit from action”. If you like puzzles, read the article yourself at: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/26/sponsors-of-pentagons-alarm-raising-climate-study-/
I have waded through it and get the following:
CNA Corporation, a private non-profit research and analysis organization located in Alexandria, VA. conducts research and analysis for military and government agencies to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of U.S. national defense efforts. Note that it also has an opportunity to influence political decisions, with recommendations that may not be subjective.
On May 13, CNA Corp. issued an alarmist global warming report that calls on the Defense Department to ramp up spending on what it calls a man-made problem. Remember that CNA Corp. is an advisor under contract to the Pentagon. With the issuance of the report, and consistent with the Commander-in-Chief’s position on man-made global warming, the Pentagon immediately adopted it as its own. The key point is the matter of “ramping up spending”.
It also turns out that a number of retired military officers have entered businesses related to supplying information and hardware intended to combat global warming. For example, The CNA advisory panel is headed by retired four-star Army Gen. Paul Kern, who sits on the board of directors of a company that sells climate-detection products to the Pentagon and other government agencies. At least two other board members are employed in businesses that sell climate change expertise and products.
Climate change has become big business. The U.S. government alone increased spending by more than $100 billion from 2003 to 2010. Nations around the world are buying sensors, imaging technologies  and airborne monitors. That means huge contracts for consulting, studies and technologies to analyze the Earth and its environment.
Gen. Kern, the CNA advisory board chairman, is also on the board of directors of Exelis Inc. (formerly ITT), a broad-based defense contractor that is in the climate change business. It sells climate-detection systems to the Pentagon as well as to private industries.
This month, SpaceNews.com reported that Exelis Geospatial Systems won two climate-related contracts worth a potential $200 million — one for a NASA monitoring system, the other for Japan’s Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.
Gen. Wald, another advisory board member, heads the largest single business entity within Deloitte, the giant international accounting and consulting firm. Gen. Wald runs its defense unit, and one of his portfolios is energy consulting. Deloitte itself has set up a consulting business that it says helps clients with “climate change and carbon management.”

One of the CNA report’s main recommendations: “In addition to DOD’s conducting comprehensive assessments of the impacts of climate change on mission and operational resilience, the Department should develop, fund, and implement plans to adapt, including developing metrics for measuring climate impacts and resilience. The Department should place a greater emphasis on the projected impacts of climate change on both DOD facilities and associated community infrastructures.”
CNA Corp. itself is in the climate change business, a check of its client lists shows.  One of its major foundation customers is the Energy Foundation, the same group that financed the CNA military advisory board climate study. It is a global warming activist and is pushing a tax on carbon emissions.
So, the real question is whether there is some justification for promoting the man-made climate change devil, with its associated expenditure of large sums of taxpayer money, much of which falls into the hands of private pockets?
The CNA report is 100 percent climate change advocacy, stating as fact that global warming has caused flooding and wildfires. It uses phrases such as “more intense storms” and “more frequent and severe storms.”
“Globally, we have seen recent prolonged drought act as a displacement of populations, each contributing to instability and eventual conflict,” the CNA said.
Yet a number of scientists — and the United Nations — have looked at the history of storms and concluded that they cannot be blamed on climate change.
Roger Pielke, an environmental scientist at the University of Colorado who has studied decades of U.S. storm data, told a Senate committee last year: “It is misleading and just plain incorrect to claim that disasters associated with hurricanes, tornadoes, floods or droughts have increased on climate time scales either in the United States or globally. It is further incorrect to associate the increasing costs of disasters with the emission of greenhouse gases.”
Jeff Kueter, president of the George C. Marshall Institute, a nonprofit that assesses scientific issues that affect public policy, said the report does not adhere to CNA's creed of “absolute objectivity. “The report is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Mr. Kueter, who believes climate change impact on national security is tenuous. “The authors begin with the belief that the impacts of climate change are negative, and from that only bad consequences can flow. The report is not an objective treatment of the validity of the scientific claims or the veracity of the connections between environmental issues and security concerns.”
Even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global warming advocate, said in its latest report that there is “low confidence” in any long-term increase in cyclone and hurricane activity. It also said there is “low confidence” in increased tornadoes and hailstorms.
David Kreutzer, an energy economics and climate change researcher at the Heritage Foundation, said the CNA report is based on some projections that have proved way off base. The report paints a picture of a future pocked with climate disasters, which is likely to be true because we have always had climate disasters,” He said, “Even with no increase in floods, droughts, hurricanes or tornadoes — no increase is what the IPCC says we have observed so far — the future will have plenty. The military should be ready for them but should not blame them on climate change.” He said, “The CNA relied on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change models that have proven embarrassingly inaccurate. In fact, instead of providing narrower and more certain projections, the projections have been getting further and further from the actual observed temperatures.” “While climate change has not led to security problems, climate policies have diverted huge chunks of the food supply to biofuels, driving up basic food prices and likely aggravating political instability in poor countries,” Mr. Kreutzer said.
So, what is the relevancy of the above?
There is some justification, but it is loaded with abuse.
Climate change is with us, and we have to recognize it and adapt to it. This will require investments in infrastructure modification, military defenses, etc., but this doesn’t have to be done all at once. Climate change moves slowly, and we can make slow adaptive changes.
We have already wasted billions of dollars in inhibiting use of fossil fuels and promoting development of renewable energy, such as wind and solar. It doesn’t mean that we may not eventually need such renewable energy, but it should not be forced. There will likely come a time when we are at a crossroads; where we can see that the cost of renewable energy is no greater than trying to get the last barrel of oil out of a depleted reserve. That will be the time to make the change. I don’t buy more Coca-Cola when I have 10 cases already in the garage.
With respect to retired military officers latching onto a good thing in preparing for climate change, and let’s not forget weather which is even more important, I have no objection. Only stupid people ignore opportunities. But, when opportunities are generated based upon deceit and fraud, we have a real problem. The fact is that there is no connection between carbon dioxide and climate change, but it is impossible to prosecute those who are basing windfall profits on the claim that it is.